David
Moderator
- Joined
- Apr 24, 2003
- Messages
- 908
- Reason
- Other
- Diagnosis
- 00/0000
- Country
- CA
- State
- ON
- City
- Cobourg
There are three possible reasons you can't find your post:
We're not infallible, mistakes will be made and important/interesting/valuable posts and/or threads will be lost.
However, the reasoning for removing posts and threads is summarized below:
The site here at alsforums.com is becoming busier, and hopefully more helpful. We have great members, and the best and most helpful moderator on the web (Al).
Unfortunately, as the site grows its member base will inevitably attract numerous advertisers and scam artists; individuals RAVING about new products and wonderful new treatments - creating hype to fool people into false hope and eventually, online purchases.
The online world is full of affiliates, earning a percentage (10-50%) of sales.
These individuals spend their daily life posting false information so that individuals such as ourselves will search the internet for more information, eventually landing on a purchase page and submitting our credit card information to order whatever it is they've "tricked" us into believing.
Sometimes these individuals posting are harmless - simply wanting to provide links to their websites for the purpose of gaining new listings in search engines, and/or new visitors to their website, etc...
However, a few of us here at alsforums are doing our best to keep this site free of all that garbage, and we'll be very ashamed of ourselves if this forum turns into a BT - a haven for false information, advertisements, quack salesmen and online marketers.
Those other forums are simply setup to sell products and make profits. They are great revenue streams for the website owners. More often than not your email addresses are given to spammers - at which point you begin to receive massive amounts of email (junk mail) with links to online pharmaceutical companies and places to purchase knock-off and potentially harmful generic drugs.
The forum owners get up to 50% of the profits from these sales, so it's good business for them, and they care very little for your safety. Money is the driving factor for why these sites are setup, not being helpful to people who need it.
They target (or setup) disease related websites because to them, it's good business, it's an exclusive market that requires specific drugs, and due to the nature of the illnesses, claims of false hope can be an easy sale (no disrespect intended).
So yes, expect threads and posts to go missing for a variety of reasons :smile: We're sorry, but this is the only way.
And no, we will not openly debate the validity of posts before removal, it's been tried, and failed miserably - the "bad" posters simply come in droves to defend the posts and/or posters. An open discussion is exactly what they want, because then it becomes their forum, they may not fool everyone, but fooling a small handful of people is good enough - we won't tolerate it here.
We're currently at less than 1% of posts being removed, we expect this number to grow over time, but very marginally. For the most part, the important members of this site (people affected by ALS) will not notice the nuisance of posts being removed (if you do, it will be somewhat infrequent).
We hope you find these forums useful and helpful. Please think twice before believing "everything you read". We're doing our best, but like always, nobody can be everywhere at once
If you have time, periodically check our <a href='/scamwatch/'>scam watch</a> page, and think twice before believing a stranger.
While the vast majority of people here are here for the right reasons, not everyone is.
We'll do our best - but while we're working hard, please keep your head up and use your common sense.
Much love and respect, David.
- You're looking in the wrong place (try using the "Search" at the top of the page)
- The post/thread was moved (rare occurence, but sometimes threads or individual posts are moved to a specific forum in the site. For instance, a drug trial thread is created in the "General" forum, it will be moved to the drug trial forum)
- The post/thread was completely deleted from the website (see below)
We're not infallible, mistakes will be made and important/interesting/valuable posts and/or threads will be lost.
However, the reasoning for removing posts and threads is summarized below:
The site here at alsforums.com is becoming busier, and hopefully more helpful. We have great members, and the best and most helpful moderator on the web (Al).
Unfortunately, as the site grows its member base will inevitably attract numerous advertisers and scam artists; individuals RAVING about new products and wonderful new treatments - creating hype to fool people into false hope and eventually, online purchases.
The online world is full of affiliates, earning a percentage (10-50%) of sales.
These individuals spend their daily life posting false information so that individuals such as ourselves will search the internet for more information, eventually landing on a purchase page and submitting our credit card information to order whatever it is they've "tricked" us into believing.
Sometimes these individuals posting are harmless - simply wanting to provide links to their websites for the purpose of gaining new listings in search engines, and/or new visitors to their website, etc...
However, a few of us here at alsforums are doing our best to keep this site free of all that garbage, and we'll be very ashamed of ourselves if this forum turns into a BT - a haven for false information, advertisements, quack salesmen and online marketers.
Those other forums are simply setup to sell products and make profits. They are great revenue streams for the website owners. More often than not your email addresses are given to spammers - at which point you begin to receive massive amounts of email (junk mail) with links to online pharmaceutical companies and places to purchase knock-off and potentially harmful generic drugs.
The forum owners get up to 50% of the profits from these sales, so it's good business for them, and they care very little for your safety. Money is the driving factor for why these sites are setup, not being helpful to people who need it.
They target (or setup) disease related websites because to them, it's good business, it's an exclusive market that requires specific drugs, and due to the nature of the illnesses, claims of false hope can be an easy sale (no disrespect intended).
So yes, expect threads and posts to go missing for a variety of reasons :smile: We're sorry, but this is the only way.
And no, we will not openly debate the validity of posts before removal, it's been tried, and failed miserably - the "bad" posters simply come in droves to defend the posts and/or posters. An open discussion is exactly what they want, because then it becomes their forum, they may not fool everyone, but fooling a small handful of people is good enough - we won't tolerate it here.
We're currently at less than 1% of posts being removed, we expect this number to grow over time, but very marginally. For the most part, the important members of this site (people affected by ALS) will not notice the nuisance of posts being removed (if you do, it will be somewhat infrequent).
We hope you find these forums useful and helpful. Please think twice before believing "everything you read". We're doing our best, but like always, nobody can be everywhere at once
If you have time, periodically check our <a href='/scamwatch/'>scam watch</a> page, and think twice before believing a stranger.
While the vast majority of people here are here for the right reasons, not everyone is.
We'll do our best - but while we're working hard, please keep your head up and use your common sense.
Much love and respect, David.
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