Warning to all business people using this forum

How does this square with Richer Sounds posting discussion on technical issues on devices and products if their declared interest is to Sell them?

Thanks,for clarifying that.

Think I'll stay away from debating with folk who have a vested interest .

Surely it would be better if people were allowed to name companies though, both good and bad?

The solar quotes thread is a joke, 50% of the content is "could someone PM me the name of the Enniskillen lads" etc.

Being able to name them would save about a dozen PMs daily. Same goes for a few other well known suppliers there.

They're well known now to most of the regulars but can't be named.

Same goes for the scumbags. If a company is quoting €15k for a system that should cost €6k then we should be allowed to name them.

See the problem with that is that it's pretty easy to abuse. Any unscrupulous company could set up a bunch of boards accounts to say how great their company is, or by the same token they can leave bad reviews for a competitor

Same garbage happens with Google reviews, or Amazon ratings or Yelp

I'm sure the mods don't want the hassle of filtering through the real accounts from the bots

At least with PMs it's hard to spread rumours or advertising and easier to root out the bots and trolls

Fully agree with the above.

There are ways around the (valid) concerns. For example, a blunt tool, but far less blunt then the current approach; a poster needs to have 10 posts before they can name a company. Another tool is to allow any company to be named and added to the opening post- so equal exposure from the top of the thread.

Mods will normally able to spot a shady post- the newbie hard sell, or newbie character assignation.

I would also split some threads, 162 pages on a single thread 50% of which is asking for a DM, its really hard for the genuine boardsie to get up to date information - which is also perfect for the less scrupulous boardsie with an agenda.

Askaboutmoney manages this issue very well in my experience and may be worth a look.

Thank you for your consideration. There is no right answer, but it doesn't hurt to try something for 6 months and review.

They're like absentee landlords.

I broached the naming of companies to one of them before and there just just a straight no.

Was chatting to Niamh about it and she suggested drawing up a new charter but when it's the mods and not the forum users who have the final say, I'd have to wonder if there's any point.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but from reading muffler's OP, it doesn't seem that mentioning specific companies by name is forbidden in threads. It was more about companies sending unsolicited PM's to people looking to get some business, which is pretty uncool

I for one don't have anything against specific companies being named, either in a positive or negative light, but I can also understand mods being wary of the forum being turned into a glorified advertising site. Or one company using the site to give itself good reviews under the guise of happy customers (or badmouth the competition in a similar way)

As mentioned though @muffler, various people including myself and @SouthWesterly have tried before and been dismissed without any attempt at engagement.

Well apparently the rules are fairly pointless anyway. In the last few days we've had people naming companies but just putting in a few *** in the name to anonymise it. But when the 3 *s replaced the letters ola in s***r it's a bit of a joke.

Likewise someone mentioned that the Enniskillen crowd had the same initials as Kelly Brook lol.

I don't think the report button is even working properly, I tried flagging a post some time ago and it wouldn't work

Thanks, any possibility of Mods for this section? Those who are supposedly here don't respond to PMs.

Happy days, thanks for this.