Reading the first 2 pages of discussion, it appears folks are talking about more than just referral links. Maybe I am truly confused in the English world, so I have to ask:
What exactly are referral links?
Correct me if I am wrong, my understanding of referral links is hyperlinks that direct visitors to sign up certain offers while the referrers get referral credit/bonuses upon referrals' signups. Referral links always come with some imbedded codes to identify the individual referrers who will harvest their due incentives. From reading
OP, I believe OP and I are in sync on this. (OP, am I correct?)
I find it useful to distinguish between referral offers and referral links, <snip>
Members who want to offer referrals in other forums would need to petition the moderators to create a designated thread.
(my underline)
All my posts in this thread are meant for referral links as stated above. Our TOS hasn't been clear on the acceptable or proper use of referral links on FT as a whole. MODs handle referral links differently in their assigned fora. Some police them, while some just don't deal with them. My POV is
our TOS needs to be revised to address the handling of referral links to prevent abuses, and in return a more pleasant browsing experience and standardized moderation w/r/t referral links.
Case in point. From what I see,
SPAM is the only forum that's specific with referral bonuses with clearly spellout forum rules for conducting conga lines. Whoever jumps the line and ignores the rules is called out and referral link deleted. Because of the clear term and prompt action of forum MOD, our community spirit is honored, conga lines are formed orderly, and referral links properly used in SPAM Forum as of today. I don't follow other fora with referral deals closely, so I can't comment on how orderly or chaotic they are.
What are NOT referral links?
Referral links are
NOT links to outside sources, let them be news, banks, blogs, , shopping portals...etc. Those links are just hyperlinks that draw traffic to sites other than FT. When a FTer posts a travel news with a link to CNN in Travel News Forum, we don't call that CNN link referral link. When someone posts a holiday promo with the link to the airline shopping portal, we don't consider it a referral link. When someone else shares the link to say our longstanding "Free Frequent Flyer Miles" blog by
pgary, we don't say it's a referral link.
Unless we all see the need to regulate the use of hyperlinks on FT, no need to muddy the waters.
In terms of blogspam and how bloggers either aggressively or distastefully promote themselves on FT, I think that is for
another discussion thread on bloggers that triggered the creation of
External Miles and Points Resources Forum. Since there's already a whole EMPR forum devoted to it, I don't see the need to drag that battle over to this thread.
As for signatures, there's a
current policy on signatures. Since referral links can be in both posts and signatures, after a more defined and/or refined policy on referral links is developed, we can always come back and revisit that issue in a different TB Topics thread that focuses on signatures. @:-)
Originally Posted by
MSPeconomist
I just saw and reported an abuse today: new member with only four posts, all on the same day the person joined FT and all in a thread started by this new member to drive traffic to a blog linked in their OP, which was just a "teaser" with no content except to point toward the blog. There was no signature, as it's not allowed for new members, but there was a link to the blog in the text of the OP. The person's later posts in the thread seemed to just be bump attempts. Total garbage IMO with no real attempt to conceal the self-serving nature of their "contribution" to FT.
I don't think that's what we are talking about here. What you reported is no doubt a true
spammer and I easily report a dozen of those in any given month. Spammers are simple cases since MODs just remove their posts and suspend them without hesitation. Our current TOS already covers spammers.