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Spamming Defined

K

KYHeirloomer

Guest
Got a private email calling me to task.

Why, the writer wanted to know, did I call Max ikn Southbridge spam, and imply that Alice of the Torches was also a spammer. Meanwhile, the Pepperman is selling his griddle.

“Seems like a double standard,” she said.

I thought if one person took the trouble to write, others might be confused as well.

Pepperman joined the group and immediately joined in. He told us about himself on the Introductions forum. And he posted recipes. And he took part in ongoing threads. And started new ones. In short, all the things members do.

Alice and Max (and others, in the past), on the other hand, joined for only one reason: to tout their products. They do not take part in forum activities, and apparently have no intention of doing so. They just want to lure us over to their websites. On the face of it this is suspicious. But when the same message appears on three, or four, or a half dozen other sites as well, it just adds up to SPAM.

Pepperman is a member who just happens to have a commercial product. So what? He isn’t here with the sole purpose of selling it to us. And when he does post a sales message he doesn't try and masquarade it as something else.

And that’s what makes the whole difference.
 
Great points you made there Brook!!! And besides I like Pepperman he is an interesting person with a product that he loves and wants to sell (nothing wrong with that!) and he shares interesting info with us and that makes all the difference in the world. He is not a spammer, as some others (sneakily) are!!! Without his post on Scallops in the Bay I never would have known about the scallops as close as a days drive to Florida, Steinhatchee to be exact!!! Yee-haw I am most def. going to try for that trip soon, and thanks Pepperman for the great tip!!!

P.S. I hope he sells a zillion of those pepper skillets!!! I'm telling everyone I know about them, and I may get a bunch for Christmas gifts to give as well!!!
 
Just so that you all know - Pepperman asked permission first before posting anything about the product he was selling - and long after he was sharing his recipes with us all.

To me - that is not spam. And he continues to share!
 
Such should be noted [posted with permission] so it is not confused with unsolicited spam.
 
Guess Mama M has a new assistant she didn't know about...lol...
 
I wasn't aware that Pepperman had asked permission. A nice, courteous thing to do, IMO.

But my point is that it didn't matter. To me, at least, it was very obvious that he was here to be a member in good standing, that selling his griddle was almost secondary.

And I really couldn't understand my correspondent's inability to see the difference between him and those Johnny-one-shots and their BS messages about "I just found this great site...." or "I'm trying to figure the difference between A & B over at Site X."

I am always suspicious when somebody joins a site, posts one message which sends us somewhere else, and then disappears.

Ironically, the site might be something of interest; a place that I'd like to explore if a real members talked about it. I just don't like the sneakiness of those people. And their attitude that the rest of us are so stupid we can't figure them out.
 
Defining a spammer is a bit like the sense of smell. It is hard to describe a smell, but everyone can pretty much agree when something smells bad.

Reg'ing and putting up your first post that in any way references another site (any post within your first day probably) without explicitly being asked about it is 99.992919949999% of the time spam.

That being said, I could see someone posting a recipe and then doing it justice by posting the source on where they got it and not being spam, but then again, if you make that a hard fast rule, people will just abuse it.

I have written thousands of lines of code focusing directly on spam. I help admin a network that has almost 10 million posts and hundreds of thousands of visitors a day. I see spam day in and day out (in case your wondering if any sites on the network are cooking related, sure: Discuss Cooking Forum & Community but that isn't spam :D ). I also am a reluctant systems administrator who engages in battle with spammers every day. It just comes to a point that you know it when you see it.

The spammers I hate the worst are the ones who reg up one day and post replies something similar to "great idea!" for a few days then unleash their torrent of spam. Or even worse, the ones who start a thread "Does anyone know anything about [INSERT STUPID SPAM TYPE SUBJECT HERE]" and then a few days later, re reg and post a reply with a link.
 
If someone comes here- posts one time only- with something to sell- and never again returns, takes part, shares recipes, or 'socializes'- even very occasionally... then I consider them just another piece of junk-mail...

On the other hand, those who truly wish to beome a good neighbor - this ain't a difficult place at all to fit-in at. We're a pretty fun & welcoming bunch, if ya ask me!
 
This is not a spam, just dropping in to say Hi :) and you are a welcoming bunch and fun to. Cookie :)
 
Bets? OK :p thanks for the link Discuss cooking.com :D. I thought pepperman gave some good recipe's and pictures. :) That looked like some Hot Stuff he was cooking. :D Cookie :)
 
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