Many of you may not be aware that every single day our private message system processes over 1000 private messages. That's right, there are as many private messages, if not more, posted every day as there are public messages in the forums.

We had a user this morning claim that we read all of the private messages. That would be impossible as it would be a full-time job. So why did this user all of a sudden make this claim? I'll tell you.

Often when a new site or forum pops up on the internet the first thing they will do is come here and try to promote their site. It's rather like Target going into Walmart and hanging up signs in the isles advertising their store and asking people to go shop elsewhere. Good neighbors don't do that. It’s unprofessional. A better way for a site to become popular is to provide a good service and give people a reason to come. They can then be proud that they did it on their own. Or at the very least it might be a nice courtesy to first email us asking if they could use our service in this manner.

Our private message system has suffered terrible abuses. We routinely have had people register under an anonymous Yahoo email account and then proceed to spam our private message system with over 300+ messages advertising their business or their site. It's unfortunate that it happens (almost daily) and that people can't be respectful of the few simple rules that we have. It would be much like someone coming into your home and after you ask them to take their shoes off so they don't get mud on the carpet they proceed to trample mud all over the carpet anyway. You feel that in your home your rules should be respected. That’s common human courtesy. The only difference is our home is your home too and when people can’t respect the rules you’re affected as well.

There are people who don’t understand why we have the forums rules we have or they may not agree with the rules. And that’s okay. Most of our forum rules pertain to keeping the forum clean, friendly, and not undermining the fact that providing a forum of this size requires a tremendous expense. If Dirt Wheels offered to run Ads for all of their advertisers for free they would have no source of revenue and would be out of business. We can’t give away advertising in these forums or we would be out of business too. We have provided the “Preferred Vendor” forums as a legitimate way for companies to share information about their products and services. These are the companies from whom you should purchase products as they make these forums possible for you!

Regarding the private message system—due to the terrible abuses of the system we have software that uses a scoring system to monitor messages passing through the private message system. Each time a suspect keyword, such as “dealership”, is detected in a message it adds a number (for example, “10”) to the total score of that message. If the private message scores a total of 100 it is routed to me personally for review. No other moderators see the message. If the message does not score “100” it passes through the system and no human eye, except for the intended recipient, ever sees the message. We honor your privacy. The intent of the system is to be respectful of your privacy while at the same time having a means of preventing abuses of the system. This is a fair and reasonable approach and we believe you appreciate the efforts we have gone through to protect your privacy.

Regarding the user yesterday—after a user spammed the private message system with messages that violated the forum rules (these messages each scored “100” by the software) the software triggered an automatic ban of the user who was at the time still in the process of spamming the private message system. The software shut the person down after they had initiated 10 identical spam messages, which angered the person. They registered under a new forum nickname, came back and again tried posting public ads of their spam. Our moderators caught the publicly posted spam and deleted it. This person told their friend about what happened and their friend then posted the lies this morning about our reading every private message. In reality, all they knew was some system was in place that prevented their abuses and they assumed it meant we read each message. Most of the problems we see are from folks who think they have all the answers and then form opinions based upon information without any basis on facts. Personal privacy is important and we care about you. I wanted to take this time to share the facts with you. Our system is software based and very accurate at identifying only abuses.

The tragedy of yesterday was I spent about 3 hours dealing with these problem users and it took me away from the programming I was doing in order to bring you the new personal photo gallery feature in the forums. I have about 40 hours of programming effort (for which I’m not paid) into providing you with your new personal photo gallery. It’s a shame that 2 or 3 people can make things worse for everyone else.

These forums are a lot of fun for a lot of people and they are a great place to learn and to share. We want them to be here for you today and tomorrow. We all, including you, have made some good friends here too. We value each and every one of you and hope that you’ll be with us for many years to come. Please don’t let a few bad apples get in the way of having a good time here.

Best regards,

Dave Beckstrom
President, CEO
ATVConnection.com Magazine.

 

[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img] Didn't really know what to say so just [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img] I am happy you shared and take the time to make this a better place!

 

Thanks Ward. The forums are doing VERY WELL. I'm anxious to roll out the personal photo gallery for everyone. I hope and I think everyone is going to have a lot of fun with that. They'll be able to post pictures of recent ride trips, mods to their ATVs, etc.

Hopefully I can get back to programming on it now. I'd like to roll it out tomorrow if I can. For the last 7 days I've worked from 8:00 am until 2:00 am on it and even ate many dinners in front of the PC. Its close to done! It took a lot of time because I'm not a javascript programmer but I used a lot of javascript to make the gallery function really slick.

As it's looking...I wasted all day so far today and most of yesterday because of 3 problem users. It looks now like the gallery won't be done until Sunday because of them. Oh, well...

 

[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img] i am glad that you do !!! these forums are aneat place to help others and you self with questions . thank you for looking out for all of us . have only been signed up for about a month , and think this is really good place to spend time !!!!! thanks Donzilla

 

As I have already PM Dave but we should all be glad for him and this wonderful environment that he has helped create. I know that I personally look forward to new topics (for the most part) each day and see what else I may learn by reading all the post.

Thanks again Dave [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img]

 

I agree, this place is great. I refer people here all the time. I even have some of my non-quad owning friends checking the site out. This is probably the best website I've ever been on. I personally know a heck of a lot more about my own quad and atving in general than I did before I discovered this site.

Thanks for all of your "behind the scene" work Dave.
It is greatly appreciated by all of us.

 

i aggree this is a great site and you have a done a lot of work on it keep up the good job!!
this is probably the best site on the net
i've learned tons from everyone about quads and i think that i'v even matured because of it
my votes its the best website on the web
cory

 

I agree with all posts. This forum is probably the biggest source of ATV knowledge on this planet.

 

Dave,
thanks for a great Forum. Your company, your rules. Running a bus. is expensive/people have no clue/.

Joe

 

I should've said" Thank's for THE GREAT FORUM"
J.