forums.ps2dev.org

Guest · Last edited by Guest on Mon Mar 28, 2005 12:48 am; edited 1 time in total

To regular forum readers,

There are frequent scammers who posts here with links promising free PSP's. The directions are invariably convoluted and require some combinations of opening up new email accounts, ebay accounts, bidding, and whatnot. They are either scams or pyramid schemes. Please do not click on their links before they can be scrubbed.

To Promoters of FREE PSP's,

Your posts are off topic and an abuse of these forums.

THESE ARE DEV FORUMS, NOT SALES/MARKETING PROMOTION FORUMS.

If you are tempted to wax eloquently about how this only benefits everyone and increases commerce, hey I am all for it. Contact me (or someone else) to arrange a website where you can pay for your advertising. That way, we can all benefit from commerce, and you don't have to abuse someone else's hosting.

At best, we will delete links and any weblinks and references to the associated web sites. At worst, we will change the referrals on your posts to someone else so that you don't get the credit for your efforts (great idea Oopo!) and someone else gets the free PSPs (in the case of the Pyramid Scheme). Perhaps we can make it a bounty so forum moderators get something for their trouble.

You won't win, and we will taunt you every step of the way.

Think you got staying power ? Some of us *enjoy* a good fight.

Mawdsley · Joined: 10 Feb 2005 Posts: 47 Location: UK

Just a thought. Please read the full post and not just the next paragraph, I am not endorcing any of these schemes.

Sites such as Gratis (free ipod) are perfectly legal and have had good press on sites such as wired.com etc. These pyramid schemes want you to get your friends and family to join up and take a trial with some company, not spam forums in their name.

They usually have mechanisms for reporting such spammers, so that they dont receive the free ipod etc. Perhaps we should post these reporting URLs and have an active policy of reporting users who spam these forums. Any obvious scams can be deleted as per usual.

If the worst that is going to happen to these people is their post may get deleted or the link changed to benifit another user/mod, then they have nothing to lose by posting here. If however, there was a chance that they could be kicked out of said pyramid scheme, then they may think twice about it.

Mods, feel free to delete this post if you want to keep this thread clean. Gorim, if you would like me to delete this post, PM me and I will.

Guest · Posted: Sat Mar 12, 2005 11:44 pm Post subject:

Hey Mawdsley,

First thanks for the post.

To address some of your points,

Regardless of the intents of that marketing organization, advertising and sales/marketing gimmicks are off topic for these forums, no matter how legal they or not. It really doesn't matter whether the goals are good or bad.

Second, I have read every paragraph of every posting. Do not assume that my disagreement is from lack of reading, I have even visited the website in question, and read elsewhere that this appears to not be so much a scam, even though very much a pyramid scheme. Still quite irrelevant, its off topic. No matter how excited you or others are about all of these prospects, it cannot change certain realities that pertain to off-topicness and abuse for commercial-gain.

Third, dunno why you bring up post deleting. No posts have been deleted around here, by me or anyone else. Personally, I would rather leave them in place (with names/URL's scrubbed) so that other people can read them and judge for themselves the character of those making the posts.

But fourth, thank you for mentioning the recourse concerning spamming. It is one more option we can use against free-psp-bots.

Mawdsley · Joined: 10 Feb 2005 Posts: 47 Location: UK

ooPo · Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2005 2:10 am Post subject:

I've deleted a few spam messages, but they were completely offtopic and that was back when we let unregisted guests post.

Public humiliation with a locked thread usually works much better to discourage people. :)

Deaddreamer · Joined: 18 Feb 2005 Posts: 5

I don't get it. Why do people believe that they can get free PSPs?
I thought everybody learned at home that, nothing in life is free!
Why would anyone want to give away free PSP to a value of something like $300 to a lot of strangers.

If you get a pop up screen saying that "you are custumer number 1.000.000, go to the link below to get your $1000 reward."
Everyone knows that this is just bull....! (at least you should know)
PSP give aways is the same thing.

Guest · Posted: Tue Mar 15, 2005 9:43 am Post subject: