Spammer, moi?

[j_c_hallgren]

As one of the moderators on another forum, I "feel your pain" - but -

As someone who has used your site strictly as a consumer (non-registered) for many years and who is also a similar loyal user of a software product that hasn't had a free vers for years, when a free vers becomes available, it was important to us fans of XY (as we call it) to have at least one comment with some more details about that on your site to offest some of the negative comments that were already here...so thus two of us totally independantly registered and tried to do so...and both of us ran afoul of spam filters for reasons we couldn't understand...

As you may note, I did not post the text of the comment I was attempting to post here as I felt that was unneeded since I was discussing the spam/filter issue..plus I felt that might be called spam...Now had either of us been successful in posting a comment (that ended up being similar with NO coordination between us), I'm quite sure the other would have been satisfied...at least I certainly would have been.

Every site has their own rules and procedures and I certainly wish to be one who follows those -but- I also see your site as having two distinct parts/sides: Reviews/comments -and- forum. And I'd used only the review/comment side as a reader/viewer before so that's why I wished to provide an update there as a software user only (BTW, neither of us have any financial interest in XY as we're both paid users only) since I felt your forum side was a bit less visible (based on my own experience).

Note that I refained from posting here at all until it was suggested via PM that I do so...and now that Enternal has created a thread on forum about XY Free, I have little reason to add to that (unless he said something incorrect)...but I would still appreciate having some more details posted as comments to address the prior negative ones by other users...because the simple announcement of it being available by George G doesn't do so, ok?

Thanks!

Addendum: here's one possible solution that may satisfy y'all here and us as XY fans and that would be to clean up the XY Free forum thread of the spam discussion as stated there and then have a simple link posted to that thread from the XY review/comment side by one of your existing users...that would keep it to one post and yet provide a means for readers of comments only to find the slighly hidden forum side.

[Anupam]

I understand the need to inform users about XYplorerFree being available after 7 years. Yes, for those you use and like XYplorerFree, I agree that's an exciting news. For fans of XYplorer too, that's an exciting news. We understand that. It's not that we are preventing any comments about XYplorerFree from being posted, the spam filter is somehow creating a problem, and you have been telling us about it, and we are looking into it. So, patience is required.

You keep saying that posting about XYplorerFree is required to offset the negative comments about it. Which negative comments are there? I just scoured the File Manager review looking for negative comments about XYplorerFree, and there are very less comments about the product itself, and an only negative comment, which was recent, but that too, it was about the older version, of 7 years ago, which had some limitations. Of course, you would expect negative comment for that.

Also, the category editor is George.J, and not George G as you keep writing. George.J has himself posted about XYplorerFree being updated, and you can be sure that soon he will post his views about it in the review, in due time, when he has had the chance to review it. So, again, please have patience.

As for the posting of comments, you can try posting again, and if you are still unsuccessful, please start a new thread in this forum section about it, with the exact content that you are trying post, and we will look into it. But, again, please have patience, as issues can take time to resolve.

As for the possible solution, thanks for your suggestion, we will do what we deem best.

The forum side is not hidden at all, and it's evident from the many threads and posts that are here on the forum. But yes, the reviews and comments are the more popular feature of this site, which is what this site is mainly about.

We again repeat that any kind of unnecessary promotion about a product will be seen as spam, so be careful not to do that. We have had "fans" of some products here before, and if it starts turning into a promotion with multiple postings and all, we will have no choice but to delete the comments/posts. A fair warning from our side.

[Enternal9]

Just to note, j_c_hallgren and a few others of us wanted to post about the update to XYplorerFree but agreed that whoever posts it first is good enough. I attempted to do it since I had free time. But because of my issue with the spam filter which I posted to their forum, j_c_hallgreen and possibly others also joined to try to update it independently hoping to not run foul of the filter with no success. This is why we have multiple people trying to post about XYplorer. This is important because it seems that the moderators here all think that we are trying to post multiple updates about XYplorerFree to Gizmo's Freeware which is not true if my post had went through smoothly, but it did not. Hence the "urge" said by MidnightCowboy, from users wanting to post about XYplorerFree.

On an extra note, the tech support from Mollum after I submitted the issue about false positives have replied:

Hello,

Thank you for letting us know about the abnormal spam-flagging behavior that you were experiencing. Modifications have been made to the spam protection algorithm, that was too aggressive and resulted in the blocking of legitimate content. We believe these adjustments should address the problem. If you continue to experience problems with legitimate content being blocked, please let us know.

Thanks,
- John Orlandella

Hopefully it is better now. Block legitimate spam and allow legitimate comments.

Also yes George.J heh. When I PM him about the new update, he replied quickly about it so I don't doubt he will get the review about it done some time. Just wanted to make sure that he knows about it considering within a month, we had 2 major releases with FreeCommander XE and XYplorerFree being revived.

