11432 Back door advertising

I agree and I do not mind a bit of subdued advertising for those who regularly contribute to the forum. Particularly in these harsh times. But it looks as if we are inundated by spam, etc.

[quote=Nielo;108181]Are any of us fooled by the new member who asks a question, only to get a, very rapid, reply that lo and behold the second poster runs just such a sevise, has just such a holiday rental etc. etc. etc.

I personally have no objections…. to my mind everyone is trying to survive…. but sometimes the subtlety is lost![/quote]

From the title, I thought you had some dodgy back doors you wanted to offload:bigergrin:

Advertising seems to be very high on the Italymag. agenda at the moment. New members/Hits bump up the data that can be used to attract more advertisers so maybe the controls are not as tight as they used to be. Again in tough times...

Please don't hesitate to hit the report button - many do already and it's very useful, thank you all by the way, as we don't have the time to read every post, every day - but if you hit the report button it will come straight through to Ronald, Marc, me or Tuscanhills, and if it's clearly a spam post or ad then we'll remove it straight away. I know it's not your job to do this but we don't get paid either :-)).

[quote=gardahomes;108218]Please don't hesitate to hit the report button - many do already and it's very useful, thank you all by the way, as we don't have the time to read every post, every day - but if you hit the report button it will come straight through to Ronald, Marc, me or Tuscanhills, and if it's clearly a spam post or ad then we'll remove it straight away. I know it's not your job to do this but we don't get paid either :-)).[/quote]

Thanks, that's good to know gardahomes - I never knew that was what that report button did.

Quick question, (to any of the four). If your "investigation" determines that the reported poster is "rogue" or operating outside the rules of the forum, do they get removed immediatley from the list of registered members currently standing at 7000+?

I ask, because as the owner of a B&B the accuracy of that figure is important in my evaluation of the advertising offers I recieve from the Italy Magazine. Thanks.

[quote=Ghianda;108249]
Quick question, (to any of the four). If your "investigation" determines that the reported poster is "rogue" or operating outside the rules of the forum, do they get removed immediatley from the list of registered members currently standing at 7000+?

I ask, because as the owner of a B&B the accuracy of that figure is important in my evaluation of the advertising offers I recieve from the Italy Magazine. Thanks.[/quote]

Spammers and people who register just to post in order to get a link or ad in etc get deactivated (banned), unless it was a genuine mistake and they are obviously genuine participants of the forum, in which case the ad would just be removed and they'd be warned. However I am not sure if a "deactivated" member is counted as one of the list of registered members... Ronald will know. Ronald????:winki:

I wrote to Cristiana to ask for clarification on the two sets of statistics a couple of days ago niente so far.

I have just had a look at the members list. On page one of the ‘As’ there are 30 members of which 13 have never posted. That is over 40%.
The last recorded activity of the 13 who have never posted is as follows

21-07-05
30-10-05
24-03-08
02-11-05
18-10-06
01-01-70
09-11-07
09-02-08
18-12-07
26-07-07
12-03-08
30-10-07
19-01-07

So the most recent activity is nine months ago and the least recent is nearly 3 ½ years ago.

I think this shows that the actual active membership is very much lower than the figure shown.

I’m certainly glad to hear spamers are removed, but perhaps it is time to remove accounts which have been dormant for over 2 years as well?

A huge drop off rate as evidenced on this forum only proves how badly it is managed.

[quote=Ghianda;108189]From the title, I thought you had some dodgy back doors you wanted to offload:bigergrin:[/quote]

Ha ha Very funny. i thought that as well but I suppose there could be even worse interpretations!

[quote=patch2277;108267]Ha ha Very funny. i thought that as well but I suppose there could be even worse interpretations![/quote]

Yep - I was worried that it could be a gay singles site!

.

