I've been seeing this a lot, in many many different forms on the site. One way or the other, its about people earning money the way they shouldn't be. Weither it be selling MMO accounts, putting up referral links, selling "totse merch", or whatever. So I propose a new restriction on the site.

"Unauthorized Soliciting"

Authorization may come from a moderator of the forum in which the user is soliciting, a super moderator, or the administer, Jeff Hunter. An infraction would also be set in place for this.

Now I know we have some people who are actively paying money to advertise whatever it is they've got. Weither it be Mother Gecko Botanicals, Tshirthell, or whatever. So in this respect, I say we have some kind of list aside for those who are actually authorized to solicit on the public forums. Maybe a sticky in M&A with just a list of people who are paying for their right to advertise on totse. A quick reference for us of people given the OK to sell by the big man himself.

...or would all this constitute "spam"?

Sounds like a brilliant idea, I'm fully behind this.

Well there's a thread in GPP where I bought import games from Trueborn Vorpal, would threads like his be looped in with too?

That's already the definition of spam.

There's been a few differences of opinion as to how these apply, particularly the SPAM rule. SPAM is an advertisement for services, generally unrelated to the forum it's posted in.

Yeah I didnt know what to do with that asshole that was selling a WOW account. Technically I guess, he was doing nothing illegal, but if Blizzard felt like it they could probably rip Totse apart.
Clarification on this topic would be good.



Edit:Thanks for the backup in that thread btw Xip,it was good to know I hadnt actually done anything wrong.

I think as mods we have to support each other. Not like we have a perfect guide to go by. Even when we make mistakes, it happens! It's only if those mistakes happen over and over again it's an issue.

Seriously yoyobek, ;) try to relax and not overthink your decisions, make them and stand to your... *be good* ...guns! I think your doing great!

stay bad
~stormy

Isn't that covered under organizing criminal activities? Seeing as it's illegal to sell something you do not (technically) own?

They sell shit like that on craigslist all the time. I don't think totse would be uber liable.

I call those ones either "spam" or "using the boards to organize criminal activity," depending on what they're up to.

E.g. in Bad Ideas I get the occasional third world credit card number spammer, who gets the latter. Sometimes it's just stupid bullshit like "vote up my feedback on eBay" or "buy my WOW shit" which gets filed under the former.

A more appropriate one would be "Totse is not your personal ______ service," with the option left to fill in the blank with whatever witticism the moderator comes up with that day. This would cover various nonsense like trying to get people to spam an email or telephone number, horde some other message board, vote up feedback on outside sites, troll for referrals, that sort of thing.

Amusing applications of this power to administer the smackdown to people who use the boards as a personal email system for contacting the mods/admins and those who can't operate Google are, of course, left entirely to the reader.

A more appropriate one would be "Totse is not your personal ______ service" with the option left to fill in the blank with whatever witticism the moderator comes up with that day.

I approve :D