Really?

Jazzy

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055698077

so what other exciting offers will be made avail to me on boards.ie ltd?
is this the new direction* that boards is taking? i remember hearing the cries of a man saying "devore doesn't know what hes sitting on". the man in question was a suit who's business it was to try and exploit people for their money, any and all. I won't go into details but a few mods and posters here will know exactly who i am talking about.


Disgusting.

*best possible word usage.

humanji

A company advertising on Boards? I don't get it.

5starpool

Someone is offering a product in a forum they have paid for. Hardly disgusting.

I'm not in favour of blatant advertising in general, but it is only akin to having an ad in the paper or on tv surely?

Steve

Boards has 4.5 employees now, wages have got to be paid somehow

humanji

Also, hasn't it been done with the help of a lot of Boardsies?

Sparky

Any more complaints Jazzy?

If anything it is a step forward.

I'm not a magnet customer, but I do think that it's one step in the right direction having the ability to post here in a forum that they have to take care of and get my query dealth with.

Dav

I want to address this as Jazzy seems to have very strong feelings on it.

Magnet came to us asking how they might be able to talk to our members - they were one of the first companies to get an "Official Representative" account and the "Talk To" forums have been around for a while (we called them Commercial Interaction forums before). These Official Reps are subject to our rules just like any other member and if they wish to post in a forum outside their own, they get permission of the forum's moderators to make sure it won't be out of place - and the mods are free to (and have already in some cases) said no to some of these sorts of interactions - there's no pressure on Mods to do this because the Reps are paying for the privilege.

So to get into the specifics of this: having been given the OK, Magnet came along and asked Boards.ie Gamers what they'd like in a broadband package and got a very positive response. Magnet have now put together this package with our member's help. This is similar to what UTV Internet did a few years ago btw. Jazzy can you as a gamer *honestly* say that a company asking you what you want and making it happen is a bad thing? Would you then not want to hear that your ideas had been put into action (hence the two posts on this by Rory outside of the Magnet forum - on Games and on Broadband)?

Any business is welcome to talk to us about doing this - Boards.ie has *ALWAYS* wanted to be the place where the people of Ireland can talk to a business or a policital party or a government body or whoever and expect to get results. Similarly, we expect these businesses/politicians/etc to answer their customers/constituants/etc and play by our rules. That has been the plan from day one. This is the power of the internet - people have a voice now should they wish to use it. It takes time for these sorts of things to happen, but we're finally starting to see it take shape.

I'm happy to answer any more questions on this if people have them.

Dav

Tallon

This is a truely great idea, i really don't see what the issue is here?

Well done to boards.ie for testing and provide info on it

Dades

Jazzy wrote:

Really?

As far as I can see the service offered isn't compulsory.

No idea what all the knicker twistage is about, tbh.

aidan_walsh

A company listened to customers needs and designed a product aimed at meeting them? And used boards to do it? While funding boards (thus benefiting all its users) in the process?

We want more like this please, surely?

deRanged

Dav wrote: »

Would you then not want to hear that your ideas had been put into action
...
(hence the two posts on this by Rory outside of the Magnet forum - on Games and on Broadband)?

I wonder is it the fact that the response was outside the paid forum that is the problem?

aidan_walsh wrote:

We want more like this please, surely?

if every forum becomes an advertising medium then I would say not.
the commercial interaction forums (or whatever they are called) are excellent, as is the largely unbiased open advise given by boards.ie members on companies and products.
the lines could become blurred very fast. I know if I was paying for a commercial forum I'd want to be able to post within mainstream forums if other commercial entities could. Assuming of course that they don't pay specifically for that purpose, but if I'm not careful I'll start a conspiracy theory

Dudess

Boards not taking advantage of a business opportunity... would be quite dumb.

dr.bollocko

Boards needs income streams to survive. There won't be any annoying pop-ups. I think it's a great idea.

Beruthiel

Jazzy wrote: »

Disgusting.

A company came to Boards and paid for the privileged.
In the process that company took the advice and suggestions of this sites members in order to provide a better, more efficient service.

So in conclusion:
Boards made money so it can pay it's staff.
Boards gamers got a faster, more efficient service.

Disgusting indeed....

FlutterinBantam

If those fcukers who make that white two ply shite paper with the so called "absorbant pockets" come on here, I'll only be too glad to give them some market research:mad:

And some of their used product!!!

