cpaptalk.com Spam Policy

Greetings,

The rise is popularity of CPAP boards has put us on the spammer radar screen.

Currently, Ted and I share spam clean up duty. We've added another admin with the power to clean it up. This is your community, if you value it, then defend it with action. Please use the "this is spam" link when you see it and we will delete it as soon as possible.

For as long as I can hang on, cpaptalk will remain a place that is free. I believe this is critical because it allows YOU the CPAPer to ask the questions and get the answers you need. This in turn sets cpaptalk.com over and above other CPAP boards because we place you ahead of the whims of internal policy or of DME backers. As the admin, I win when I help you. I believe my actions and decisions are doing just that.

What are we willing to do to keep this place free? Well, it starts by us hand cleaning spam in order to prevent a unnecessarily restrictive or confusing spam prevention system. It also means you shouldn't HAVE to register in order to ask questions or get help. Yes, abuses can and do occur but in the end I believe the pros of this philosophy far outweigh the cons.

I do not think that any tool released standard with phpBB will be effective as the first thing spammers do is write tools to overcome standard security features. I think that a custom, non-standard "Check This If You Are A Human" box or equivalent may indeed be effective against registration spam, since spammers can't factor for non-standard modifications. We will most likely be adding this to the registration page in a few days.

We've increased staff to watch this. We'll be watching for your spam reports. We'll be creating a custom registration blockers. Guests are free to post because this is about helping people and new users are guests.

I welcome comments and discussion.

Johnny

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CPAPopedia Keywords Contained In This Post (Click For Definition): CPAP, DME, Power, clean

Johnny and all,

Thank you for all your efforts.
This IS the best forum of its type on the Internet (IMHO).
We'll also try our best to help you keep the "bad guys" out.

Best wishes,

Den

This forum has really been essential in helping me to sort out my OSA. I appreciate all work in keeping this forum up and running.

Johnny,
May God bless you in your endeavor to keep this site free from mis-use so that it can serve it's intended purpose by offering the support and encouragement that each of us have needed from time to time to cope and be successful in our treatment for a "new way of sleeping."
Thanks to each of you that work "behind the scenes" and to all the ones that have posted and shared their experiences which has certainly taken a lot of bumps out of the road for me and I will always be grateful that I found this forum.

Best wishes to all of you.

Ditto!

Grateful doesn't even seem to be a good enough word for this forum. And believe me, I shopped around when I got diagnosed, scouring the websites looking for chat groups etc. Many seemed very restrictive in the content, and being a healthcare professional myself, I am not offended or annoyed by patients that want to learn about their health problems and ask questions or quote things to me they learned from web sites or books. I encourage patients to be their own advocates.

And seeing the post the other day from Amigo, about getting the hand slap for posting some advice on pressure levels, was IMO an insult. Noone on this forum is incinuating that anybody should sidestep their physcians' advice or recommendations and blindly treat themselves, but honestly, my own Primary care doctor doesn't know a blessed thing about CPAP. and getting an appointment to see the sleep specialist in the next 2 months is a joke, they dont have any openings.

This forum is a godsend. If it wasn't for the people on it and the administrators keeping it free and available to anyone, I was able to learn a lot about different machines and learned that it was essential to get software to help follow my treatment. Thank you everyone both members and the administrators and Johnny for such a great place.

Suzy

forumadmin wrote:What are we willing to do to keep this place free? Well, it starts by us hand cleaning spam in order to prevent a unnecessarily restrictive or confusing spam prevention system.

In a word:

As annoying as the spam can be, the benefits and generosity of this site far outweigh the negative. It can get infuriating at times to see the amount of spam that seems to be finding its way to this site, but we must remain loyal to a place that has given so much to us.

If there's anything else we, as members, can do to help this war on the spammers, I'm sure I speak for most of us when I say let us know and we'll spring into action. Thanks for making this the best place for the treatment and awareness of OSA issues. Your efforts do not go unnoticed.

This forum and all your efforts are much appreciated! If there is anything that I can do to be of assistance, let me know.

Do we get a $1 reward for each spam post we turn in? Shoot, I may just post spam myself and then turn myself in!

Forum is great as you moderators already know, and surely you realize the help you are to people that post here. It's like we're all 1 big fam... ~tear~

Keep up the great work!

too late Swordz, I already turned you in