Classifieds are no longer available. Forum threatened.

[windfind]

Hi Gang,

Sorry to announce that we have shut down our Classified Section.

For years there has been no practical way we can insure that crooks are not cheating our customers using our Classifieds and the problem is worsening.

Ideally, everyone would verify all the details about a prospective buyer but it is clear that most of our customers are trusting of other "windsurfers" and get burned.

Recently this situation has become worse as spammers join IW. or IK then place plausible sounding forum posts commenting with a post or providing "helpful" information.

It is obvious these spammers are trying to establish a forum history so they seem like a trustworthy west coast windsurfer or kiteboarder whom our customers are more likely to trust in a classified transaction.

We are working on a forum solution but in the meantime, you can recognize spammers since their date of joining is just a few days old.

Please don't respond to them since that just doubles our time deleting messages.

Very very few of our customers use the forums but we know the forums are important to those customers and we don't want to also close down the forums because of these spammers.

Lastly, please refrain from attacking your fellow windsurfers and kiters in the forum. Deleting those posts just adds to our work on a service that brings in no income. Plus several of our most colorful posters are getting very close to the threshold of being banned from the forums for attacks and we would hate to lose them.

Thanks,

Mike Godsey
Weatherflow

[evanwambeke]

Why not just limit the forum and classifieds to paying members? No spammer is going to go through the trouble to get a payed membership. Seems a pretty simple temporary solution.

Also, look at sites like tennis warehouse, they've had a forums and classifieds as long as IW and its a robust ongoing community of users.

[windfind]

The issue is that sailflow, fishweather, windalert, etc. etc have very large free user bases that use us for all our free public domain sensors worldwide. That brings in ad revenue.

But we are working on a similar approach that will make it much more difficult for spammers to make posts. And frankly, without the Classifieds there is little incentive for them to make fake useful posts.

Mike

[H2OJoe]

Message deleted.

[isobars]

... or to help people.

[H2OJoe]

Message deleted

[NOVAAN]

I think most of us old farts try to pass on useful information. We do it to try to help people who ask questions. And most do it in a positive and honest way

[isobars]

Even "respected persons" are not infallible. I've seen and successfully refuted at length some truly bad -- some of them outright violations of the laws of physics -- advice from pros in WSing, dirt bike, and meteorology magazines.

Just one example was the dirt bike magazine editor and racer whose article on how we control a motorcycle's airborne attitude (nose up/down) mid-jump violated two laws of physics. He claimed that the front wheel became heavier when slowed by braking and that its heavier weight dropped the nose in midair. BS and BS; it's all about rotational inertia, not falling bodies.

[jse]

[isobars]