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like to see providers that have their domains registered at least 3 years, newer provides need to go through Google or some other search engine. when they pass 2 or 3 years they should be accepted. this way it will be really hard to scum users.
I've had friends scummed by some Pakistani and Indian providers, they asked 25USD per year only to shutdown and run with the money within 2 months.
Banning potential deadpoolers sounds pre-event reactive and that's a bad idea. It's "pre-crime".
As much as I like researching the bad behaviors here, I don't think any ID requirements are going to fix anything.
Problem is, many of the bad actors here aren't doing their failures, misleading, etc. as sole actors. There are some minor one off actors, but much of the bad behavior is groups of folks 3-5 people who rotate in and out of companies, create shells, fake identities, etc. Those actors are often fairly involved in the same datacenters. When you see 100 offers out of the same "datacenter" it's time to start digging.
Now outing these actors here gets zero done. Chief seems to like the dirty money he derives from them. You can refer to the big ole fake identity issue that was shuttered and the screencap I posted in the Cess Pool post.
Biggest issue around here, there are too few end users who post and participate. The providers make up majority of the activity.
Couldn't have run far though!
There isn't one that I'd really consider.
The vast majority of the entries were head->desk worthy, and that's only the ones that Chief felt were worth my time to audit through.
As mentioned before, the gap from 1st to 2nd place was huge. The 2nd place pick (Chief required I picked 2 just to see how Tim & I lined up) was just your standard run of the mill Solus/cheapo CC plans and hope to make it big in the LE market.
There's a lot of those already and it isn't going to slow down for a bit longer.
Francisco
yes
You say if you launched today, you'd be deadpool in 6 months. Ergo, you don't have a plan.
imbalanced comparison. Love or hate it, WHT has it's rules and quite rightly if you are going to have rules then you should enforce them otherwise what's their point, if you don't like them you don't need to be there. It is also a business and there is a very clear who's who over there in terms of management and they are accessible. Hitting the report button and telling them why gets pretty good results I find. And WHT is a much more useful resource.
LET does not appear to have many rules and depending on which way the wind is blowing is how you are more likely to understand how things work around here, no 2 situations are always treated the same and I don't mean that in a good way. The management are not accessible here and that causes much frustration but of course it provides a more open forum for some discussions, mainly drama and some intrigue.
TLDR;
For your web hosting related needs, LET/LEB for cheap VPS and Drama, WHT for everything else.
Fixed :P
At some point it's going to come out that no one who oversees WHT even likes WHT. It's got more scammers in 2 months than this place has in a year, far more drama just more civilized and passive aggressive, far more (more, not higher) quality offerings as well to be fair.
This hunting of suspicious hosts was mostly community driven process through commenting offers not LEB policy. When we discovered something suspicious we exposed it. Simple.
I remember only one case when LEA said that he won't post offers. That was in case of notorious Dann Fry - but this was more exception not general rule because this site orientation wasn't market place for sharing "special offers" but introduction of new hosts, great deals, etc... and of course commenting them.
Complete orientation of LEB/LET as such? Move from LEB host offers introduction to mass market place for (mostly) known hosts with new and new "special offers"?
@jarland - I agree however the scale is quite different so you will naturally get more Drama and scammers, it is more reserved and I have had my share of infractions and suspensions over the last 10 years.
Makes no difference where you go, in this industry with no regulation or control the scammers will take advantage just as the summer hosts will start to take control of the streets soon.
+1 for WHT being a Cesspool. There are however multitudes of real folks, good conversations and all of varying levels. It too suffers from way too much activity by providers compared to general buying public.
As a percentage of fraud, who knows which site has more. Both have too many problems.
But, I'll say it again, look at WHT VPS offers and CC's network is probably < 10% compared to here often nearing 50%. What does that prove? Proves the LET/LEB is heavily manipulated and centered around one provider that has token top placement and as I've alleged special pull. I was banned for saying this and claiming Chief give special treatment to them... So.... Yeah... Ban me and I'll come back like the sellers do
LET/LEB is far more 'click' oriented. 3-5 person operators behind oodles of front companies. WHT has same thing, but most people have different brands for totally different services (i.e. 1 company for dedicated hosting, another for VPS, etc.).
