Tech: Banned from Mobiles and PDAs

vinnielo

The following message was sent to The Corinthian on 02/02/12:

Hi, The Corinthian,

Thanks for the notification on the ban.

Sorry if my message looked like spam.
Its intention was to appeal for information and feedback on the development of something that would be of benefit to the Irish WP7 owners' community.

As you can imagine, it's difficult to source many different types of Windows Phones for testing purposes, and an internet forum is the ideal place to make such an appeal.

I tried to explain the background of what I'm trying to do before making the appeal, hence I understand why it may have looked like an advertisement.

I hope you can make a second judgment over the banning.

Thanks,

Vinnie

Thank you.

aidan_walsh

From the Mobiles/PDAs charter, as of 2009:

Soliciting feedback on a product/service is considered advertising, please do not do it.

vinnielo

Apologies. My bad, then.
Would you consider unbanning me and just take this as a warning acknowledged?

aidan_walsh

Has The Corinthian come back to you since your original PM to him?

vinnielo

No. I've only ever had one PM from The Corinthian.. the one which was probably automated.

aidan_walsh

Ok. Since there was no response by The Corinthian by PM I have asked him to take a look at this thread.

The Corinthian

As Aidan pointed out shilling/spamming (which is essentially what the ban was for) is strictly forbidden and treated with zero tolerance - as such, unless reasonable mitigating factors are believed present, an immediate and permanent ban takes place.

Even if one had not read the charter (which does not excuse the act), it is hardly out of the ordinary that spamming is forbidden on community boards. Pretty much any board which is moderated bans such posts, TBH.

Additionally, posters regularly come to the moderators before posting anything to clear it with us if they are genuinely looking for testers, etc.

Ultimately Vinnielo started a thread which advertised the following (URL info snipped):

I've just launched a new browser-based player that supports Windows Phone 7s with the Mango update.
Just load <snip> from your phone's browser and you'll see a link to the player at the top of the page.

Now to me this, even if under the pretext of testing, looks like spam and nothing else, so a ban was executed.

Now a PM was then subsequently sent, but this is not unusual in cases of spam bannings. Typically they involve some sort of feigning of ignorance, combined with a promise not to offend again. And then more often than not they will.

Almost always that is what happens and so unless I genuinely get a feeling that the sender can display reasonable mitigating factors, I won't even bother to respond as they've already wasted enough of my and Board's time.

Unfortunately, I don't really see any reasonable mitigating factors in this case. If any of the other mods disagree and want to overrule this, I've genuinely no objections - however, if it turns out that Vinnielo becomes a repeat offender, then they can clean up next time.

vinnielo

The Corinthian wrote: »

posters regularly come to the moderators before posting anything to clear it with us if they are genuinely looking for testers, etc.

I've honestly never come across anything like this on any other discussion board before.. but your boards, your rules, I guess!

aidan_walsh

Ok, in this case I'm going to give you a second chance vinnielo. I'll reduce the ban from Permanent to 1 month from the original ban date, meaning a further 10 days from today. The ban will be automatically lifted at that point.

Please bear what you have been told here in mind. If you are banned for any similar behaviour in future you may not get another chance.

vinnielo

Thanks, aidan_walsh. I'm guessing the original request for testing is still a no-no, The Corinthian?

The Corinthian

Sell the request for testing, not the app. In short, don't make it sound like you're spamming under the pretext of 'app testing'.

trout

Closing this. Marked as resolved - amicably. Thanks to all concerned.