The Last Straw With Web Hosting Talk

[silverfreak]

Well I have personally "had it" with Web Hosting Talk and even trying to participate in things over there. I just posted this up on my blog, but I thought folks here might want to read it as well.

Web Hosting Talk Sucks

Now I'm not one to usually bash other Web hosting related Web sites, but this one takes the cake. I was over on Web Hosting Talk this morning, reading a thread about WHIR TV. It seemed like not that many people liked what they were seeing, so I posted on the thread asking for folks to compare the Web Hosting Show with WHIR TV. Seems simple enough right? I'm giving back to the conversation.

Around 20 minutes later I get this in my E-mail from Web Hosting Talk:

This is an important message from WebHostingTalk containing information about how your post has violated Forum Guidelines.

This e-mail is to inform you that you have received 10 warning points, which are set to expire at midnight US EST on 2005-12-24, for "Self-Promotion."

You now have a total of 10 warning points. If your aggregate point value reaches 30 or more, your account will be disabled until enough points expire that it falls below the 30 points banning threshold.

Anybody have any good ways for me to spend my other "20 warning points"?

Gee, and people wonder why alternative Web hosting forums are getting more popular? I'll take Web Hosting Chat over this crap any day of the week. It isn't like I was saying, "Hey folks! Click here! Click here!". I was just listing another option that is out there. It just happens that I am the other option.

[DanEthical]

Now, I totally agree that there should be rules on any message forum etc. However, I have come across a few that just take it too far.

[silverfreak]

Yes, there should always be rules.. but also, there should be people there that can make common sence decissions on deciding if the content is relative to the conversation.

[RocketFlow]

Well I have personally "had it" with Web Hosting Talk and even trying to participate in things over there. I just posted this up on my blog, but I thought folks here might want to read it as well.


Now I'm not one to usually bash other Web hosting related Web sites, but this one takes the cake. I was over on Web Hosting Talk this morning, reading a thread about WHIR TV. It seemed like not that many people liked what they were seeing, so I posted on the thread asking for folks to compare the Web Hosting Show with WHIR TV. Seems simple enough right? I'm giving back to the conversation.

Around 20 minutes later I get this in my E-mail from Web Hosting Talk:



Anybody have any good ways for me to spend my other "20 warning points"?

Gee, and people wonder why alternative Web hosting forums are getting more popular? I'll take Web Hosting Chat over this crap any day of the week. It isn't like I was saying, "Hey folks! Click here! Click here!". I was just listing another option that is out there. It just happens that I am the other option.

Well, they have rules on their forums that do not allow you to do self promotion. This being said, I agree with you that they are pushing this stuff a bit too far. We got 10 points ourselves by recommending one day that a poster searches for providers in the WHT advertising forums that would offer the kind of plans he was looking for and for the budget he had (for the story, there are hundreds of identical recommendations on WHT made by tens of members every single day). Note that before making that recommendation, we also addressed technical questions from the poster. Note also, that we did not ask them to search for our own offers in the advertising forums. The moderator considered that, since we posted offers in the past in the advertising forums, this was also self-promotion: we got 10 points, and our recommendation was stripped from our response.

Now, that's where they are making themselves look ridiculous at WHT. We posted a similar response to another post, but in a different forum on WHT. That second forum was moderated by another moderator. We were not warned by the second moderator and our post was not stripped.

In other words, the moderation on WHT is 100% subjective. And as such, it has no value whatsoever.

The cherry on the cake is that I immediately requested explanations from the moderators about this lack of consistency in applying the published rules. As I expected, I never got any answer. That's just another proof that WHT is completely biased.

[RocketFlow]

Another thing that is ridiculous at WHT due to the fact that you can't do self promotion. In some rare cases, some providers have a very unique solution that addresses a niche market. I have seen posts where somebody was looking for these services. The one provider that had the solution for this guy was not even allowed to say: "yes, I can help you, contact me". Nobody else knew that this provider had the answer to the problem and therefore nobody made the right recommendation. The only recommendations that were made were to search in the forums, or request a quote via Host Quote (and we know why they recommend Host Quote, right???). As a result, the original poster was left in the dark forever. Is that the way to help people who are desperately trying to find help? I don't think so.

Just like somebody else said here: rules are ok and even required, but they must be applied with common sense and with consistency.

[ourweb]

THEY ARE A BUNCH OF ASSHOLES OVER THERE!!!!!!!!!!!11 I gave them over $2,000 in sales.... They kick me off becuase i was tring to help a user

[silverfreak]

Reading over the E-mail I got from them, I just now noticed this part:

=========================
BEGIN COMMENT
=========================
You\\'ve infriged just about all the rules regarding advertising on
WHT.

They are rather rude about it there, aren't they? I don't think anybody would let their Web hosting support staff talk to a client or future customer that way.

[kooshin.com]

Well this happens everyday at the WHT and the worst thing of all the things is that they don't respond to your emails so basically in situations like this I think it is better off to leave them and never send them any emails as it doens't worth at all.

[JoshuaRhoads]

i didn't mind them for a while but then yes they go to damn far thats why i found this place. I am more relaxed at being myself then a tight arse in a suit all the time.

[WebairGerard]

They really are out of control. If they stay on this path nobody is going to participate there. I get those warnings so easily too. Discouraging.