Forum Mods

[crxvfr]

I just got an email (pm notification) from this place that was nothing but frustrating. The email read:

Code: Select all

The message they sent you was:

If you could change your signature so that it doesn't include any tiny 
URLs, as they are against forum URLS.

Only exact URLs allowed ie not < a href="http://www.joomla.org">LOOK 
HERE - No tinyurls etc either, only exact, literal URLs
Forum Rules http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,65.0.html

Reply to this Personal Message here: 
http://forum.joomla.org/index.php?action=pm;sa=send;f=inbox;pmsg=49839;quote;u=3655

So, I logged on to see what she was talking about.

First, you cannot make a link on any forum using html.

In any case, I often use tiny urls on forums if they are way too long to type out. My sig did not reference tinyurl.com in any way but was a straight link like in the unclear example she gave.

I tried many times to pm her so I could get a clarification but it looks like to me the only option was to delete her pm. Apparently the mods around here are too important to receive pms as I did not see a way to do that and viewing her profile offered no option. When I clicked the link in my email, the page pulled up here stated: An Error Has Occurred! You are not allowed to send personal messages.

In addition to that, the message she was referring to was 6 months old. WTF?

I checked the guidelines in the policies and still could not figure out what she was talking about. As it turns out, she had copied the line verbatim form the policy guidelines but my signature did not violate any of the terms I read about in the signature section. My site is not adult, does not contain warez, etc. Its 100% above board. My profession is as a whitehat SEO and I prefer not screwing myself that way.

Although it says I'm allowed to have 2 clickable links in my sig, I removed it altogether .....but Wizzie? If this is the way things go here just delete my account and give me my twenty minutes back.

[ChiefGoFor]

When she sent you the PM, your signature had text that was a link. This is against for policy. If you have a link in your signature, the link must be of the URL that it links to. The rule that this violates is the 6th Signature Rule of the forums. That is the rule that she quoted to you. That particular rule also mentions tiny urls as well. I apologize if you thought that she was insinuating that your Link violated this rule as it did not.

Forum Rules: http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,65.0.html

To, to sum it up, this is legal:

Google: http://www.google.com

This is not:

Google

If you have any other questions please let me know. Thank you!

... moving thread to "Sites & Infrastructure - Feedback/Information" board.

[Tonie]

You need 5 posts to send PM's. Unfortunately, we had to resort to this for spammers on the forum who want to abuse the PM system.

[ChiefGoFor]

You need 5 posts to send PM's. Unfortunately, we had to resort to this for spammers on the forum who want to abuse the PM system.

@ Tonie - Thank you for jumping in!

@ crxvfr - Sorry, I forgot to mention that above. Us Mod are very approachable, so if you have an issue, please feel free to contact any of us. you post count is now 5, so you can PM away. Have a great week!

[crxvfr]

Thank you for the clarification. I had to read it a couple of times to understand what it meant. The example was easier to understand. I have not heard of the term tiny url outside of the tinyurl.com reference. Maybe, it would have been clearer to me if someone said the anchor text, or link text has to be the url of the link, but everyone does not think in the same terms.

I was confused about the pms because I had sent pms before. Perhaps they were replies.

In any case, thats for the friendly explanation. I'm sorry I got flustered.

[ChiefGoFor]

No problem. Actually, the "No PMs until post 5" thing is somewhat of a new thing (a couple months). We kept having people signing up, then spamming people via PM. Since the 5 Post requirement, PM Spamming is almost non existent.

Anyway, have a great week!