An open message to Pipstradamus

Hi Pipstradamus,

Very long and sometimes unpleasant experience in this forum has taught me that the only reliable way to get a reply from the foum’s staff is to ask in public, so this time I’m doing that as well as sending you a “private message”.

You may remember some correspondence we had, some months ago, when I was objecting to a shameless spammer and had had a disgreement with your moderators about him. They had removed my posts commenting on the spam, while protecting the spammer by retaining his posts and allowing him to continue posting.

[B][U]Eventually[/U][/B] (because [I][U]many members[/U][/I] were extremely persistent about it!) common sense prevailed, and they finally closed the thread.

You wrote to me to express your regret at how that situation had, at the time, been made so much worse by my posts drawing attention to the spam being removed while the spammer remained unimpeded.

At the time, I accepted your apology for that, with very good grace, and I naively imagined that it wouldn’t happen again.

[B]It’s happening again, right now.[/B]

I have been drawing the moderators’ attention for a long time to a member’s posts designed to promote his broker affiliate-links through private contact here. (“I can help with referrals to brokers who will offer $100 bonuses”) and so on and so forth. A spammer, in short.

He does this [U]very[/U] repeatedly and [U]very[/U] persistently.

Again, your staff are removing my posts asking him not to do it, while allowing him to continue to do it indefinitely.

I’m also asking them to be kind enough to reply to me about this situation, but as ever they continue to ignore me completely (in spite of your previous reassurances that the moderation system has now been changed so that that won’t happen again).

[B]Yet again, your staff are protecting the spammers while removing the posts of longstanding, respected, contributing members expressing our concern about this situation.[/B]

You and I have previously discussed this privately, and you have already acknowledged how unfortunate it was on that occasion, so naturally enough I’m concerned that the exact same thing is now happening all over again.

Please be kind enough to let me know B what action you’re going to take about this, and (b) what reassurance you can offer me that it won’t happen again.[/B]

All I’m asking is for the rules to be enforced, so that more and more of my fellow-members don’t leave in disgust at the spam and the staff’s attitudes to this ever-increasing problem. (And not having my posts deleted would be nice, too!).

If you want us to stop complaining, then I suggest that you either take notice of us, and this time mean what you say and do something about it, or let us all drift away in despair, or opt for the simple life by banning us completely so that we can no longer be a thorn in your flesh - though that course would, of course, leave you with a forum full of shameless spammers and self-promoters and not many “real members” … but hey: that seems to be the direction in which you’re absolutely determined to move anyway?!

I’m extremely disappointed, and will leave you to decide for yourself why, at a time that retail trading is booming, your forum’s traffic and participation are declining while those of some of your competitors are increasing. On commercial grounds alone, leaving any questions of “common decency” aside altogether, that puzzles me.

Lexy

Outstanding post Lexys, well said, and thank-you.

As an aside, (I seem to have form of tourette’ s) I see your 2,000th post fast approaches, will there be a party?

Thanks, Miss Croft. :cool:

I did have something potentially helpful to many new members to post, for my 2,000th, but am now planning to post it elsewhere instead.

My post-count, I see, has actually gone [I][U]down[/U][/I] again since you kindly posted the above question this afternoon, as the moderators [I][U]continue inexorably[/U][/I] to remove my posts politely asking spammers to desist while protecting the spammers themselves, whose posts often remain.

So to be honest I’ll probably be on my way, soon enough, one way or another. (The staff will breathe a sigh of relief, doubtless, because from their perspective the “nuisance” will effectively have been removed, even as the forum’s gradual decline into a spam-house and collection of nonsense pasted-in, unaccredited, from the web, continues unchecked.)

Hey Lexy,

Thanks for your message. Regarding the “$100 bonus” violation, we received your reported post Friday at 9:53AM (the only “reported post” notice we received, actually, on that thread). By 10:11AM, you posted asking the OP to stop his Forum Rules violation. At 10:23AM, the OP’s post was edited by a moderator to remove the portion that was in violation of the Forum Rules, and by 10:26AM, the OP was given an infraction for the Forum Rules violation. The moderator made another edit to the OP’s post at 11:27AM.

