Advertising /Spam.

General Forums Off-topic Chat
1

There will always be someone advertising something, someway or another. We can’t really do much about that, other than wait for a moderator to delete it as and when they come across it, though recently I really do wonder about Blender Artist’s possition on allowing people to advertise, since some of these are not only left, but have modertors posting in them.

With no offence intended towards alltaken, here is an example: http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=111696.

First of all. The topic starter has only one post.
Secondly, He’s already filled his signature with websites, which are prety much gimic sites filled with adverts, Prestohosting.com is simply a site full of targeted adverts (which he used for his e-mail)

I’m sorry, but youcannot get any more blatent than that. Even if he did want work done, he certainly hasn’t said much usefull text as to what he wants. Based on the types of site he has, which is basically collections of other people’s creations, I doubt he wanted any work done, rather he wanted you to submit you examples, of which he’ll keep and use.

This is a very well known scam in the design industry, where people ask for examples /samples and they keep the sample and use it or use it as a basis for an idea and make a new one.

Without going into much details, the sort of work that is offered around on forums damage the design industry, de-values it, promotes bad business practices / ethics, such as spec work etc… aswell as an array of other issues.

Spec work is bad, It results in several ‘designers’ trying to make a design and ‘win’ the pot money. This means several designers do a lot of hard earned work, but don’t get paid for it, since they worked only under speculation they would. In the eyes of the business man, this style of work is perfect, several designs get submitted and you can pick the best one and not spend a penny more than you intended.

If more and more people are willing to de-value themselfs and do spec work, the more and more business / ‘clients’ are going to want work done in this way.

The main basis of this post isn’t so much to get this spam deleted /stoped (afterall, someone is always going to post them), its more so to stop more and more idiots from actually getting involved with these sort of offers. I could name a few BlenderArtists Money Vampires here, rather, you can just look at this thread andthis thread.

Certainly A LOT of people, as soon as they hear “blender” and “money” they post as fast as they can, usally saying something pointless like “im intereted”. Someone with a half ounce of interlect then says “im interested but need more info” followed by a domino effect of people saying “yeh more info please, duhhh”. It’s quite noticeable who the money vampires are on this forum, as some die off more get bitten and sucked in.

Stop responding to these shitty lame advertising threads :slight_smile: Simple as.

Though, I guess if you want to really degrade yourself, do it off the forums, such as this: http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=112433 and go to the ‘freelancer’ site, where several freelancers submit their work and bid against each other to win. and guess what, 97% of the time the one with the lowest bid wins “yey”.

But, if you really want to work for peanuts / live off peanuts, I’m happy to feed you as many peanuts as you’d possibly like so come work for me.

2

Without a nice list of maxims, I would just mindlessly go about my day.

Thank you so much for your informed incite, and your willingness to share your opinions with us. We really need information like this to help us all just stop being so stupid.
After reading this thread, I all ready feel 200% smarter!

We need to make this thread into a stickie, so that we we can all stop being so stupid.

3

It’s a shame the last 3 links you provide are the same link. It would be helpful to some to see what you actually intended to show. BUT, if that’s what you meant to do…well then don’t I feel like ass horse ass.

4

I did Infact mess up with the links, I must have not copied it properly. Though, I do intend for there to be 4 links refering to two threads.

The first one was an example of just obvious spam. The last link since it liniked to another site (freelancers.com or simiilar), and the two posted again as example of people simply ‘jumping the gun’ for this type of posts.

Thanks for the notice. Even if you were wrong, theres no need to feel like an ass. Your post only intended to be helpful and i appreciate that.

Mrph!. Thanks for your sarcasim. Dispite how you may feel, such threads are of no to little benifit to anyone other than the person making the advertisment.

The truth is, most of these “jobs” pay peanuts. You may not like me calling people idiots, but jumping at any potential to make money with blender hardly warrants respect, especially for those willing to bid against each other /do work under spec (see no-spec.com). The fact some people simply throw themselfs when they hear money, like those who pratically spam the off topic section with pointless threads in my personal opinion, not only degrades them as a person, but this forum aswell.

People are allowed to make mistakes though (people are going to post something pointless in the offtopic or any section to be exact), people are going to think ‘nice i could probabily do that, and earn some money’ without knowing they could do better than 1. working hard with only speculation they’d get paid and 2. getting paid peanuts after all their hard effort. But as I say, the one who truly benifits is the one who’s getting 20 people to design a 3D char, all nicely rigged and materials set.

Of course, there nothing wrong with someone doing something for free, pro-bono or a discounted price. ‘Helping’ people who come here purposly to rip people off and make a profit, or simply to spam some sites etc… shouldnt be happening, even if those people honestly dont mean to do it.

5

Fair comments. Although I do potentially think it sounds a little out of proportion compared to the size of the problem. I will keep more of an eye on things because it is an increasing trend in general with increasing sophistication.