Steve

want.thanks.back.here

Kinetic^

FlutterinBantam wrote: »

If those fcukers who make that white two ply shite paper with the so called "absorbant pockets" come on here, I'll only be too glad to give them some market research:mad:

And some of their used product!!!

I know what I'd tell them....... tri-ply please!

Orion

aidan_walsh wrote: »

A company listened to customers needs and designed a product aimed at meeting them? And used boards to do it? While funding boards (thus benefiting all its users) in the process?

We want more like this please, surely?

That's just crazy talk. You've obviously been assimilated :pac:

watty

About 90% of the population can't get this Wonderous Magent product.

So I wouldn't worry about it being an advert on Boards. I'd worry about it being MISLEADING

Only 66% of households now have phone line (thus potential for DSL). Only a small percentange can get Magnet Fibre or LLU. This service isn't possible on on regular resold bitstream DSL.

The average length of phone line in Ireland can do about 4Mbps max.

Magnet is one of the top 3 ISPs. But they are only available to a tiny fraction of Ireland due to the incompetance of Goverment and Comreg. Unless you are on fibre the performance of DSL is ultimately limited by the copper pair Magnet rent off eircom. Even on LLU, where a significant number of people using a multipair cable in a duct from exchange the interleaving has to be raised to allow speed due to cross talk. So I'm sceptical as to how many LLU customers can get this performance.

The Advert should make it clearer that this is available to limited people. Also there are REGULAR services that give good pings.

I don't even have a phone line or Fibre. Ping from the Countryside, about 10km from Limerick city centre.

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\WINDOWS>ping www.heanet.ie

Pinging samhain.heanet.ie [193.1.219.57] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 193.1.219.57: bytes=32 time=21ms TTL=60
Reply from 193.1.219.57: bytes=32 time=22ms TTL=60
Reply from 193.1.219.57: bytes=32 time=19ms TTL=60
Reply from 193.1.219.57: bytes=32 time=19ms TTL=60

Ping statistics for 193.1.219.57:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 19ms, Maximum = 22ms, Average = 20ms

C:\WINDOWS>

Orion

Fair points from Wally. However I'm on a phone line on a Bitstream reseller and my pings are worse than his on a so-called regular service.

~$ ping www.heanet.ie
PING samhain.heanet.ie (193.1.219.57) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from samhain.heanet.ie (193.1.219.57): icmp_seq=1 ttl=55 time=46.3 ms
64 bytes from samhain.heanet.ie (193.1.219.57): icmp_seq=2 ttl=55 time=46.0 ms
64 bytes from samhain.heanet.ie (193.1.219.57): icmp_seq=3 ttl=55 time=47.0 ms
64 bytes from samhain.heanet.ie (193.1.219.57): icmp_seq=4 ttl=55 time=46.0 ms
^C
--- samhain.heanet.ie ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 4 received, 0% packet loss, time 3011ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 46.028/46.361/47.024/0.398 ms

tbh

to answer your question:

yes, really.

L31mr0d

While I don't have any issue with this advert, I can understand where Jazzy is coming from. It's like kicking a snowball down a mountain. The snowball isn't the issue, it's what crushes the town at the bottom that is.

Is there some restriction in place or criteria for these adverts? I mean if Budweiser wanted to post an advert for The Gentlemans Club will they be allowed?

How frequently can these ads be posted?

Will they be posted everywhere?

Dav

deRanged wrote: »

I wonder is it the fact that the response was outside the paid forum that is the problem?



if every forum becomes an advertising medium then I would say not.
the commercial interaction forums (or whatever they are called) are excellent, as is the largely unbiased open advise given by boards.ie members on companies and products.
the lines could become blurred very fast. I know if I was paying for a commercial forum I'd want to be able to post within mainstream forums if other commercial entities could. Assuming of course that they don't pay specifically for that purpose, but if I'm not careful I'll start a conspiracy theory

I'm extremely busy this morning folks, but I wanted to say that I'll be back later on to give a proper answer to this and the similar points raised by RopeDrink and Leimrod, so if you'll accept my apologies in not being able to answer you straight away, I'll talk to you about this in the afternoon.

Further questions and feedback are welcome in the mean time.

Dav

PogMoThoin

I'm against the whole idea of subscribers advertising outside their own forum. I run the adblock plus addon on firefox to block ads, I subscribe here and have the option of turning them off. I don't want to be tripping over them in ordinary forums like gaming. Down with this sort of thing

Turd Ferguson

I agree with Jazzy on this. It's not that particular ad but its the precedent its setting. Whats to say in a few months time that we dont have loads of paid adverts as stickies all over the shop? Its both silly and disgusting.