I know you mentioned that this member does this repeatedly, but we only received a single reported post notification on the matter, which we attended to. So start to finish from report to removing the violation and sending an infraction was 33 minutes. I think that’s a reasonable turnaround. Perhaps there’s a chance something similar happened on another thread the member was involved in, or maybe through PMs, but I haven’t been able to confirm that.

Regarding the deletion of posts aimed at the OP about a rules violation, we’ve stated in the past publicly and to you directly in private, let’s try to keep the threads and accompanying posts as clean and on-topic as possible. If there is a violation, use the “Report Post” icon and subsequent form to notify us of the problem and moderators will be notified immediately. If they aren’t available that very moment, a notification is sent to all moderators and it sits in their action queue for later attention. Many times a post can be edited, instead of completely deleted, to remove the violation in question. This preserves any value that may exist in the post for future reads. Posts about the violation (which may no longer exist because of moderation), would muddy with flow for subsequent readers.

We also discussed privately that when an action was taken on a reported post that was in line with what the post reporter (you) expected to happen (post deletion, post edit, infraction given, etc.), the moderation team would not contact the post reporter. Only in cases where the moderation team didn’t think a violation took place, or if more information was needed about the situation, would we contact the post reporter. We have since enhanced this policy so that anytime a post is removed or edited, all parties will be notified, including the post reporter.

I can only continue to tell you, Lexy, that we’re working hard to keep the Forums in order by responding to yours and everybody else’s reported posts and support requests as quickly as we can. This includes by email, the Forums, comments sections, on our Support page and on the various social media platforms that we use (Google+, Twitter and Facebook), close to 24 hours a day. I hope that’s to your satisfaction.

Thanks,

Pipstradamus

Thanks for replying.

If that’s true, then the “reports” system isn’t working, because I’ve been reporting the posts of the same member [B][U]for weeks[/U][/B] - otherwise I wouldn’t have resorted to challenging your moderation in public (yet again).

The fact that you - so conveniently, as ever - “haven’t been able to confirm that”(!) doesn’t mean that it hasn’t been going on for weeks. And it [B][U]HAS[/U][/B] been going on for weeks. Your staff have just been [I]ignoring[/I] it. Either the reports don’t work (though I don’t believe that, because quite often the moderators act on a report but won’t communicate about it or answer questions, in spite of your repeated assurances to the contrary), or your staff aren’t telling you what’s going on, or they’re “losing” some of the reports before you look at them.

Your loyalty to your staff is touching, but demonstrates that actually you’re more concerned that the moderators shouldn’t be shown up in public than that the forum’s full of spam and self-promotion and that nobody will do anything about it! :rolleyes:

You mean that they’d allow your members and readers to notice that your staff aren’t doing their jobs and that members are increasingly and openly complaining about that (as well as offering [U]very repeatedly[/U] to help them to do it!). :rolleyes:

That [U]doesn’t[/U] happen and you know it. That has [U]never[/U] happened. So if you’ve done that, you’ve done it only since yesterday.

Let’s talk now about another unresolved matter - the posts of “Alex Cook”. This member very persistently pasted in a [B][U]huge[/U][/B] number of paragraphs of text from various websites (Investopedia, and so on - I gave links to [B][U]all[/U][/B] of the original sources from which he’d stolen them,in my never-ending reports), unaccredited, passing them off as “his own forum posts”, and I kept on and on and on asking whether it was [I][U]really[/U][/I] necessary to report every such post individually to get them removed (evidently it [B]was[/B], which is awful!), and I kept on saying expressly “I look forward to hearing from you about this and thank you in advance for your kind reply” ([B]that’s polite enough, isn’t it?![/B]) and I was totally ignored.

Clearly your staff were receiving the reports, because (eventually, very slowly) they managed to act on them. But they wouldn’t moderate his posts themselves. So if you’re “[U]unable to confirm[/U]” that, as you put it, then someone has removed the evidence, in which case “I wonder why”!

The inescapable reality is that they just weren’t doing their job, over many weeks. The “system” still doesn’t work.

I must have asked the same question at least 15 times (perfectly politely, which was a trial in the circumstances, let me tell you!) and [B]nobody has ever replied once[/B]. [U]Even now[/U].

