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Gearbest Forum

Digital Solitude

Not sure if this is in the right place, but I was flicking through the forum listings today and came across the gearbest hosted forum.

Seems a bit strange that there's a link straight to them after the crap in the Chinese Android Thread last year that got them added to the swear list and made any association and links from users a big no-no.

Any explanation for this?

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Winterlong

hightower1 wrote: »

You can encourage people to break rules all you wish however it doesn't make you responsible for their actions.

It does if you provide a financial incentive for them to break those rules.

tsue921i8wljb3

I don't have a problem with Gearbest or "shilling" particularly. I am an adult and am capable of making an educated decision on whether something is a bargain or not.

What troubles me though is the double standard we are now seeing. The post by Dav in the prison forum quoted by Baldy earlier was directed at a 17 or 18 year old.

There are barely words to express how vile and despicable I think someone like you is, so don't ever come back.

I thought then and still do that it was a hugely inappropriate thing to say to someone especially a relative youngster. The fact that it came from a senior person in the company is even worse.

Seamus said:

It's not like GB killed anyone or broke multiple laws. They've come to understand what they did wrong and now they've been turned into a valuable contributor.

The "shilling" users did not kill anyone either.

degsie

#unbantheshillers

Wibbs

Jasmine Chilly Chisel wrote: »

I thought then and still do that it was a hugely inappropriate thing to say to someone especially a relative youngster. The fact that it came from a senior person in the company is even worse.

+1. Whatever about this gearbest crowd selling tat, unless that user posted kiddie porn we don't know about that's well over the top.

Boards.ie: Niamh

Good afternoon.

We do and have said no to working with certain companies in the past but there is no reason to have said no to Gearbest.com. It has always been our policy to try to turn companies engaging on the site into useful, paying contributors to the site. At the risk of repeating myself, they admitted their wrongdoing in encouraging established users to shill their stuff and are now willing to have an above board and transparent presence on the site. It would be silly for both the site and the community for us to ignore that opportunity.

Long-term users who personally gained from shilling on the site will not be welcomed back. They knowingly broke an important site rule and that has not changed. "Oh poor them, they were co-erced into it" - no. They knew it was against site rules and did it anyway, not for your benefit or the site's but for their own benefit. Gearbest.com, who were not long-term users, were not aware of how dimly we view shilling - they are now.

Having Gearbest.com on the site was a business decision. We make no apology for that fact. We want to keep Boards going as it is for the community but in return we (the office team) need to make the commercial decisions. You might not like some of them but you have the luxury of saying a hypothetical yes or no to them from the comfort of your own keyboard. We're not actively trying to annoy you here, we're trying to do what is best for the site as a whole. As a whole. Not just for a set of vocal users or our personal favourite forums but for the whole thing. Bringing in money to pay the bills is a very large part of that.

LuckyLloyd

Was sure the office would roll back on this after review and consideration. Surprising. A poor decision.

dunworth1

Very well said Niamh.

When's the sub forum opening?

Renegade Mechanic

Niamh, you're making out that while the users were well aware of this sites view on shilling, Gearbest themselves were not. There's no way whatsoever of proving that this is the case.

Imo, the Gearbest crowd are much smarter than that..

Curb Your Enthusiasm

Gearbest 100% knew that shilling was frowned upon. They've been banned from countless other forums for the same thing.

Kenjataimu

There is a standard type of reply when people are caught shilling.

The banlist page shows a couple of examples.

Please contact sales@boards.ie to get a verified rep account

Contact sales@boards.ie to advertise

This is nothing new, I've seen this reply countless times before.

It is a bit surprising that an infamous shiller has decided to actually advertise properly.

I'd guess that most companies that shill are too tight to pay for advertising in the first place.

Personally I have no problem with sponsored forums. Boards have to pay the bills somehow.

I know its an advert & boards are not hiding that its a sponsored forum.

But like every other advert on the internet I wont be clicking on them.

RossieMan

I don't know about their posters, but I'm fine with geatbest having a subforum here, no matter how ****ty their company is. Its the fact its in BAs, which all the mods and Niamh seemed to have danced around.

