How I was banned from an expat forum or why does a forum limit the information it is supposed to provide?
authored by Mark Alexander 20/02/2024
Forums are a widespread and beloved tool to gather information. Online Forums have been around since the advent of the internet and have conquered a huge popularity, being one of the state of the art sources of tips and information on all thinkable subjects.
How come that someone could claim that forums might be limiting information? Could this be some sort of marketing prank or one more conspiracy theory?
To understand this we should take into account the goal of a forum initiator or management. They want, of course, to provide a platform for an exchange of experiences and qualified information regarding a specific subject.
They also want to grow the forum and hold it for as long as possible.
They may be monetized or following a marketing purpose or not, being run by an association, an NGO or an altruistic patron willing to spread the word and make the world a better place.
Many forums show off with the amount of members and posts. The higher the number of posts, more content is published, showing the search engine algorithm that this domain is relevant, pushing it in direction of the top of the SERPS (search engine results). Therefore, “quick and dirty” and straight-to-the-point posts are less welcome.
Much better for the forum is a never ending succession of vague and incomplete messages, that requite more inquiries and the interference of other members. Even better is a hot discussion that needs an administrator´s intervention. Trolls are paramount, they heat up the discussion and provoke outrage and more posts. I think you get the picture.
Interestingly, search engines like google, yahoo, bing, yandex, baidu, duckduckgo and others operate in a similar manner. Search engines were created in the 1990s long before social media, digital communities etc...After decades of the game of cat and mouse between the algorithm and SEO (search engine optimization) and SEM (search engine marketing), always adapting and changing the rules, today´s search engines work -- according to my experience and to statements of SEO/SEM agencies-- following the basic rule:
a site is rewarded when users spend long periods of time on it. So, if a site provides quick answers to a user´s search term, the average time spent on it will decrease, pushing the site down in the search results.
On the other hand, if the site provides a long and unclear and confusing and complex text, that forces the user to klick on several different links to obtain the full result the user is searching for, the site is rewarded and rises in the hierarchy of the search engine results.
This is why most sites are constructed accordingly and also explains why search engines lost relevance and got increasingly worse over time.
By the way: younger users don´t use search engines anymore , they consult their preferred social media channels and communities first, obtaining faster results, sometimes even in form of quick videos with hands on recommendations and guidance.
That brings us back to the initial issue, the ban.
In the forum in question some user asked for a recommendation regarding a competent international moving company operating in a certain region in the USA. For the sake of the user´s privacy I
won´t disclose the region.
Those questions are were common but denote of a very deep misunderstanding of business, logistics, economics and geography, just to name a few areas.
If a mover managed successfully in 2009 a move of a household from a 2 bedroom apartment (25m3) from New Jersey to Paris with a half-filled 20 foot container, will he be...
automatically eligible and entitled to manage today a relocation of a household from a 500m2 penthouse apartment in downtown Manhattan to London (175 m3) with 3 full 40 foot containers, including an 8 meters long piano and countless paintings worth millions of dollars?
We shouldn´t compare apples to bananas, just because both are fruit!
It´s been a time since 2009, the company´s CEO might have changed 4 times, the whole board of directors might have been replaced, the corporate culture might have changed.
Or does the user recommending the company believe that the move from New York to London will have the same team that performed his move to Paris ages ago?
He may be able to rate the partner company in Paris, but does the US-company still work with this partner? Did this partner maintain the same standards? But what about the Partner in London? The small move to Paris was OK, therefore the XXL move to London will be OK, too? Got it?
As we can see, such a recommendation is blatantly ludicrous.
In that thread in the forum I summarized these arguments explaining how important it is to get the right consultancy and gather as much information as possible, in order to be at least as informed as the potential movers you may hire. How can one judge or rate a company with zero knowledge of the subject?
I did not advertise for my business nor did I place any links or cite any contact information.
Despite the fact of having been an active member of the forum with several posts, I was suddenly banned for spam...
In the aftermath I can state that it was indeed too much of the truth, with my post I threatened the very existence of the forum. If everyone posting in forums was really into what she is writing about, and the replies were straight to the point and based on expertise, the size of forums would be a fraction of the actual size, and most forums wouldn´t even make it to the search results.
I didn´t, so far, mention people´s fear of being sanctioned due to a manifestation that could hypothetically harm of offend a group of people that wasn´t perceived in public life a day ago or that could infringe a yet unknown rule or social convention introduced the day before. People are skeptic and increasingly refrain from taking part in public life. Less people take interest in other people and less people take the time to post and help others.
Remember: there´s no public life without anonymity.
The snake bites its own tail... the search engines and forums are both fighting for survival, and both are nowadays of limited usage. The time when we used to “google” a term or check something in a forum will soon be gone. Tech-Leads have been telling us for nearly 15 years: the internet is dead.
Yes, taking into account the way the www was conceived and built, the internet has been dead for a long time.
The internet was replaced by gated communities, the pioneering time of the global jumping around per hyperlink is long gone.
The dogs bark, but the caravan goes on...we have to accept the fact that the internet we got used to for decades now is vanishing. The search engines are, depending on the subject, increasingly bad and useless. Forums are more focused on their own survival than on the service they should be committed to.
The spirit of freedom we had enjoyed in the internet gave way to social, political and technical regulation, and we are told it´s only to increase the user´s experience. Welcome to the Brave New World.