Math Is Fun Forum

iamaditya

Member

From: Planet Mars

Registered: 2016-11-15

Posts: 821

Banning new members

Why are so many advertisers joining the forum nowadays and getting banned due to advertising there own math websites?

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Practice makes a man perfect.
There is no substitute to hard work
All of us do not have equal talents but everybody has equal oppurtunities to build their talents.-APJ Abdul Kalam

Jai Ganesh

Administrator

Registered: 2005-06-28

Posts: 48,425

Re: Banning new members

Hi,

This is a disturbing trend. The forum rules stipulate, inter alia, 

No Spam. Spam includes messages that have no relevance to the topic, that are annoying, repetitious or promotional in nature. Overuse of short comments is also spam.

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It appears to me that if one wants to make progress in mathematics, one should study the masters and not the pupils. - Niels Henrik Abel.

Nothing is better than reading and gaining more and more knowledge - Stephen William Hawking.

Bob

Administrator

Registered: 2010-06-20

Posts: 10,626

Re: Banning new members

hi iamaditya

Advertising is not accepted on the forum.  Two reasons: It's not fair that members have to put up with advertising like this.  Mostly they are just an attempt to promote a product; unrelated to maths.  Recently I have encountered some that are totally unacceptable when you consider that we have young members.  Secondly, MIF does have some paying advertisers.  These help to fund the site.  They are carefully selected and are all maths related.  If they are paying, why should others get a free go?

If it's a maths website then a lot depends on what links lead off from it and whether the site charges for its services.  I investigated one recently that looked innocent to start with, but the side links led to some very unpleasant sites.  When a new member joins any forum, they should spend a while getting to know how that forum operates and what is acceptable.  The ones that have resulted in bans have been where a new member jumps straight in with unacceptable posts from day 1.  Some time back  a maths writer started to post about his new maths research and included a link to his book (for sale).  He was messaged about this and was happy to make a pdf of his work available to members for free.  That seemed a satisfactory compromise.

The administrators and moderators have been discussing this recently and are working towards a policy to cover this.  The rules may be modified.

Bob

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Children are not defined by school ...........The Fonz
You cannot teach a man anything;  you can only help him find it within himself..........Galileo Galilei
Sometimes I deliberately make mistakes, just to test you!  …………….Bob

MathsIsFun

Administrator

Registered: 2005-01-21

Posts: 7,713

Re: Banning new members

Exactly right.

Spam is an annoyance that we always have to fight.

But we also want to allow well established members to talk about other sites.

Imagine you are in a group of friends and someone just turns up trying to sell you something (versus a friend telling you about things).

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"The physicists defer only to mathematicians, and the mathematicians defer only to God ..."  - Leon M. Lederman