NO LINKS POLICY FOR NEW MEMBERS

[pbj11]

CANCER FORUMS "No Links" policy.

Until you have been a member for at least one month and posted at least 10 significant messages, you are not PERMITTED to use links to external sites. The exceptions are to truly personal blogs or websites. May we suggest that you use this time to post messages about your own personal struggle with cancer? That way we can first get to know you.

Links posted by members in their posts or in their profiles is a privilege and not a right. Member will need to be active members in order to use links to other websites. Links to other threads within The Cancer Forums will continue to be allowed. An active member is defined as someone who has met all of the following prerequisites:

1. Have an activated membership of no less than one month
2. Have posted 10 or more substantive messages. Posts made only in order to increase the number of an individual's total posts will not be counted.

Purely personal, cancer related blogs or websites will be exceptions to this policy.

As administrators find members who already have links in their profiles, they will delete the links.

[shoab]

this is good!............

[coltsitland]

No, this is not good because it deters new users to share valuable information because there are a few people out there spamming its completely ridiculous.

[ChemoMan]

Hi coltsitland

Actually its a very good policy. You would be surprised at how many scammers and spammers we get, it certainly is not a " few". We have a lot of supporters and posters who are quite capable of providing good links and do so on a regular basis.

Stick around for a while and prove that you can give support and before you know it you will be allowed to post links, it doesn't take long .

Cheers

[joepet]

Wouldn't a better policy be for moderators or admins to review the links and allow them to be posted if they are helpful? Seems a bit vindictive to disallow useful information merely because the poster is "new".

[brainman]

Hi Joe, we have thought about that option. There are two reasons we cannot do that:

1. Too much work already for us to do. To add checking every link is to ask too much.

2. To much danger involved. I have a corporate grade firewall/spy ware blocker/virus detector so I feel safe. Yet I still find viruses when I click on links. Even the most innocent sounder links have taken me to porn sites.

It really is not too much to ask new members to wait 1 month and to have posted 10 messages, is it?

[joepet]

It really is not too much to ask new members to wait 1 month and to have posted 10 messages, is it?

Requiring new posters to a cancer board, most of whom find their way here after a diagnosis of or fear of cancer and thus rightly being frightened and freaked out, to wait a month to ask a question involving an external link? Yes, IMHO, I do think that's too much to ask.

[brainman]

Joe, I am not sure I understand what you are saying. Anyone can ask a question... just not post a link. I have never seen someone post a link and ask a question about it. All the links I have seen are from new members offering information.

[brainman]

Correction to my previous reply: there are people who post links to pictures... most often to a skin lesion that they are concerned about.

Nevertheless, the policies are working as we expected them to work. I have not seen a true spammer posting in many months now. IMHO this is greatly due to our enforcement of the "no links" policy.

[joepet]

"I have never seen someone post a link and ask a question about it. "

Jim, were you not the person who deleted the link in this post?

http://cancerforums.net/viewtopic.php?t=14136

I suppose by the policy, this must also go?

http://cancerforums.net/viewtopic.php?t=14045&start=15

It seems that this has already been discussed and decided on, so I will pursue this no further but to ask if preventing spammers is really so important as to exclude any exceptions?

[Claude]

Interesting discussion: Links, no Links, selected Links (by whom). I support a cautious approach. If at some time we advocate for authentication encryption use, we could liberalize the policy, but would make registration slightly more onerous. By the way, at the cost of revealing some paranoia, graphics are easy objects in which to hide malware.

[ladyunicornejg]

"By the way, at the cost of revealing some paranoia, graphics are easy objects in which to hide malware."

And cannot be posted on this forum at this time (somewhat unfortunately). To be honest, though, it's pretty easy to wind up getting malware anyway...including without even browsing websites, believe it or not. If you're concerned, I'd just keep a good antivirus (and maybe other anti-malware programs) on the computer.