DeVore

1. They didnt "pay" for this thread, I dont know why you all jumped to that conclusion. They paid for a Talk To forum, but that gives them no automatic rights what so ever to post in other forums.

2. They went about this the right way. They engaged, took on members feedback, worked with the users of this site (120 of them), devised a product and tested it with them. What do you think we were going to do... turn around and say "no, you cant let them know that its live".

3. We arent exactly going to be drowning in companies doing that any time soon, I wish we were, but the feedback of "we should have some criteria, even if its subjective, going forward", is fair and good. We'll make that happen. Magnet DID contact us and got our approval before posting that.

4. UTV did this back as far as 2002... http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=63228&highlight=UTVinternet
So I dont know where every is getting this "oh Boards is changing" stuff. We're just being more efficient about it.

I know Dav will be back later t respond, he's up to his tonsils today, but I wanted to make those points. I do take the point that we dont want hundreds of these in forums, but to be fair, this isnt some "paid-for-spam", this was an announcment to the people that have worked with them to get a product they wanted that it was finally being launched. If you cant see the difference there, then I really dunno..

This sort of "us boardsie's telling them (politicians, companies, journos etc)" has always been my goal.

This sort of thing gives me a boner. Is that wrong??

DeV.

PogMoThoin

Couldn't they have told them its live in the thread they already had? Why start a new thread just to advertise? I fail to see how its an announcement, its advertising.

Edit: I see its also a sticky in the Broadband Forum

aidan_walsh

deRanged wrote:

if every forum becomes an advertising medium then I would say not.
the commercial interaction forums (or whatever they are called) are excellent, as is the largely unbiased open advise given by boards.ie members on companies and products.
the lines could become blurred very fast. I know if I was paying for a commercial forum I'd want to be able to post within mainstream forums if other commercial entities could. Assuming of course that they don't pay specifically for that purpose, but if I'm not careful I'll start a conspiracy theory

DeV touched on most of the important points, but its also the case that for threads like this the Reps need to have the permission of the forum mods in question. This is a requirement of their Talk To forum.

As such, I don't see it becoming too much of an issue. I don't see the forums becoming too swamped with threads like this. The majority of the Talk To groups tend to stick to their own forums for this, but where it helps a specific group like this one did I don't see a problem in one thread pointing it out to that group.

DeVore wrote:

This sort of thing gives me a boner. Is that wrong??

Probably a discussion best had between yourself and Darragh

Dav

Thanks for your patience folks. I apologise in advance for the length of this post, but I want everything to be as clear as possible.

I think that first of all I should clarify what it is we want Official Representatives to be. These are people who work for a company and who will answer questions on behalf of that company. Over the years, there have been many people who operate on boards like this - they've been allowed to stay as they've been honest about who they are and they give value to our members - now we're just giving them a clear badge to identify them.

After a lot of discussion with the moderators we came to an arrangement that it would be down to the individual forums to allow (or not) Official Reps into their communities - it would be up to the mods if they thought it's the sort of thing they should ask the communities about or not as they have a better feel for the places. There has not been (and won't be) pressure from us here in the office to allow these people access to our members in their own communities if they don't want that - we often joke in here in the office about when the Daft.ie Official Rep account went into the Accommodation & Property forum and got banned straight away because they don't allow or want that sort of interaction in that community. We tell business etc who're asking about these Official Rep accounts that we make no guarantees of the levels of interactivity they will get from Boards.ie - it's up to them to make it work, not us.

Getting more specific about this, the Games and Broadband mods have previously indicated that they're happy to have Official Reps in their forums as they felt having questions answered by a company is very beneficial. So, after once again confirming everything was ok with them, Rory from Magnet began to engage with our members on those forums. What followed, amongst other things, is that Magnet wanted and got feedback on a package for gamers and designed by gamers.

So roll on to this week and we get the news that their package is ready to go and how best might they tell the members outside of their Talk To forum. I said I'd ask the Mods of the forums that gave them the feedback if they thought posting a thread saying "we've put this together thanks to your help" would be acceptable and consensus was reached that we'd have a thread announcing it and directing people over to the Magnet Talk To forum would be ok because 1) they were delighted to see we'd been directly responsible for this happening, 2) we wanted to keep discussion on the topic in one place and 3) felt it's fair to give some kudos when a business has shown that they really do give a damn about what Boards.ie members have to say.

Magnet did not pay for those 2 threads.