[Anupam]

Did you people consider that trying to register with multiple ID on the site just to post about XYplorerFree, and trying to post repeatedly about it, might actually be making the matter worse? Because of a sudden rush to post about the product, and MC having to deal with it, it looked like some kind of spamming was going on. Also, repeatedly posting about it, and the spam filter blocking it... it might actually be making it more tougher for the comments to go through, since spam filter might be taking it as repeated attempt to spam.

Thanks for letting us know about the communication with Mollom, that's appreciated. This is what I was guessing too, that Mollom might have updated to use aggressive blocking. Let's hope that this will not be the case now.

While we understand that this is a thing to be excited about, but sometimes over-excitedness can be a cause of trouble too. So, calm down your horses a bit, to put it on a lighter note.

And of course George.J knows about the update. He was the one to post about it in the comments!

[Enternal9]

Originally Posted by Anupam

Did you people consider that trying to register with multiple ID on the site just to post about XYplorerFree, and trying to post repeatedly about it, might actually be making the matter worse? Because of a sudden rush to post about the product, and MC having to deal with it, it looked like some kind of spamming was going on. Also, repeatedly posting about it, and the spam filter blocking it... it might actually be making it more tougher for the comments to go through, since spam filter might be taking it as repeated attempt to spam.

Thanks for letting us know about the communication with Mollom, that's appreciated. This is what I was guessing too, that Mollom might have updated to use aggressive blocking. Let's hope that this will not be the case now.

While we understand that this is a thing to be excited about, but sometimes over-excitedness can be a cause of trouble too. So, calm down your horses a bit, to put it on a lighter note.

And of course George.J knows about the update. He was the one to post about it in the comments!

Lol! It did not cross our mind. So yes we need to calm a bit down. We were so excited, then got too frustrated, and consequently we have this problem that took this long to resolve.

George.J knows about it because I PMed him. He posted that comment after I PMed him earlier in the day after finally creating this account since my earlier account got banned since the name shared with a malware site. He was quite excited by the news too haha.

[Enternal9]

However, posting about the spam filter issue here, in the same thread, and in the same post is not appreciated at all.

You have already posted about the spam filter issue here:

Spammer, moi?

MidnightCowboy has been addressing the issue with you and other members too, since the time it has been informed about. Then what is the need to post again and again about it, specially in this way. If you are posting about XYplorerFree, keep the content on that topic.. why mix it with spam filter issue.

Yes, you may say that the above thread was closed earlier, and that you couldn't post there, so you posted here. Please understand that the above thread was closed because you and other members were already having discussions with MC on this issue in the PMs. Posting about the issue on the above thread was only overlapping it, and achieving no purpose. Therefore, the thread had to be closed. If you are having a problem, we understand, and we are working to solve it, then a bit of patience is required for the issue to be solved.

Also, if you had issues in the past, why didn't you post about it to any of the moderators, or site staff, at that time, like you are posting now. Someone would have looked in to the issue that time itself. All you had to do was make someone in the staff aware of it.

It's a request that please post content in the proper area of the forum only. We will be editing out the content regarding spam filter from your post, in a day or two, and I will also delete this post of mine then. Please do not reply to this post of mine here. Let this thread be about XYplorerFree.

Sorry about this. I wasn't sure what to do because MignightCowboy in his PM told me I can start a new thread about an explain it so I wasn't clear about it whether I start two separate threads or a thread with 2 topics at the same time. I did not post in the past probably because I was young and stupid? I was a freshman in high school during that period. Anyways, I removed the spam issue from it and post it here for the records:

"I'm now wondering why this desperate urge from different people to post more comments about XYplorer?" -MidnightCowboy

Lol! Well, it's not really an urge to be exact. Actually all I wanted was to post that message above but then the spam filter got really annoying and harsh. As a result, it's kind of like a forbidden fruit thing. The spam filter is trying to prevent us from posting (for whatever reason) and therefore I got quite upset about it and keep trying to find ways to post.

But that leads to another problem. As I have said before, I used to have an account here in the past. During that time, I also encountered a lot of issues whenever it comes to posting as I keep triggering the filter even for simple questions or asking for help. I then "left" the community (well I still read the articles here) as I cannot always sitting around fighting the filter when I'm trying to post something.

If posting here is such a hard thing, I always thought of how many potential contributors you may have lost over the years due to that spam filter. Like you said, spam filter are necessary and I fully agree yet why is this particular one such a problem?

And besides, Gizmo's freeware is where I learned about XYplorer in the first place and as a result, when I learned that XYplorerFree is finally offered again, of course I will be very happy to tell everyone about it since it's a really good software just like FreeCommander XE (which I'm now a fan with their new release) and Q-Dir.

