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It appears that what almost ruined the integrity of Compuserve's AI neural net
forum a few years back made its first appearance in RealTraders and will, most
likely, appear in this forum as well. Let me explain...
Many years ago, Compuserve's AI neural net forum was not much more than a
flaming electronic billboard for software companies to post the latest product
announcements, complete with *pages* of descriptions, prices, options, etc. It
took over a year of diligent work by myself, Will Dwinnell, and a few others to
clean house and convert it to a respectable forum.
However, one firm decided to go "underground" and employ schills or stooges to
post "innocent" messages, crammed with hype about the firm's products. The
trialog would go something like this... (names changed to protect the guilty)
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MOE: I'm considering buying a NN product. Any comments on the best ones?
LARRY: Glad you asked! I've tried them all and XYX's Professional-Pro is the
best. Great product and a great price. Can't go wrong!
CURLY: I just received their brochures and boy am I impressed! Do you think
their 88% accuracy is good enough for trading?
LARRY: Yes, especially when you but their optional ZZ module. Made my
investments soar!
CURLY: woo-woo-woo-woo!
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The next phase is when *innocent* tech support questions are (innaproporiately)
posted and answers are provided that go well beyond what was asked. For
example....
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MO: I'm just received XYX's Professional-Pro. It's outstanding. However, I'm
having difficulty getting the best use of the optional ZZ module. Can anybody
help?
LARRY: Sure. ZZ gives you ...[deleted]...and also ...[deleted]... and by the
way, they just upgraded their entire product line! Here's their *entire*
catalog,...[deleted]...and their *entire* price list..[deleted]..., and their
.....[deleted].. If you want additional info, call their outstanding tech
support at 800-........
CURLY: woo-woo-woo-woo!
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Now it appears to be happening again. To counter it, Realtraders posted the
following message:
>>RealTraders: There are three things I want everybody to do:
1. Don't patronize vendors who spam you by getting your name from the
RealTraders discussion group. Just don't. That in itself will discourage
this activity.
2. One not-so-clever tactic that is currently is use by vendors to sell
products through RealTraders is to enlist stooges to engage in an innocent
sounding conversation on RealTraders. The conversation gradually builds and
eventually sounds like they are not have a discussion, but promoting a
product. I know you people are intelligent enough to figure out when this
happens. I ask you now--DON'T PATRONIZE THESE PEOPLE. We will remove people
who do this.
<<
Good advice.
It's one thing to contibute honestly to a forum and take the infrequent liberty
to post a message about your own accomplishments. Folks like Pierre, Bob and
others deserve that privilege. OTOH, deceptive postings (like the examples
above) ought to be unacceptable.
- Mark Jurik
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