Do they pay more to have it in BA rather than android devices or similar? In its present state, it looks like boards is promoting the fact that they think GB sell bargains.

degsie

I'm assuming the conversation went something like:

Gearbest - "Hi boards, Gearbest here, remember us?"
Boards - "Sure we do, what the hell do you want?"
Gearbest - "We'd like to come back to boards!"
Boards - "Yeah right! Remember the sh1tstorm you caused all those months ago?"
Gearbest - Yeah, sorry 'bout that, but we will give you money now!"
Boards - "Wait, what?"
Gearbest - "Yes money, reddies, dosh. You know what that is, right?"
Boards - "Sure! Would you like your own forum?"
Gearbest - "That would be nice"
Boards - "None of your shinanigans now, ok?"
Gearbest - "Sure. Of course

"
Boards - "Welcome to boards.ie

Edward Hopper

Saintly Gearbest led astray by a few users who used their evil devilish wiles to get a discount on a phone cover or something. Thank god Niamh has got the correct perspective on this issue.

#prayforgearbest

KERSPLAT!

Boards.ie: Niamh wrote: »

Good afternoon.

We do and have said no to working with certain companies in the past but there is no reason to have said no to Gearbest.com. It has always been our policy to try to turn companies engaging on the site into useful, paying contributors to the site. At the risk of repeating myself, they admitted their wrongdoing in encouraging established users to shill their stuff and are now willing to have an above board and transparent presence on the site. It would be silly for both the site and the community for us to ignore that opportunity.

Long-term users who personally gained from shilling on the site will not be welcomed back. They knowingly broke an important site rule and that has not changed. "Oh poor them, they were co-erced into it" - no. They knew it was against site rules and did it anyway, not for your benefit or the site's but for their own benefit. Gearbest.com, who were not long-term users, were not aware of how dimly we view shilling - they are now.

Having Gearbest.com on the site was a business decision. We make no apology for that fact. We want to keep Boards going as it is for the community but in return we (the office team) need to make the commercial decisions. You might not like some of them but you have the luxury of saying a hypothetical yes or no to them from the comfort of your own keyboard. We're not actively trying to annoy you here, we're trying to do what is best for the site as a whole. As a whole. Not just for a set of vocal users or our personal favourite forums but for the whole thing. Bringing in money to pay the bills is a very large part of that.

Gearbest weren't aware how serious an offence it was, OK, fair enough. Then why did Dav, or whoever, go hell for leather and add them to the swear filter? Something I've never seen before. A company who seemingly were fairly innocent here... Completely wiped from the site.

I honestly couldn't care less but to let Gearbest back on and not the users banned due to them, directly or indirectly, is ridiculous.

Boards need to pay bills, we all know that, but by Jaysus ye do yourself no favours when it comes to things like this, the roll out of apps, new site, responses in the site dev section, etc. Communication is abysmal to say the least.

endacl

I have stuff for sale. Anybody interested? It's good stuff. Of the highest quality. Also, I may be a wee bit tipsy...

gandalf

I have already posted on the thread in BA about this but I have a couple of comments to add here.

I understand the fact that boards needs to generate revenue to stay online, however it also needs a critical mass of eyeballs looking at the screen and fingers generating content to achieve that revenue as well. If user numbers drop then it's ability to generate income diminishes also. This kind of hypocritical U-turn really does no favours with the user base at all. The message it sends out is damaging to the integrity of the site. It shows that those with enough resources can expunge their record and given the thread Dav posted about Gearbest has been deleted shows they can retrospectively influence editing of content. Given the extremely poor communications to the community and the sporadic engagement about some very large changes that you have attempted to foist onto us this is yet another example where Boards Management have shot themselves in the foot with the user base. As I said in the thread on the site redesign it's like we are an inconvenience and not critical to the success of the site. You really need to rethink the communication strategy with the user base because at the moment it is a "us and them" situation.

I find it interesting that Dav himself has not commented on this. I have a feeling this has been actioned despite his personal feelings.

I also believe that if a company with Gearbests shoddy reputation gets a reprieve that all users who were banned because of them should also be given one.

KERSPLAT!

"We don't delete content..." Well not unless you pay.

You couldn't make this up.

Edit: I was wrong, my bad.

ThisRegard

Boards.ie: Niamh wrote: »

they admitted their wrongdoing in encouraging established users to shill their stuff and are now willing to have an above board and transparent presence on the site.

