Final Warning Regarding Referral Link Abuse

Allowing readers to post their referral links on dedicated posts has long been the bane of my existence. There is a small minority of readers that has decided that taking advantage of this and posting their links multiple times under different e-mail addresses and usernames is a good use of their time. Some readers decide to share their links where ever they want. This is a warning to all readers that you need to do the following:

  • Only post your links once per household, sorry no multiples.
  • Make sure you follow the rules in each individual posts and only post your referral links in posts that specifically state it’s allowed
  • Don’t offer any form of incentive for using your referral links. It would be great if this worked, but in practice it doesn’t as it’s impossible to police and we end up with both parties saying they didn’t get what’s promised.

If readers continue to abuse these rules we will be banning their IP address from leaving any comments and removing any and all referral links they have previously posted. If abuse continues to happen the simple solution is that we will no longer allow anybody to share their links at all and the community will be worse because of it. I’d also like to remind readers to taking a few minutes when selecting a link to use and try to select a reader that you recognize, that makes useful comments on the site. You can view their posting history by clicking the ‘i’ button next to their name. If all readers did this then people trying to game the system simply wouldn’t get any referrals and they would be wasting their time. Sadly this is not the case.

I’d also like to thank the 99% of readers that do the right thing and follow the rules and the readers that help us call out others that are abusing the rules.

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132 Comments
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CNS1280
CNS1280 (@guest_596987)
May 19, 2018 11:14

I’m with the group saying just ban referral links.

SteveH
SteveH (@guest_596393)
May 17, 2018 20:53

As a policing mechanism, you can use the Chrome extension Link Grabber to quickly grab all the links on the page and it will highlight duplicate links. For example, I can quickly see that there are 3 duplicate referral links in the comments of the Chime thread.

SteveH
SteveH (@guest_596899)
May 18, 2018 23:36

It doesn’t show only duplicate links but if you use the substring filter option, you can filter out just the referral links and see the dups there.

Frogger
Frogger (@guest_596373)
May 17, 2018 20:13

Unless the referral link gives higher bonus than publically available I don’t see point of refferal links. I say eliminate them.

JASON
JASON (@guest_596279)
May 17, 2018 18:58

Which post? the CHIME one?

JuicyJosh
JuicyJosh (@guest_596236)
May 17, 2018 17:53

Are you taunting? Why do you persist with this. Sure banning IP isn’t fool proof but DoC busted you with I assume IP match. Some people make honest mistakes or are simply unaware but you are intentionally taking these actions. For those unaware LC/Jessica/Kelsi is almost certainly the reason for this post. Pure selfish greed.

sTEVE
sTEVE (@guest_596210)
May 17, 2018 17:12

+1

Ace Malik
Ace Malik (@guest_596198)
May 17, 2018 16:57

While i do feel a conga type referral situation is best, i have to agree that using a link from somebody who is recognizable is more appropriate

Essentially that will exclude me because i dont post very often, but why should i be rewarded for not providing useful information

Ace Malik
Ace Malik (@guest_596197)
May 17, 2018 16:55

Personally i dont think a warning is even necessary, a lack of integrity should be enough

This site is essentially free and people want to abuse it

justintime
justintime (@guest_596187)
May 17, 2018 16:30

i think referrals in general do more harm than good to sites. Look at /r/churning. Everything gets downvoted to hell because of the karma requirements, asking a question will most likely get you minus karma. I think referrals with the exception of things like Incredible Bank (where it’s necessary) should be outright not allowed and then referrals for everything else that needs them should ban spammers, etc.