The Banhammer Needs to Be Used More Often (Affiliate Links)

Davo1111 on 12/03/2015 - 18:57
Last edited 13/03/2015 - 18:58

There are too many users (particularly new ones) who are posting deals because they have a referral account. IMO it's saturating ozbargain with "deals" which I don't think are particularly good value. By the time the mods get to it (god bless them), they've already got 100+ clickthroughs, which imo is leading to a 'post and run' scenario.

In the past, I liked to rule with an iron fist.

These are my suggestions

  • The deal should automatically be unpublished, even if it's a good deal*. Someone else can reap the karma.

AND

  • L or P users who post a referral link in the URL = 6 month deal posting ban (unless overwritten by mods), anyone else gets a 2 month (deal posting ban)

AND/OR

  • completly ban referrals from any Chinese website and COTD (except through the built in referral system).

    *if it is a good deal, maybe a bot can "post" the deal.

Opinions?

https://www.ozbargain.com.au/wiki/help:referral_and_affiliat…

I should clarify:

I classify affiliate and referral as the same thing as it still has the same goal. "spam the site and you get a kickback". Whether that kickback comes as a store credit or actual cash is irrelevant imo, the person still "benefits" from posting here, which imo isn't really what the community should be about.

An example:

https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/186251

User has 2 posts, 2 comments and has been a member for 3 years

First post: affiliate link, gets removed
Second post: affiliate link (likely duplicate).

Poll Options

  • 73
    OzB needs MORE banhammer
  • 1
    OzB needs LESS banhammer
  • 19
    OzB's banhammer is about right
  • 6
    Candy
Site Discussion Affiliate Moderation

Comments

  • Axelstrife on 12/03/2015 - 19:01
    -2

    L or P users who post a referral link in the URL = 6 month deal posting ban (unless overwritten by mods), anyone else gets a 2 month (deal posting ban)

    Bit long…

    • Davo1111 on 12/03/2015 - 19:06

      true, although they can post comments and forum topics.

      It's mainly to avoid the many 'post and run' deals we have.

  • scatman00 on 12/03/2015 - 21:40
    +1

    Then there's this….. https://www.airtasker.com/tasks/looking-for-ozbargain-accoun…

    (not affiliate in the same way, but still making money by referral)

    • leonheart1 on 12/03/2015 - 21:45
      +5

      Holy crap! You mean our accounts are worth $20 a pop?! Post that as a bargain!

      • scatman00 on 12/03/2015 - 21:49
        +1

        Airtasker has no affiliate program, wasn't worth my time ;)

        • Moderatorneil on 13/03/2015 - 01:26

          FYI, we do monitor these sites (especially as Airtasker tweets their jobs out). Anyone posting without declaring will get the "banhammer" along with the store.

    • mskeggs on 12/03/2015 - 22:02

      Wow.

    • TheAccountant on 12/03/2015 - 23:41

      The business is wasting money on something they'd be better off posting themselves.
      They could pay a recognised user on here to post their 'deal' but if the community decides there isn't really any deal, it doesn't matter who posted it, it's not getting any attention.

      • scotty on 13/03/2015 - 09:36

        Business often solicit "members with established account" because the reps have been banned from posting, either permanently (due to sockpuppeting or other offences) or temporarily (from our rep posting limits). Therefore in this case if a user here that took up the task to post deals on behalf of the business, and

        • not declaring association — it would be against the rule here resulting both the user and the store banned, or
        • do declare association, but would be blocked from posting due to posting limits.
    • rompastompa on 13/03/2015 - 13:31
      +1

      I found a better bargain: $5 more https://www.airtasker.com/tasks/looking-for-ozbargain-accoun…

    • Kozhutki on 16/03/2015 - 01:32

      Hahaha! Wow! This site is really out there!

  • scrimshaw on 12/03/2015 - 22:24
    +2

    Candy? There are no candies here, only bikies. Candy is for Whirlpool.

    • Davo1111 on 12/03/2015 - 22:56

      Is an OCAU thing… throwaway vote.

