create sticky for sites to avoid

Adder1 · 17-03-2009 12:19am #1

having read a post by Redhat-Newbie I thought it might be a good idea to create a sticky on "Sites to Avoid"

Any opinions

Spear · 17-03-2009 12:24am

Adder1 wrote: »

having read a post by Redhat-Newbie I thought it might be a good idea to create a sticky on "Sites to Avoid"

Any opinions

There's already a sticky in building & upgrading for retailers to avoid. For any other sites, there's little point, most will only last a few weeks and are gone, attempting to maintain such a sticky would impractical.

Unregistered. · 17-03-2009 1:15am

THIS WAS MY IDEA!

Spear - I think you're being unhelpful.
Perhaps a more feasable suggestion would be to merge the sticky in Building & Upgrading with this forum.
Even if they only last a few weeks/months, well, I don't see why it would be urgent for the list to maintained to the extent of having a mod constantly remove sites that no longer exist! People will only use the sticky to see if a particular site is there, it's worth the effort on their part to check the list, even if it does get really long. (Ctrl+F should be advised in the sticky, thus eliminating the need for the the thread to be maintained, bar updating it with new sites).

So yes, I am in favour of this.

Jonathan · 17-03-2009 1:34am

Unregistered. wrote: »

Spear - I think you're being unhelpful.

I think you are being unreasonable.

How about we make you a mod and put you in charge of keeping it updated?

Mods have more to do with their lives tbh..

Adder1 · 17-03-2009 1:39am

Unregistered. wrote: »

THIS WAS MY IDEA!

Spear - I think you're being unhelpful.
Perhaps a more feasable suggestion would be to merge the sticky in Building & Upgrading with this forum.
Even if they only last a few weeks/months, well, I don't see why it would be urgent for the list to maintained to the extent of having a mod constantly remove sites that no longer exist! People will only use the sticky to see if a particular site is there, it's worth the effort on their part to check the list, even if it does get really long. (Ctrl+F should be advised in the sticky, thus eliminating the need for the the thread to be maintained, bar updating it with new sites).

So yes, I am in favour of this.

I just rechecked the post and I see you made the same suggestion Unregistered. I was looking at the bikes "Ducati Superbike 1098 2007 Member: 3820 EUR VIP: 3498 EUR" in the last post good. Deal or what maybe we could get a discount if we pooled our resources and bought 2!
I think merging the 2 stickys is a good idea perhaps create a link in all computer sub forums if possible didn`t think of this. Well spotted Unregistered!

Unregistered. · 17-03-2009 1:45am

jmccrohan wrote: »

I think you are being unreasonable.

How about we make you a mod and put you in charge of keeping it updated?

Mods have more to do with their lives tbh..

If you cared to read the rest of my post, or indeed Spear's post, you'd see that there is already a list of retailers to avoid so are you saying they are wasting their time?
I don't buy the argument "mods have better things to do". The fact is that this website is a useful resource for thousands of people, and this would add to it's usefulness. Mods are generally helpful in this regard. All over this site there are stickies, where ordinary users make suggestions and the mods take their suggestions and update a list.

This really wouldn't be any different. Or unreasonable IMO.

AlmightyCushion · 17-03-2009 1:45am

While it is a noble idea it but it is a hard one to put into practise. There are absolutely loads of these scam sites and as said above they usually don't last long. Also, these sites usually just catch out people who see the "bargain" and hit the buy me button straight away. Anyone who thinks it's a bit dodgy to the extent that they would do a bit of research on the site (and hence where this list would come in handy) would more than likely find out it's a scam fairly easily even without the thread.

AlmightyCushion · 17-03-2009 1:47am

Unregistered. wrote: »

If you cared to read the rest of my post, or indeed Spear's post, you'd see that there is already a list of retailers to avoid so are you saying they are wasting their time?

That's a different kettle of fish. The thread we are talking about (or seem to be talking about as far as I can see) is to alert people about scam sites. The sticky in building and upgrading is for actually retailers (so not the scammers) and users opinions of them.

