Should "shilling" via referral links be allowed by BLF members????

raccoon · November 4, 2015, 7:05am

Man, I used a lot of custom smileys 4 years ago. :)

veer · November 4, 2015, 4:51pm

Yeah, now youre more fixated on Mila’s pictures :D!

DavidEF · November 4, 2015, 4:59pm

I’m firmly against shilling and think it should be banned from BLF! We don’t need any of those dirty, underhanded tactics around here! I borrowed this from the OP:

Shill - Excerpt from Wikipedia:

A shill, plant or stooge is a person who helps a person or organization without disclosing that he or she has a close relationship with that person or organization. Shill typically refers to someone who purposely gives onlookers the impression that he or she is an enthusiastic independent customer of a seller (or marketer of ideas) that he or she is secretly working for. The person or group that hires the shill is using crowd psychology, to encourage other onlookers or audience members to purchase the goods or services (or accept the ideas being marketed). Shills are often employed by confidence artists. Plant and stooge more commonly refer to any person who is secretly in league with another person or organization while pretending to be neutral or actually a part of the organization he or she is planted in, such as a magician’s audience, a political party, or an intelligence organization (see double agent).

As for aff-linking, I don’t see any problem with that. :bigsmile:

sb56637 · November 4, 2015, 5:47pm

Well, I wish there was a way to satisfy everyone’s preferences, but unfortunately there isn’t. We have a lot of members that want to see affiliate links, because they bring better deals. But also a few of our very knowledgeable and valued members detest them. At this point, few if any will change their position for or against affiliate links. So the best I can do is restrict them to a specific area of the forum, which has already been done. So I would recommend that the affiliate link haters not visit the “BLF User Negotiated Deals” section. And to make it easier for them to avoid it, I have created a Recent Posts page with threads from “BLF User Negotiated Deals” filtered out:

http://budgetlightforum.com/recent-posts-noaff

In this thread I would like to establish that according to my definition, affiliate linking in accordance with the defined BLF rules is not considered to be shilling. Of course, classical shilling or new affiliate links outside of the “BLF User Negotiated Deals” section is strictly prohibited and will be enforced as always.

Joshk · November 4, 2015, 6:05pm

How about simply requiring them to say it’s an affiliate link?
for example

Deal here! (affiliate link)

Rufusbduck · November 4, 2015, 6:07pm

Without some sort of filter that identifies the embedded code you would be depending on the linker to fess up. If they’re honest to begin with the link will be to a product they have tried and approved, if not then, well, not. Lots of people ask where to find this or that and I find myself posting links if I know or can locate the item but I don’t do aff-links or care to be rewarded since I don’t wish to tie myself to any particular vendor that way. Offhand it has the appearance of a temptation that leads toward reccomending products just for the reward and not for their actual quality. What happens when the vendor starts suggesting items to be linked? I would like to trust everyone but not everyone is worthy. I don’t like the idea of regulating but I have a much stronger distaste for fraud. I guess maybe some sort of symbol attached to aff-links that isn’t otherwise present might work. It might be an insult to the honest but they have chosen to stand behind those products and should not hide that fact. In the end let the buyer beware is and always has been the bottom line.

Joshk · November 4, 2015, 6:12pm

Well they could be banned for violating the rule. What you suggested with using code to do it is probably possible too, the site seems to already check and tag anything that is an external link. A bit of code would be helpful. Though maybe not as foolproof as a moderator.

ChibiM · November 4, 2015, 6:12pm

sb56637:

Well, I wish there was a way to satisfy everyone’s preferences, but unfortunately there isn’t. We have a lot of members that want to see affiliate links, because they bring better deals. But also a few of our very knowledgeable and valued members detest them. At this point, few if any will change their position for or against affiliate links. So the best I can do is restrict them to a specific area of the forum, which has already been done. So I would recommend that the affiliate link haters not visit the “BLF User Negotiated Deals” section. And to make it easier for them to avoid it, I have created a Recent Posts page with threads from “BLF User Negotiated Deals” filtered out: p=. http://budgetlightforum.com/recent-posts-noaff In this thread I would like to establish that according to my definition, affiliate linking in accordance with the defined BLF rules is +not+ considered to be shilling. Of course, classical shilling or new affiliate links outside of the “BLF User Negotiated Deals” section is strictly prohibited and will be enforced as always.

I feel sad that even SB now thinks that we can ONLY get good deals with aff links...!

sb56637 · November 4, 2015, 6:16pm

Yep, as Rufusbduck alludes to, the affiliate link haters simply don’t want to see any affiliate links because they distrust the motives that the user has for posting the link, because in theory an affiliate linker might try to get his link out there for profit regardless of the actual quality of the “deal”. So whether the affiliate link is labeled or not it’s still irritating to a few of our users. I’m not going to try to sway anybody’s viewpoint with this, and I hope that limiting them to a specific section that can optionally be filtered will reduce some of the contention.

sb56637 · November 4, 2015, 6:18pm

ChibiM:

sb56637:

Well, I wish there was a way to satisfy everyone’s preferences, but unfortunately there isn’t. We have a lot of members that want to see affiliate links, because they bring better deals. But also a few of our very knowledgeable and valued members detest them. At this point, few if any will change their position for or against affiliate links. So the best I can do is restrict them to a specific area of the forum, which has already been done. So I would recommend that the affiliate link haters not visit the “BLF User Negotiated Deals” section. And to make it easier for them to avoid it, I have created a Recent Posts page with threads from “BLF User Negotiated Deals” filtered out: p=. http://budgetlightforum.com/recent-posts-noaff In this thread I would like to establish that according to my definition, affiliate linking in accordance with the defined BLF rules is not considered to be shilling. Of course, classical shilling or new affiliate links outside of the “BLF User Negotiated Deals” section is strictly prohibited and will be enforced as always.

I feel sad that even SB now thinks that we can ONLY get good deals with aff links…!

I did not say that.

Kloepper_Knife_Works · November 4, 2015, 6:24pm

ChibiM:

sb56637:

Well, I wish there was a way to satisfy everyone’s preferences, but unfortunately there isn’t. We have a lot of members that want to see affiliate links, because they bring better deals. But also a few of our very knowledgeable and valued members detest them. At this point, few if any will change their position for or against affiliate links. So the best I can do is restrict them to a specific area of the forum, which has already been done. So I would recommend that the affiliate link haters not visit the “BLF User Negotiated Deals” section. And to make it easier for them to avoid it, I have created a Recent Posts page with threads from “BLF User Negotiated Deals” filtered out: p=. http://budgetlightforum.com/recent-posts-noaff In this thread I would like to establish that according to my definition, affiliate linking in accordance with the defined BLF rules is not considered to be shilling. Of course, classical shilling or new affiliate links outside of the “BLF User Negotiated Deals” section is strictly prohibited and will be enforced as always.

I feel sad that even SB now thinks that we can ONLY get good deals with aff links…!

I’m not sure I read sb’s response to say that good deals only come from affiliate links. To me it says that they can bring better deals. I’ve tried to negotiate with Gearbest before to no avail when doing 10+ piece orders, and although I never tried to negotiate directly with Banggood for reduced prices I was able to request a lower price through M4D M4X, and got about 30% off of the chargers I wanted to order. I have no problem with affiliate links for products being on the forum, especially in these nicely separated sub-forums where it’s clear that every link could likely be an affiliate link. As long as aff linkers aren’t being “shills” as defined above, then I think it adds value to this forum.