Bryant Quan, Slickdeals CEO

Quote from bryantq : -snip - But just as an aside, I'm pro gun

idk, imho, no self respecting advocate of gun owner's rights would conclude a sentence with a cartoon smiley face. Would Charlton Heston have ended a sentence with a cartoon smiley face? I think not.

Quote from bryantq : We agree to disagree.

I agree with about 95% of what you've said, but, blocking links imho seems counterproductive to the success of this site. If I go onto a site which is composed almost entirely of user contributed information on deals, and that site blocks or omits critical details, I am FORCED to lave that site to go find the missing details elsewhere, or, my opinion of the utility of the site omitting details on the info I seek is reduced, and I become less inclined to use that source as my primary tool for finding deals. That can't help this site, to omit key parts of the info people come here for, and force them to go elsewhere to find it. again, just my opinion, but if I know I'll be forced to go find the missing pieces someplace else if I start out on sd, I'll find myself more often than not just going to those other sources first, or exclusively. Be confident that if you foster a site that provides the most complete and authoritative source for deals info, you'll be the #1 site, and if you don't, you won't.

Quote from takuyaah : 1) Bryant had very clearly explained that HE doesnt' believe that is a good business decision in his opinion. This has nothing to do with HOW MUCH the link quality will improve in search engines but rather if it makes business sense to begin with. I am not saying that I agree but that is his opinion and until I am CEO of slickdeals I believe it is a valid policy. 2) Slickdeals has owner(s) and users/customers. It is way more similar to a restaurant than a country as countries have citizens, laws, foreign policies, taxations... It is silly to try to justisfy that it is a more appropriate analogy at this point. With that said, you may see advertisements being posted in a restaurant from other vendors. But I bet you that the owner has final say on what and if anything can be posted there. Permission is the key here, and you as a customer has to follow the rules. And yes, I may be a bad businessman since I don't own any business. But if I were to open a McDonald's you can bet that I will not have Burger King advertisements in my store. 3) Please stop to argue just for the sake of arguing. Are you really intent to make the site better? If so, please be constructive instead of picking on concept of arguements. I don't think Bryant is trying to publish a logical proof here via deduction. So even though your counter example proves that it is not 100% true in his statement, essentially it's worthless in common sense. 4) You are going in circles. Bryant already stated the reason why links for certain sites are not allowed multiple times. The reason to mention 12 years is a polite way to tell you that this decision has been carefully determined, even if you don't understand it.

Holy Smokes! I offered logical arguments supporting a suggestion about how to make SD better to the CEO, in hopes of change. And you are accusing me of argue for the sake of arguing, when your entire post addresses none of the my points, is a list of red herring fallacies, and does nothing to improve Slickdeals?!?!

However, I will argue with you for the sake of it. In case you don't understand why your post is so flawed:
1) This is an appeal to authority, which is the fallacy that something must be true bases on the authority of the person asserting it. I know that is Bryant's opinion and I am giving some reasons why it might not really matter much in terms of business sense. You offered nothing to counter this.
2) This is a Straw man argument, where one misrepresents the opponents position in order to defeat something easier. You imply here that I am suggesting that anybody can put up ads on slickdeals with no oversight, which is simply not true no matter how much more convenient it would be for you to argue against. If you read point number 4 you will see that I support the moderators removing spam. We are talking about users discussing deals in the forums not ads. And you are absolutely right about permission, that is exactly what I am asking for here!!
3) First I already showed above that you are the one arguing for the sake of it. Second, this an Appeal to the people, which is a fallacy that something must be true if many people believe it. Thirdly, II don't even think many people would believe it. Its not common sense that something proven wrong can somehow be right. In your "common sense" world how many counter examples are sufficient to disprove something? what is necessary to disprove something?
4) I don't understand how this is a circle. Its as if you didn't even read my post and decided to just argue. As I already explained in my reply to Bryant, this is a straw man argument. I agree with moderators blocking spam. But that has no bearing on my position on url blocking of deal discussions. I do understand they have reason for the policy. My point is to offer other reasons why it might not be the best policy and ask for a change.

Quote from takuyaah : -snip- 2) Slickdeals has owner(s) and users/customers. It is way more similar to a restaurant than a country as countries have citizens, laws, foreign policies, taxations... It is silly to try to justisfy that it is a more appropriate analogy at this point. With that said, you may see advertisements being posted in a restaurant from other vendors. But I bet you that the owner has final say on what and if anything can be posted there. Permission is the key here, and you as a customer has to follow the rules. And yes, I may be a bad businessman since I don't own any business. But if I were to open a McDonald's you can bet that I will not have Burger King advertisements in my store. -snip-

How is this site like a restaurant? When I go to a restaurant, it's not the patrons that bring in the food, cook it, in their own pots and pans, on their own stove, and sit in chairs at tables the patrons also provided. If not for the patrons of sd, there is no sd. No employees of sd (ok, rarely a mod posts a deal) post deals, find deals, or explain the deals. ALL of the content that people come here for is contributed by other members of the sd community. SD doesn't sell food, they provide a forum for users to discuss information about deals. Simply put, if this forum intentionally censors critical useful information on how to make those deals work, it is shooting itself in the foot. If the NY Times building burned down, would the NY Post refuse to report it, for fear of giving their competitor free advertising?

