Wow things done changed...

Spam is deleted. It's so far been the only thing that has ever been deleted with the exception of some private stuff deleted at the request of the person who posted it.

Once a spam thread is reported by a few people, it gets deleted. If no-one had reported it, then it would have lived on and you could continue to take the piss out of it.

Once spam gets deleted, the spammer is automatically banned. I have no time for spammers you see.

Anyhow, a few people reported it so it got deleted automatically once I flipped a switch to say that yeah I agreed with the reports (a final check so you can't all just ban someone by marking them as spam).

Anyhow, a follow-on...

The person in question sent me this post-ban:

Dear London Fixed Gear and Single Speed,
We meant no harm lodging our Bridgestone frames for sale under the classifieds of the forum. We just wanted to tell your users of the items.

As a good will i can make a helmet available in what ever cat of the site.

Again we meant no harm and i can see that other members have classifieds up.

Regards

And my response was:

Hi,

I am just the administrator, but the view is roughly this: Classifieds are perfectly fine on the website so long as they are within the context of friends offering/buying things from friends. To that end we generally say that anyone who participates in the wider forum has the right to post in the classifieds. We don't stop newbies from posting in classifieds as we hope that they will use the wider forum before posting again.

The policing of the above is done by the members themselves. When a certain percentage of the active user base reports a post as spam then what has been considered spam is deleted automatically. The only bit where I get involved is to summarise the numerous report messages "spam!", "this is spam", "how many times?!" into something descriptive enough to show you so that you can see why you were banned.

To successfully post in the classifieds section you need to have convinced the active members on the board that the posting isn't just a sales pitch and is a reflection of your being part of the community and then sharing stuff with us. It's about trust and respect you see.

Anyhow, it's done now as that is the way that members view your posts. You can certainly re-register and try again, but I would advise that doing so quite soon will probably have the same end result.

I've no doubt that a lot of the members would be interested in the frames, but you'll need to find a way to do that without making it feel like you're using the community to make money from them. Come in as a friend and then people may listen.

Cheers

David

And finally he responded with:

Hi David,

Thanks for your email.

I am a very keen fixed wheel rider myself and found this forum very interesting as i love my old classic stuff to.

I time trial and ride to and from work on my fixed and would ride road races on fixed if it was allowed.

It’s just that i work in the trade and like to give people what i believe would benefit them.

I do agree with you after looking back at the way i posted the classifieds how it would look like spam.

May i ask to be placed back in to the community under the same name and i will change the way i come across.

I would also make an official apology about how it may have invaded the nature of the forum.

If this decision is final then i will respect that.

Kind regards

So basically he says he's seen the error of his ways, so I'm going to let him back and give him a chance to prove that he can be part of the wider community rather than a spammer. Very few spammers would ever try and speak to us like that, so I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt... the old threads have still been nuked though.