Magnet have however, proven that their involvement in boards is far more than just advertising though - this is direct customer interaction for them. It's more than just saying yes and no to broadband availability or reporting problems to the engineers. We (here in the office and the mods involved) felt that this was more than just a "we're offering a discount to boardsies" piece of news, this was big. This is why those two threads were given the go-ahead.

The main thing to have come out of this is we've broken new ground with this sort of involvement with a business on boards.ie. We need to make sure we do the best thing by our members. We don't intend to offer that sort of a thread to anyone as a form of advertising - as I said in this specific case, the threads happened to 1) inform the members that the product they helped design was now live and 2) give credit to Magnet for they way they've gone about this.

Taking the example above about Budweiser advertising like that in the Gentlemen's Club - what if they paid for a talk to forum, had an official rep account and designed a brand new beer based on the input of the members of boards.ie? Would you think that letting people know they could hear more about it on their forum was a terrible idea? However, if they wanted to come along and say "hey, we're offering boardsies 2 for 1 on bottles of Bud, can we have a thread on the Gentlemen's Club forum to tell people" that's not something we'd give any consideration to at all. Sure, it's value for boardsies, but that is direct advertising and they haven't earned it.

Sorry it's taken so long, I offer this:

tl;dr:
You cannot buy a thread to advertise your product or service, but you can earn it. After a lot of consultation with people involved, we felt Magnet earned it.

Dav

deRanged

DeVore wrote:

They didnt "pay" for this thread, I dont know why you all jumped to that conclusion.

given that people normally aren't allowed advertise in forums, and we know that

They paid for a Talk To forum,

you can see why people might wonder.

thanks very much for the detailed answer Dav.
it certainly answers any questions I had.

DeVore

Yeah, sorry deranged, its just frustrating sometimes.

We have had people like pix.ie working with the photography forum for a long time, no one complained because they were *respectful* of that space. Thats a big part of this for me.

As Dav said, you can EARN the right, you cant buy it from us, and the mods have to approve it. Some mods have in fact issued blanket bans on any Commercial Rep from posting in their threads as it is.

DeV.

Steve

Just throwing it out there - how come Digiweb hasn't been given the same treatment? I don't wish to criticise the fine offer of a years free hosting that they're giving away to boardsies on a weekly basis but I've often wondered about the honesty of it. It's classic 'loss leader' marketing tactics - you can build your website and host it free for a year but you pay for it after that if you want to keep it live... :suitable smiley:

Kinetic^

I do understand where people are coming from. A small announcement imo is fine. It's where you have companies being allowed to spam all over there target market's forum then we get a problem. Thankfully Dav & Darragh are not going to allow this to happen and still have the communities interests at heart.

Blowfish

Dav wrote: »

Taking the example above about Budweiser advertising like that in the Gentlemen's Club - what if they paid for a talk to forum, had an official rep account and designed a brand new beer based on the input of the members of boards.ie? Would you think that letting people know they could hear more about it on their forum was a terrible idea? However, if they wanted to come along and say "hey, we're offering boardsies 2 for 1 on bottles of Bud, can we have a thread on the Gentlemen's Club forum to tell people" that's not something we'd give any consideration to at all. Sure, it's value for boardsies, but that is direct advertising and they haven't earned it.

On that note...

[edit] Nice one, sorted. Cheers DeVore, that spanner never seems to give up

sceptre

Dav wrote: »

tl;dr:
You cannot buy a thread to advertise your product or service, but you can earn it. After a lot of consultation with people involved, we felt Magnet earned it.

On a purely personal non-admin note, this is just as important to gamers as the UTV involvement and feedback was to us who couldn't get BB back in 02 (I jumped with UTV the day they announced their product on boards as it was the first affordable offering and I'm still with them partly because of their willingness to honestly engage and discuss here). Pointless denying people a good thing from a company that have been willing to get involved when there was far less in it for them. So thumbs up from me. Especially given that involvement by companies is watched and monitored and won't be a free for all in any way.

All IMHO personal view of course.

Orion

Thanks DeV and Dav for the feedback. I'd love to hear from the OP now to see if his opinion has changed.

Jazzy

Macros42 wrote: »

Thanks DeV and Dav for the feedback. I'd love to hear from the OP now to see if his opinion has changed.

would ya macros?

AckwelFoley

i dont get it..

the problem that is.

Its hardly the fall of boards.ie at the feet of capitalism.

