BanHammer

[FastKatt]

I am advertising 2 other sites,... and the others are advertising car domain and what not...
If you click and like what you see you'll join...
So by your count, it would be okay to post a link to GPONA if it linked to the posters main info page? Wait, you're not a mod...
Ohh,... purpose of this site... learn, help, inform, buy, sell, play, and let's not forget OT...
Let's not be afraid of the other forums getting members from clicking a sig link and realize that someone from here might get someone from over there as well,...
And, that person might be an asset to this site.

[Trannyman95]

Your links are fine and fall under safe within the rules, which I feel are very clear. If you just had a link to cgp then it would not be accepted, but you have a link directly to a list of your mods, which is fine as it is a direct link to info, NOT a link just to the home page of another forum. Same with your MySpace link, it is a link to stuff for you and not just to my space. com . Advertising another website,forum, whatever, with no specific reason other than for people to click on to go check it out in general falls under spamming or promoting another site to direct people to check out. Cgp does not allow this nor do most any other forums car related or not, unless you are a paying vendor or pay to advertise your products. As far as the earlier confusion on not being clear about having these links in your sig or just in posts it doesnt matter, the general "home page" type links are not to be allowed no matter where you post them, there doesnt need to be specifics on this because they are prohibited in anything that is publicly viewable on these forums. If another member or visitor can see it, it shouldnt be there unless as stated has a specific reason such as a direct link to info

[SyntheticShield]

FastKatt, your links are fine. The reason being is one (to clubgp) is informational. It provides a link to your mods. If you were to ask a question about something going on with your car then this information becomes helpful.

Your Car Domain link is also fine for obvious reasons.

Its not that we are afraid of other forums, that is far from it. It is the fact that the link is being placed there in a blatant attempt to recruit members from here to their site. There is no other reason. We have been rather successful here and have a continuously growing membership. There are those, apparently, rather than putting in the work we have to grow this community, find it easier to recruit from our membership.

We have no problem at all with their forum, we do have a problem with them trying to recruit from members here. If they wish to increase their membership, then put in the work in so that they show up in the google rankings and people will see it, have more of a choice and then they can decided for themselves.

[webracin]

Ok guys and gals,

I know that some like to have rules that are VERY specific and we tried to keep the rules so that most would understand them, but apparently there are a couple of people that would like or need the rules more specific so I have done just that.

Rule 4, Links To External Sites (both in the forum body and signatures: You may provide specific links to other sites as long as the link you provide is answering a question posed by one of the community members. No spamming will be tolerated. Spam links (or messages) will be deleted and the spammer dealt with accordingly.

Spam links are defined as any link that is not answering a specific question or any link that does not provide specific information.

Example:

www.myspace.com (SPAM)
www.myspace.com/bransongrandprixmeet (Not SPAM due to providing specific information)

If there was a question posted as follows:
What is the site alot of people use to post personal information about themselves?

And you posted www.myspace.com

This would be fine as you are providing an answer to a question and is not considered SPAM.

As you can see links anywhere in the forum are fine as long as they are providing specific information to a question, or are links to specific information about you.

This rule keeps out the "Come to viagra.coms" as well as keeps it clean of other forums fishing for members. Believe it or not, but there are quite a few people who dont like people to ask them to check out another site (its along the same lines of timeshare people calling you on the phone and asking you to come look at their property. If I want to go there I will search on google).

I hope you all understand why this rule is there. Basically its to keep the forum focused on helping the community. I think I speak for everyone of the admins and moderators here when I say its you that make the community, not the board. We only give you a venue to speak. I personally think that this site will stand on its own merrit and I really am not concerned about other forums "taking members". What I am concerned with is if we allow homepage links to other sites, this will open the door for the NON car related sites to come in and post up links to their sites, and before long the forum will be full of links to all kinds of non car related sites, and then we will all be complaining about how much useless crap is on GPF. Lets keep it clean and on focus so we can continue to have a site made by the community/for the community.

Thanks

Chris

[webracin]

One more thing to think about....

If you are an admin on a site, and you have a homepage link to that site in your signature, would that not be the same as a guy that owns a business and has a link to his site in his signature? If everyone could post whatever they wanted in the signature, then what is the purpose of having sponsors on the site. Without sponsors, this site would be gone. The users of the site dont have to pay a dime for the using the site, all they are asked to do is follow some simple (and not unreasonable) rules. There are 3 admins and 3 moderators that have put forth thousands of man hours and hundreds of dollars to make this site what it is. The sponsors help keep it going by each paying a small portion of the domain fees, software fees, hosting fees, etc etc. Trust me when I say that as of now, and I doubt ever that the site will make a profit. Our goal here is to provide a service to the community and in the end to not have to much out of pocket expense. If we ever do turn a profit, I am sure the profits will in some way go back to the community in some way shape or form.

webracin

I am an admin at BGPM, but you dont see it in my signature.