      • neil on 13/03/2015 - 03:14
        +1

        You can't put candy as an option on OzBargain as people will assume they will receive free candy if they vote for it!

        • leonheart1 on 13/03/2015 - 14:34

          That's right, now where are my gang of bikies I ordered a few months ago by voting?

  • TheAccountant on 12/03/2015 - 23:31
    -7

    I'm kinda new here but I like things the way they are apart from the occasional obvious troll comment.

    I'd suggest temp bans for accounts with frequently negged comments. Like 3-4 highly negged comments over a week gets you a 24 hour ban. Don't know if that'll work but just my 2¢.

    • iridiumstem on 12/03/2015 - 23:45
      +19

      But that means jv will almost always be on 24 hour ban?

      • TheAccountant on 13/03/2015 - 00:09
        -3

        To be honest, this is exactly why I made that suggestion. Didn't want to name names in case I was breaking any rules.
        Like I said, I'm a newbie here and I still don't know the who's who around here. I know easternculture and tightarse do amazing work, is jv a mod or something? Hardly a thread without a mention of him.

        • iridiumstem on 13/03/2015 - 00:32

          I don't know who jv is, but I think the reason that jv's mentioned often is because he's in almost every single thread.

          I think jv being negged not really an uncommon sight, if you look at the 2014 Ozbargain Annual Award.

        • Davo1111 on 13/03/2015 - 00:32

          I don't see the problem tbh. In his opinion it looks ugly, and i agree with him. He didn't vote up or down, so a neutral vote is appropriate.

        • TheAccountant on 13/03/2015 - 00:37
          +1

          @Davo1111:

          But some people want a smart watch and can't afford an Apple watch.
          They'll want to get one of these so they don't feel left out.

        • Davo1111 on 13/03/2015 - 00:38

          @stingymonkey:

          ahh ok, i was looking at the top comment that had the most negative votes on the page.

        • iridiumstem on 13/03/2015 - 00:51

          @stingymonkey: Yeah, that looks slightly too condescending. Does that mean that he deserves to be banned for 24 hours? It's going to stop people from commenting things that might attract negs, which will also stop people from expressing their opinions as well, IMO.

        • TheAccountant on 13/03/2015 - 02:10
          +1

          @AznMitch: That's why I specified the 3-4 highly negged comments in a week. I'm suggested a 24-hour ban because that's what other forums do, the community here could decide what's necessary.

          I believe most users wouldn't neg a reasonable opinion of another user and that's why I suggested using votes to determine what we as a group consider unacceptable. It's a flawed idea but it's all I can come up with really. Consistent negative votes have to mean something or there wouldn't be any negging, certainly not 15-20 of them.

        • ProjectZero on 13/03/2015 - 09:17
          +2

          @stingymonkey:

          I believe most users wouldn't neg a reasonable opinion

          Nope, there have been times where proper questions and opinions have been negg'd because some people don't agree with what they were saying.

          Refer to edfoo's comment regarding what the chromecast basically does. First and foremost that was an explanation of what it does, people downvoted anyway…

        • Gnostikos on 14/03/2015 - 13:21
          +4

          @stingymonkey:

          I believe most users wouldn't neg a reasonable opinion of another user

          Do we live in the same country? What you've just uttered is an unwritten code amongst the self-entitled, middle-class whingers of this nation.

          My posting history is a testament to the trend of negging for the sake of differing brand loyalties or daring to say some negative against a product that has a critical-mass level of appeal.

          Typing too many words, finding too many links people can't be bothered contesting, and trying to negate emotive, knee-jerk opinions with reasoned logic are all grounds for negging here.

          People just do not like feeling disenfranchised of their giddy illusion that they've found the bargain of the century that no-one knows about and is actually worth tenfold it's sale price; when in actuality it's a complete piece of sh*t they've wasted perfectly good money on. Hyper-Crapitalist Consumerism is a cruel, cruel mistress and people will defend it to the bitter end.

          Equally hostile is the reaction to stupendously cheap deals that people feel are above any and all criticism because they're so cheap.

