Feedback The Hypocrisy of Allowing Threads about WOV, VCT, not TP

No, you are trolling us because you did not get your way with us, not even after you attempted to blackmail us to do your bidding. The reason we spend so much team on Feedback from members is because we care about our community and strive to continuously improve it for them.

Yes, and you were allowed to post those 2 first links the same way we would have allowed any other member to post a couple of links to an unknown site if they asked us and told us they were non-commercial and not theirs. However, you then abused that and started spamming your link across the site even though you had never actually been granted permission to do so, and therefore your links were removed, including those 2 once it started becoming clearer that you were acting in bad faith in trying to promote your external site here.

Unfortunately, the facts do not support your case as we have outlined thoroughly with evidence in this thread.

That was when we thought you were being truthful with us and acting in good faith when you alluded to having been granted permission to promote your links wherever you liked on our site. We have since learned that was never the case and you had not been truthful with us. So now it us who have lost trust in you.

Yes, and we are still waiting for yours for spamming your external site on ours, for leading us to believe you had been given permission to do so when that never actually happened, and for attempting to blackmail us to do your bidding.

Thank you, we appreciate your feedback and agree.

Thank you, we apreciate your feedback and opportunity to clarify. For cases of links, we tend to follow the Duck test. If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck. In the case of MDawg's linking to that site and his actions and reactions to those links and our removal of them, he has acted and continues to act exactly like the owner of that site would act.

For example, if it's not his site, the why would he try to blackmail us to restore his links to that site? Why would he care so much about someone else's site? It's not like he cannot post here whatever he posts on the other site, so the fact that he is so adamant about promoting it so much together with the fact that he cares so much about the other site and has even gone so far as to attempt to blackmail us to restore his links to that site and that he slipped and referred to it as "my site" in the heat of the moment in one of his private messages to us tells us that it is his site.

That being said, as we stated earlier, we do not care if it's his site or not:

So at the end of the day we look at intent because it is very difficult to prove ownership and at the end of the day, we won't allow our site to be used to promote another site directly in posts even if a member does not own it. If we allowed members to promote other people's sites, then it could be easily skirted by simply having some friend or family member get around the "ownership" rule and posting to promote it here which we will of course not allow.

MDawg is clearly intent on promoting that external site repeatedly here. As such, we err on the side of caution, treat it as if it were his site, consider his actions promotional and therefore a violation of rule #3, and we will therefore not allow him to promote it here outside of paid advertising.

Keep in mind that it was not until his most recent promotion that we discovered none of our Admin Team members had actually ever given him carte blanche permission to promote his site as often as he liked. He took it upon himself to start spamming that link across our site even though he was never given permission to do that.

Furthermore, recall the difference we pointed out between links to WOV versus MDawg's site:

If we look at the intent of those members that post links to WOV, we do not see intent to promote those other sites.

If we look at the intent of MDawg in relation to his external site, he is clearly intent on promoting it here repeatedly.

Also, remember that if he had just left it at the 2 original URL's he had posted, then we would have left those as we don't generally consider 1 or 2 links to an unknown external site to be promoting. It's when MDawg continued to actively promote that site several times more across several different threads that it crossed the line into promotional.

That is of course always a natural concern for any site, but It's the circumvention of paid advertising that is the biggest issue here. If a member wishes to promote a site, we offer paid advertising for that. We are not a charity. We are very much a for-profit site and never hid that fact. Allowing the repeated promotion of external sites by individual members would diminish the value of our paid advertising. We do not want our advertisers to feel like chumps for paying to advertise here by allowing others to do it for free.

A site does not need to sell something for it to violate our rule #3. Our rule #3 clearly states "No Selling, Advertising, or Promoting." MDawg is clearly promoting that other site here. Therefore, it clearly violates our rules.