I still haven’t had a reply about this, even after finally resorting to sending messages to both Pipzilla and yourself about it.

I’m asking [B][U]WHY[/U][/B], and having been [B][U]so[/U][/B] rudely treated over that issue, for so many weeks, I’m not going to stop asking until I’ve had an answer.

And please don’t try to fob me off with “I haven’t been able to confirm that”. :o

Can you understand that needing to report every such post individually, after doing a Google search for the original sources of the so-obviously stolen paragraphs of text in each case, before each was removed, made me feel that I was doing the moderators’ work for them? [B]Yes or no?[/B] I’m not asking to “blow off steam”: I’m inviting you to think about why you have a situation in which your concerned members are offering to help, and in fact end up helping, and nobody will even acknowledge it or reply to them, when your own moderators won’t even [U][I]on specific request[/I][/U] pro-actively look through the posts of a known offender to remove the paste-ins. What does that tell you about the forum’s moderation? It’s not a rhetorical question, Pipstradamus: I’m literally asking you what that tells you (and whether you can see what it tells everyone else) about the forum’s moderation, and I’m asking for an answer.

You told me in this thread that you take that very seriously, but evidently that’s just not true, is it? Or even if you do, your staff manage to ignore it for weeks and weeks after it’s been persistently but politely brought to their attention.

They [U]did[/U] (eventually!!) delete all the offending posts, after I’d reported all of them at least once and some of them twice, so clearly they were receiving the reports. My question is: [U]why weren’t they willing to look through the posts of this so-persistently offending member themselves, and why did I have to do it for them[/U]?

[I]And why did nobody reply to me about it, however many times I [I]perfectly politely[/I] asked for a reply?[/I]

As you see, I have now turned from “polite” to “angry”, and you know as well as I do that members reading this post will [B][U]FULLY[/U][/B] understand why, in the circumstances - as anyone would!

Without wanting to sound completely like “Little Miss Sense-of-Entitlement”, here, I [I]do[/I] actually feel entitled to an answer to these questions. They’re not going to go away just by being ignored. You know me well enough to know that I’m not making all this up just for the sake of it, Pipstradamus, and if you’re “unable to confirm it”, then I respectfully suggest that you start asking yourself [B]why[/B] you’re “unable to confirm it” and what you’re going to do about that. And if this all comes across as being “demanding”, then I offer you the observation that if your staff had simply been willing to reciprocate my own unerring politeness to them and not persistently ignore my entirely reasonable question completely, I might perhaps feel differently about the situation.

If your responses, when eventually provoked in public about the persistence of all these issues, bore any relation at all to the actual [U]outcomes[/U] following these discussions, when these same situations occur again and again (which they always will), then it would be. But very sadly, that’s [I]never[/I] been the case. So it isn’t.

And however much you try to make me sound “demanding” and try inferentially to cast doubt on what I’m saying by being “unable to confirm it”, the overall situation [I]isn’t[/I] improving - that’s the reality, and everyone knows it. And [I]that’s why you’re losing members and participation[/I].

Just look at how much time and attention have been taken up here, and how much bad grace and ill will and resentment have been caused, over the simplest of situations which could totally have been avoided if [B][U]any one[/U][/B] of your staff, on [B][U]any one[/U][/B] occasion, had simply been willing to say to me “Ok, thanks, we’ll check his other posts” [I]or even[/I] “Ok, thanks, we’re too busy but if you check them and report accordingly, we’ll delete them because that only takes a second”. But apparently even that’s too much to ask for!

Lexy

(Edited to change emphasis, punctuation, etc.)

Lexys:
I wanted to send you a PM but I have not yet been granted that privilege.

So the short public comment is to thank-you for all your efforts. You have been a tremendous asset to this forum. Your posts have had a consistent depth and quality that to my mind makes them the finest on this forum.

You should consider setting up your own site since you are far better than what is here. Perhaps draw upon the questions posted here as a source of inspiration for what to write about. But again, the depth and quality of your posts, along with well referenced sources, make obvious the time and effort you spend on them. You are far better than what this board deserves.

Thank-you
Lisa

I sincerely hope you stay here, lexy.
This forum would be a much poorer place without you. At risk if getting an infraction, it would be akin to the lunatics taking over the asylum , as the song says.