          Neg-magnets like JV (and numerous others) receive negs for no other reason than previous posts which got negged (for a completely unrelated reason), which in turn got negged because of previous posts that got negged; fostering a sense of there being certain inherently "right" and inherently "wrong" posters (regardless of how correct they are) simply due to lemmings piling on that neg button at some point in the distant past.

          Once you catch that "neg-taint", you can expect dimwits to haunt your posts for weeks on end just to neg you, even though you might be 100% accurate in whatever you're saying.

      • Flying Ace on 13/03/2015 - 13:29

        So there's another up side? Awesome!

    • rompastompa on 13/03/2015 - 13:23
      +2

      I have just negged you because I disagree with your statement. Do you need a 24-hour ban? No. I agree highly negged bans are obviously a disagreed or possibly a troll comment, but it doesn't take much for a mass of people to disagree and cause 3-4 highly negged comments. Ford vs Holden, Apple vs Android. They will all incur massive backslash if you're on the wrong side of the discussion. Also; I enjoy seeing jv's comments, I wouldn't want to see them banned.

      I'm not sure if you know this, but each user is only allowed 5 negs per day, as some people go crazy and look through history and try and neg every comment of yours (not happened to me, but a professional driver once).

  • Moderatorneil on 13/03/2015 - 01:33

    There are too many users (particularly new ones) who are posting deals because they have a referral account. IMO it's saturating ozbargain with "deals" which I don't think are particularly good value. By the time the mods get to it (god bless them), they've already got 100+ clickthroughs, which imo is leading to a 'post and run' scenario.

    Do you have an example? New users (L) and P platers are NOT allowed to post referral links. Affiliate links are banned from everyone. Affiliate vs Referral Links

    • Davo1111 on 13/03/2015 - 02:16

      I classify affiliate and referral as the same thing as it still has the same goal. "spam the site and you get a kickback". Whether that kickback comes as a store credit or actual cash is irrelevant imo, the person still "benefits" from posting here, which imo isn't really what the community should be about.

      An example of this is this thread, a 3 year old account should know better that to post a referral link. He did it a week prior too

      Next time I see a "post and run" I'll report

      ta,

      • Moderatorneil on 13/03/2015 - 03:11

        An example of this is this thread

        Yeah, that is a bit weird. In most of these cases, as you know, people don't see the mod messages in the description. We don't PM users when we just change descriptions so perhaps we need to do that to ensure users are well aware of referral issues. Most of our PMs are sent automatically by the system and these will require a manual PM.

        • foobar on 13/03/2015 - 05:28

          What's odd there is both posts are for gearbest, one has been edited and the referral/affiliate link removed totally and the other has it still listed in the deal main body. It appears that the OP listed one link as a referral (which still stands) and the other as affiliate (which is now gone).

          A quick look over the latest two pages of gearbest deals doesn't show any other referral/aff links (one is listed as referral but doesn't seem to actually contain one) so they probably are aff links meaning one of the two that davo linked to needs to be tidied up.

          Maybe a PM or message via the notification system of a mod edit could help those that keep breaking the rules making mistakes like this to learn from their mistakes as like you say, some may not ever know or notice the edits.

        • Moderatorscotty on 13/03/2015 - 09:46

          @foobar: It was due to some confusion that we have regarding to GearBest's "affiliate programs". Basically on OzBargain affiliate links are not allowed but referrals are okay. See the difference & examples in wiki.

          With GearBest when vip= is appended to the URL, initially we thought that it was an affiliate link (possibly due to people have been calling it an affiliate link in the comments) thus was removed. It turns out to be part of their Get it for free referral program where those who shared the links might be able to get the products for free. GearBest runs their affiliate program with CommissionJunction I think.

          I had a discussion with hamza the other day. The conclusion is that the links are okay in the content of the deal (as it's a referral link). However the poster will be subjected to the referral link posting limit (similar to store rep posting limit currently at 2 links max per week). This was the reason why the link on the deal posted on the 9th got removed, but stay intact on the deal posted on the 11th.

        • Musing Outloud on 13/03/2015 - 16:11
          +1

          @scotty:

          Hi Scotty,

          The problem I see is that people are gaining a benefit that is not properly disclosed upfront, which you guys as admins then have to make a decision on, whether to shut down, edit up or let pass.

