Question about TOS and links, and crooked advertisers



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Discus: SAT/ACT Tests and Test Preparation: October 2003 Archive: Question about TOS and links, and crooked advertisers
By Xiggi (Xiggi) on Monday, October 20, 2003 - 04:00 pm: Edit

To Obiwan and other moderators:

In the past weeks, there have been numerous incidences of posts'and link's deletions, as well as banning of repeated transgressors.

I am not writing this post to voice my disagreement with the policies or their aplication. After all, we all are guests and we can take our "business" elsewhere, if we do not like thr rules. However, a review of the TOS does NOT seem to support "verbatim" the current stringent application of the rules.

Quote:

Commercial Posts, Repetitive Posts, Spam.
Posts promoting web sites, products, or services are not allowed. Affiliate links are not allowed. URL signatures are not allowed. Please don't create extra work for our moderators by posting promotional notices on our boards. If you register as a user, you can put your URL in your profile where interested visitors can find it. We recognize that occasionally a post may contain a commercial URL which could be of value to our visitors. Our moderators will attempt to exercise judgment and delete promotial posts while leaving informative ones in place. They will err on the side of not allowing commercial links. Users who post commercial messages will be warned or banned. Repetitive posts, numerous posts that do not comply with our TOS, and other egregious incidents of spam will be reported to the abuse department of the poster's Internet Service Provider and/or national spam tracking organizations.

Links to other Forums.
Please do not post links to other discussion forums. In order to fulfill our mission of being the best college discussion forum, we want important topics to be discussed here at College Confidential. Linking to discussions elsewhere defeats this purpose. Such links will be removed.



There are two different items that are prohibited: commercial and affiliate links AND links to other forums.

There is also a prohibition to post our own email address or own websites in the BODY of the posts. However, we are permitted, even encouraged to post them in our profile.

I bring this up in order to clarify the recent banning of Jaisen. Inasmuch as he deserved his banning on the sole merit of his attitude, I believe that the mere linking to a contributor's website is an issue worth revisiting. Assuming that the linked website is NOT a commerical site but a personal site, what is the difference between these 2 options:

A. To view the collated answers to the recent PSAT, click on www.iamasatguru.com. and
B. To view the collated answers to the recent PSAT, click on the url in my profile

Am I not correct to illustrate that the second avenue is totally legitimate and accomplishes the same exact thing?

Would it be possible to add to the TOS a list of sites that are acceptable. We know by experience that CC does not delete posts linking to The College Board or to www.act.org. But, how about the schools? How about sites like m-w.com or other grammar sites?

I do believe in following the rules to the letter. However, there are some obvious grey areas, especially when CC encourages listing websites in certain areas and also seems to actively recruit cross-linkage of its OWN site.

Lastly, we all know that this website does survive because of its ability to attract advertisers. However, I do lose some confidence when a crooked advertiser www.sat-secrets.com is allowed to continue his barrage of advertisements despite the fact that we have reported several times how worthless the books are. I know that my last comment will not endear me to the "higher-ups" at College Confidential, but I hope that this site will keep on fighting to maintain its reputation of being a site where one can find unbiased opinions, honest evaluations, and where its advertisers would be subject to a minimum level of commercial integrity and the scrutiny of the CC owners.

By Xiggi (Xiggi) on Tuesday, October 21, 2003 - 11:18 am: Edit

BUMP

By Underqualified (Underqualified) on Tuesday, October 21, 2003 - 03:20 pm: Edit

Call me a newbie (I'm Underqualified's brother, and I am), but what does "bump" mean in a forum?

By Xiggi (Xiggi) on Tuesday, October 21, 2003 - 03:56 pm: Edit

Bring Up My Post

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