[johnnyj773]

thats understandable

[LowlyfeGTP]

Seriously, in what way, shape, or form is there even a remote amount of confusion here??? Really? Come on guys, common sense. Is it necessary to play.. yeah, but repeatedly? Everyone knows the purpose of the rules, everyone knows this is not anywhere near the type of forum CGP is, and most know about there being multiple forums. I am a member of this and the other two mentioned, as well as dozens of other GP and misc. automotive and business forums.

It is a REALLY easy concept to grasp unless purely trying to be difficult. All of the forums serve a purpose....kind of, well, most of them, sort of. For the most part this one is open-minded, no bs, informative, etc. with the exception of a handful of trolls that have crept in. This isn't the "Your car is a POS, Go back where you belong, Look at this b***h's p***y!" forum thankfully and shouldn't be. I enjoy the amount of respect and help that is shared between the membership here and feel no need for "the drama".

Everyone is welcome and everyone can be a useful part of the community. And there is no chance of being a martyr that was wrongfully banned on this site as far as I am aware. If you push it to the point of a permanent ban, then really it was intentional on that member's part. So support new ideas, growth, the sponsors, and yourselves. No one is taking away from any other forums in my opinion. As stated, if someone asks feel free to post a link to MyGrandPrixSiteIsBetterThanYours.com, otherwise keep it out of view. I try to help out when I can and if the information someone needs is on one of the many other GP sites then I will direct that person to that link or credit the OP in the info I provide when possible.

Above all, if you don't know something...ASK. From what I've seen no one is gonna take it personal or go on a mission to get you. Anyways, I will stop babbling now as I've gone with too little sleep and too many hours on the road this weekend. Enjoy!

P.S. But what if I put the link to a site's homepage in my avatar? Does that count? J/K

[Rocket468]

Only people to be banned so far where bots, there is some software on the forum that auto detects bots and banns them so they don't get on here and start pm people. Or making all sorts of post about free ipods etc. not sure who martyr is but hes is not banned.

[LowlyfeGTP]

not sure who martyr is but hes is not banned.

Didn't see a smiley or LOL, so... I wasn't saying martyr is a member that was banned. I was talking about people trying to purposefully be like the CGP martyrs/sacrifices that were banned in the course of helping others. Whereas I've seen some members try to pull "Look what I just posted, gonna ban me now? How 'bout now?" Which appears to me to be an attempt to get attention and then I would suspect run back to another forum and be like, "GPF just banned me for no reason!"

I was simply inferring that there was little chance of that happening due to checks in the system in place here and number of warnings, etc. provided. So if someone were to get banned they intentionally did so and had ample chances to avoid it completely. Not that there aren't people on every forum that I would instantly ban if it was up to me.

[SyntheticShield]

LowlyfeGTP, you are correct. When this site was formed it was our intention to do everything possible to avoid the ban for no apparent reason or warning that was taking place on clubgp. Now Im banned from over there, but I deserved it so Im not crying about it. But as you pointed out, there were many that were banned basically for no other reason than trying to help out others.

Thats why we have the system we do in place. And I am like you, I have encountered a few here that I would just as soon ban on the spot but that would me me/us no different than the other place. So if you (not you specifically) do manage to work your way through all the warnings and points and such then I have little sympathy for ya.

I try to be compassionate but Im also something of a disciplinarian and I dont believe it should take 20 times telling you that you are doing something wrong. If you dont get it after the first or second time then you probably arent or your purposely doing it.

But I also believe that is part of the success of this forum. People know where they stand. The boundaries are clearly marked and everyone has a fairly wide latitude. To be honest, I expected a few 'bad apples' to come in and cause a change in where we had to tighten things up, but we have been blessed with SEVERAL members in the community that take pride in this place and keep their eyes out for anything out of place and let us know if they feel it is out of line.

[03GPScottyd]

Here is a personal story of being banned for no apparant reason.

I signed up for a local car club site on Monday of last week, looked through the sections and posted in one of the threads. The thread stated on it that they wanted to minimize the amount of double posting, so here is a thread that everyone could post to because everyone still wanted to discuss that topic. I posted on that thread and then I recieved an email about an hour after stating, "I had been banned for 48 hours because I posted to an old thread". I tried to explain that the thread was not old and was a sticky at the top of the section. They didn't care and I was banned for 48 hours.

I think the rules here are just fine, and I appreciate the time the admins and mods take to warn someone of a broken rules before a ban goes into place. I didn't and was mad as hell, needless to say I won't be going back to that site.

[SyntheticShield]

Geeesh, that is a little extreme.