Good solution would be to limit the offers on a per datacenter level within 90 days... Would make the mafias around here have to involve new folks, other datacenters, etc. We'll end up with same run around whack-a-mole issue, but when caught staging these companies, the bans and enforcement should be spectacular.
If you are writing a blog about startups I am sure you know how much preparation really matters, not just "have a plan".
Creating a plan is not difficult, it is how much you are willing to put mini-steps in to make sure you get to where your plan set you to be.
Anyways, this is my business and this is my startup, just like I have no interests in attacking all the stuff you have wrote on your startup blog, I do not think you have any rights nor interests to attack mine. Particularly since we are discussing about something completely irrelevant. Fair enough?
@jarland I prefer WHT to most of the members here, just a total different attitude and approach to everything. WHT also is a good learning ground aswell as there is plenty of more experienced individuals on there so lots to read. If we could clean out the riff raff here then I'm sure this forum would be just as good.
Having been a member here too many months... It's only recently that what LET previously was, a small community based forum instead it's now a play ground for all the banned WHT members that have nothing better to do.
I think he meant "banned retarded WHT sellers"
@Jacob I don't say this often but I am impressed. Seriously.
I think I worded it pretty good, and considering I'm falling asleep kickin' some ass on battlefield.
World peace is next on the list guys! > . >
http://www.lowendbox.com/blog/how-do-you-tell-a-provider-is-dodgy/
url from old thread for our younger LEB/LET members
On-topic: I wouldn't ban any "potential deadpooler" because we're here to discuss about.
There is, I vote Gabe@ioflood for next president!
Pfff... vote down!
http://www.crime-research.org/news/19.09.2008/3583/
How you know it's time to move on: You spend your days posting on an Internet forum talking about how it used to be.
Targeted to no one and everyone.
@jarland - I like spending my days on internet forums talking to young boys about how it used to be.
Dr. Jarland, Psy.D? :P
@jarland It's 12:16AM, what else do I have better to do at this time. :P
@jarland It's 1:18AM, what else do I have better to do at this time. :P
I think partly how CC operates is really making it a newbie friendly business - Cost is low (sometimes I really think they are selling at cost) and the TOS is relatively less restrictive compare to other providers.
Again, not saying what you've claimed is completely wrong, but just saying things like this might have contributed to such effect, even though the mods here may not voluntarily want to post a disproportional number of CC offers.
No doubt @zhuanyi. They price the network low, so low that that have to eat crow about it. No Gogent bandwidth, and now Gogent and XO (blech). Let the cost cutting begin! Love the routing to Choopa in NJ from Buffalo now:
Telia --> Level3 Chicago --> Cogent NY --> Level3 NY --> finally into Choopa.
I didn't know Chicago was between Buffalo and NYC.
Something going on with bunch of companies offering out Buffalo. HVH clearly changed business and selling CC dedicated with no support at CC cost. Others have special offers pushed on here in past from CC directly --- not me saying it --- has been documented by others.
If price were the sole issue for these summer hosts, we'd see 1000 VPS companies on here out of FDC.
Just saying.
Boy you guys have some messed up communist clocks. It's 6:30pm here.
Buffalo backhauls a lot of traffic it can't handle to Chicago interestingly enough is why.
Because Chicago is better connected
back at the issue at hand, I am against any banning of any offer that meets the criteria to be posted.
As ppl said:
1. You are not forced to buy;
2. 7 $ is not the end of the world, even in countries where 200 is the average wage;
3. The community does a pretty good job at spotting dodgy offers, who is still buying without reading the comments or even ToS/AUP deserves it, to be honest.
Sure, offers with dodgy licenses or hidden whois/quarters locations, which lie about hardware, link, whatever, should not be posted, after all, we may be tolerant with kids, but it is not like we should encourage scammers quite like that.
TL;DR, leave it like this, if anything, post more offers.
On the other aspect, I agree here are more providers (it is evident from the way some try to fight the market instead of offering what the customers want), but you see, some consumers turned providers or joined some after a while. I am always thinking as a consumer and try to push uncle towards what i like, I am more the voice of consumers with a provider than a provider trying to make quick sale and squeeze a couple of bucks from some innocent victim.
Also, there are some consumers which alternate between consumer status and provider status while others are both in the same time.