Well recently someone came in with a simple request, check out my site. And I realize that its spam in a sense.
But the convo was real enough. I dunno maybe I am wrong here.
Why delete? One link to a site? I remember I linked my site in the old forums for feedback…if my post had been deleted at that point in my Modx experience, it wouldn’t have sat well, that’s for sure.
I just don’t know if its good or not. A little convo with keywords like wordpress and snippet and layout doesn’t hurt us. Yes it wasn’t a Modx user, but I just wonder if its overzealous deletion. How many threads are we getting per day? Is that too many?
I feel a little bad, i wouldn’t have minded to chat more about layout and such things.
I suppose its ok, they got some useful advice, hopefully. But that’s a potential user that will never happen now.
That was the only thread that has happened thus-far. The reality of the matter was that it was a wordpress-powered site, and I felt it had no belonging on the MODX forums. It had gotten a few flags, and I tended to agree with them in this matter.
If we allowed one, then the next time it came up and it got reported there’d be problems of “but why did that one get allowed”. The reality is this forum is meant to focus on the MODX ecosystem, and to support those related to it. There’s other more generic forums and communities for things like that thread.
I want to say I’m relieved to know that flagged topics will be removed. While I admire @nuan88’s patience and generosity (truly - you are remarkably helpful!), for my part I find I lose patience and am actually de-incentivized to help when random off-topic posts clutter up a forum. There is already too much noise online; I would like to be able to offer what little I can to people here who are actually using MODX and that means being able to find genuine questions about MODX. Someone who posts in this community with their Wordpress site is either trolling or clueless.
I was one of the users who flagged the original post. My first reaction to it was that it was an old spammy backlink bot considering it was a first time user, the site wasn’t in modx, it just seemed a little left of centre to be a genuine post to me and even if it was it’s not really the etiquette you’d expect for a first time post. I was quite surprised the guy replied to you though nuan in all honesty.
Yeah, I just had 2 threads I was conversing on that were just flagged as spam! I really need help on these issues but it was saying I was “advertising” rather than getting help. That’s complete nonsense!
I looked at your posts, and you got auto flagged by the forum software just because of links. You “age out” of those filters as your account gets older/you have more posts. Sorry that happened to you, but I can definitely tell you nobody manually flagged you (and posts were restored when they came up to me or another staff member).
While an inconvenience, this feature does manage to filter out a ton of the auto spam these forums seem to get. I’m sorry, but it should be much better for you in the long-term.
Most likely that now that I’ve disagreed with the system flags, you should be fine to submit now. If you get flagged again, let me know in a PM and I’ll get it taken care of.
Every user account on this forum gets a kind of trust bank account that grows as you use the forum. The more trust you’ve built up the more links you can post, etc. That is my non-technical version of it. I’m sure Elizabeth can give you a more accurate description if you need it.
In this case, because his forum account was newer (not just in age, but number of posts) the forums apply some heuristics to see if they’re a potential spammer or not. He was posting multiple posts with an external link, and that’s generally suspicious behavior for “new” (including with little posts) users. So the forum automatically hides those posts while they’re reviewed by a staff member. Not many legitimate users hit these, and they’re reviewed pretty quickly.
I think you might be thinking there’s malicious intent where there’s not, very few legitimate users have ever hit these and once they’re “cleared” once by a staff member those restrictions are lifted for the life of the account and won’t hit them again. A lot of spammer accounts get flagged by these heuristics, and it’s generally very helpful.
The reality is one or two legitimate people are affected once in a while, whereas a ton of spam is taken out long run. And everything gets reviewed, anyway, and if it’s an invalid flag things are restored on a click.
Sorry to revive this old thread, but I find it somewhat humorous that we just had an identical post asking for advice on a WP site, and this time I immediately realized it was…well let’s say less than authentic.
Funny how they get you the first time but only the first time. Why I cared last time, I do not know
