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Why I'm not able to send a member a personal message


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1 hour ago, Ralph Heber said:

Hi there,

if I try that, i receive the following message:

You are only allowed to send 0 messages per day. Please try again later.

Whats wrong?

That is a very good question and deserves an explanation.

We have recently had a lot of unscrupulous people post, usually some crap but harmless sounding post like: “that is a really good idea, thank you for that” so it gets approved and then bombard people with P.M.’s for things like fake driving licences and also bombard the forum with the same.

We have also had people advertising their “shop” supposedly in one country whilst they are posting from some other part of the world, and when you check their website there is no physical address or, often, even a phone number. Any reader of this forum does need to realise it is “Buyer Beware” i.e. the forum cannot be held responsible for such content particularly if the seller is not someone who has clearly supported and helped others on this forum and has a good reputation on the forum. However, we do feel we should do what we can to minimise questionable and unscrupulous dealers, trolls and spammers.

As a result, quite recently we decided that you need to demonstrate you are a real member with a genuine interest and a good reputation before you can post private messages.

Commercial members also need to prove they are good citizens of this forum before they will be allowed to advertise as well.

For example there are loads of posts, often from children, with cries for help because they have a problem with their Hoverboard. As most of us are EUC people we cannot usually help. Dozens of companies try to advertise the “wonderful” Hoverboards they sell yet VERY FEW can be bothered to help anyone with a problem - why on earth should we then let them use this forum as a free advertising platform?

Below is a one good example posted today. You cannot just reject this or the other post from the same person, but they are not the sort of posts that give you any trust that it is someone with a genuine interest - let’s see what they try to do next ?

 

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22 minutes ago, Esper said:

what if we put a captcha on messages? then allow only one every 5 minutes for people under 100 rep? with a limit of 5/day?

???. Captcha, if I understand it correctly would catch a robot, these aren’t robots they are real. 

One every 5 minutes and a limit of 5/day!” We don’t have a full time staff, or indeed any staff, just volunteers. We were down to one message per day for New members and they were still causing too many problems.

100 reps is far too high as we have many members who read actively but not talk much , for example there was a poster only yesterday who posted his very first post but has been coming to the forum regularly since September 2016. 

Perhaps, the below thread might well illustrate our dilemma at times?

 

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I am no programmer, but I thought it would be easy to implement. If it requires actual approval, wouldn't that defeat the 'Private' part of private message? I have no idea how this runs or how to make it better except for voice my thoughts and ideas. As you mentioned, that rep may not be a good idea after all.

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I asked the same question when I entered this forum. There is still no answer, which is the criteria, to send private messages?

10 posts, 50 or hundred?

My really personal opinion to this: not a good idea for a forum. I wanted to contact a member near my location, whom I don't know. Due to this limitation - no chance.

I didn't come across such a limitation on other forums.

 

Regards 

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20 hours ago, MBIKER_SURFER said:

I asked the same question when I entered this forum. There is still no answer, which is the criteria, to send private messages?

10 posts, 50 or hundred?

My really personal opinion to this: not a good idea for a forum. I wanted to contact a member near my location, whom I don't know. Due to this limitation - no chance.

I didn't come across such a limitation on other forums.

Regards 

No it is nothing like as silly as those numbers, you just need to do enough to prove you are genuine, I deliberately didn’t quote a number as that forewarns a spammer what he needs to do to get around the system.

We do not think it is a good idea either, but the bottom line was that we cannot read private messages (they really are private)  only see that they have been sent and we were seeing just that from people who had lied and cheated their way into the forum and were doing harm we could see, regardless of what they might have been saying in P.M.’s.

It is also why we do not like people lying about their location like the guy below. The dubious, and indeed downright dangerous misleading or scamming  ads we sometimes get can almost invariably be spotted quickly just by the poster lying about where they are.