If it makes money for the admin which in turn will help keep the ship afloat without changing the site greatly.. i see no evil

Gary ITR

Turd Ferguson wrote: »

I agree with Jazzy on this. It's not that particular ad but its the precedent its setting. Whats to say in a few months time that we dont have loads of paid adverts as stickies all over the shop? Its both silly and disgusting.

Well it's better than some of the stuff you've posted, meatspin, golden showers etc


I really don't see a problem with this or the Commercial Reps when they add value to the forum and in the Talk to Magnet forum that guy seems to be on top of his game and has earned his position on the boards

Jazzy

Onkle wrote: »

Well it's better than some of the stuff you've posted, meatspin, golden showers etc

showing real class there Onkle. any point in bringing up something like that here or do you just like lording it over people with a copy of their permanent record in hand?

ill reply properly later tonight

Jazzy

from what I can see this is all a bit hypocritical. There is boards not wanting to have its name on other sites or connected to other things (the whole Helix getting banned from soccer fiasco) but its alright with the promotion of this service from another company on this site. what if the magnet broadband package is sh1t? what if someone gets this package because it was recommended by boards (and from what I can see, it is being recommended by boards.ie ltd. the team in the office have all given the product a thumbs up ya see) and it turns out to be awful? surely that is a poor reflection on this site and would help drag its name through the mud, something this site has stated it clearly wants to avoid and has taken the appropriate actions to do so.

It is another case of just putting the line where it suits. instead of papering over the crack you can just cover it with a new wall. frankly, I dont believe the whole 'for the good of our readers' line when it comes to who will/won't be able to advertise here. If MCD waved enough wads of money around Im pretty sure they would be given one of those red accounts and be given status as an 'official representitive'. I know how business's like this site work and I know how they make money... so in the long run I probably shouldnt be complaining
The fact that the thread was immediately locked is a big teller that money has changed hands though.. and if not money, some other form of payment. It isnt so much a thread then as just a blatent advertisement. If you are going to put ads up on the site then don't hide them as a thread because it is quite condescending towards your readers and viewers. Threads are for discussion, I always thought it was as simple as that.. sure, its been pointed out to me a few times by mods from here

I dunno, at the end of the day I can't really complain because Daddy needs to make money to make the site survive and grow and who knows, he might give me the whole 'but you are using this service for free' speech with all the best sounding words and phrases thrown in to really give me the donkey punch.
Its one of those things I just hope doesn't get out of hand and there isn't representatives and threads across all forums telling us how great a product x,y & z is. I still think the whole thing stinks a bit and you can tell from the importance and exactness of the main replies how important ads/threads like these are to boards.ie going forward

Boston

I should say at the start I welcome this initiative from magnet Telecoms and I see no reason to believe it's offered in anything but good faith. I look forward to seeing future collaborations between Boards LTD and the business community. A Broadband package aimed at gamers is a product DeVore and others have been talking about for as long as I've been on this site, there was even attempts to set up a boards.ie ISP to offer such a service. It is truly a watershed day and something I hope all those involved are proud of.

5starpool wrote: »

Someone is offering a product in a forum they have paid for. Hardly disgusting.

I'm not in favour of blatant advertising in general, but it is only akin to having an ad in the paper or on tv surely?

They didn't pay for the games forum.

Dudess wrote: »

Boards not taking advantage of a business opportunity... would be quite dumb.

Boards.ie is a community funded through commerce. It isn't a business with a community as the product.

DeVore wrote: »

make that happen. Magnet DID contact us and got our approval before posting that.

4. UTV did this back as far as 2002... http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=63228&highlight=UTVinternet

I was going to reference this point. UTV, Fon, and Smart Telecom have all done what Magnet did. Fon and Smart where two initiative spearheaded by Vexorg which were to the amazing benefit of board users and companies alike. So its not new, nor it is a DeVore original. I think the problem now is with trust. Previously no one concluded money as the main motivator, now even the supports jumped to that conclusion. Says alot about the current faith your average user has and who they see the management looking out for.

DeVore wrote: »

This sort of thing gives me a boner. Is that wrong??

DeV.

Yes is it wrong. The firs and most extreme example I've seen is Jimmy Corr. He was allow to post unsubstantiated drivel (It was condemned as such by at least two moderators of the forum he posted on) which would never have been normally permitted. But because he was a celebrity campaigner and despite the clear objections of the community, he was allowed use this site as a political platform. I think we've enough problems as it is from special interest groups on boards without inviting more of them onto the site. Perhaps Fianna Fail will latch onto the idea of having a talk to forum where they can spread propaganda without challenge?