Quote from Edxzxz : How is this site like a restaurant? When I go to a restaurant, it's not the patrons that bring in the food, cook it, in their own pots and pans, on their own stove, and sit in chairs at tables the patrons also provided. If not for the patrons of sd, there is no sd. No employees of sd (ok, rarely a mod posts a deal) post deals, find deals, or explain the deals. ALL of the content that people come here for is contributed by other members of the sd community. SD doesn't sell food, they provide a forum for users to discuss information about deals. Simply put, if this forum intentionally censors critical useful information on how to make those deals work, it is shooting itself in the foot. If the NY Times building burned down, would the NY Post refuse to report it, for fear of giving their competitor free advertising?

You have some very good points especially the one where people bring in their content to this site that I didn't consider. The analogies of slickdeals vs restaurant vs country are all pretty bad and I didn't come up with them. In fact my point is simply that it is a large stretch of comparing a message board to the likeness of a country and I just didn't feel that it is a better analogy as Chia claimed.

As to all the other parts, I don't have a dog in this fight and I just feel that it is rather annoying to me for people to worry about the techniques of arguements other than the content that was given. Especially when at the core there is no substance for constructive intelligence. That was basically all I was tryign to say. Too bad I got lured into the QQ fest and I will stop now. =)

Quote from takuyaah : As to all the other parts, I don't have a dog in this fight and I just feel that it is rather annoying to me for people to worry about the techniques of arguements other than the content that was given. Especially when at the core there is no substance for constructive intelligence. That was basically all I was tryign to say. Too bad I got lured into the QQ fest and I will stop now. =)

Again you are the one doing exactly what you claim to be arguing against. There is nothing constructive in either of your posts. Yet you persist in trying to make a point that you can't, because it is not true. This time your post is just a thinly veiled passive aggressive dig at me and QQ over being called out for your invalid logic.

Again, both Ed and I offered both substantive and logical arguments for ending broad urlbans. And the constructive part was offered multiple times in the suggestions to continue excluding spam with moderators and to show URLs in deal discussions, but not linking.

Arguing with you was substantive, but not constructive; it was just for fun.

Quote from bryantq : Let me point out that the majority of content on our website is posted by our users and found by our users. We don't always know where the content comes from because they're posted by users, however, the a good chunk of deal content on the web starts on Slickdeals and spreads to other websites. We've done tests with exclusive offers to see how they spread to other sites and they always do. I don't necessarily mind that it spreads, as long as they dont copy content verbatim. But as many others have said, we also choose not to promote our competitors. The differentiating factor is that Slickdeals has scale and size in its community. People come here first because they know that's where the deals usually start. Other deal websites don't have as large a community, and some dont even have a community at all. Those that don't have a community have employees who look for content. Selma is not employed by Slickdeals, she is not paid by Slickdeals, she has refused swag from us, and as far as we know, does not work for any of the merchants. We've never met her, but we've talked to her. Based on her history of posts, ips, computers, we know its probably a single person, although we have seen someone claiming to be her sister on the site using her account. She identifies herself as a woman. She is not a bot. she is a real person. She has feelings. She gets upset when we merge things wrong or do something wrong. We've tried to reach out to her and give her stuff as thanks, and she doesnt even want it. Asked why she does it, she says she does it for the community. You may say "its impossible for one person to do this" and I retort that it is... if you had the drive and effort... You can see how sparse she is with posts, and how cut and dry it is, she's got the timing down to a science, but even she still makes mistakes.

Still defending the bot, will it ever end????? We know it is a hoax, so kindly take Selma off. Even the Avatar and fake Facebook profile are thinly veiled attempts to make people believe that the constant robot postings are from a single entity.

Quote from raymacfla : Still defending the bot, will it ever end????? We know it is a hoax, so kindly take Selma off. Even the Avatar and fake Facebook profile are thinly veiled attempts to make people believe that the constant robot postings are from a single entity.

How do I know you're not a bot?

You can't fool me, bot.

This has been a very interesting read. As one who was a lurker in 2003 and 2004, then joining in 2005, being active for a couple years, then taking an extended hiatus, it has been extremely interesting to see this site with a loyal community turn into such an enterprising site. What has been particularly interesting--from a business POV--is that many of the mods were just regulars back in the day. Great way to attract a committed workforce.