In the case of the below guy he is harmless, but his pointless stand on his wrong location simply meant he didn’t get the help he was asking for because few of use know much about the Japanese EUC market, and nobody would talk about the Solowheel Glide series to someone in Japan whereas Florida would be a completely different matter.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Interesting, I have not run into this either. (NO PM'ing.) I have been watching and reading here for a few days as the EUC is new to me and of strong interest. I have been looking to piucked up a used unit to learn on and figure out how much and what style EUC I am really inserted in. Being new and not having one I didn't feel I can contribute much to the conversations here. When buying I do like to chat with the seller a bit via PM when possible. Sure makes it easier to conduct a purchase and share information.

I do feel for you. I also run a forum for my business. We do not have as much traffic in the forum as you have hear, so things are easier, but we do get the occasional spammer showing up and making a mess. My forum has some STRONG anti-spammer features, but I currently have most of them turned off as it does flag legitimate customers as possible spammers. (It checks emails and IP addresses against a global anti-forum-spammer list.) I am tempted to turn it on at times. Once we detect a spammer, it is pretty much a single click to ban them, report them and remove all of their content form the site. They usually spam up the place pretty well.

It is always a tightrope to deal with this issue. You want to make the forum friendly to new folks, but you really want to filter new accounts if you can. 

If your approach is working, then use it, but I think this conversation exists as your method is actually harming the new users to a level. So, the question is, what does more harm? The spammers, or your methods of dealing with them?

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I guess we have something of a unique problem on our forum in terms of "unwanted accounts". The usual forum-software customized spambots are one thing, and there are tools to stop or control those, like @rotozuk pointed out, IP Checks, Spamlist crosschecks etc. But thats not the end of it, and what makes it hard.

We have actual humans trying to promote their shady business on our forum with a bunch of likeminded people craving any form of selfbalancing magic. So they basically circumvent all the automated systems in place against bots.

So far these restrictions we have were internally discussed and put in place, and have kept our workload on a acceptable levels and as @Keith listed above, we only have to deal with those more skilled in the scam-game.

But a thread like this is also exactly what we want, so we see that there are things we didnt anticipate. If we have some legitimate users having issues with that, then we are up for discussing it, we're a Forum after all :thumbup:

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I like the system that is in place now. I understand that a new member may want to talk with people in private sales via pm in order to pass along contact information. But the easiest way to get to the pm portion of the forum is to just make a few posts asking questions on specific wheels that may interest you. Why is there a need to directly pm someone as your first action when trying to buy a wheel anyways? It would be better to pose your question openly to the community to allow multiple people to answer thus giving you a wider degree of information rather than from one specific source that is just trying to sell their single wheel.

Also throughout the forum, if you are a newcomer, there are links to all sorts of official and trustworthy websites and dealers that you can visit. If buying a new wheel you should consider looking into those sites first, then posting a new thread in general chat asking opinions on which wheel would suit your needs better based on the wheels you like from the dealer websites. Someone may even offer to teach you on their personal wheel before you buy one to let you know what you're getting yourself into.

In my personal opinion, I think there should be a mandatory introduction page that you need to post on first before being allowed to even reply on any other thread. Who you are, where you first saw an EUC. if you got one already, where from. if you were invited by a current member, who. what region of the world you live in. I feel like in order to join the community, you should first introduce yourself to the current people in the community.

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  • 3 weeks later...

hello, 

first of all thx for such a Wonderfull site, it's really interesting and I am learning a lot just by reading the difference topics, 

I am a new member here and as you enter a new sport or forum you have not that much to contribute in a first place.. .

However one of the first things I tried was to PM someone,  EUC is quite new so you don't have local forums for small countries like mine, so you look for some experienced people where you chat with and pretty maybe you can give them a call if they agree upon it.. 

It's not the first forum that I use and not the first time that I get friends through this way.. take your pick kitesurfing, paragliding and mountaineering sites alike in the past.. 

From my experience this is a good way to introduce people into the new sport.. 