At the time this all happened I read the apologetic post from one of the banned shillers in which they also admitted their wrongdoing. They were told they were vile and despicable.

LuckyLloyd

Did they actually delete critical historical content related to Gearbest? Yikes.

EDIT: Thankfully that is not the case as confirmed below!!

Cathmandooo

In fairness Davs thread wasn't deleted, it was merged with the charter probably a long time ago for housekeeping purposes by the mods.

It's still there, and has been edited to add Davs comments

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=94734530&postcount=23

Polo_Mint

lol

This thread to me looks like this

KERSPLAT!

KERSPLAT! wrote: »

"We don't delete content..." Well not unless you pay.

You couldn't make this up.

Cathmandooo wrote: »

In fairness Davs thread wasn't deleted, it was merged with the charter probably a long time ago for housekeeping purposes by the mods.

It's still there, and has been edited to add Davs comments

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=94734530&postcount=23

Fair enough.

gandalf

Cathmandooo wrote: »

In fairness Davs thread wasn't deleted, it was merged with the charter probably a long time ago for housekeeping purposes by the mods.

It's still there, and has been edited to add Davs comments

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=94734530&postcount=23

Fair enough and I see Dav commented although it does read very PR like. Again I wonder if it reflects Dav's personal feelings about this especially as Niamh is the one fronting the interaction here on this thread and the BA thread as well. It's almost like Dav has been pushed into the background on this issue on purpose.

My central arguement that this diminishes the independence, ethics and integrity of the site remains.

hardCopy

Kenjataimu wrote: »

There is a standard type of reply when people are caught shilling.

The banlist page shows a couple of examples.

This is nothing new, I've seen this reply countless times before.

It is a bit surprising that an infamous shiller has decided to actually advertise properly.

I'd guess that most companies that shill are too tight to pay for advertising in the first place.

Personally I have no problem with sponsored forums. Boards have to pay the bills somehow.

I know its an advert & boards are not hiding that its a sponsored forum.

But like every other advert on the internet I wont be clicking on them.

Yeah, I've also seen this approach many times.

I can understand gearbest making an approach to "regularise" their access to boards once it became clear that their shilling "affiliate marketing" approach wasn't going to fly.

I can also understand why the previous users are still banned, assuming it's been proven that they were profiting from links.

Dav's earlier comments do look OTT though.

Unpaid advertising has never been allowed but every wayward advertiser will always make a hot lead for the ad sales team.

I think a sponsored sub-forum and verified accounts make it very clear to users who the Gearbest reps are and their motivation in posting any links.

I can't say I personally have a massive problem with it but I can see why others do and the inevitable backlash should have been pretty obvious to the office team. It would have been better to at least ask Gearbest to go away and try again in a few months or a year.

[Deleted User]

Just because GB have decided they want to play by the rules here doesn't make them any less a scummy outfit. Far more serious issues with them than the shilling that went on here a while back and giving them a platform here lends them some credibility to the uninformed. They should have been told where to go once and for all.

Satriale

I've no bother with forgive and forget (and that's coming from someone who had a two month nightmare with Gearbests horrific customer service.)

But if Gearbest are allowed buy their way back into the good books, then the boards members involved should as well.
Business is business but fair is fair.

Canis Lupus

Do the banned members really give a f*ck?

godtabh

Boards.ie: Niamh wrote: »

It has always been our policy to try to turn companies engaging on the site into useful, paying contributors to the site.

There is a big difference in a standard shill and what Gearbest did. A standard shill is obvious in most cases. Not much thought is put into it.

Gearbest put a lot of thought and effort in manipulating boards. It only came to light because some one noticed a pattern.

Converting a standard shill into a paying customer - great.

Converting a company who set out to manipulate a community - bad.

What is it that they say about ethics? Ethics is what you do when nobody looking. The ethical thing to do here is tell Gearbest to fcuk right off after what it tried to do to the community here.

I get a lot from boards and I'd find it hard to leave it but I'm considering my position. As has been pointed out elsewhere the users are the product and if you dont have a product you dont need to make decisions like this.

Edward Hopper

I'd like to suggest the "spammer/shill notification" thread be renamed the "potential new sponsored forum client notification - sponsored by buzz cola" thread. (admittedly not the punchiest of titles)

gandalf

Probably more appropriate to call it a sales pipeline then