IMing about competing discussion forum

kevteljeur

Not sure what to make of this so I figured I might as well start here - if this should be somewhere else, please let me know.

A user who I do not know has contacted my via IM (as you see, I do have them active in my posts/profile) to ask me to do him a favour, which is to go and use the discussion forums on his site. According to him, they are better and have better users. Whatever. Apart from personally finding this a little odd, is it against boards.ie rules? If so, I'll happily hand over the user's handle - and if someone is dealing with this, please PM me. If it's perfectly normal, I'll block him and we'll speak of it no more.

Nuke from orbit, as the man says...

Bob the Builder

kevteljeur wrote: »

...

Bit odd,but I dont think it's against the rules. I think thats only on adverts, that you're not allowed contact people via PM or otherwise until item bought/sold. If the discussion was a social one, regardless of what he said, or where he met you online, I dont think it's Boards place to step in.

And if he sent you abusive messages, then you would contact the Gardai who would contact Boards themselves.

But the nature of the message, I would only presume the website is desperate for traffic, and his advertising method is applaudible to say the least.

Is it a guy called Mark Farl by any chance?

Rb

nevf wrote: »

Bit odd,but I dont think it's against the rules. I think thats only on adverts, that you're not allowed contact people via PM or otherwise until item bought/sold. If the discussion was a social one, regardless of what he said, or where he met you online, I dont think it's Boards place to step in.

And if he sent you abusive messages, then you would contact the Gardai who would contact Boards themselves.

But the nature of the message, I would only presume the website is desperate for traffic, and his advertising method is applaudible to say the least.

Is it a guy called Mark Farl by any chance?

Ah Mark Farl, he píssed off quick enough

OP: How active are they here?

orestes

If it's someone who has just signed up to use the site to message people and plug his site is it spamming even though he isn't using boards messaging system?

Bob the Builder

Rb wrote: »

Ah Mark Farl, he píssed off quick enough

OP: How active are they here?

Does Yellow Road sound familiar?
His website was so going to be better than Boards though. No doubt.

orestes wrote: »

If it's someone who has just signed up to use the site to message people and plug his site is it spamming even though he isn't using boards messaging system?

Good point. Never thought of that.

kevteljeur

nevf wrote: »

Bit odd,but I dont think it's against the rules.

But the nature of the message, I would only presume the website is desperate for traffic, and his advertising method is applaudible to say the least.

Is it a guy called Mark Farl by any chance?

That's ok, I was just curious - I hadn't experienced it before is all. But you'd be about right about that.

It is not he, afaik.

Rb wrote: »

Ah Mark Farl, he píssed off quick enough

OP: How active are they here?

Mildly active.

orestes wrote: »

If it's someone who has just signed up to use the site to message people and plug his site is it spamming even though he isn't using boards messaging system?

Well, that's what I want to know. This doesn't bother me much in itself, but if it's disallowed then I'd like to inform someone. Just testing the water for future reference more than anything.

nevf wrote: »

Does Yellow Road sound familiar?
His website was so going to be better than Boards though. No doubt.

Good point. Never thought of that.

No, that's not it, and I'm not naming it either because that would be a classic trap to fall into


Anyway, thanks a lot for the suggestions lads/ladies, I think I'll leave it at that. It's not exactly a terrorist-containment situation, and it's probably not going to come up again...

Steve

kevteljeur wrote: »

Well, that's what I want to know. This doesn't bother me much in itself, but if it's disallowed then I'd like to inform someone. Just testing the water for future reference more than anything.

Have a look at his profile and search recent posts - that will normally tell you if it is a genuine user or a spammer.

If you're still concerned, PM an SMOD.

tSubh Dearg

Sending unsolicited PM's to spam something is pretty much frowned upon. If you forward the PM onto an SMod or Admin, they'll sort it out for you.

There was something about this recently and I think DeVore said in some cases like this the admins can delete every PM the user has sent.

EDIT: Read this thread: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055304437

leninbenjamin

tSubh Dearg wrote: »

Sending unsolicited PM's to spam something is pretty much frowned upon.

you've misread man. he's talking about Instant Messaging, MSN or the like, where the user signed onto boards just to get his contact details to send unsolicited messages.

kevteljeur

Thanks for clarifying that. Yes, he is a regular user of Boards, who contacted me via AOL Messenger to help him out by signing on to and using a competitor to boards. A better class of user there, apparently. The only reason I'm flagging it is because my details weren't picked out at random from, say, the Skype directory (and who here hasn't been informed at some point of a fantastic new electronics website in China at some point?) - they were taken from any one of my posts on Boards. My IM details are there to allow me to be contacted, and the contact happened off boards. It's a grey area, I imagine.

DeVore

if we could be sure he took it from here I would ban the account here, but we dont even know which account they have here (do we??).

PM me in confidence if you want...

DeV.