It's the act of promoting something external to our site that is prohibited. Again, we try to be balanced by allowing a first mention to it if it's non-commercial. But we will not allow repeated mentions to something external to our site by a single member as that is clearly the member trying to promote something unaffiliated with our site, and for that we have paid advertising.

If this was limited solely to "commercial sites" or to "ones own sites", then a member would theoretically be allowed to spam their cousin's blog on here as much as they wanted to, which we will of course not allow.

All that being said, if you have any suggestions on how we can improve the clarifications in the sub-section for that Rule #3 - No Selling, Advertising, or Promoting and within our Link Policy section, then please let us know and we'd be happy to clarify them further to avoid further abuses of our strict link policy. But we have been quite consistent about our strict link policy here since launch, and we don't believe you will find another member that has spammed an unknown site here over 10 times across 6 different threads and is the only one mentioning that unknown site. That is a clear violation of both the spirit and the letter of Rule #3 - No Selling, Advertising, or Promoting and we are happy to clarify this rule better within our rule's page and based on your suggestions because this does not apply only to MDawg, it applies to all our members. As we stated previously:

Please let us know regarding how we can better clarify this rule and link policy, and thank you for your feedback.

Our Rule #3 clearly states No Selling, Advertising, or Promoting. The moment you went beyond your 2 original links, your crossed the line into promotional which put all your links to that site at risk.

We already addressed this, so we'll copy and paste our answer again:

If we look at the intent of those members that post links to WOV, we do not see intent to promote those other sites.

If we look at your intent in relation to your external site, you are clearly intent on promoting it here repeatedly.

So to answer your question again in the clearest way possible, the difference is: intent.

You paint us as a site that does not care or listen to or act on member feedback which is not true at all. We have a proven track record of requesting and encouraging member feedback so that we can improve our site. In fact, it was us that encouraged MDawg to create this thread so that we could get feedback from the community. However, it seem some members have taken our open and willing approach to feedback to mean we can be bullied into doing their bidding, which is not the case as this thread has proven.

Actually, that is not true in the case of MDawg. We have found many of his posts to lead to greater engagement among readers and our users, so we would lose out if he left. Of course, if he did leave after we stopped allowing him to promote his site here, then it would be further proof of what we have been saying about his intent to use our site to promote his external site here.

True in this particular case, but not true with us in general as there are several instances of members convincing us to make a change for them precisely because we take user feedback very seriously.

We dispute that. We try to be as principled and consistent and balanced as possible. At the end of the day we are human and can of course make mistakes and have made mistakes, but we strive to be principled and we try to honor our 3 founding principles of "Independent. Comprehensive. Uncensored" as much as possible because they are one of the many things that set us apart.

Yes, members do have to respect our rules. In relation to freedom of speech, we believe we are the most uncensored of all the major gambling forums online. Does that mean one can violate our rules, spam their sites, or post child pornography? No, but it does mean one would be hard-pressed to find a more open and uncensored gambling community.

In this particular case you are correct because we will not reverse this decision with this particular site because we are 100% convinced it was being promoted in violation of our rules. That being said, we still encourage feedback on how to clarify our rules and react better to such rule violations to keep this from happening again in the future.

Thank you, we appreciate your feedback. MDawg can continue to post his content on the other site, or he can continue to post it here. He is not restricted from posting here in any way, he simply cannot promote his external site here. That's his only limitation because it violates our rule #3. We hope he continues to post his content here, but understand if he prefers not to considering he can no longer use our site to promote his external site.

Thank you, we appreciate your feedback.

 

Thank you for your feedback. The abuse of our link policy means we cannot revert this decision. We unfortunately must set a clear precedent that spamming links across our site will not be tolerated in any way and will actually be counterproductive for the member spamming them since all of their links will be removed in such cases.

