Real Estate Consultant · Madison, NJ · Member since 2016 · 6k+ posts · 7k+ votes
Do you know who the welcome trolls are? Go into the new member introductions forum and watch for the same few people who say the same basic message every time someone new comes on the site. Don't get me wrong, providing a warm welcome is great, but these welcome trolls are just cutting and pasting the same thing to every new person, so their post activity looks sturdy. However, seeing their post-to-upvote ratio is abysmal because all they do is say welcome and add no value at all. But they aren't the only spammers currently infiltrating the forums.
There are also the cut and pasters and the AI posters. Both are obvious because no one takes that long to structure a post with headings and subheadings for one person; we all know it's cut and paste. Again, don't get me wrong, cutting and pasting obvious info may help someone, but I think it just jams up the forums. For those of us in the forums all the time, we see it repeatedly. And then the AI.
Listen, no one talks like AI. It's not conversational. It's the most obvious read out there when you see it. If all you are doing is asking AI how to respond to someone, you are not adding any value. You are just looking to get more posts up. What is the point of that? Did you also try to become the Mayor on Yelp of the local coffee shop when you were younger? Likely.
If you don't have the time to respond in your voice, based on your own experience, you probably shouldn't spend time in the forums just to say welcome only, cut and paste, or use AI.
I await the first "Who made you the forum police?" response.
My favorite AI posts are the ones with emojis in them.
Didn't even know you could post those on here
AI is not allowed. Marketing is not allowed. Advertising your business is not allowed. Unfortunately, there are too man posts and moderators can't catch all of them.
If you see something that you believe violates the rules, type "@moderators" and we will take a look at it.
My favorite AI posts are the ones with emojis in them.
Didn't even know you could post those on here
AI is not allowed. Marketing is not allowed. Advertising your business is not allowed. Unfortunately, there are too man posts and moderators can't catch all of them.
If you see something that you believe violates the rules, type "@moderators" and we will take a look at it.
Do you know who the welcome trolls are? Go into the new member introductions forum and watch for the same few people who say the same basic message every time someone new comes on the site. Don't get me wrong, providing a warm welcome is great, but these welcome trolls are just cutting and pasting the same thing to every new person, so their post activity looks sturdy. However, seeing their post-to-upvote ratio is abysmal because all they do is say welcome and add no value at all. But they aren't the only spammers currently infiltrating the forums.
There are also the cut and pasters and the AI posters. Both are obvious because no one takes that long to structure a post with headings and subheadings for one person; we all know it's cut and paste. Again, don't get me wrong, cutting and pasting obvious info may help someone, but I think it just jams up the forums. For those of us in the forums all the time, we see it repeatedly. And then the AI.
Listen, no one talks like AI. It's not conversational. It's the most obvious read out there when you see it. If all you are doing is asking AI how to respond to someone, you are not adding any value. You are just looking to get more posts up. What is the point of that? Did you also try to become the Mayor on Yelp of the local coffee shop when you were younger? Likely.
If you don't have the time to respond in your voice, based on your own experience, you probably shouldn't spend time in the forums just to say welcome only, cut and paste, or use AI.
I await the first "Who made you the forum police?" response.
easy to spot perfect spelling and punctuation. Anyone who has read any number of my post know they are real there is always some spelling error punctuation booboo etc.. I type to fast and just want to get an Authentic response. The welcome wagon was encouraged when I first came on BP. And I get it but your right there are members that welcoming folks is the ONLY thing they did. No other contibutions and for sure post count does influence others who relate it to credibility.
Yell ppl the AI with the ** before each heading then it ends in “in conclusion”
thankfully most of these people last a few weeks to a month or so and realize it’s not getting them deals so they stop
Little secret for people is you shouldn’t come here expecting something in return - those who post more frequently are giving back from experience and not expecting things in return
My favorite AI posts are the ones with emojis in them.
Didn't even know you could post those on here
AI is not allowed. Marketing is not allowed. Advertising your business is not allowed. Unfortunately, there are too man posts and moderators can't catch all of them.