[quote=Nielo;108264]I have just had a look at the members list. On page one of the ‘As’ there are 30 members of which 13 have never posted. That is over 40%.
The last recorded activity of the 13 who have never posted is as follows

21-07-05
30-10-05
24-03-08
02-11-05
18-10-06
01-01-70
09-11-07
09-02-08
18-12-07
26-07-07
12-03-08
30-10-07
19-01-07

So the most recent activity is nine months ago and the least recent is nearly 3 ½ years ago.

I think this shows that the actual active membership is very much lower than the figure shown.

I’m certainly glad to hear spamers are removed, but perhaps it is time to remove accounts which have been dormant for over 2 years as well?[/quote]

Sorry Nielo, not too sure what you are trying to illustrate. Are you trying to say that the site is less popular than it looks?

I can tell you that there are many many people who read the threads but do not dare to post because

a) the self appointed hierachy would take offence
b) they do not know who is who in the zoo here
c) they are just trying to learn about italy and do not have anything to add
d) they are alienated by some members who come across as know it alls/ - how dare you post on this thread!!!-

This is by far the most informative site regarding relocating to Italy on the web. The depth of knowledge on riduiculously disparate issues is incredible and every day you learn something; so, just because they havn't posted doesn't mean they are not on the forum.

[quote=alan h;108281]Yep - I was worried that it could be a gay singles site!

.[/quote]
[URL="http://www.maam.org/airshow/b25_tailgun.htm"]Tailgunners?[/URL]

[quote=Ghianda;108249]Thanks, that's good to know gardahomes - I never knew that was what that report button did.

Quick question, (to any of the four). If your "investigation" determines that the reported poster is "rogue" or operating outside the rules of the forum, do they get removed immediatley from the list of registered members currently standing at 7000+?

I ask, because as the owner of a B&B the accuracy of that figure is important in my evaluation of the advertising offers I recieve from the Italy Magazine. Thanks.[/quote]

[quote=patch2277;108288]Sorry Nielo, not too sure what you are trying to illustrate. Are you trying to say that the site is less popular than it looks?

I can tell you that there are many many people who read the threads but do not dare to post because

a) the self appointed hierachy would take offence
b) they do not know who is who in the zoo here
c) they are just trying to learn about italy and do not have anything to add
d) they are alienated by some members who come across as know it alls/ - how dare you post on this thread!!!-

This is by far the most informative site regarding relocating to Italy on the web. The depth of knowledge on riduiculously disparate issues is incredible and every day you learn something; so, just because they havn't posted doesn't mean they are not on the forum.[/quote]

Patch2277, my post was in response to the one from Ghianda and merely shows that although the forum sports a large number of registered members, many of them are not active. I know that the forum has many guests so perhaps a ‘hit rate’ would be a more accurate way to assess the forums use. I suspect that the hit rate would actually show the forum to be as popular as you suggest. So NO I was not ‘trying to say the site is less popular than it looks’ just that the membership list is not an accurate gauge.

Your post is very aggressive and does demonstrate quite a few of the reasons you give for people not wishing to post so I guess I’d have to agree with you there.

Finally I pointed out in my post that the registered members who had not posted had also not been active, that means they have not even logged in to read. Granted they may still read as guests but to have registered membership and then not logged in for more than two years does make me think that perhaps they have lost interest and moved on, much as I am doing now.:bigergrin:

Ooooooooooer! I'm off to the music threads - but will watch this one develop from the sidelines! :bigergrin:

Good points by both Nielo and Patch2277 re being active/inactive and "terrified" respectively.

Interestingly, (as a B&B owner) I have just been emailed by IM inviting me to advertise with them and one of the pieces of info supplied is that of forum membership. see quote below. If the membership figure is being used in that way, then I believe IM has a serious responsibility to ensure they are robust, actively managed and meaningfully described.:yes:

[LIST]

Hi
Ghianda, I had the same email plus another the week before from IM (Peter Shaw) and had the same concerns as you re: the effectiveness of the advertising if the user data is not clear or accurate. I have used the site for direct advertisng for 3 years.
I mailed him and received something of a reply. I replied.

