ghostrider990

Is it just me, or this forum turning into a daily deluge of ads from vendors??

Ok, I get it, the sponsors need to pay the bills and keep the lights on, but pretty much every single forum I'm on has a Vendor section for these people
with rules that restrict vendor (sales) posts to that section.

Personally, I don't come to the daily forum discussion to get bombarded by ads from every tom-dick-and harry trying to sell me LED upgrades for my footwells.
I come here for open forum discussion of issues with my car, advice, and to some extent camaraderie.
If I wanted to BUY something, particularly an upgrade or aftermarket part -- i'd go seek that in a different section, not on the discussion board.
It's getting tedious to weigh-through all the for sale ads from these vendors, and making me not want to participate or visit the site on a regular basis.

Maybe I just woke-up crabby today....but Im pretty tired of all the sales threads in the open discussion section(s).

Thoughts?

gr

mplsbrian

I just ignore that LED guy. The new B9 S4 is 100% LED except for perhaps that one bulb in the glovebox when you open it, so if someone wants to waste their time schlepping "LED upgrades" on a car that already is riddled with them they are free to waste their time. If them doing so is what is keeping this forum operational, paid-for, and free from viruses/scams/popup ads, I will take it. I have disabled adblock on this site to try and support the existence of this community and will tolerate sponsor threads as long as they are not too burdensome and, like the LED guy, contained to a single thread vs. a new one every day.

I am also mostly interested in vendor posts. Example: I think the new ECS dipstick is cool (although currently too expensive for me to justify, would potentially grab one during a sale), I wouldn't have heard about it if they didn't post because I am not the type to go to websites and actively search&seek for new products in a sea of crap I don't need and have already seen. On the other side of that coin there is some stupid stuff out there: remember when ECS came in here selling a billet aluminum trunk release latch and got laughed out of the forum?

Good products have their place and I welcome posts about them here.

ghostrider990

Good counterpoint -B.

I think Friday IS vendor day, so they seem to be more prevalent at the end of the week.

i too LIKE that dipstick!!
But agree - overpriced, and Im on a lease, and not inclined to spend anymore $$$ on a car ill only have another 1.5 years.

I'd still like to see vendor's limited to vendor section, but that's just me.

gr

rccoleman

I mentioned this a while back in the "forum feedback" section, and just yesterday I had two full screens consisting entirely of duplicate crossposts in every single section with one "real" post in the middle. It's out of control, and makes navigating the site really tiresome. There's a dedicated section just for this sort of marketing, but there's no attempt to contain the advertising there. Ignoring the posters doesn't help at all.

I used to just bookmark a few sections and look for new posts there, but it became clear early on that I was missing a bunch of relevant content elsewhere and now I hit the top-level "new posts" link. I suspect that the cross-posting is meant to address the first behavior, but it's a giant hassle for folks who just monitor all new posts.

Mr. Three

I agree with the sentiment of the first post...I am ok with new products that are presented by a vendor but the repetitive nature of advertising threads for products that don't even apply to our cars is super annoying. I understand bills have to be paid but there has to be a slightly better way to do it, no?

TT-S4

My thoughts are that I agree with you.

I too was very surprised and annoyed at the large amount of vendor posts in the regular forum.
I agree, a vendor section is preferable.

rccoleman

There's gotta be a better way, right?