Only Posters can respond to Classified Ads

It seems that some forum users who haven't made any posts are trying to get around the block on emailing advertisers using PMs.

I don't know if they are scammers, but the nature of some messages suggests this could be the case.

Please let me know if you get a dodgy PM in response to a classified ad.

Any users repeatedly using PMs to get around the system will have their accounts suspended.

I hope this shows genuine classifieds users why we have had to bring in the 'only posters can contact advertisers' rule.

Neil

On a slightly different tack I've had some PMs from somebody asking about the 63/69 hole division plate I made. He claimed to be having difficulty with the calculations. The English was extremely poor, almost nonsensical. Since one can't search for members I emailed Neil, who confirmed that the body concerned had made no posts and had no details. His response to my PM reply describing the method I used was to reply asking for my email address. I'm not that daft, so I've deleted all his messages and my reply. I'm not quite sure what his ultimate aim was, as I have nothing for sale on the classifieds.

Andrew

So question is Neil (or Katy) can PMs be disabled unless you are an active member? I know they can on other forums I have used.

I'm assuming that the problem is only for people who have added a profile as its not easy to send a PM to anyone who has not unless you trawl through looking for their posts.

Non-mods need to trawl through and find a post to get to their profile as well

Neil

I assume that whoever the guy was he must have looked at one post or more of mine to have picked up on the division plate. I do have a profile, but I don't recall it mentioning the division plate. Strange, but not something I'm going to spend time worrying about.

Andrew

Some forums get round the problems by handling the messages without revealing personal email addresses. In fact it's such a common problem that forum packages often come with this built in. Then people can exchange actual email addresses if they want to.

It's a sore point with me. At times in some areas I have received a number of personal messages usually asking for advice as strange as that may seem to some. I stopped replying and just posted the question and the reply on the forum. Not because they were spammers but because of the number of machines that are about that harvest email addresses. I often found I received spam as a result of answering with an email or worse still a virus.

There is another aspect concerning odd english etc. The sender may not be able to speak it that well. People from all over the world do read posts on forums that are in line with their interests. There are also trolls about that love to start threads off. I know of one forum where the mods seem to go to some trouble to spot those. Mind you the mod that seemed to do most of that did quit.

John

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John, you are mixing up two different issues.

Classified adds will show e-mail details

Private messages on this forum don't reveal members e-mail details

Edited By JasonB on 18/08/2016 13:52:07

I assumed classified could be the same Jason. I'm not on many forums that have a classified and can't remember if my email address was revealed when I bought or sold something. It's too long ago.

John

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Its been a while since I've been on the site and I am surprised to see that now you can only gain access to the classifieds contact details if you contributed to the forum. I been a member for quite sometime and been on the forum several times and spent time reading the various topics but have not felt the need contribute to them or indeed start my own thread, maybe one day!! I can understand why this has been done and its a difficult situation to control.

My question therefore is how many times do you have to contribute to the forum to enable you to obtain contact details on the classifieds and what is there in place to stop the unwanted's doing exactly the same. Maybe I missed an announcement to the above. Probably not the place to answer this question so a PM might be better.

Does this post constitute a forum contribution?

John

It does indeed count as a contribution, message about to be sent.

J

Jason,

Just how many posts are required to be able to see the contact details for classifieds? Just posting drivel to make the target isn't going to enhance the forum.

Thank you,

Reg

All I will say is that the number is being ammended so there should not be too much drivel, for some reason it got set a bit higher than Neil had intended, we are just waiting for it to be corrected.

J

Once again its been a while since I tried to gain contact details for items in the for sale section so just sending this in the hope that this contribution will be sufficient to acquire access. If not I guess I could cut and past to get the numbers up!!

John