Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Warrior Forum limits (Controls) Expression of Individual Writers - Encourages Spammers!

Warrior Forum is a Forum I believe for Writers who are involved in online writing to earn their livelihood. You can use the forum to make your career flourish with new offers and can also clear doubts on online marketing, Search Engine Optimization and any doubts on the Internet Writing. This forum is for those who have taken the internet and writing as their profession.

I very much liked the forum and was smitten with it when I interacted with so many of the writers from across the Globe. I always have the habit of posting on forums. So, the first thing I did was to post a thread on their forum though I read very less of the other posts. I had about 121 people witnessing my thread within the first two days of posting. I got about 12 or so replies.

That is when the problem started. My thread was about preparing an English Training Module for the rural village children who do not learn proper English due to poor education in Panchayat, Municipal and Corporation Schools. People from India understood the truth or reality posted replies calling it a good initiative. But understandably, the westerners did not understand the situation and suggested something like, "Maybe they should get good teachers."

Then, an Indian named "Arya" (NRI - Living outside of India in some native English country) said learning English was not going to change their lives. If they wanted to learn English and develop inferiority complex, why weren't they proud of their mother tongue Tamil? Here if people dropped out of School or College due to English, there (in Native English speaking countries) drop out rate was turning too high and the medium of learning as well as teaching is English. (Why would a native English student drop out of School due to English?)

He pointed out that he had been to India and there was no necessity for such a module even for rural India. He also said that there were a lot of students who did not get to go school (How contradictory of the previous statement?). I replied to him with a long post and then I got slightly miffed with an Indian claiming to know the nook and corner of India residing all comfortably in a western country. I gave strong replies to him. Then I said, "Am I doing something as bad as spamming? Or something more worse than spamming?"

I opened it late at night and read on the screen:


You have been banned for the following reason:
Breaking the Forum Rules!
Date the ban will be lifted: Never


I searched for my thread and that too was banned. There are mistakes on my part - Not reading the terms and conditions before signing up. I remember I included this blog's URL which a pop up said, "You cannot insert links before completing 15 posts. You are now at 7 posts." I removed the dots and posted "rationalfilms(dot)blogspot(dot)com. My intention was not to put my blog URL there. I felt that mentioning my blog was important and so I did though I did not want any straight back link to my blog. Hence, I could by all means use (dot) instead of the real dots.


Two possible explanations for being banned was (I assume) that "Arya" interpreted my explanations as personally offensive and complained to the moderators or I entered my blog URL before posting 15 replies. I think only paid members gain access to strong arguments and is not straightly connected with avoiding conflict in the forum. But what I find offensive on the part of Warrior Forum is that there were no explanations for which they could argue, "We had this in the terms and conditions." Then, there was no politeness even in the terms and conditions and also with this message.


You have been banned for the following reason:
Breaking the Forum Rules!

Date the ban will be lifted: Never


Why was there a strong disrespect for any individual who is banned and why is there no politeness, though warrior forum may be the most sought after by professionals.

Date the ban will be lifted: Never

Here, if I were to paraphrase this in a polite manner, I would say, "The ban cannot be lifted." Or, "We (would like to inform you that) will not lift the ban on you." These are more polite and any other way of expressing is also a possibility. But this is purely intended to be harsh. When they say, "Date the ban...." you will look forward to having the date. But then they are sadistic in making you disappointed in saying, "Never". I wonder what pleasure is derived out of it.

I had mistakenly entered my email address once on Locanto.in wile placing an ad and their message ran something like this, "Your email is banned for terms of use violation." I did not feel any offended with the subtle distinction of politeness in this message. Warrior Forum is not fully free of cost. Certain sections are available on payment and no refund will be made if there is a ban.


There was not any room for making an explanation or for asking them to repeal the ban. What is more hypocritical is that they encourage spammers who post ads like, "Earn $17000 within 2 hours!" How atrocious! Is anybody becoming Bill Gates by reading the spam thread? Good job Warrior (Forum)! Please argue by saying that it is up to the users to ignore them!"

It could be very blatantly apparent that Warrior Forum encourages Spammers with the intention of earning money than to encourage individual writers grow in stature. Warrior Forum knows best on where the money comes from. Warrior forum, from the beginning, was a "control freak" which could be observed from the rules they impose on you.

I am not fuming for I got banned but I am fuming about how unkind or inconsiderate they could be and in the name of being strict treat writers like thieves who burgled their forum. I agree that I made a mistake but wouldn't there be any chance given for me to explain? Won't the ban messages be more polite? Why was not there any option to know why I was banned and correct my mistakes?

Is this the way they treat the writers with whose contribution the warrior forum is growing or has grown? Is each and every writer dependent upon Warrior Forum to have their careers grow? Will writers become losers if they are not going to be in the forum? An open forum may be strict to avoid conflict but it cannot ruffle the feathers of its users for even the smallest of mistakes they make. I believe I have the "right to information" and I hope the Warrior Forum is aware of that.