If you see something that you believe violates the rules, type "@moderators" and we will take a look at it.
I have been reporting like 20-25 a day and almost none of them are removed. Just an FYI, I know the moderators are overloaded and doing it on spec, but it's quite lax as to what gets removed when all of us know what is what.
Do you know who the welcome trolls are? Go into the new member introductions forum and watch for the same few people who say the same basic message every time someone new comes on the site. Don't get me wrong, providing a warm welcome is great, but these welcome trolls are just cutting and pasting the same thing to every new person, so their post activity looks sturdy. However, seeing their post-to-upvote ratio is abysmal because all they do is say welcome and add no value at all. But they aren't the only spammers currently infiltrating the forums.
There are also the cut and pasters and the AI posters. Both are obvious because no one takes that long to structure a post with headings and subheadings for one person; we all know it's cut and paste. Again, don't get me wrong, cutting and pasting obvious info may help someone, but I think it just jams up the forums. For those of us in the forums all the time, we see it repeatedly. And then the AI.
Listen, no one talks like AI. It's not conversational. It's the most obvious read out there when you see it. If all you are doing is asking AI how to respond to someone, you are not adding any value. You are just looking to get more posts up. What is the point of that? Did you also try to become the Mayor on Yelp of the local coffee shop when you were younger? Likely.
If you don't have the time to respond in your voice, based on your own experience, you probably shouldn't spend time in the forums just to say welcome only, cut and paste, or use AI.
I await the first "Who made you the forum police?" response.
easy to spot perfect spelling and punctuation. Anyone who has read any number of my post know they are real there is always some spelling error punctuation booboo etc.. I type to fast and just want to get an Authentic response. The welcome wagon was encouraged when I first came on BP. And I get it but your right there are members that welcoming folks is the ONLY thing they did. No other contibutions and for sure post count does influence others who relate it to credibility.
I have been commenting on their welcome posts things like "You post the same exact wording on every post. How about you actually write a personal message."
It's sad that these welcome trolls post to post to get some vanity metrics when they will never catch you and all of your responses are always you and your words (and quick typing). :)
As a company, BP has wide reach now which brings a lot of spam and right now they can't keep up.
If you can send me specifics, I'll look into them.
If we aren't 100% certain of a violation, we'll let it go. AI can be tricky to prove sometimes.
I use cut/paste for questions that are asked every day. I have some pre-written advice for beginners, people asking if they should set up an LLC, how to find a property manager, etc. I try not to overdo it, but I also don't want to spend 30 minutes typing it fresh when it's literally asked every. single. day. I want to help the maximum number of users possible.
Yell ppl the AI with the ** before each heading then it ends in “in conclusion”
thankfully most of these people last a few weeks to a month or so and realize it’s not getting them deals so they stop
Little secret for people is you shouldn’t come here expecting something in return - those who post more frequently are giving back from experience and not expecting things in return
I just like looking at their posts to upvotes ratio. It's usually like 10 to 1, posts to upvotes and the upvotes are from their moms.
I love when someone answers a minute after the post and it has paragraph headers. OK, cut and paste.
If you can send me specifics, I'll look into them.
If we aren't 100% certain of a violation, we'll let it go. AI can be tricky to prove sometimes.
I use cut/paste for questions that are asked every day. I have some pre-written advice for beginners, people asking if they should set up an LLC, how to find a property manager, etc. I try not to overdo it, but I also don't want to spend 30 minutes typing it fresh when it's literally asked every. single. day. I want to help the maximum number of users possible.
Yeah, for sure. There is cut and paste appropriate where it matches the topic and is a good overview (those are yours every time) for a general question and then cut and paste where it doesn't even match the actual question, those are what I am referring to.
My favorite AI posts are the ones with emojis in them.
Didn't even know you could post those on here
AI is not allowed. Marketing is not allowed. Advertising your business is not allowed. Unfortunately, there are too man posts and moderators can't catch all of them.
If you see something that you believe violates the rules, type "@moderators" and we will take a look at it.
