And you all thought I was a psychotic bad-tempered paranoid.

parsi

Hagar wrote:

Have I mentioned my wife makes a tasty selection of Viking goats cheeses?

Do you ship to Ireland ? Do you accept Western Union or indeed unmarked notes...?

Stark

monument wrote:

Anyone hear about the free bottle of wine being offered to Irish blogers a while back (not any more btw)?

http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/001646.html

That was a different situation though. Nothing wrong with promotional advertising once dishonesty isn't involved. In that case the bloggers would have posted on their blogs: "Well such and such gave me this wine to try out and this is my opinion of that wine". The important part was they were honest about being given the wine by the winemakers. Also the bloggers weren't being paid any money to give a favourable opinion, they were totally free to give their own honest opinions.

monument

Yes, I know that. Originally, before posting, I had a bit about that or similar offers which could be enough for some made to undisclosed posts about products, I didn’t post such. I should have deleted the bit about the wine too.

Hitchhiker's Guide to...

anyone got suspicions about the OP in this thread:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054902159

maybe its just innocent...but looks like what was described in this thread...

Zillah

Roundtower2 wrote:

anyone got suspicions about the OP in this thread:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054902159

maybe its just innocent...but looks like what was described in this thread...

He's a witch!!!

stormkeeper

Zillah wrote:

He's a witch!!!

Hey now, what have witches got to do with this?


On a more serious note... I find that I have to clean out my blog/guestbook of comments and/or entries every so often becayse they're pretty much spammed, heh.

WhiteWashMan

Freelancer wrote:

You, sir are essentially trying to dress up the dishonest snake oil salesman routine as genuine honest salesmanship (mind you an oxymoron if there ever was on).

thats pretty insulting to those of us who are in sales.

which is rich coming from....

Freelancer wrote:

I am also a student of marketing

marketeers. failed sales people.

John

9 pages in and no one has come up with the magic equation:

Shill+product=swear filter

I know this will affect real posters but **** it, if companies are willing to this sort of marketing malpractice then obliterate them. I've seriously reduced the amount of major label albums that I buy (mainly because it's ****e) and I'm really glad I have after both this and the Fony rootkit fiasco.

EDIT: When I posted this and then looked down at my signature I feel like a tool.

Freelancer

WhiteWashMan wrote:

thats pretty insulting to those of us who are in sales.

Well I'm sorry the insult I directed at someone else several months ago, wounded your ego so.

which is rich coming from....

marketeers. failed sales people.

Not a marketeer, just had to study it as part of a module for College years ago.

I'm able to look at myself in the mirror in the morning.

RuggieBear

Freelancer wrote:

I'm able to look at myself in the mirror in the morning.

DeVore

You can change your sig you know...

I like the swear filter idea too... but its easy to clean up once you've discovered them (we simply deleted everything the univershills ever posted).

DeV.

DeVore

WWMan and Freelancer, the thunderdome is there for a reason. Its not the same reason that this thread is here.

DeV.

John

DeVore wrote:

You can change your sig you know...

Well if you want me to I will. The first link's a non-profit organisation that I write for (well in the process of becoming one) and the second one is a link to a thread on boards but just looks like an ad for a major recording artist. Actually, this has given me some inspiration to do an article on shills for the non-profit folks as they have been campaigning against major labels and their lack of ethics for years.

Would a mass email to every member warning of these folks be too much? As you've stated, it's not just the ones that post here but the fact that if it's allowed to happen it will ruin forums everywhere.

DeVore

Lol... sorry, no I was joking a little as you seemed dismayed by your own sig

DeV.

John

Ah, damn interweb with its lack of vocal tone.

The Sweeper

it's why we need the pacman smiley back

John

Minesajackdaniels wrote:

it's why we need the pacman smiley back

This man speaks the truth

stormkeeper

This "man" you quoted is actually a woman.

John

In this crazy world of ours, who isn't a woman?

Crash

Blatant lie - i slept with him, and he was definitely a chick.


maybe not born a chick, but hey, who's picky?

oscarBravo

Me.

[edit: I typed this in reply to John2, but strangely enough it works perfectly well as a reply to crash...]

John

oscarBravo wrote:

Me.

[edit: I typed this in reply to John2, but strangely enough it works perfectly well as a reply to crash...]

Good multitasking

Crash

but see, mine was a reply to you oscarBravo

The Sweeper

Kennett wrote:

This "man" you quoted is actually a woman.

<__<
>__>

who, me?

Shabadu

What's he talking about? Women aren't allowed on the internet.

John

They are in many of the sites I go to...

Anyway, these shill chaps. When can we ninja them?

Zaph0d

from this week's Economist...

economist.com wrote:

Listening to the internet
Mar 9th 2006

Internet trends: Companies are eavesdropping on online discussion forums to find out what their customers really think about them

ONE of the things that makes the internet so appealing is that for any subject, no matter how obscure, there is almost guaranteed to be at least one website, blog or discussion forum where people congregate to talk about it. Online discussion forums cover a huge range of topics: it is not just stereotypical geeky bickering about Macs versus PCs, or Windows versus Linux. Worried mothers compare the fat content of different brands of potato crisps; car enthusiasts discuss the merits of forthcoming models; fans of obscure bands swap trivia.

The internet's oldest discussion system, called Usenet, dates back to 1979 and can now be easily reached via Google, which also maintains archived discussions going back 25 years. More recently, web-based discussion boards, and the comments that can be appended to blogs, have become the most popular forums for online debate. Most of these discussions are of little interest except to their participants. But the direct, unfiltered, brutally honest nature of much online discussion is gold dust to big companies that want to spot trends, or find out what customers really think of them. As a result, many firms now monitor online chatter as an adjunct to more traditional forms of market research.