          I'd recommend you think about an approach that puts the onus on the poster to be honest in the first place, that also takes the load off the admins. So please hear my idea out…

          There seems to be a number of posters with roles ranging from:

          • Seller - Works for or owns the company and openly initiates the deal on Ozbargain
          • Affiliate - not sure of your definition, but I associate their relationship with benefits (direct = commission; indirect = it's my job to facilitate sales thru social media)
          • Referrer - doesn't work for or own, but gets some form of kickback from the company
          • Champion - a person who gets no benefit from offering a deal on Ozbargain

          The first three involve various conflict of interests, the last doesn't. A poster needs to claim to be one of these roles when they post. If the poster claims to be a "Champion" when they clearly aren't, they have outright lied to the Ozbargain community and can be banned per your policies.

          This also makes it clear to the Ozbargain community what the poster claims to be versus their post and report suspicions to the admins.

          Rolled in with the L and P plater policy, some of the issues could be controlled or reduced with this sort of framework. So L's and P's apply to newer accounts, but could be expanded to: Severe breach = Ban; moderate breach = assign L's, minor breach = assign P's.

          You might have better definitions and role descriptions than I, but the whole idea is to get full disclosure upfront.

        • Moderatorscotty on 13/03/2015 - 17:30

          @Musing Outloud: We already have roles for these.

          • Sellers: Or even just employees or in anyway associated with the company — they must be declare themselves as Store Representative on the deal submission form.

          • Affiliate: These aren't allowed. See my first comment.

          • Referrer: We do referral link detection in the post content and will automatically mark the deal as referral post if detected.

          You'll see different "tags" next to their username in their deal posts. However someone without a "tag" might not necessarily mean that he/she is a "Champion". People have various motivations posting deals. Some for financial gain. Some for LOL. Some for ego.

        • This Guy on 14/03/2015 - 02:30

          @scotty:

          "Sellers: Or even just employees or in anyway associated with the company — they must be declare themselves as Store Representative on the deal submission form."

          Offtopic:

          That's a pretty quick way to get yourself fired when you work for a large company :)

    • Davo1111 on 13/03/2015 - 14:04

      Got an example

      https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/186251

      User has 2 posts, 2 comments and has been a member for 3 years

      First post: affiliate link, gets removed
      Second post: affiliate link (likely duplicate).

      Can't deny this isn't an affiliate link 'post and run'

  • [Deactivated] on 13/03/2015 - 09:00
    +7

    Something needs to be done. About a year+ back ozbargain used to be one of my favourite sites, it rarely featured any of these repetitive rubbish $2 deals, nearly all of the deals on the front page were high quality.

    Now I may as well just navigate to the front page of dx.com

    • muncan on 13/03/2015 - 09:11
      +11

      Don't you mean www.dx.com/?affiliate=muncan ?

      • tomsco on 13/03/2015 - 13:09

        Lol, perfect.

    • [Deactivated] on 13/03/2015 - 10:22

      Gotta agree with this, brings a tear to my eye seeing the quality fall , like the deterioration of the runescape :( you get those sweeping tingly waves of nostalgia when you see a glimpse of the past.

    • CheapCoffee on 13/03/2015 - 13:08
      +1

      I don't think it is necessarily true… Sure, you have some slow days but the overall it is still pretty good.

    • Moderatorneil on 13/03/2015 - 13:30

      Statistically speaking, the quality, measured by deals that reach the front page has hovered around ~20% for the past few years. 2014 Zeitgeist.

      The 2012 Zeitgeist ranked Meritline as 10th in number of front page deals (55) so there is always a bit of "$2 rubbish deals".

      However, you can block seeing deals by certain stores. See Blocking Stores and Users.

  • Logical on 13/03/2015 - 20:36
    +4

    OzBargain is Not what it used to be a year or two ago. There are too many 'non bargains' posted by OP's who only want to claim the monthly prize. Give it another year and membership numbers will be dropping.