Just to note, because of the spam filter issue, I actually PM George.J himeself to let him know about the update which he then made a post on in his article comments and is in the current process of reviewing. It's just not fair that I still cannot post anything there without triggering the filter.

EDIT: Uhh... I cannot edit my original message in that thread. Can you clean that up then?

[j_c_hallgren]

Just wanted to say for the record that I only attempted to post a "comment" one time and that being my very first attempt here, so when it didn't work, my followup has been more about that issue which I perceived as being unusual...While I certainly can't control what other XY fans do by themselves (except on OUR forum), if he/they have offended y'all, I'm sorry...and while I'm try to be patient, I'm also maybe spoiled because we often have responses to posts/issues on our side within a very short time so now think other sites act likewise.

As I hope you've noted, I have not anywhere here publically posted what I thought would be the one and only "comment" needed to followup/enhance to George's initial note about the release nor have I attemped to post it again as comment...I guess in hindsight some of us consumers of your site should have been registered all along so we would have had some history here but I (for one) was caught off-guard (SHOCKED is more like it!) by Don's sudden creation of a new free vers which I never expected based on his history, so thus having previously tried to get XY some publicity a nbr of yrs ago, thought it was time to do so again.

Now as to negative prior comments...Ok, maybe that was not ideal or perfect terminology to use but the one specific entry that I was addressing was this:
'ichabod on 11. November 2013 - 23:24 (112183)
XYplorerFree seems to be showing its age, although that might be an advantage for anyone who shares the preferences expressed by Snowman123. Using it on a Win8 box, it didn't recognize the Library "folders" and gave me a tedious hourglass when I connected a camera to a USB port. Has anyone else had that experience?"
And what I was actually doing was trying to give info that these specific issues about product may also exist in the new vers and are being addressed but don't expect that every prior glitch is resolved yet.

As a side note, the prior vers was more known by name "XYplorer Free" but now has no space so it's "XYplorerFree" and thus we'd appreciate if that small distinction is kept in mind.

[sicknero]

Looks like I can post in the main site again. Thank you if somone sorted that out for me.

Reading Anupam's comment about the spam filter jumping on people making a lot of comments about one peice of software, I have posted quite a bit lately about FreeCommander so maybe that's how I ran foul of the filter.

[Anupam]

Originally Posted by sicknero

Reading Anupam's comment about the spam filter jumping on people making a lot of comments about one peice of software, I have posted quite a bit lately about FreeCommander so maybe that's how I ran foul of the filter.

Mollom was being too aggressive, that's why you weren't able to post probably. It's good to know you can post now .

And no, I don't think that's the reason that the spam filter prevented you from posting.

My point was that, comments about XYplorer were being blocked by the spam filter already. So, if you repeatedly attempt to post about something which is already blocked by spam filter, then it's bound to create more problems IMO. Don't know however for sure if the comments were blocked because of XYplorer in it, or for some other reason. Would seem really odd, if it was because of mention of XYplorer.

[Anupam]

j_c_hallgren, yes, I was referring to that comment, which you posted. Such desperateness to reply to one "negative" comment? That sounds odd to me.

And you guys have really created a mess in these past two days, just trying to post a comment about XYplorerFree, trying to "publicize" about it.

You guys have been hijacking different threads to post about your issues. Mixing posts, posting in PMs as well as in threads, etc. MC says that many people registered just to post about the product, and he was getting barrage of complaints then, about not being able to post, just about XYplorerFree. When someone is already looking into the problem, this is really making it even harder, and it's only messing it up more. He has spent a whole lot of time yesterday, just trying to deal with the emails and complaints. In other words, you guys really made a mess.

All that for what, just to post one comment about XYplorerFree? That's ridiculous. It's not even THAT big of a software to get so much of attention. It's just a free version of a commercial software, with its own limitations, and there are better freeware out there than it.

Also, you say that XY fans are trying to post independently. Independently yes, but I don't think the efforts are not un-coordinated. I think all this was coordinated, just to promote and publicize about the product. This is just typical fanboy attitude, and this does not work on our site and forum.

And now, this topic about XYplorer is just getting stale, and getting too much attention than required. And it wasn't a fault on our side, it was because of aggressive filtering from Mollom. We are here to provide a service to the people, yes, but we are not here to provide a platform to fanboys and people who try to make a mess just to promote a product.

Add to that, despite MC sending links to the forum rules, Enternal9 just goes ahead and posts about commercial software twice, on a site dedicated to freeware, as a result of which he is now banned. Called it on himself.

If this is continued, we will even decide not to feature the product in the review at all. We have done this in the past with several products whose fanboys tried to achieve a similar thing, and we will do this again, if needed.