Joined Aug 2012
L6: Expert
Forum Thread
urlhasbeenblocked please do not urlhasbenblocked so that I can urlhasbeenblocked without urlhasbeenblocked
December 21, 2021 at
05:30 PM
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Open Two Question Letter to the urlhasbeenblocked Editors, owners and powers that be at urlhasbeenblocked Slickdeals:
Several people have had threads deleted by urlhasbeenblocked mods and then found that the reason for that is because urlhasbeenblocked the merchant violated urlhasbeenblocked SD policy. The purpose here is not to discuss any specific urlhasbeenblocked case nor to post specific case information which has already been discussed with mods. It is more so to ask of the urlhasbeenblocked powers that be what they hope to gain by such policies.
1) Who gains and who looses when a deal posting is deleted? The urlhasbeenblocked merchant that violated policies is not the poster of the thread. The thread was posted by well repped and long time SD users. We are not talking about 10 rep new users that are here to shill and only shill on their product (Please do ban them at the drop of a hat - no question there).
Loser1: Well-repped SD user. Because they cannot collect more reps.
Loser 2: Slickdeals because the user is discouraged from posting new deals be it related to urlhasbeenblocked or otherwise. Thus SD loses the race to being the first to post a real good deal even if it has nothing to do with urlhasbeenblocked just because the community is no longer as strong as it used to be.
Loser 3: SD community who lose the opportunity to see the urlhasbeenblocked deal as well as to discuss it in detail and if necessary slam the merchant for a bad product. For all you know the product could be a great product with the merchant just outsourcing their advertising to a third party that does not care about shilling rules of urlhasbeenblocked SD because they don't stand to loose much here.
Partial Loser: the urlhasbeenblocked merchant. Partial because SD is not the beginning and end all of their advertising. urlhasbeenblocked will find other ways to advertise their products. They just lose the opportunity to market to the SD community.
Gainer: SD competitor: Because they have the deal posted there and when someone googles for urlhasbeenblocked google will direct them to the competitors website not to urlhasbeenblocked SD.
2) What prevents SD from being more open and transparent about this list of urlhasbeenblocked merchants?
Why should SD users find out after the fact that the urlhasbeenblocked merchant is urlhasbeenblocked? If there was a well stated policy that SD urlhasbeenblocks a list of merchants then the mods can point to such a policy and a list of those merchants is there for all to see. This wall of shame will also discourage the urlhasbeenblocked merchants themselves from shilling in the future. Absence of such a list and clear policies around it gives rise to the conspiracy theories that we see often that may or may not have some substance to them (Example conspiracy theory: SD tax was not paid by the merchant and hence they were banned). Yeah ok, this is not a democracy - its a commercial entity that will do what they want to protect their interests. Or at least what they think are their interests. Which is where it goes into murky territory: Maybe this policy is shooting SD in the foot?
Several people have had threads deleted by urlhasbeenblocked mods and then found that the reason for that is because urlhasbeenblocked the merchant violated urlhasbeenblocked SD policy. The purpose here is not to discuss any specific urlhasbeenblocked case nor to post specific case information which has already been discussed with mods. It is more so to ask of the urlhasbeenblocked powers that be what they hope to gain by such policies.
1) Who gains and who looses when a deal posting is deleted? The urlhasbeenblocked merchant that violated policies is not the poster of the thread. The thread was posted by well repped and long time SD users. We are not talking about 10 rep new users that are here to shill and only shill on their product (Please do ban them at the drop of a hat - no question there).
Loser1: Well-repped SD user. Because they cannot collect more reps.
Loser 2: Slickdeals because the user is discouraged from posting new deals be it related to urlhasbeenblocked or otherwise. Thus SD loses the race to being the first to post a real good deal even if it has nothing to do with urlhasbeenblocked just because the community is no longer as strong as it used to be.
Loser 3: SD community who lose the opportunity to see the urlhasbeenblocked deal as well as to discuss it in detail and if necessary slam the merchant for a bad product. For all you know the product could be a great product with the merchant just outsourcing their advertising to a third party that does not care about shilling rules of urlhasbeenblocked SD because they don't stand to loose much here.
Partial Loser: the urlhasbeenblocked merchant. Partial because SD is not the beginning and end all of their advertising. urlhasbeenblocked will find other ways to advertise their products. They just lose the opportunity to market to the SD community.
Gainer: SD competitor: Because they have the deal posted there and when someone googles for urlhasbeenblocked google will direct them to the competitors website not to urlhasbeenblocked SD.
2) What prevents SD from being more open and transparent about this list of urlhasbeenblocked merchants?
Why should SD users find out after the fact that the urlhasbeenblocked merchant is urlhasbeenblocked? If there was a well stated policy that SD urlhasbeenblocks a list of merchants then the mods can point to such a policy and a list of those merchants is there for all to see. This wall of shame will also discourage the urlhasbeenblocked merchants themselves from shilling in the future. Absence of such a list and clear policies around it gives rise to the conspiracy theories that we see often that may or may not have some substance to them (Example conspiracy theory: SD tax was not paid by the merchant and hence they were banned). Yeah ok, this is not a democracy - its a commercial entity that will do what they want to protect their interests. Or at least what they think are their interests. Which is where it goes into murky territory: Maybe this policy is shooting SD in the foot?
