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An idea for the forum regarding disclosure

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mouser:
We recently had a fake question and answer pair of posts made by people who were affiliated with and trying to spam about a product while pretending to be making honest recommendations.

Because so much of the discussion on this forum deals with people recommending software they like, it's definitely something we have to work hard to prevent.

I had an idea:
What if we added some warning to the post/reply form saying "if you are in any way affiliated with (or have a financial stake in) a product mentioned in this post, you must disclose it.  And we could even have a pop-up confirmation any time an html link is included in a post if we wanted (or is that too annoying).

Gothi[c]:
Try to make it visible but not annoying.
A pop-up would be in the annoying category.
Perhaps a checkbox people have to click saying "I agree to disclose my affiliation with products when i post about them" when people sign up for the forum or something, and make it stand out from the rest of the signup formalities.

mouser:
Perhaps a checkbox people have to click saying "I agree to disclose my affiliation with products when i post about them" when people sign up for the forum or something, and make it stand out from the rest of the signup formalities.
--- End quote ---

this gives me a good idea --
we could have that checkbox only on the first time they ever post -- that seems to be like it might be a good compromise.

nudone:
what happens to those people that don't abide by the rule(s).

will their post be automatically deleted - or marked in some way as an example and maybe moved to the 'hall of shame' section of the forum.

CWuestefeld:
will their post be automatically deleted - or marked in some way as an example and maybe moved to the 'hall of shame' section of the forum.
-nudone (May 14, 2008, 01:12 AM)
--- End quote ---

Under no circumstances should such spams be preserved. If the links they post survive, they will serve to improve the spammer's Google position, and we don't want to enable that.

What I feel is that the beneficiary of such postings should be listed on a page-of-shame. The NAME of the page -- maybe the server name and the page title -- could be listed textually only (no link), serving as a reference to people we should not do business with.

However, prepare to be sued  :'(. At the very least there must be a means of submitting a request have one's shame removed.

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