Many thanks for your kind words, Carlos.

Well, we’ll see whether/how Pipstradamus replies to the three very specific questions in my post just above (#5).

As MissCroft wisely observed yesterday (in a now-deleted post in another thread), it’s actually the forum owner’s choice whether the longstanding members continue to be driven away by the forum’s moderation policies and staff behaviour.

Hello Lexy,

I wanted to respond to some of your comments and questions.

Regarding your reported posts, I was made aware of two more reports on the same member mentioning broker bonus programs. You reported him on the 5th and on the 11th. We sent him a warning on the 5th, within an hour of your report. Your reported post on the 11th wasn’t followed up until the 13th, but the member was given an infraction. We didn’t get to that quick enough, but it was acted on. And all of your requests on the matter were attended to.

Lexy, I stated:

That means, we weren’t communicating at every interaction to the [B]post reporter[/B], but that we had changed that policy to include deletions and edits post [B]reporter posts[/B]. We were already communicating with members who violated our Forum Rules, resulting in post edits or deletions.

Lexy, the mod team and I are confused about this. You and least one member of the team, Nica, actually discussed this issue, with both you sending PM’s on the subject and you replying the issue had been resolved.

Your reply to her:

We’ve also since given the same user an infraction just this month for another rules violation.

As I mentioned in a reply in another one of your posts, we have made changes in how we communicate during moderation actions, and we’ve been following through on those. Granted, we weren’t communicating with the [B]post reporter [/B]as best we could, when questions were asked or edits were made, even though our moderations actions resulted in the reported post being deleted/edited or OP given an infraction. This new change, to communicate to the post reporter, will definitely help to keep all parties updated to all actions and inaction.

While you may not agree, I believe we are making progress in getting to the spam that gets in, and keeping members accountable for rules violations.

Thanks,

Pipstradamus

That was ages ago! I’m talking about [B]since[/B] then.

You know perfectly well that what Nica had told me (in the message to which that was a reply) [B][U]wasn’t true[/U][/B]. And that’s why this whole situation arose.

She told me the matter had been dealt with. But it [I][U]hadn’t[/U][/I]. The offending posts were still on the board and more were being made.

On about another 15 occasions after that, over the course of 2-3 weeks, I had to report every post of “Alex Cook’s” that had pasted in chunks of texts from the web, to get them removed (and doing so eventually worked, in that they were gradually removed).

In each report I explained that the post was stolen text pasted in from the web, and listed the original source, which I had found through a Google search each time. As explained above, I also asked if the moderators would please be kind enough to do this, or at least clarify whether they wanted me to continue to do it for every individual post he made. And in all those reports, as explained above, in order to clarify that I wasn’t asking rhetorically and wanted to know whether it was necessary for me to do this, [B]I added the words “I look forward to hearing from you about this and thank you in advance for your kind reply”[/B].

[I]How much clearer can it be?[/I]

Again, this was all [B][U]AFTER[/U][/B] Nica’s message claiming ([B]falsely![/B]) that the situation had been dealt with.

It [I][U]HADN’T[/U][/I] been dealt with, and my requests were totally ignored.

I’ve chosen the case of “Alex Cook” to mention only as one very specific example of this, Pipstradamus. There have been many others, similar or the same. If you’re not aware of this, then someone’s fooling you and not showing you the evidence.

This is what [I]normally[/I] happens.

It’s not some “rare, isolated incident”: it’s [B][U]typical[/U][/B] of what goes on.

[i]I honestly can’t tell for sure whether you know this, and are bluffing to try to “save face” in public, or whether it’s genuinely news to you - I suppose the latter? But that would be in spite of the fact that I’ve told you this so many times[/I]?

I [I][U]certainly[/U][/I] don’t agree.

I see absolutely [B][U]no[/U][/B] evidence of that whatsoever, and a [I]great deal[/I] of evidence directly to the contrary.

