His/her posting pattern is consistent.
Hi Clint,
I see Michael has a site up and running - back to no charge which is good, thoâ likely has made some past cpl of years.
Havenât much viewed what he has to say but i take the nay sayers with a pinch - might have a look in again.
Anyways take care - big year for you guys up ahead - pity M.P. not in the race but is what it is.
Leftist too lefty to be right, and rightist too righty to be left.
- Left
- Right
- Liberal
0 voters
Cheers to a new week everyone! 
Wrong thread
Pipstradamus here.
Iâd like to start simply by saying âWelcome!â and âHappy New Year!â Glad to see so many familiar faces here having a chat.
Regarding some of the comments made above, and reiterating statements weâve made in the past, we have never paid for traffic, forum users, or posts in the manner described. We donât employ bots willing. We donât pay for bots. We donât pay a company in some corner of the world to post in our forums as bots or as humans.
As @peterma stated, we are a business, and from a business perspective, we have absolutely everything to lose and nothing to gain if we utilize such techniques. For one, Googleâs search and ranking algorithms/crawlers are super smart. They can identify paid contributions, link farming, backlink networks, and all levels of black-hat tactics. As you might expect, like most businesses around the world, we depend on our reputation and clean bill of health as far as Google is concerned. We would never risk our rankings, as doing any of the aforementioned things could result in our company being demoted into oblivion. Paid writing services tend to operate internationally, and the topic of finance requires advanced writers with exposure and experience in trading. Thatâs extremely difficult to find and super expensive to create content or buy users at scale.
Now on to the bots and âlow-valueâ posts. Yes, bots are a problem. Weâve been working with our platform provider to create higher barriers for bots to climb to get registered and verified. Some have worked in the past, but itâs an arms race. It often feels like one step forward and two steps back regarding the different security and moderation systems weâve deployed. With technology evolving by leaps and bounds, technology providers are always playing catchup.
As for some of those barriers weâve created (which are not a secret),
- we perform speed checks at registration - if youâre registering in under 10s, youâre most likely a bot. Those accounts get flagged, but not blocked altogether, as this system isnât foolproof.
- We filter known spam/malware IPs.
- We block new registrations from post links and URLs
- We block certain IP blocks and regions known for illicit activities.
- We block certain email domains we know are used by spammers
- We block certain web hosts that have lax rules regarding who they allow to use their networks
- And we do our best as human moderators to review most topics and replies as they come in. To get the clearest picture of bot behavior, it often requires that our team wait for the account in question to build a profile, posting history, and friends list that we can manually review, compare, and decide whether all these interactions are ânaturalâ. Thatâs extremely time-consuming.
Regarding low-value, chatGPT-type posts, these posts, and users in general, are sometimes difficult to identify as real or bot. We do our best to qualify the content as valuable or not to the community, and we relay that to the user via PM. We do this for multiple reasons, primarily to see if we get a reply, and secondarily to have the user make changes to the post. Normally, we get a reply and are confident that the user is human, but he might not be great at writing on his own. Or she uses a translation service which doesnât always come across accurately. Itâs these types of interactions that build a profile of a user, but this also takes time to form and then later review.
Weâve always taken a more flexible approach in our moderation efforts as opposed to a heavy-handed approach often requested by a vocal minority. We give members second chances to clean up posts, as youâll sometimes see a once-public post disappear and then reappear with edits made. Sometimes those edits arenât good enough, the post gets reflagged, and itâs at this point the message gets deleted by our mod team because sufficient changes werenât made. Sometimes the user is also removed for repeat offenses. But again, this process is not as timely as some members would like. We know this is frustrating, but itâs the system we have, and it works.
The best thing you can all do to help us in our moderation efforts is to flag any post you feel needs reviewing. Flag the post, select a flag category, or give us a little note about why you think this post warrants additional attention. All flags get checked. If we deem thereâs an issue, weâll act accordingly. Another thing you can do if you come across a member whoâs not providing you value is ignore them, literally and figuratively. Add them to your Forums Ignore List, or just keep scrolling down the page.
We donât ever like seeing members leave because of shortcomings on our end. Weâre transparent in what we do, but sometimes that isnât good enough, and thatâs understandable. Itâs at that point that we say we probably arenât what youâre looking for and you should move on.
All we can say is that moderation is difficult and time-consuming. We ask for your patience and understanding that weâll continue to work on and refine our registration and quality-control systems and processes, and hopefully, that will help enhance the quality standards you expect from us.
Please reach out if you have any questions or concerns.
Pipstradamus
15 Likes
We appreciate your response and understand that it is impossible to be perfect in a imperfect world, but all Babypips can do is keep striving to be the best forex forum.
I was sad to see @flamingoproxy leave. He was helpful and supportive with me during the few interactions I had with him.
Iâm still having a hard time accepting that such a valued member of the community who made significant contributions to the forums turned into the very thing he wanted to get rid of. He outdid the bots by creating fake accounts and spamming the forums with his personal crusade.
Some members said that they want him to come back, but I hope he stays away for good. I canât trust someone who seems to care more about being right and getting his way than he ever cared about the community.
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Yes, this is exacty it. I can understand being frustrated because after all, he is spending time out here giving advice etc. but the way he was writing his messages towards the end and even as you can read here from @maria_fp is just full of hate and toxicity. Like an unhealthy fixation on something because like you said, he canât seem to get his way and is absolutely certain he is right - an ego issue.
He had a lot of valuable trading advice for everyone but it seems heâs quick to get impatient. I doubt heâll come clean about this and will probably continue to deny he ever had multiple accounts. His last resort will be to leave for good or âleaveâ and come back as yet another account until his anger over how this place is run takes over again and then the cycle continues lol.
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Bye.
Such is life.
Clint is still here? Wow, old timer 
Iâm just making my semi-annual check in.
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Dwl. This is sooooo funny. Almost shed a tear laughing.
@Clint Iâve never thought of that. Yet to experience the spam the OP talked about. If there are bots here I havenât noticed them either. I will check in if I feel like commenting on a post that interests me but other than that the site is fine. The Pipsology course is truly invaluable and a great starting point from which to build on.
BP says ur last post was 1 year ago. Yer slacking off. 
Registrations done under 10s should be blocked. Let the chips fall where they may. (bangs gavel)
I forgot to set my alarm.
Hope you donât forgot to set your stoploss? 