Why does "Warrior Forum" deny me of the right to information and act sick? However, it is better if Warrior Forum recognizes the contribution of the millions of Forum Members it has banned. Warrior Forum may understand that it is with their contribution they have grown. If Warrior Forum is genuine enough, I hope they can give an explanation or at least address my grievances.

If Warrior Forum is going to wield its clout even further on me, let them "ban" me from blogging.

"To err is human: to forgive is also human; but to not forgive is ANIMAL!"

I hope Warrior Forum understands this!

"If rules are not right and humane, speaking the same rules over and over again is not reform; breaking or changing the rules is what is called a reform,"

I am deeply hurt by the behavior of Warrior Forum! Warrior Forum may at least consider giving an explanation, if writing could be a powerful tool. If Warrior Forum does not care about the grievances of the end-users, and if one user out of 6 billion is too negligible to be noticed, then Warrior Forum may right away ignore me.

Due to the indefinite ban, none of my posts nor my thread could be retrieved or reproduced!

I found these websites or blogs that are against the forum. You can look in for more details.

http://www.warriorforumsucks.com/2010/03/internet-marketing-warrior-forums-scams.html


http://selffundingbusiness.com/2010/03/more-unethical-warrior-forum-shenannigans-stay-away/



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10 comments:

  1. Dinesh,

    Thank you for your well written article about how the Warrior Forum limits the expression of writers while encouraging spammers and scammers.

    Chuck

    ReplyDelete
  2. Just a quick point to you - the "Date the Ban will be lifted: Never" is actually the wording used by the forum software and not their personal message.

    With vBulletin, the phrase used is "Date the ban will be lifted:" and then after that appears any length of time the moderator set. The in-built options are set to days, weeks, months and 'never'.

    It's not that they were being rude, all vBulletin forums use that exact same wording.

    I also wouldn't be holding your breath waiting for a reply from them, their attitude is that there are "far too many" issues to deal with to respond to everyone individually.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi,

    Chuck and Melani (whom I see in all warrior forum sucks campaign), thank you for the information. My lack of technical knowledge does me that. I was pretty ignorant of the forum or its ways in treating innocent marketers.

    I posted this thread straightaway after being banned. I did not even do a Google Search. I had remained a lot of the forum.

    Anyway, thank you for the information. And Chuck! Your articles have been great! If possible please tell me why Warrior Forum could not be sued by anybody or if they could not be called scammers.

    How is this going to end? I hope you are following up your comments by email. If possible, please answer me these. There must be someone who does something about this and there must not be any victims out there!

    Thank you guys for posting comments!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hi Dinesh,

    It is a very simple procedure for a forum moderator to set a time limit on a ban. That the Warrior Forum moderator banned you for life demonstrates a total lack of member support and services on the Warrior Forum.

    Anyone could sue the Warrior Forum. It doesn't mean you're going to win and it certainly isn't practical. It's their forum, so generally they can ban anyone they want.

    Paying members who were unjustly banned could sue the Warrior Forum in small claims court. These folks have actual damages (membership fees) and might win because the WF TOS is an agreement between the forum and its members. However, the time, expense and effort for even a small claims action hardly makes it worthwhile.

    The best way to respond to Warrior Forum's shenanigans is to spread the truth about them here and elsewhere on the web.

    In my opinion there are many scammers on the Warrior Forum. What's worse though is WF owner Allen Says and his incompetent moderators encourage and foster a welcoming environment for internet scam artists by suppressing freedom of speech.

    If a Warrior Forum member has been scammed on the WF, he is prohibited from challenging and exposing the WF scam artist. Should the victim try to fight back or warn other members, the Warrior Forum will censor and ban the scam victim while allowing the scam artist to continue stealing money from other unsuspecting WF members.

    The Warrior Forum is almost a complete waste of time. You won't miss it at all but you will have great fun spreading the news that the Warrior Forum is a cesspool of internet marketing excrement.

    ReplyDelete
  5. HI Chuck,

    I understand what you say. Well written and I particularly like the last line in your reply. The terms and conditions of Warrior Forum which we agree before signing up could easily bail them out.

    Scam artists are encouraged by the ambiguity or the abstractness in the implied terms and conditions on warrior forum besides which the elimination of evidences, posts, threads and the members also helps them.

    Of course, creating awareness on warrior forum's ways is better than legal action. Spreading awareness is the easiest and effective way of expressing our grief. This way potential members, who are looking for internet marketing forums, might very well gain knowledge of the warrior forum and avoid it.

    They can choose better forums than the warrior forum. I am afraid there could be no comparison of any good forum with the warrior forum. Those who get banned sense a lot subconsciously when they are in the warrior forum where they are bound to feel the lack of freedom of speech in the warrior forum.

    The moment any member logs out, he wants to express something, see something or reply to something on a thread, but when they log in the next time, they see that they are banned and that is when they realize that their freedom of speech has been suppressed.

    The next thing they do is to try the search engines with all the keywords related to "Warrior Forum". Almost all variations are tried by the members on the term "Warrior Forum".