And what’s even worse [B][U]and downright rude[/U][/B] is that your staff are [I]routinely[/I] ignoring the members who are trying to help them to do the job they’re clearly unwilling to do themselves. :rolleyes:

If I didn’t [I]very persistently[/I] report spammers, nonsense-posters, and pasters-in of stolen text, they’d all still be on the board (and by the way Alex Cook had a post edited for [I]advertising[/I] as recently as [I]yesterday[/I], so you can see how much notice he’s taking.) You [I]surely[/I] realise that people who endlessly paste in paragraphs stolen from Investopedia as forum posts are doing so in order to inflate their post-counts so that they can try to gain credibility for the purposes of promoting/selling things by using the private messaging system, too? Your “50-post rule” - about which I’m not complaining, because given the way you moderate the forum, unfortunately, you need something like that - makes it necessary for them to build a post-count before doing that.

If I hadn’t reported every single one of Alex Cook’s paste-ins, they’d still be on the board. They all were, [U]after[/U] I’d notified the moderators repeatedly, until I made a big issue of it - and even after that, I [U]still[/U] had to report a lot of them [I]twice[/I] to get them removed.

This is simply factual.

Do you think it speaks well, or badly, of the forum’s moderation process that even as recently as [U]yesterday[/U], even [I]after[/I] a [B]public[/B] discussion about all this, Alex Cook was still openly advertising here?

I find that breathtaking.

[B]Don’t you?[/B]

I’m not making it all up for the sake of it, Pipstradamus: here’s the post. It says clearly “edited by Pipzilla” and “advertising”, doesn’t it? That was [I]yesterday[/I]: the date’s shown right there, too.

Thanks for replying to my post above, but you [I]haven’t[/I] answered my main question: [B]why weren’t your staff willing to do this themselves, why did I have to do it all for them, and why wouldn’t they reply to any one of over 15 perfectly polite messages asking them about it?[/B]

I’ll say this again, since it appears to have been ignored: just look at how much time and attention have been taken up here, and how much bad grace and ill will and resentment have been caused, over the simplest of situations which could totally have been avoided if [B][U]any one[/U][/B] of your staff, on [B][U]any one[/U][/B] occasion, had simply been willing to say to me “Ok, thanks, we’ll check his other posts” [I]or even[/I] “Ok, thanks, we’re too busy but if you check them and report accordingly, we’ll delete them because that only takes a second”. But apparently even that’s too much to ask for!

I’m surprised to have to ask so expressly, but don’t you think the words “Sorry, we totally failed, and very repeatedly” might not go amiss, here, in one of your replies?! That’s certainly what all the people contacting me over this issue seem to think … :o

Those people are [I]your[/I] members! [B]You don’t have a forum without them[/B]. Do you care what they all think?

Lexy

Hello Lexy,

Regarding this quote:

I’ve gone through every single reported post you’ve sent in in 2017. We received [B]ZERO [/B]reports from you on Alex Cook in 2017. Your last reported posts about the matter were on 12/30 and 12/31, all on the same post. That date coincides with Nica’s PMs to you and your reply back, and the resolution of the matter, as I stated above.

The Alex Cook edited post you reference above

[I]was edited[/I] and I make mention of that in my previous reply, stating that:

That particular post was not reported by you, or any member of the community. It was reviewed by the mod team directly. We’ve done our part.

Look, I understand that we aren’t meeting your needs as an active and dedicated member of this Forum. For that I am truly sorry. I’ve stated in the past that your help with moderation is top-notch and greatly appreciated, and that your feedback has led to us updating and changing our moderation policies, especially those related to communications between members and the moderation team. And that losing you would be a detriment to the community as a whole, both from an educational and moderation perspective. But to make claims that we are purposefully ignoring you or that 15 of your reported posts have gone unanswered and continue to be ignored is just not true. And to continue to make claims that we are directly and purposefully helping spammers and snake oil salesmen, instead of our community members, is also ridiculous. Spending almost 1000 words on the matter, with mostly condescending and sniping comments, isn’t very constructive, and doesn’t help anybody, but that’s what the mod team has been subjected to on far too many occasions.

It appears that nothing is good enough in our efforts and that’s fine. We know we can’t please everyone 100% of the time. But to suggest that we have completely failed you is not something I will accept or agree with. We will continue in our efforts as we have been. If those efforts are not up to your standard (or other members who have voiced dissatisfaction to you), then we’re not the Forex Forum for you or them.

This matter is closed.

Pipstradamus