For example, ConAgra, an American food giant known for its Butterball turkeys and Healthy Choice ready meals, tracks discussion groups to keep abreast of new diet trends, such as Atkins and organic food. “These discussion groups are very useful to determine whether a trend is really a trend, or just a fad,” says Nick Mysore, ConAgra's director of strategy. “They also help you get a read on the marketplace quickly and cost effectively, and provide you with the ‘baseline hypothesis' that you can test further, using conventional market-research techniques.”

This sort of thing has been going on, in an informal way at least, for several years. Sometimes public-relations teams are asked to keep an eye on online discussions, and switched-on company executives visit forums to stay in touch with the public mood. But companies are now looking to do it in a more systematic way. Initially, this involved throwing lots of computing power at the problem. Accenture and IBM have each built computer systems that trawl the web in search of trends and insights. But the extensive use of jargon, abbreviations and obscure slang can make it hard for computers to figure out what people are saying.

So smaller specialist firms, such as Wavemetrix in Britain and Nielsen BuzzMetrics in America, are now using a combination of computers and human researchers. They track general discussions and try to spot trends early, by identifying the members of online communities who are most likely to influence other participants. BuzzMetrics does this kind of work on behalf of 100 of the world's biggest firms, including General Motors, Ford and Microsoft.

Such research has a number of weaknesses, not least the fact that it excludes non-internet users, so it is not about to replace telephone surveys and focus groups any time soon. But it also has many advantages, notably its high speed and low cost. Opinions appear on the web within minutes of an event. Convening a focus group or performing traditional market research to gauge the impact of a campaign, in contrast, might take weeks or even months.

The results can often be surprising. Wavemetrix, for example, carried out a study for a European mobile operator that was aware that its network was less reliable than those of its rivals. Online research, however, showed that the general public believed the opposite to be true. Other surprising findings arise because participants in discussion groups can say anything they like, whereas people answering a survey answer only the questions that researchers think to ask.

What of privacy? Max Kalehoff of BuzzMetrics insists that “openness and transparency are the most important things in our industry.” Even so, many companies are reluctant to discuss their activities in this area. Although firms track only public forums, they do not obtain the participants' formal consent, and many users may be disconcerted to learn that their conversations are being listened to. That said, people who post their thoughts online generally want them to be read. While the ethics of monitoring public discussion boards are a matter of debate, there is general agreement that the active abuse of forums—in particular, posting poorly disguised product plugs—is unacceptable.

Occasionally, the monitoring of discussion groups itself becomes a topic of conversation. In one car forum, a discussion of BuzzMetrics' research for General Motors produced no objections—just disbelief that the carmaker could listen to their conversations and still produce such unappealing products. Consumers often moan that companies do not listen to them. Might the monitoring of discussion groups provide an answer to that problem? Discuss.

failsafe

This is a fascinating thread, and I'm loving DeV's matrix/lord of the rings pre-epic war-esque rallying of the troops! It's late so i skipped the last 3 pages, sorry if I'm repeating but....

I agree that this form of marketing is very clever indeed, and could be very effective if done well, but it's sneaky and deceitfull, reccomending products that may not be the best out their and unfortunatley if DeV doesn't encourage people to think about it and discuss combat measures, it could prove very damaging to boards.ie as it undermines the community spirit that makes it so sucessfull.

As regards combatting this shilling, the best tool available to boards (i feel!) is very community spirit that it seeks to exploit. For example, look how quick that "Esat Una" was exposed and dealt with. This negative exposure and communal frowning upon of shilling - "the name and shame" that DeV was talking about - can make boards.ie unattractive to potential shillers.

Like DeV and others also said, technology is the tool needed to implement preventative measures, and for what it's worth, here's a few suggestions that I thought you guys might find useful..

1. Shillers under the guise of regular boardsie's shakes people's trust in the opinions and recommendations of others. This problem was really tackled by e-bay (as we all know) with the "rate the seller" feature. This could be used on boards much the same way as the karma function on the Simple Machines Forums, whereby all users can "rate the poster". Obviously this would encourage shillers with multiple accounts to pimp (or shill) themselves! So maybe a negative only rating. So for example, if someone get's 50 "smites" the get a thumbs down as an avatar?


2. An anti-shill forum where potential shilling can be reported, with a dedicated moderator, who makes the call on wheather a user is shilling. The forum would contain threads such as "UNA is back " or "Is this shilling in Nintend forum" - where people could report potential shilling, it could be debated and the mod could make the call on lock/delete thread and/or ban the user.

3. Encourage community response. The anti-shilling thread would do this, but I was particularly impressed when someone nominated Muck for a boards award. A reward system like this for rewarding those who flush out shillers and make them known would be a great tool to make boards.ie a shill free zone!

i can understand why people might think dev is over reacting, but by getting the ball rolling with a thread like this it encourages the boards.ie community to be anti-shilling, which would hopefully a) quickly nib shills in the bud and b) make boards.ie and unnatractive place for shillers to try hit, as it would be a waste of time!

Sorry if this is babble, but hopefully something in there might be usefull in the fight against evil!

stormkeeper

I read the post and thought it had some good ideas

Stark

failsafe wrote:

1. Shillers under the guise of regular boardsie's shakes people's trust in the opinions and recommendations of others. This problem was really tackled by e-bay (as we all know) with the "rate the seller" feature. This could be used on boards much the same way as the karma function on the Simple Machines Forums, whereby all users can "rate the poster". Obviously this would encourage shillers with multiple accounts to pimp (or shill) themselves! So maybe a negative only rating. So for example, if someone get's 50 "smites" the get a thumbs down as an avatar?

Don't think this would work, as we've already tried that system in two forms and it didn't work.

I think the others are potentially good ideas though.