I thought I would try and help you with this very lively debate, firstly inactivy can easlily be shyness I know i read alot but think my opinion is not worthy for that very reason that because I am new, you all know it or it has already been covered on the forum previously.

I have been a member for 2 years I think but probably for 1 of those i was not active due to moving to Italy and having no internet!!

As far as the adverts are concerned it does not bother me because the message is archived pretty quickly with very little response, spam to me is when I am personally pestered on my PM. Which has never happened on this forum.

The members list is a different issue, and I can imagine there are many that are also duplicated members so they can get the information across, but how can this be policed , some of these adverts are intersting and also informative which is what the forum is about!

Anyway don't shout at me for my little opinion I thought it may help.:winki:

[quote=Gala Placidia;108188]I agree and I do not mind a bit of subdued advertising for those who regularly contribute to the forum. Particularly in these harsh times. But it looks as if we are inundated by spam, etc.[/quote]

I find this is a highly efficient website to help detect SPAMMERS:
[url=http://www.stopforumspam.com/search]Stop Forum Spam - Search[/url]

[quote=debswad;108315]

Anyway don't shout at me for my little opinion I thought it may help.:winki:[/quote]

Hi debswad - for my money, your opinion is as valid as everyone else's. So keep posting.:yes: you can probably bet that if you are thinking "it", so are others, and someone has to step forward.

Dear Nielo

I am sorry that you took my post as aggressive, it was certainly not my intention to be aggressive. (Dare I say "Please don't put me on your ignore list!!" :winki: joking!)

My point is that there are many reasons why people may sign up and be inactive. Another reason may be that as far as I remember if you do not sign up you have to use the verification device every time you do a search. This would lead to many people signing up only once and then not logging in again.

I am amazed at how popular this forum is. If you Google many subjects e.g. Italy heating you will see that the forums often come up in the top five results. There is a tremendous amount of interest in what goes on here.

However surely for your purposes the amount of signed up users is just as irrelevant as the amount of hits on the forum. The only thing that would be important to me as an advertiser is the amount of unique users viewing the bed and breakfast pages and then the amount of clicks through to my page or the amount of bookings the advert generates. Presumable as Italy mag are competing in a way with Google adwords they would make this info available to you if you do not have it already?

As they say "What's not measured is not managed".

Hi
The comment from Patch2277 that direct hits to the accommodation pages as well as general hits to the site be measured and available to advertisers seems an eminently sensible.

Perhaps the best way of finding out the efficacy of placing an advert would be to contact those who already do advertise and ask them how effective it has been.

I don’t know about others but I rarely look at other sections, the forum is enough for me to handle!

So even forum use may not give a useful gauge of overall site use.

I predict that this forum will be gone by July. There is no way a business such as Italy Mag can sustain its reputation in the face of such a disastrous marketing tool.

I think that there may be more lookers than members then we think.
If you look at the figures for the "Dubious Estate Agent" there are 136 post, 24400 views, thats a ratio of 179 views per post, I dont think that the 7000 plus members is accurate, as we do have a lot of 1 post wonders, but the average hit count must be quiet high.

I think you re right Deborahandricky but I also think that time plays a major part in the figures. This forum has been going for a good many years now and has amassed a large number of registrations also the thread you cite has been going since 03 11 05 and is a sticky, so has remained at the top of the visible lists and has not sunk to the bottom like other threads. So the views have taken place over the period of a little more than three years.

The forum is an important and valuable tool for anyone wanting to get information about Italy and for that purpose it doesn’t matter how many users there are just that there us at least one who can answer a query with accurate information.

The ‘active users’ part is only important in the sense of the community created by the users. I belong to another forum where there are 256,093 registered members and the most users ever on line (yesterday) was 7,043. As you might imagine it is a lively forum with plenty of debate, but it does not really have a community nor does it suffer from cliques. I guess all forums are different and you make your choice.

I have no problem whatsoever with the published membership figures, they record the number of people who have registered over the lifetime of the forum, all I am trying to say is that it is not representative of the number of ‘active users’.