    This has a strong potential to spread as word of mouth amidst internet marketers at least. I guess that is when our job begins - I mean spreading awareness! :-))

    ReplyDelete
  6. Dinesh, please don't think that I am unsympathetic; I, too, am a victim. However,you will have learned the hard way that it is important to read Terms of Service anywhere you encounter them if you intend to interact in any way with the publisher of the terms. As boring and tedious as it is to read them, it does give you the opportunity to decline participating if you don't like the terms.

    I think it's particularly important when you're reading TOS that aren't written in your native language. If you encounter something that you don't understand, you then have the opportunity to find out what it means before committing yourself to.

    You're not alone in doing this, you know. Everybody does it at some time, and I suspect that people who are reading in a language not their own are the worst offenders. Maybe we could all do a service to others by occasionally posting a reminder on our blogs that Terms of Service are there to be read.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hi Jo,

    I have read you in Ad hustlers as well. Let me tell you, English is not my mother tongue, but I am a writer and I write only in English not in my Mother Tongue Tamil though I would have written a few poems in Tamil.

    I was declined a job offer to be a writer in Tamil. But even before that I took to English writing and I have ghostwritten novels. So there is nothing that I cannot understand in English.

    My dear friend Chuck has mentioned the article as "well-written" and "excellent" in his comments area and he has linked back to my article.

    Being a Ghostwriting screenwriter, I work on the subtexts, metaphors, allegories etc. Being a journalist, I work on reading between the lines etc. Then, having been an English Teacher in my country for people of all sects, I have trained people in English, rural or village children to practice speaking English.

    Besides all these, I am not at all proud in saying that we Indians have the strongest Victorian and Elizabethan background in the world and we still do have strong British influences though bilateral trade and commerce have been linked with the United States of America over the past decade or so.

    The question is not about understanding English or the TOS of the Warrior Forum but it is about the blinding trust brought upon as we have used Yahoo, Gmail, MSN or any other genuine Email Service Providers and various other forums without getting banned once nor have we read the Terms of Conditions of the forums we have been in.

    The only mistake I confess to have made is "not reading". Our not getting banned in any other Social Networking Sites or Forums marks our integrity. But Warrior Forum was not going to determine my integrity being a minority in having me banned.

    I mean to say that those who have not banned me are the majority. Even my dear friend Chuck would like me guest write on his blog. And the ambiguity of the Terms or Service or the abstractness in them goes on to say that nothing cannot be concretely determined on scams, spams, errors, mistakes and violation.

    This does not mean that the warrior forum's Terms of Service is not understood. I would like to strongly assert that an illiterate in English cannot write articles, novels, screenplays etc. Imagine how we get loads of Ghostwriting projects from the native English speaking countries!

    Anyway, thank you very much for the reply! And also for your kind advice or suggestion!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Dinesh: I certainly think you are entitled to a response about our misunderstandings on your own blog, but to avoid any further problems, I am going to repeat exactly what I said on Ad Hustler rather than introduce any new comments that might lead to more understandings.

    "@Dinesh Babu. I cannot think how to reply to you; I am stunned to learn that I have offended and hurt you, and you have my most profound apologies for that. Nothing that I have said, either here or on your own blog, was meant to be unkind.

    Since this terrible misunderstanding has occurred, I feel that it might be best if you and I don’t engage in any further conversation. Clearly, we are just two people who simply don’t understand each other, and anything further almost surely would lead to yet more misunderstanding. Let’s don’t perpetuate this. At the very least, it is out of place on this thread and on someone else’s blog.

    Once more, please allow me to beg your pardon most sincerely and ask you to abandon your hurt feelings. Not one word I have said to you, anywhere and at any time, was meant to cause you any discomfort."

    ReplyDelete
  9. I feel sick of myself Jo. Last few days have been terrible for my business and that has been irking me to extents.

    Perhaps, you are not the one through whom I should vent my frustrations. What I mean is, when I hear somebody speak bad about me in my business circles, it turns out that whatever anyone else says is also interpreted in the same way.

    Now as I am slightly feeling better, I am able to find out how I have been over the last week. But I did not want you to be a victim but what really was misinterpreted was your stress on English Language.

    I responded by saying one does not need to be a native speaker to learn English. It is a kind of writer's pride and, being a writer, the one that I am bound to feel if someone takes a dig.

    By the way, I would like you to take a look at my Ezine articles:

    http://ezinearticles.com/?Philosophies?-One-Liners?-Quotes?-Humor?-Wits?&id=4038031

    http://ezinearticles.com/?Relative-Or-Absolute---Where-Am-I?-Oh-My!-I-Have-Been-Poor!&id=4057065

    Thank you very much for posting here "Jo". Thank you!

    ReplyDelete
  10. In order to keep your account there, you should lick asses and say every Internet marketing gurus are great. Also, the WSO forum is a total joke. The only person who makes money from it is Allen Says, the owner.

    ReplyDelete

Hi, this is a place to disagree with me! I know I am not perfect and not perfect more as a writer! I love to read those who disagree! Your voices are constantly heard by me! What you say will be listened to! I will personally and surely answer all your questions and responses!