    • Kozhutki on 16/03/2015 - 01:38
      -1

      The monthly prize generally goes to people who always post good deals. TA, Trent, etc. Haven't seen any randoms with it (albeit I don't really check it).

      • Moderatorneil on 16/03/2015 - 07:56

        2014 member awards. We often give out prizes to different members however the lengths that Trent & TA (and a few others) go researching and formatting deals is just incredible. If you compute the amount of hours spent on the bargains divided by the prize money ($100) then they would be better off working a minimum wage job.

        We basically want to reward members who contribute to the community in a positive way to make OzBargain better. Statistical metrics is the easiest way for us to do that however if you have other suggestions then let us know.

        • muncan on 16/03/2015 - 09:15

          they would be better off working a minimum wage job

          ouch

        • [Deactivated] on 19/03/2015 - 01:15
          +1

          It's pretty obvious some prolific posters get paid to post deals on behalf of stores. I'm not going to discuss how I came that conclusion cause I'll get shot down but I hate to see OzBargain become less about the community and more about a few power users and vendors. That's capitalism for ya and I'm not going to sit of my high horse as most others would do the same thing. Scotty has created a highly competitive environment and top posters will do anything within the rules to claw their way to no#1, albeit with a few misinterpretations and hissy fits on the way. All I can recommend is double checking the validity of a deal(the real availability, true discount etc and filter out certain stores/posters/categories if you want.

        • Moderatorneil on 19/03/2015 - 09:42

          @Davo93:

          We have systems in place to detect if users are associated with companies. There isn't a week that goes past that where some employee or marketer pretends to be a customer and these result in bans.

          I'm not going to discuss how I came that conclusion cause I'll get shot down

          If you have some knowledge, please start a thread in Talk with a Moderator forum. We DO NOT allow users to post on behalf of a company without declaring their association. Obviously we can't catch everyone so if you do have evidence such as unusual posting patterns then please let us know. Reports from members are the best way for the community to weed out these shills.

    • spackbace on 16/03/2015 - 11:53
      -1

      I think you'll find its just different. Yes there's more e-book deals, but as has previously been said, these can be hidden. 'Sometimes' I do see an increase of votes on some peoples posts, but I just think that's a fanboy type thing in the community and won't change.
      At the end of the day, it doesn't take much to scroll past something you don't like. Doesn't take time, and doesn't take effort.

      At least now the mods are cracking down a bit more on plagiarism and getting sources quoted.

      And sorry to be 'that guy', but with 3 deal posts since 2013, kinda hard to stand on a pedestal and have a go at others that take the time to post a deal.

  • Tnetennba on 14/03/2015 - 23:12

    I think people will keep trying to get away with sockpuppeting & affiliate posting if there is little penalty for doing so. The mods here do a very good job, but I feel like they are hesitant to ban things like this - instead it seems they will either tag it as an affiliate, edit the link to remove affiliate link (after it's been clicked hundreds of times), or remove the deal.

    Either way, I feel like the penalty should be more severe, as it is VERY clear to users when we are posting deals that it is NOT okay to post undeclared affiliate/referrals/etc.

    I've reported posts in the past suggesting that the OP is a representative of the store, and instead of the deal being removed or anything, the mods just ticked the store rep box for the person. I find it VERY hard to believe that the user forgot to click that MASSIVE box to declare association.. but to each is their own.

    Of course if the mods over-moderate it could be even worse than under-moderation. Honestly there's a decent balance and the only issue is the quality of deals is declining :(

    • Moderatorneil on 16/03/2015 - 07:22

      If sockpuppeting is detected we ALWAYS ban the store.
      If the post is very obviously a rep but they forgot to check the box. E.G. username acmecorp posts a deal for acmecorp, then we just click the rep box for them.

  • Alzori on 20/03/2015 - 23:14

    Oops, meant to vote about right, but voted for less. My bad.

  • Moderatorneil on 25/03/2015 - 15:09

    Just to update on referrals.

    From here:

    OP's referral link will not show in the grey referral box if

    • the deal has less than 5 votes
    • OP is L or P plated poster

    The random link will continue to show.

    Hopefully this will alleviate those who believe some posts are just made for referral credit.

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