I’m supposing that the function where you can report rule violation anonymously doesn’t work??? I reported someone sometime back that was blatantly self promoting and using fake account to ask a question so they can answer it with their service pitch. It was left up.
This particular individual would have really went off and done personal attacks if anyone would have been bold enough to challenge what he was doing openly. I’ve seen him do it before. I mean, all I would have to do is give a hint, but I don’t want to be personally attacked…
My favorite AI posts are the ones with emojis in them.
Didn't even know you could post those on here
AI is not allowed. Marketing is not allowed. Advertising your business is not allowed. Unfortunately, there are too man posts and moderators can't catch all of them.
If you see something that you believe violates the rules, type "@moderators" and we will take a look at it.
I’m supposing that the function where you can report rule violation anonymously doesn’t work??? I reported someone sometime back that was blatantly self promoting and using fake account to ask a question so they can answer it with their service pitch. It was left up.
This particular individual would have really went off and done personal attacks if anyone would have been bold enough to challenge what he was doing openly. I’ve seen him do it before. I mean, all I would have to do is give a hint, but I don’t want to be personally attacked…
I report at least 10 things a day. Almost never do they get removed and they are all one of the above things. I report spam accounts and nothing happens most of the time there either. They don't have the bandwidth to keep up.
I don't even know how to anonymously report a post? Is it under the three dots? My view is a little different than yours since I'm a moderator with super powers.
If you want to report someone anonymously, send me a DM. It may take me 24 hours, but I'm checking my account once a day. I especially love to go after the repeat offenders!
They don't ask for anything, so seem to just want someone to give them a medal for showing up.
I believe the bootcamps and podcasts encourage new users to introduce themselves. It's a method of getting them to participate so they feel comfortable asking questions and learning. It's been that way for as long as I've been around.
BP has remote team members in the Philippines or Mexico that review posts every day, bu they can't keep up. BP also uses volunteer moderators (people with Hollywood good looks and keen intellect, such as myself) with little training or monitoring. Some of us are on the forums daily, while others may only log in once a week or less. Even the most active moderators tend to stick to specific forum topics. I follow about ten forum topics, but I'm only on once a day. I probably see 1% of what's posted every day, if that.
You know my name. If you see something and want to report it privately, send me a DM.
Good call out @Jonathan Greene - @Moderators need to continue to step up there game, but there are obviously limitations.
If you see multiple posts a day, it's definitely worth speaking up about like @Nathan Gesner mentioned.
At the end of the day, these "trolls, the cut and pasters, and AI posters" don't win in the long term....
All sites or groups that grow experience the same issues with moderation (see Facebook groups), but VAs can't moderate because they are doing a letter of the law thing and not reading these garbage posts for what they are - spam, AI, number puffing, and cut and pasting, self-promo. Moderating for free sucks, but the spam has increased a lot in the past couple of years and almost none is getting removed.
Good call out @Jonathan Greene - @Moderators need to continue to step up there game, but there are obviously limitations.
If you see multiple posts a day, it's definitely worth speaking up about like @Nathan Gesner mentioned.
At the end of the day, these "trolls, the cut and pasters, and AI posters" don't win in the long term....
All sites or groups that grow experience the same issues with moderation (see Facebook groups), but VAs can't moderate because they are doing a letter of the law thing and not reading these garbage posts for what they are - spam, AI, number puffing, and cut and pasting, self-promo. Moderating for free sucks, but the spam has increased a lot in the past couple of years and almost none is getting removed.
Have I told you how unbelievably awesome Pace Morby is? His class and group is life altering (says the person who signed up 24 hours ago and has never done a real estate deal).
Good call out @Jonathan Greene - @Moderators need to continue to step up there game, but there are obviously limitations.
If you see multiple posts a day, it's definitely worth speaking up about like @Nathan Gesner mentioned.
At the end of the day, these "trolls, the cut and pasters, and AI posters" don't win in the long term....