Yes, but we do not allow child pornography the same way we do not allow free promotions. Any member can discuss any topic here that is happening on that external site and they do not need to promote the site in order to discuss it. We will not censor any gambling topic discussed on GF. That does not mean our members are free to actively promote external sites here. 1 or 2 links to a non-commercial site are fine. More than 10 links spread across 6 different threads is not. MDawg crossed the line and so we unfortunately must make an example of his because it is clear that he did not feel our strict link policy had teeth, and if he felt that then other members may feel the same way and may try to do the same. We've said from our launch that we have one of the strictest link policies of any gambling site, and repeated this many times. With this incident, we are showing just how strict that policy is so that no one else considers doing the same.

What would be worse is not taking action and setting a precedent that members can actively spam links to external sites here. We will unfortunately not be reversing our decision in this case because an important precedent must be set since this is the first time this has happened in this way.

We would argue this is worse because the spamming was deliberate, repetitive, and ignored our multiple warnings.

We already addressed that clear difference here:

If we look at the intent of those members that post links to WOV, we do not see intent to promote those other sites.

If we look at the intent of MDawg in relation to his external site, he is clearly intent on promoting it here repeatedly.

Also, remember that if he had just left it at the 2 original URL's he had originally posted, then we would have left those as we don't generally consider 1 or 2 links to an unknown external site to be promoting. It's when MDawg continued to actively promote that site several times more across several different threads that it crossed the line into promotional which then forced us to take action repeatedly leading to the most recent action after we discovered he had ignored the previous 2 warnings and continued to spam that site here repeatedly (including 5 times in the past month alone).

At any rate, thank you for your feedback and please do let us know if you have any suggestions on how we can better clarify are link policy to keep this from happening again.

 

We've already addressed, explained, and refuted all your points. Instead of refuting our replies, you conveniently ignore them and continue to make the same exact points you made at the beginning which we have refuted several posts ago. It seems your current strategy is to make sure the last post of this thread contains your same incorrect points from your first posts to give the illusion that your points stand. We understand you are trolling us, so we won't debate the same points over and over again as we've refuted those points ad nauseum. Therefore, we'll let you have that and will only address any new points you make and posts from other members.

We should point out that you just combined 2 different conversations into one without any spacing or mention presumably to make them seem like the same Conversation thread which is very misleading and dishonest. Part of the confusion, as we explained earlier, is because the discussions happened with different Admin Team members across different Conversation threads.

Yes, because that's when we found out you had been quietly spamming your site here in multiple threads in direct violation of our rules after you had already been warned about it twice.

No, we don't retaliate against members here. Not even members like yourself who lie, blackmail, falsely lead us on, move goal posts, make false accusations, repeat old points over and over again that have already been refuted repeatedly, and combine screenshots from different conversations and present them as one to mislead readers. So don't worry, as long as you respect all our rules, you won't be sanctioned.

To be clear, you will not be censored here, but you will not be able to promote your site here either. We understand you are not happy about that, but you should not have abused our rules and falsely led us on repeatedly about it.

You are wrong, but it it helps you to view us as 1 evil villain out to get you, then feel free to incorrectly assume that. You still won't be allowed to promote your site here unless you pay for advertising.

 

You got it!

Now please explain it to MDawg because he still doesn't get it.

Go for it! But we have an even better feature for that which is our Signatures feature that will allow you to promote your blog in all your posts. Unlike our advertising feature, it's free!

 

This is yet another lie.

We never told you that you would be able to post that site in your Signature.

That would not make any sense considering that in Signatures members can only promote sites/products/services that they own as per the signature rules we've had since our launch. You claimed you didn't own that site, remember?

Here you go again trying to mislead us by claiming you were granted a special permission you were never actually granted. You have now established a clear pattern of this deceptive and bad faith behavior.

This time we actually checked since we have now learned that we cannot give you the benefit of the doubt and cannot take you at your word and must verify everything you claim.

Since you enjoy posting screenshots so much, why don't you post a new screenshot this time of that supposed special permission you received from us allowing you to promote that site in your Signature?

 

Nowhere in your screenshot do we say this.

We rest our case.