Here's one I'm watching that will probably be closed soon. I wonder how much longer it will last?
http://candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?p=3474025#post3474025
You are quite right brted. If you link to an american vendor it stays there forever, but if its to DX or KD hell breakes loose.
Brilliant, I love the smell of fresh sarcasm in the morning 
CPF, i really don't like there, here is much better, and the administrator is nice
If further clarification is needed take it up privately or discuss it in the UG.
Thread Closed. 
And it only took 1 more day.
Note the key words in the reply which are all about the money as usual.
"
The policy was established some time back primarily because of shills posting "hey look at this". "Has anyone seen this light?" Before long some threads had become virtual shopping experience threads with members joining in and posting every new light they found. The links primarily pointed to two sites which turned them into advertising threads inviting more shills from those sites. It wasn't until after the policy went into effect that those sites started actually supporting CPF. Their own customer service issues eventually (mostly) halted their forum participation."
Can't we all just get along? :D
No
Edit: 
Good one. :D
I just got banned from cpfmarketplace presumably by posting in a thread about those "solarfarce" lights at lightake:
http://www.cpfmarketplace.com/mp/showthread.php?t=234297
They deleted several later comment from me about how the santimony is unjustified and how hk retailers work; and the reason for ban is "ignoring moderation" (of which I can see none in the thread, probably deleted but I guess they expect you to know all deleted comments ).
As if we really needed to drive home how small minded these cpf admins are...
This is not about shilling really, it is about paying your Danegeld to Sasha. Why doesn't eveyone leave? It is so glaringly obivious that this is Clearly Profit Focussed at its worst again. And again
And again!
Does this mean the tools loyal to her now get banned for their blatant shilling? Or do we add hypocrisy to the long list of appropo descriptors?
It is an ambiguous post, there is the real concern with shills but reading the whole post it looks like there could either be some monetary motivation and/or plain old overzealousness behind the concern. I just can't see how the forum will get money out of having fewer shills, could someone enlighten me?
To me it seems that the real point is that dealer mentioning will not be tolerated.
Fair enough, though silly IMO.
However they can't mention their own wares in CPF or CPFMarketplace unless they pay the Danegeld. My guess is that any paying advertiser will not find mentions of their products disappearing, the Chinese dealers will. And of course, the holy Surefire will never get hit by this.
My suspicion is that shilling (which is objectionable) is being used as an excuse to raise advertising revenues.
I mean - is it shilling to say where you bought, or were given, something for the purpose of reviewing it?
I would evaluate any review where the device was a free sample in a different manner to one where the person spent their own money. I may add that all of my reviews ever (apart from review copies of a couple of books, one of which was excellent and one of which was unreadable) were of things bought with my own money and if anything was not, I would say who gave it to me and why. If a dealer or manufacturer is prepared to do that (presumably as advertising) then I would try not to make it influence my judgement but I might not always succeed. Which is why it is essential at the very least to say that it was given rather than bought.
And why does this only apply only to dealers and not to manufacturers as well?
If you look at any enthusiast website you will see that the vast majority are reviewing stuff that they didn't buy as well as user reviews of stuff they did buy. Why does CPF feel the need to be different?
It seems that LT (perfectful) is the one in trouble here (who paid to be on CPFMP but have now been kicked out) but the details are unclear. Daniel has mentioned to me before (on Skype) that I can get points for making posts, but I never asked the details, and in particular whether he was only asking me to comment on things I was aware of like reviews of stuff I bought (which is IMHO acceptable) OR asking me to review things I didn't own without making it clear I didn't own them (which would be shilling). In any case, I do agree the distinction between manufacturers and dealers and in particular the ban on mentioning dealers in reviews is silly. I have no problem with dealers providing points or whatever for genuine reviews, particularly if it's made clear in the review this is happening. Of course as Don has pointed out, the vast majority of sites operate in that fashion, in fact very often it's taken as a given the product was provided by the manufacturer or some dealer, it isn't even mentioned in the review.
Good netiquette is not a strong point of many Chinese sellers but from what I've seen Daniel is generally willing to do his best, needing some guidance along the way but CPF is not a particularly welcoming place to bulk Chinese sellers (including the mods) except for those in the high end of the market (like AW) and I somewhat doubt any real attempts were made to help Daniel understand what is and isn't acceptable behaviour.
BTW while shilling is bad, the fanboyishness that is so common on forums including on CPF is not exactly much better IMHO. In fact, while I'm sometimes guilty of it in a mild form myself it's somewhat funny that people are sometimes so dedicated to a certain brand (or whatever) without even getting anything for all the free promotion :-P
The entire fascade they try to put on of self-imposed "rules" is hilarious since whatever actions they take are post hoc justifiable to their subjects anyway, especially given they can and do delete all evidence to the contrary.
That thread is nothing more than a shallow attempt to root out any possible dissidence (anyone really think she's the type to ever correct herself?) and reinforce the admin's own ego with a display of pretty authority.
===
Took another look at the thread and I will note the extreme irony of the abundant shilling in that very thread.
2. a person who publicizes or praises something or someone for reasons of self-interest, personal profit, or friendship or loyalty.
Indeed.
So true, so true!!
The CPF hostility towards its forum members seems to be expanding even to dealers. Sasha's hamster wheel seems to be spinning faster and faster, and I wonder if she will eventually go *splat*.
Could this happen here too. No?