- Joined
- Aug 14, 2009
- Messages
- 27,395
It's incredibly irritating to read, it screws up your links, and it's WAY too aggressive for what is advertised as a CONSUMER forum.
Yes, there are vendors that are near and dear to many PSers' hearts, and that pay to support and be advertised by the forum. But If I type a post that references WhiteFlash, it will look like I am marketing for WhiteFlash, whether or not that is true. As a consumer who has nothing to gain financially from posting on PS, I do not want to appear to be marketing WF unless I openly state as such - and I'm happy to do that when I want to by typing out their website.
Frankly, from a new-consumer's perspective, I think this feature must be a huge turnoff - for a place advertised as a 'consumer forum' it is all too obvious that certain vendors stand to benefit from "consumer" references more than others - and those consumers lose credibility by appearing to favour certain vendors, and the PS forum loses credibility as being first and foremost about diamond consumers. It is obvious that PS endorses certain companies - there is a list in plain print under the Resources tab, this does not need to be made intrusively explicit.
And if I type a post that references Wells Fargo by acronym, it will look like I am marketing for WhiteFlash - which just ridicules the feature.
If the objective is to make clear to new members what the acronyms most often mean, a list on the homepage that we can link to or a dropdown menu in the tabs on the top of the page or under Resources would be more than sufficient.
Yes, there are vendors that are near and dear to many PSers' hearts, and that pay to support and be advertised by the forum. But If I type a post that references WhiteFlash, it will look like I am marketing for WhiteFlash, whether or not that is true. As a consumer who has nothing to gain financially from posting on PS, I do not want to appear to be marketing WF unless I openly state as such - and I'm happy to do that when I want to by typing out their website.
Frankly, from a new-consumer's perspective, I think this feature must be a huge turnoff - for a place advertised as a 'consumer forum' it is all too obvious that certain vendors stand to benefit from "consumer" references more than others - and those consumers lose credibility by appearing to favour certain vendors, and the PS forum loses credibility as being first and foremost about diamond consumers. It is obvious that PS endorses certain companies - there is a list in plain print under the Resources tab, this does not need to be made intrusively explicit.
And if I type a post that references Wells Fargo by acronym, it will look like I am marketing for WhiteFlash - which just ridicules the feature.
If the objective is to make clear to new members what the acronyms most often mean, a list on the homepage that we can link to or a dropdown menu in the tabs on the top of the page or under Resources would be more than sufficient.