All sites or groups that grow experience the same issues with moderation (see Facebook groups), but VAs can't moderate because they are doing a letter of the law thing and not reading these garbage posts for what they are - spam, AI, number puffing, and cut and pasting, self-promo. Moderating for free sucks, but the spam has increased a lot in the past couple of years and almost none is getting removed.
Have I told you how unbelievably awesome Pace Morby is? His class and group is life altering (says the person who signed up 24 hours ago and has never done a real estate deal).
That same person writes a post six months later about how it's all a scam no matter what class or mentor. Every. Single. Time.
Do you know who the welcome trolls are? Go into the new member introductions forum and watch for the same few people who say the same basic message every time someone new comes on the site. Don't get me wrong, providing a warm welcome is great, but these welcome trolls are just cutting and pasting the same thing to every new person, so their post activity looks sturdy. However, seeing their post-to-upvote ratio is abysmal because all they do is say welcome and add no value at all. But they aren't the only spammers currently infiltrating the forums.
There are also the cut and pasters and the AI posters. Both are obvious because no one takes that long to structure a post with headings and subheadings for one person; we all know it's cut and paste. Again, don't get me wrong, cutting and pasting obvious info may help someone, but I think it just jams up the forums. For those of us in the forums all the time, we see it repeatedly. And then the AI.
Listen, no one talks like AI. It's not conversational. It's the most obvious read out there when you see it. If all you are doing is asking AI how to respond to someone, you are not adding any value. You are just looking to get more posts up. What is the point of that? Did you also try to become the Mayor on Yelp of the local coffee shop when you were younger? Likely.
If you don't have the time to respond in your voice, based on your own experience, you probably shouldn't spend time in the forums just to say welcome only, cut and paste, or use AI.
I await the first "Who made you the forum police?" response.
Hi Jonathan! Want to be an official moderator for us? :P
Do you know who the welcome trolls are? Go into the new member introductions forum and watch for the same few people who say the same basic message every time someone new comes on the site. Don't get me wrong, providing a warm welcome is great, but these welcome trolls are just cutting and pasting the same thing to every new person, so their post activity looks sturdy. However, seeing their post-to-upvote ratio is abysmal because all they do is say welcome and add no value at all. But they aren't the only spammers currently infiltrating the forums.
There are also the cut and pasters and the AI posters. Both are obvious because no one takes that long to structure a post with headings and subheadings for one person; we all know it's cut and paste. Again, don't get me wrong, cutting and pasting obvious info may help someone, but I think it just jams up the forums. For those of us in the forums all the time, we see it repeatedly. And then the AI.
Listen, no one talks like AI. It's not conversational. It's the most obvious read out there when you see it. If all you are doing is asking AI how to respond to someone, you are not adding any value. You are just looking to get more posts up. What is the point of that? Did you also try to become the Mayor on Yelp of the local coffee shop when you were younger? Likely.
If you don't have the time to respond in your voice, based on your own experience, you probably shouldn't spend time in the forums just to say welcome only, cut and paste, or use AI.
I await the first "Who made you the forum police?" response.
Hi Jonathan! Want to be an official moderator for us? :P
Do you know who the welcome trolls are? Go into the new member introductions forum and watch for the same few people who say the same basic message every time someone new comes on the site. Don't get me wrong, providing a warm welcome is great, but these welcome trolls are just cutting and pasting the same thing to every new person, so their post activity looks sturdy. However, seeing their post-to-upvote ratio is abysmal because all they do is say welcome and add no value at all. But they aren't the only spammers currently infiltrating the forums.
There are also the cut and pasters and the AI posters. Both are obvious because no one takes that long to structure a post with headings and subheadings for one person; we all know it's cut and paste. Again, don't get me wrong, cutting and pasting obvious info may help someone, but I think it just jams up the forums. For those of us in the forums all the time, we see it repeatedly. And then the AI.
Listen, no one talks like AI. It's not conversational. It's the most obvious read out there when you see it. If all you are doing is asking AI how to respond to someone, you are not adding any value. You are just looking to get more posts up. What is the point of that? Did you also try to become the Mayor on Yelp of the local coffee shop when you were younger? Likely.