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Several people have had threads deleted by urlhasbeenblocked mods and then found that the reason for that is because urlhasbeenblocked the merchant violated urlhasbeenblocked SD policy. The purpose here is not to discuss any specific urlhasbeenblocked case nor to post specific case information which has already been discussed with mods. It is more so to ask of the urlhasbeenblocked powers that be what they hope to gain by such policies.
1) Who gains and who looses when a deal posting is deleted? The urlhasbeenblocked merchant that violated policies is not the poster of the thread. The thread was posted by well repped and long time SD users. We are not talking about 10 rep new users that are here to shill and only shill on their product (Please do ban them at the drop of a hat - no question there).
Loser1: Well-repped SD user. Because they cannot collect more reps.
Loser 2: Slickdeals because the user is discouraged from posting new deals be it related to urlhasbeenblocked or otherwise. Thus SD loses the race to being the first to post a real good deal even if it has nothing to do with urlhasbeenblocked just because the community is no longer as strong as it used to be.
Loser 3: SD community who lose the opportunity to see the urlhasbeenblocked deal as well as to discuss it in detail and if necessary slam the merchant for a bad product. For all you know the product could be a great product with the merchant just outsourcing their advertising to a third party that does not care about shilling rules of urlhasbeenblocked SD because they don't stand to loose much here.
Partial Loser: the urlhasbeenblocked merchant. Partial because SD is not the beginning and end all of their advertising. urlhasbeenblocked will find other ways to advertise their products. They just lose the opportunity to market to the SD community.
Gainer: SD competitor: Because they have the deal posted there and when someone googles for urlhasbeenblocked google will direct them to the competitors website not to urlhasbeenblocked SD.
2) What prevents SD from being more open and transparent about this list of urlhasbeenblocked merchants?
Why should SD users find out after the fact that the urlhasbeenblocked merchant is urlhasbeenblocked? If there was a well stated policy that SD urlhasbeenblocks a list of merchants then the mods can point to such a policy and a list of those merchants is there for all to see. This wall of shame will also discourage the urlhasbeenblocked merchants themselves from shilling in the future. Absence of such a list and clear policies around it gives rise to the conspiracy theories that we see often that may or may not have some substance to them (Example conspiracy theory: SD tax was not paid by the merchant and hence they were banned). Yeah ok, this is not a democracy - its a commercial entity that will do what they want to protect their interests. Or at least what they think are their interests. Which is where it goes into murky territory: Maybe this policy is shooting SD in the foot?
I am sorry for the frustration and we have discussed ways to help members when posting deals to know ahead of actually submitting the thread that the merchant or manufacturer is blocked, but that is a work in process/discussion.
Merchants are never URL blocked due to monetary reasons. They are blocked for bad behavior on the site, soliciting members to post for them for pay, shilling, making fake accounts or other shady acts.
The reason for blocking them is multifaceted. We don't want members to be taken advantage of by accounts that look organic but are really shill accounts before we can ferret them out and ban them. We also don't want to allow them to prosper at the cost of our site integrity.
We work diligently to keep shills and scammers off the site so that members can vet deals honestly. If threads get shill votes and shill commenting boosting it up that isn't fair to newer (or older) members when making decisions about the quality of the deal.
It would be too difficult to keep up a list of those merchants as they often are little 3rd party sellers who can change their names at a whim and start over so the list is very long.
Taking it to a next level of full disclosure, it is rare but has happened when a small merchant gets themselves blocked but then has a change of management, reaches out to us and promises to behave so we unblock them. Sometimes those promises are kept and they go on to become good with the membership and others... they don't and get blocked again. Again that would mean someone would have to constantly keep up with the "list".
We hope to have a tool implements that would notify the poster before they finish writing up a deal and posting it that the merchant is blocked but I have no ETA on when that could take place.
We appreciate the effort our members put in to sharing deals and we know this is an issue. My apologies that this is a struggle for our members. Our highest goal is for members to get the best deals possible. Sometimes merchants make it harder on us and themselves that it needs to be.
I do hope this helps explain the issue we face and why we have to handle it like we do.
And that's fine. It's your site, and the click-throughs are part of your business model. But at least be transparent about it.
If you're not being transparent, it makes your users suspicious of you. How do we know you aren't blocking any merchants for monetary reasons? I suspect you don't, because you'd much rather get click-throughs. Most merchants are more than happy to provide you an affiliate link, and for smaller merchants that can't afford to, you're keeping us happy by letting us track those deals, and it's a relatively minor amount of your traffic.
On the other side, though, how do we know you (or your algorithms) don't promote sites that give you click-through kickback more readily and more highly than those that don't. In this case, I suspect you do, as do many SDers. Again, that's fine, I get why you would. We mostly just want you to be up front about these kind of things.