Today I struggle a bit with the limitations that I am imposed by not being able to send PM ;) , but I will adapt myself  and hope to get passed this algorithm one day so it allows me to send PM's ;)

I do agree with Esper above here, I am in favour of new members introducing themselves, in this way you get a feel of who someone is ... 

I guess this is the society we are evolving towards or we are in .., righteous people have limitations through rules and laws just because of the few that have no respect and misusing the system..

keep up the good work 

ciao

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2 hours ago, Cumulus Libre said:

I am a new member here and as you enter a new sport or forum you have not that much to contribute in a first place.. .

However one of the first things I tried was to PM someone,  EUC is quite new so you don't have local forums for small countries like mine, so you look for some experienced people where you chat with and pretty maybe you can give them a call if they agree upon it.. 

It's not the first forum that I use and not the first time that I get friends through this way.. take your pick kitesurfing, paragliding and mountaineering sites alike in the past.. 

ciao

You will have to do a few more postings - than you will be able to write PM's.

I had exactly the same problem!

 

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First , Tanks to the people that make this forum possible. Thanks!:thumbup: 

When I was new to this forum and realized that I was limited in what I could do for the purpose of protecting the forum's members I knew that it would be worth becoming a member. 

Reading all of the content while hiding in the shadows does not allow us to get a feel for who you are and does not help us trust you. Not that there is anything wrong with not posting. It is just that we do not know you. (yet) 

I think it is a good system.  

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I don't know what's wrong with this buggy forum software.  I've been sending PM's to all the hot women members, and I don't seem to be getting any nudes or replies for that matter.  It's like they just don't receive the messages successfully or something.  Must be a glitch.  :furious:

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On 7/28/2018 at 1:52 AM, Hunka Hunka Burning Love said:

I don't know what's wrong with this buggy forum software.  I've been sending PM's to all the hot women members, and I don't seem to be getting any nudes or replies for that matter.  It's like they just don't receive the messages successfully or something.  Must be a glitch.  :furious:

Yes, the lack of replies must be because the messages weren't delivered, of course... Who could resist your charm? ;)

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  • 4 weeks later...

@Shyone750 and @Christophe Vidal I’ve explained clearly why we needed to do this already 2nd post down. Prove yourselves to be “good citizens” and that limitation will be removed.

We get one or two complete prat’s a week trying to sell crap like forged driving licences. No way are we willing to let them start bombarding members with P.M.’s.

Meanwhile, as I have demonstrated to you both on your posts, use “@“ in a post and start to type the name you wish to contact and you will get a dropdown with the names that match, select that name and the user will be notified that you are talking about them. Thus YOU CAN contact any user in the same way that this post has contacted both of you.

 

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  • 5 months later...
On 8/26/2018 at 8:56 AM, Christophe Vidal said:

Same here, i joined to contact @US69 for his ACMv2 (secondhand) ... I cannot contact him ...

 

Count me in this group.  The only place I go is the secondhand wheel sales, but although there have been several that would have worked for me, I can’t send contact info in a private message.

 

I suppose worse would be if the seller couldn’t either.

 

Frustrating.  If I want questions answered about a particular wheel, I watch reviews on YouTube.

 

Kev

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While understand the intention of limiting people's ability to pm a person because they're new to the forum. An issue that I see is the restriction on private messaging sort of ties people's hands in some situations. 

Sure it's important to protect the members of the forum, but maybe it's better to let them protect themselves.

We could do this by being able to flag spammers in a way that alerts moderators, and perhaps their followers that unwelcome adverts are coming in from specific sources. The moderators could ban the source. Eventually the wall might frustrate the spammers. 

This way requires some activism from the members, but I think a nice equilibrium could be reached in time that simultaneously blocks spammers while allowing the networking on the sites to flow freely. 

I think that the system that is in play works, but perhaps there is room for some tweaking. 

 

 

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