If you don't have the time to respond in your voice, based on your own experience, you probably shouldn't spend time in the forums just to say welcome only, cut and paste, or use AI.
I await the first "Who made you the forum police?" response.
Hi Jonathan! Want to be an official moderator for us? :P
Hey Katie! I am happy to help, but let me tell you this story first (it's one of many similar ones in regard to moderation of groups):
When I was still at eXp, I offered to moderate their Workplace forum The Watercooler because it was full of spam. There were like 20,000 people in there. I spent time writing forum guidelines, getting them approved,and then implementing them.
Once I started actually moderating the spam, eXp got kickback because all of the spammers were mad that their fake posts were being taken down in seconds by me. So, after a month, they asked me to stop doing what they asked me to do - actually moderating the spam out. It went back to being full of garbage and of no use to anyone.
I have done this for several other "groups" but it almost always ends up in the same spot because people start to dispute what is spam, what the rules are, and the trolls always say not that their posts are ok, but that they are technically allowed.
So, I would be happy to help, but there are other consequences to me helping. :)
@Jonathan Greene: We have robust rules and lots of really helpful and welcoming mods that love getting rid of the spammers without shame. :) I think you'd fit in nicely! We don't take just anyone though, so we'll need to meet with you a bit first!
Same goes for you, @Chris Seveney! I've been watching you contribute a ton lately!
@Rene Hosman want to connect with Chris and Jonathan and see if they're up for the moderator challenge?
There's only a few (great) people on there that have been mods longer than me, so here's my take on it from years of digesting it, in my usual assorted, scattered order:
1. Not everything that is reported needs to be moderated. There is a lot of grey area on this site, as there is on most sites, and in the interest of wanting to be fair to posters and not be ridiculously heavy handed, most mods will give posters the benefit of the doubt on the front end, maybe with removing a post and a warning or something similar. That means that the post that you reported maybe didn't get removed, but another one did, and the poster in question got the official message to knock it off. That might give someone the idea that the reporting is being ignored because they can't see the post(s) that have been removed. Generally most of us aren't going to go through the guilty party's profile and take down everything that qualifies because it takes a lot of time and effort, and most threads have an extremely short shelf life - no one is going to remember it or see it a couple of days from now. Which brings me to
2. Threads with a lot of active participation are going to be moderated more heavily and regularly than those with 1 or 2 posts. If no one, or virtually no one, is seeing it, it's not a judicious use of time to spend all day taking down people shouting in empty hallways. We (collectively, I speak for all of the mods here) would rather keep the active and engaged threads clean if given a choice.
3. Spam and spammers evolve - their techniques evolve, the posters change, the things that are being spammed change. Mods aren't always immediately hip to the latest scam flavor or spammer, so you should continue to report posts even if it seems like no one is listening because it helps all of us get better at spotting the guys (I'm from NJ, this means women too) who are clogging up the airwaves here.
4. More Mods won't necessarily change things that are complained about, because as my esteemed colleague @Nathan Gesner mentioned, it depends on time of day, forum(s) frequented, posting times, and other issues that sometimes means there's a whole bunch of us here at the same time and sometimes I'm the only guy here, or Nathan might be, or Ned, or someone else. Theoretically more Mods means more chances of catching stuff, so more help is generally always welcome, but no one should expect miracles.
5. The amount of spam & scams ebbs and flows in response to things that might have little to do with BP, and again sometimes that means response is a trailing effect. We (mods) will have a trainload of spammers, and all of us are doing double-time clearing things off, and all of a sudden it will get real quiet and we can go back to doing things that are usually more fun like posting and reading threads, which doesn't mean we become complacent but does mean maybe we're not as vigilant as usual.
All of that means you should continue to report anything you see, don't become disheartened if not everything gets taken down, and mostly just ignore the noise. I scan the forums every day, but I mostly ignore any threads that seem like a waste of my time either because they've already been fully answered, they're spammy in nature even if not explicitly against the rules, or they're just not something I'm interested in. If most people do the same, a lot of the scams & spams take care of themselves because there's no audience.