When moderating this kind of thing, its a very grey area between a right decision and a wrong decision. Sometimes the offers are genuine and sometimes not. I have done paid work through offers on the net and then been paid pretty good money for it. Not a professional rate. Though at the time I was not a professional and probably gave them a quality of work equal to what they paid.

Sometimes I get it wrong, and sometimes I get it right. I need to make a decision, and IMO part of that decision is to give the original poster the chance to add information. Perhaps I can test the genuiness of the offer by deleting all contact information on such threads until they add more information (email address being the first red flag).

If you think something is more SPAM than real please report it so that we can take a closer look at it.

I also feel that artists will be able to distinguish between something they want to do and something they don’t want to do. An experienced artists who knows their value is unlikely to bother with all requests except the best and most information rich.

P.S. on the SPAM topic with companies selling products/services through posts, I allow Blender/3d related companies to post new threads (within reason). I.E. the respowers and the truebones of the world. But the requirement of that is that they are honest about their affiliation and don’t make it a regular event. Again a very grey area and I need to judge the value of the information to the user.

Alltaken

6

Certainly, there is only a minority of people who get involved in such threads in the first place, but the same principles apply to any forum / site. As such, it provides a very minimal ammount of ‘education’ in the area. I’m certainly not the one for explaining /educating people, and the point could be expressed in a better, more imformative way, which anyone is welcome to do ;).

With spec work especially, no-spec.com should have a nice explanation. I also ‘know’ the owners, so i can say they know what their talking about a fair bit, and they also earn pretty good salarys to back themselfs up but they’ve also OTT’d the whole spec’ thing, to the point i felt necessary to leave about.com forums. So those of you who do visit, take it with a pinch of salt and certainly dont go spamming no-spec.com on a site offering spec work like many of their supporters do/did.

It’s a bit sad to promote “good” business practices / ethics (no spec work) by doing it in another, un ethical / pratical way such as spam.

When moderating this kind of thing, its a very grey area between a right decision and a wrong decision. Sometimes the offers are genuine and sometimes not. I have done paid work through offers on the net and then been paid pretty good money for it. Not a professional rate. Though at the time I was not a professional and probably gave them a quality of work equal to what they paid.
I agree with that fully. There is also nothing wrong with doing work /work off of forums, and the price can be more than fair. The forum maybe not the best place, ideally a site such as blenderjobs would server that purpose, so even a dedicate page on BA would help, though that wouldnt stop the spam type made on the forums (though it would certainly give a reason to instantly delete it and PM the poster)

Personally I would rather see legitimate adverst on a dedicated BA page. As it is a dedicated type of submission, the page can easily made to force specific, detailed information and be subject to moderation before disclosure, that, or an all-out ban of advertising. For those advertising services, if it is truly of value to BA, (say a render farm) one would assume this would warrant a “news posting” and maybe a slot under a resources page.

Rather than letting the person post on the forum, and also make fake accounts pretending to be customers, which was the case of Respower wasnt it? Personaly i feel he/she was very, very lucky, being let off… I would have reported it to his country’s advertising agency as missleading advertising, but we already know im quite cruel.

An experienced artists who knows their value is unlikely to bother with all requests except the best and most information rich.
We could also say this is part of my point, that some people are just going for anything, whereas those who tend to be the ones earning a living by doing design work etc… never touch these type of job offers for a reason.

the fact is, it does little damage to me. Infact, the only one benifiting from this should be the ones that stop letting themself being abuses /ripped off by doing spec work, /bidding work (in the case of a recent freelancers.com site post) etc… etc…

Cheers,
luke.

7

http://www.appscout.com/images/spam%20boy.jpg

lol , btw , sometimes i see some similar threads <there authors have also one post >
and they flood the GE forums with spam and sony ericsson mobiles , illegal games , etc …
and some times it takes 3 hours for them to be delete !
<knowing that they are reported immediatly > .
regards

8

Some People shouldn’t spam.

9

some people?.., but other may lol

10

I saw the thread you reference in your first post, before BeBraw posted (iirc) and thought it was a gray area. I’m not sure whether it’s a measure of sophistication or just experience, but some spam is more obvious to some people than others.

You’ve seen that kind of thing before, so you make the call. I know I’ve reported my share of Nike spam and Nokia spam, but I can’t catch them all. I suspect the moderators don’t spend all their time looking for spam posts, but if we work together, we can keep the site clean.

Non-mods: that little red circle with the horizontal white bar icon is the “Report Spam” button. Press it, you send a report message directly to the moderators. I generally send a one word message, “Spam.” Sometimes, when I notice the same poster in two or three different forums, I’ll list the forums that have been hit.

Don’t reply to the post. If there are replies, and it’s one of those gray areas, I think the mods might be more willing to leave it and see how it plays out. It’s rather easier to delete a single post spam thread than a thread with several replies from established, legitimate members asking for more information.