I think Spondoolies did somewhat cause the spam by giving away so many of their miners under the condition that a review was to be made for the device. I really don't see it causing that much harm though as each thread is not going to cause that much of a distraction and they will probably quickly die/fade away.
It probably would have been more appropriate for Spondoolies to have the reviews be made in the "main" thread and then they could quote the review in the OP or 2nd/3rd reserved page
Consolidation into a single thread (SPT had a couple to choose from) would have been the smart and right thing to do.
If the other manufactures don't do it then ya it was completely harmless (unless you care about SPT spending money to advertise here and the forum not getting paid for it, which some do and some don't).
If all of a sudden other manufactures start to do it to compete it will detract from the readability of the Hardware forum IMO.Which is why it needs to be stopped, now. It would be entirely unfair to allow this episode to continue and NOT let a further one by a different manufacturer continue.
There is also the issue that mod's that actively decide what is allowed and not are involved in this (and potentially future) giveaways. SS received a unit from the main giveaway and CK rightly from a cgminer perspective. At what point does it simply become a bribe in order to circumvent otherwise 'accepted' standards? [This is an entirely theoretical question, I'm not suggesting that's what happened here. But seriously, what if every admin was targeted in a giveaway, such that no one wants to actually stop the obvious spam?]
Dogie and the rest ..
While I find dogie's guides not technical enough to
read respond to them, they should be consolidated too ..
I don't see a reason for dogie's individual reviews remaining out there as posted and MY review (if any) should be made part of any other one's thread.
In the screen capture above I actually ran through all the reviews I found and try to understand how steep is the learning curve for all legendary and hero members involved. I "bumped them" so that I can track user interest and response time for each of them.
With the Christmas around the corner, try think of giving something to the community without impersonating the forum staff. If you feel threatened in one way or the other, report my posts. The moderators do a nice job altogether .. and while I did not post too much since I joined in 2012, I read most of the forum members output. We all play by the rules ..