Onkle wrote: »

Well it's better than some of the stuff you've posted, meatspin, golden showers etc

You're right, I mean one time Jazzy posted up a naked picture of himself on a forum largely populated by women.... actually that was someone else, I forget his name but he lives in a glass house and is the world champion stone thrower.

Jazzy wrote: »

The fact that the thread was immediately locked is a big teller that money has changed hands though.. and if not money, some other form of payment. It isnt so much a thread then as just a blatent advertisement. If you are going to put ads up on the site then don't hide them as a thread because it is quite condescending towards your readers and viewers. Threads are for discussion, I always thought it was as simple as that.. sure, its been pointed out to me a few times by mods from here

Very good point. What happens if I want to say their service is no good? I mean they're not paying good money to boards LTD to be slated, are they? In general I've no problem with these commercial offerings, I went with UTV, I missed FON and I got the Smart Video over IP deal. But it all comes down to having faith that the boards.ie team isn't going to let its users be taken for a ride in an effort to make a quick euro.

Kur4mA

A locked thread such as the one Magnet posted is a glorified advertisement. I completely agree with Jumpy and Boston... what happens when they're using a thread to advertise and some of us start to respond that the service is actually ****? If money has exchanged hands are you going to start locking all such threads?

If so, this will completely destroy boards.

Steve

kyub wrote: »

what happens when they're using a thread to advertise and some of us start to respond that the service is actually ****?

Just my opinion but...

In that case, the correct thing to do would be to complain in the rep's own forum. If there's no answer there then bring it to the attention of a forum mod that the the thread was posted in and they'll take action as appropriate. Failing that, bring it to admin attention on helpdesk.

It's treated the same as any other thread on the site you have an issue with.

Gone West

The whole thing is grand, but really they shouldn't have locked the thread.
If they are going to have multiple threads on the same thing in different forums, they should not have them locked.
This is a discussion forum, and a one post locked thread is essentially an announcement, not engaging in discussion.

Just my 1cent

jor el

el judìo wrote: »

The whole thing is grand, but really they shouldn't have locked the thread.
If they are going to have multiple threads on the same thing in different forums, they should not have them locked.
This is a discussion forum, and a one post locked thread is essentially an announcement, not engaging in discussion.

Just my 1cent

The suggestion to lock them was mine. This is a discussion forum, and fragmenting the discussion of one product on many different forums does nothing to help it. It was best to have it all discussed in one place, the Magnet Forum, where Rory could answer all questions, but announce it in the relevant, related forums (Broadband and Games).

kyub wrote:

what happens when they're using a thread to advertise and some of us start to respond that the service is actually ****?

Give examples of where criticism of any of the commercial reps products was censored, removed or forbidden.

kyub wrote:

If money has exchanged hands are you going to start locking all such threads?

Announcement type posts generally are locked, that's nothing new. And what money was given for this? You have the admins and community managers saying that no money was paid for this. If you don't believe them, or don't trust them, then maybe you should just leave.

I really don't get what the problem is here. You have little to be worried about if a simple announcement gives rise to such hysteria.

Jazzy wrote:

The fact that the thread was immediately locked is a big teller that money has changed hands though.. and if not money, some other form of payment.

What an absolute load of bullsh*t. There was a link to the Magnet Forum thread in the announcement, where the discussion, criticism, or praise of the product could be placed. Locking the thread stops the discussion from being fragmented, simple as that. NO attempt was made to stifle discussion or comments.

Boston wrote:

What happens if I want to say their service is no good? I mean they're not paying good money to boards LTD to be slated, are they?

Again, post examples of where criticism of any commercial reps products or services have been stifled in any way? Here's a thread discussing Magnet, going back 3 years, complete with positive and negative posts.

Kinetic^

jor el wrote: »

This is a discussion forum, and fragmenting the discussion of one product on many different forums does nothing to help it. It was best to have it all discussed in one place, the Magnet Forum, where Rory could answer all questions, but announce it in the relevant, related forums (Broadband and Games).

Same reason it was locked on games.

DeVore

The reason we locked it, ironically, was so that it wouldnt be used as an advert with repeated bumping, we wanted to direct discussion to their forum, where it is on topic and can go on as long as people want. In that way, perhaps an announcement in the games category would have been more suited, but we felt that was too much of a "privilege" afforded to them. We didnt want it too seem like an ad. I'm comfortable with the whole thing... it doesnt seem like the sky has fallen since then either...

DeV.