Unregistered. · 17-03-2009 1:53am

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

That's a different kettle of fish. The thread we are talking about (or seem to be talking about as far as I can see) is to alert people about scam sites. The sticky in building and upgrading is for actually retailers (so not the scammers) and users opinions of them.

Granted.
However, just to clarify, I did say they could be merged and perhaps that may be inappropriate, but what i was referring to in my subsequent post is that if jmccrohan thinks that it's "unreasonable" to create such a sticky and that mods have better things to do, does this mean that other mods who maintain/update stickies are wasting their time?

I think not.

Spear · 17-03-2009 2:00am

Unregistered. wrote: »

Granted.
However, just to clarify, I did say they could be merged and perhaps that may be inappropriate, but what i was referring to in my subsequent post is that if jmccrohan thinks that it's "unreasonable" to create such a sticky and that mods have better things to do, does this mean that other mods who maintain/update stickies are wasting their time?

I think not.

Scam sites are usually created in their thousands daily by scripts of bots, it's aspects like this that makes it impractical.

Unregistered. · 17-03-2009 2:06am

Spear wrote: »

Scam sites are usually created in their thousands daily by scripts of bots, it's aspects like this that makes it impractical.

Well no, It wouldn't be an exhaustive list. I thought the idea would be the users who come across dodgy sites and know that they're dodgy, would post them on the sticky... That's the way it usually goes.

Spear · 17-03-2009 2:11am

Unregistered. wrote: »

Well no, It wouldn't be an exhaustive list. I thought the idea would be the users who come across dodgy sites and know that they're dodgy, would post them on the sticky... That's the way it usually goes.

It wouldn't need to be exhaustive, even a tiny percentage would still generate a massive workload for a mod, and would be outdated quickly. No-one objects to the principle here, just the practicality of it. Even taking the example from the earlier thread about fescx.com I took a string of text from their about us site and searched for it in Google. There are 139 hits for a lengthy piece of text, all equally dodgy no doubt.

http://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=%22We+are+a+large+wholesaler+who+mainly+sell+electrical+product+.such+as+digital+cameras%2C+mobile%2C+LCD+TV%2C+Laptops+Notebooks%2C+Digital+Video%2C+Mp4%2C+GPS%2C%22&btnG=Search&meta=

Unregistered. · 17-03-2009 2:17am

Spear wrote: »

It wouldn't need to be exhaustive, even a tiny percentage would still generate a massive workload for a mod, and would be outdated quickly. No-one objects to the principle here, just the practicality of it. Even taking the example from the earlier thread about fescx.com I took a string of text from their about us site and searched for it in Google. There are 139 hits for a lengthy piece of text, all equally dodgy no doubt.

http://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=%22We+are+a+large+wholesaler+who+mainly+sell+electrical+product+.such+as+digital+cameras%2C+mobile%2C+LCD+TV%2C+Laptops+Notebooks%2C+Digital+Video%2C+Mp4%2C+GPS%2C%22&btnG=Search&meta=

So the main objection is that there are so many of these sites that the odds of the a certain site at being on the list are slim. Because it's likely the nobody else would have reported it on the sticky.

Spear · 17-03-2009 2:23am

Unregistered. wrote: »

So the main objection is that there are so many of these sites that the odds of the a certain site at being on the list are slim. Because it's likely the nobody else would have reported it on the sticky.

There's plenty of anti-virus companies, including the likes of Google, who maintain indexes of scam sites, but they have dozens, if not thousands of servers, and millions of dollars of a budget to do this. A single sticky post won't make any headway. As I said, it's not the principle, just the practicality.

Unregistered. · 17-03-2009 2:32am

Spear wrote: »

There's plenty of anti-virus companies, including the likes of Google, who maintain indexes of scam sites, but they have dozens, if not thousands of servers, and millions of dollars of a budget to do this. A single sticky post won't make any headway. As I said, it's not the principle, just the practicality.

Granted - Yet here's the key to this debate: A user posted in this forum asking if a certain site was real or fake!
And also, my antivirus(McAfee SC) did not alert me when logged on to that site, however, I it is always better err on the side of user-awareness rather than relying soley on AV and the likes I think.

create sticky for sites to avoid

Is this a good idea 5 votes

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