I'm planning on spending two months in Malaga, Spain in April and May 2011 and need to rent a famili car.
You will be better off buying a small 10 year old S/H Seat or Fiat on E-Bay, that you pick up on arrival. A car for 2 months hire in Malaga will set you back about €1,000.
You can buy a little car for around €250-€350. Even with 2 months insurance, it'll still work out cheaper than hiring one.
The chances are - here on Travellerspoint, anyone who puts up a company or price for you to check out, will be zapped by a moderator and get accused of spamming.
Travellerspoint is so mad strict on recommendations. Even someone who recommends a hotel and is a newcomer to T/P, gets their post wiped off.
[ 06-Nov-2010, at 13:58 by flyingbob ]
The chances are - here on Travellerspoint, anyone who puts up a company or price for you to check out, will be zapped by a moderator and get accused of spamming.
Travellerspoint is so mad strict on recommendations. Even someone who recommends a hotel and is a newcomer to T/P, gets their post wiped off.
Oh, c'mon bob, what's got you upset now that you're bringing this up in recent posts? Such a reply is giving a rather skewed image to new members here. Yes, we're strict on promotional posts, no we don't wantonly take action on genuine recommendations by actual travellers. If there's a specific example of a moderator snipping something where you're reasonably certain it didn't deserve snipping, please start a thread about that in system talk, so that it can either be rectified, or explained to you why it really was spam. Everything I have seen action being taken on completely deserved it. (For example, there's a big "independent" hotel marketing company flooding any- and all Paris-related threads with innocent seeming replies which are recommending specific hotels, which would be my prime bet for what you're referring to. But I can guarantee you that those posts were all made on behalf of the same company - we check them out pretty thoroughly, and there's a couple of very strong indicators which don't show up in the posts themselves, but are obvious to us.)
[ 06-Nov-2010, at 15:42 by Sander ]
Strict - isn't a strong enough word for it.
Its becoming pathetic on T/P nowadays.
I saw a post the other day where someone had merely recommended a hotel and it was snipped by a moderator or admin controller. I'm not upset at all, but just feel like T/P is becoming a dictatorial lecturer for travellers - rather than a guide.
When someone new says something along the lines of 'I stayed at a particular hotel and it cost (say) €30 a night, it was near to the city centre and the shop close-by sold very good cheap cameras etc.', the post ends up....
'I stayed at -snip- and it cost -snip- it was near to the -snip- and the -snip- close-by sold very -snip-
[No promos please]
It's a point that has to be stressed. This is a travellers forum - and if someone can help a fellow traveller to safe haven or cheap room for the night, then what's wrong with that? Regardless of whether they mention a product or price.
T/P is living in the dark ages. Take a leaf out of Thorn Trees book and open up to the real world of tips and economising.... Amen.
If you feel it needs to be moved to Off Topic or System Talk, then be my guest. The more that read it - the merrier.
The rules have been the exact same since day one. Well, not exactly the same, in the very beginning we didn't allow any links at all, no matter who had posted them. So we're more leniant than in the very early days I'd say.
What has changed, sadly, is that there are a lot more people promoting their own properties and websites and trying to disguise it. The case you're referring to is probably a perfect example, especially if it was about Paris. There is a very large chain of hotels all owned/controlled/promoted by the same company and they've been signing up under dozens of accounts to promote those hotels. Those are NOT recommendations; they are advertising their own properties under the guise of them being neutral, which they aren't. You wouldn't know this or see this, but a lot of decisions/patterns like that get discussed between moderators/admins so we know what to look for.
If you had replied with a hotel name, nothing would happen; that hasn't changed either. When it's a one-time poster, or someone who has posted 3 or 4 other times, only recommending that one property, the chances of it being a real recommendation are around 0. The whole reason we have this policy is like you say so "someone can help a fellow traveller", not a hotelier trick a traveller into believing their hotel is a good one, or has a good price. The interesting thing is that the very best hotels/hostels never engage in this behaviour, so any hotel/hostel engaging in these tactics is almost certainly crap in comparison to others in that city/town. In other words, by deleting those mentions, we are actually helping out travellers... by the way, what you mention about -snip- ... -snip- etc. is why I usually delete those posts flat out. Some mods are more leniant and leave them up, or they leave them up when they add in a reply in the hope that the spammer will actually be checking replies and learn from it. We too wish they would stop
Last but not least, if you are ever in doubt or want to know why something was snipped, feel free to get in touch with me or the mods for that forum. We're an open bunch and happy to come back on a call if it was incorrect!
Thanks for that, but I'm sure if you check over the last couple of months or so, the 'snipping' is becoming more of a pastime than a necessity.
We can probably have another look through what is snipped versus outright deleted. You'd never see the deletions, whereas the snipped posts obviously are much more noticable. It could be that we've inadvertently started snipping more than deleting the posts, which would then lead to that being more visible.
But I can see from stats that we certainly are not moderating more in the forums than some years ago. The only specific case that I know has caused us a lot of headaches is that hotel chain/marketing company. They've probably posted a few hundred entries all of which are spam/misleading. Nearly all under different usernames too, so I'm not surprised you would have noticed the snipping there.
We take keeping these forums clean very seriously, and posts are certainly not edited as a matter of pasttime rather than necessity. It's just that we might have a little more information than other users as to what exactly is going on (previous deleted post count, ip matching, email addresses, websites etc. all of which can only be seen by the admin).
But hey, maybe it is time for a go-through of the policies. I'd be happy to hear a bunch of members chiming in on this. Perhaps worthy of a new thread in System Talk?
-snip-
[ Would have deleted the post, but am illustrating a point (see my reply below). ]
flyingbob, looks like lexiemill just proved my point Although the person has posted 5 posts not mentioning the company they represent, they have posted it here and in one other thread. The link up is not obvious as they are different sites, but they are owned/run by the same person/s. In other words, this is basically a hidden ad. There is no 'friend', and the person doing it is just misleading travellers. It's against the law in most countries, but as it's typically the worst companies doing this kind of thing, they don't really care about upholding any kind of reputation or brand.
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