Should we make more of SellersAskSellers private?

Site Feedback
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Is this a reason the SAS forum should consider locking up most of its discussion groups?

Marilyn

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Hi @ickynicks and all SellersAskSellers–

I moved this question to its own topic because it’s interesting and more of a Site Feedback question than its previous topic. I know we staff ( @Pepper_Thine_Angus @Tallytony @VTR and me @papy ) have our own thoughts, but we are interested in hearing from the community, after a year “live”.

As a reminder, the following categories are already private to only logged-in SellersAskSellers members at this time:

OPs can always post in a private space, or ask mods to move a topic to a private space after posting.

ETA: The issue in question on the original post was that a service provider (which we don’t allow on SellersAskSellers) has created more than one fake account to try to spam our community on behalf of their business and for SEO purposes. The spamming has been quickly caught and deleted from view each time.

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As a former forum owner and admin of 12 years with over 2,000 members, I can say you aren’t going to stop all of this - ever. Going private with everything or almost everything severely limits your growth and attracting new members. If that’s not your goal, that’s fine, but I don’t think it will accomplish what you may think it will.

You guys do a fantastic job of keeping trash out of this forum. It’s admirable really. I was never able to keep ALL the spam out of mine even with software in place and many mods keeping their eyes out for stuff like that. My vote is leave it alone, but that’s just my opinion and you know what they say about those. LOL

-Ana

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Agree with Ana. I assume if we see something fishy we can/should just report it to the Admins? You all are so on top of things, I have no worries. I saw a long post from a new poster recommending a manufacturer the other day - it was clearly spam and it was gone very quickly (I think - I haven’t seen it since!).

ETA: Clicked on the original link and yup, that was it!

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Seems to me like we have a pretty good balance. For private stuff (which we all know is never 100% private), we have the locked categories; perhaps there might be reason to add another, but I can’t think of any. And the rest IMO needs to maintain some level of visibility, so that those who need us stand a chance of finding us.

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I agree with Picks by Nisha above – I thinks we have a good balance. And this forum does support private messages.

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I say open it all up, let them lurk

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Yes, please! Flag it, and it gets to the first of us who can do something about it.

We don’t see everything immediately, and flags help us so much.

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I generally agree with the comments above, but would suggest getting just a tad more aggresive about making certain discussions private, such as New choices for FBA Ship to Amazon. In the case of that thread, for example, precisely because we’re sharing ideas on how to counter the never-ending Amazon hurdles and actually trying to turn them around for our benefit, I’d say we don’t want to share such valuable knowledge with bad actors.

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Threads can me moved into private. If in doubt ask on the thread! We are not Amazon, we actually take feedback and do things!

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So did Amazon, at one time.
When Congress starts investigating SAS for antitrust over its awesomeness monopoly, we will see if you still read our flags ;p

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At that point you can contact my lawyer, JarJar!

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Gone to the Dark Side, you have.

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I would say no just on the basis that this isn’t a private forum. Anyone can register for it. Even anything posted in a “SAS confidential” thread should be treated as if it’s being posted publicly.

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I understand the SAS mission to be able to throw a public life raft to struggling NFSE’ers, but discussions about specific bad actors or proposed legal defense strategies such as @Tried_Tested should not be viewable and accessible to Amazon staff.

Marilyn

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If @Tried_Tested wants their topic taken private we are more then happy to do so.

So far the idea was get the info out there. I know there have been MANY PM’s going on behind the scenes also for things that are not of public consumption. Your right that it may have changed, but that is TT’s cal

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If Amazon staff wanted to reg an account here without identifying themselves they could do so too. You have the right to be anonymous here since it’s not linked to your seller account or anything else.

If TT actually goes to arbitration, then any strategy discussion would be strictly between him and his attorney until it’s over. Right now the discussion is just pointing out the obvious things that Amazon has access to on their side. And discussion about what the letter to legal should look like is fine, since they’re receiving the letter regardless. It’s not like their legal team is going to spend time reading hearsay on the internet, and say they should handle the case differently as a result.

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TT Has requested we make the thread private, I have done so!

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