This morning I made 2 posts: one to the new members introduction section and one to the classified forum. A few hours later they were both removed. I received a private message (I presume is about why the posts were removed) but I am unable to read it as I am a new member and do not have the required posting to enable private messaging. Can someone from the administration team kindly explain to me why my posts were removed or help me to learn the contents of the private message? Thank you in advance.

Dear Yakamoz,

Your profile doesn't have email enabled, so I couldn't post you an email. Since you are also a new user, your PMing is not yet enabled as we prefer to have members become regulars on the forum before being able to PM (avoids cyber-stalkers).

The reason why your posts were removed was because they did not seem to be in keeping with the community aspect of our forum.

The purpose of this site is not to recruit customers. We have removed your postings and ask that you read the mission statement of this forum.

If your intentions/personal history do not match the aims and intents of this forum, then perhaps this is not the place for you. It isn't a place to post ads before even becoming part of the community.

Thanks for your understanding.

Regards,
Pollyanna

You could you please let me know where I can find this mission statement? I read 'ExpatinTurkey.com Rules & Disclaimer' and all the other administrative-type posts I came across before posting and could not find a mission statement. Thanks.

Pretty much sums it up!

Also, I am wondering about an inconsistency in your logic for removing posts. I couldn't help but notice a few other posters in the Classifieds forum (namely robertc and bepush) who had directly posted there without participating in the forum first. I believed I may be providing welcome information on a service which is quite essential when one is an expatriate - namely learning the local language. If you can sell a car or rent a flat on this website, why not advertise about Turkish lessons?

dear yakamoz ... it is one thing to sell your car and another thing to use a site to advertise on some language courses!
see we love this site ... and the people responsible for it have the difficult job of keeping the site clean... and close to its purpose!

Merhaba!
When people get to know you better they will want you to help in Turkish without placing any adverts for lessons..Otherwise reason of joining this site will seem like hunting for students...

I am not trying to be stubborn, just hoping to understand the inconsistency in removing the posts. For example, denitsa (grand total of 2 posts) was allowed to advertise for her 'private violin and/or piano lessons' in the Classifieds forum. My classified ad was not a link to a language course, it was my offering private Turkish lessons. What is the difference in my offering private Turkish lessons on this site after only making a few posts and denitsa's offering private violin and/or piano lessons after only making a few posts? I am hoping the expatriate community in Istanbul has at least as much need to learn Turkish as they do violin and/or piano.

yakmoz for gods sake as far as I can see you are a very new member ... why don't you wait until we all now you better ... we had threads removed or split as well

I agree with Yamakoz here, I think that it does serve the purpose of this website for private language tutors to post a thread about their services. I think we should be careful about spammers and bigger institutions intruding but that doesn't appear to be the case here.

Starman/John/FD, can you please adjudicate over this and perhaps post clearer guidance so that this issue doesn't come up again?

Hi Yakamoz

I'm a moderator too on here like PollyAnna. We understand your issue and have asked the Administrators to clarify the policy.

Maybe you should repost a note in the Member Introductions - of a non-commercial nature - and tell us about yourself! I'd be interested to know about your high level of English in comparison to the actual English-speaking natives on this site

i'm backing simonb and yakamoz on this...looks more like some admin/mod has been too trigger happy (wouldn't be the first time)...walking a reasonable line is the goal here...not shooting down anyone you don't know

Yup, we will look at this again during the next few days.

However, the forum's title says it all: Social Forum for Expats in Turkey. It is not a classified listing site where anyone who feels like it can post details of their services or web sites.

We do not have a specific policy on advertising because until recently, there was no need. Unfortunately the success of this forum now means we have a regular procession of spammers, advertisers and western female hunting individuals to deal with. This is extremely time consuming and the vast majority of members will have been blissfully unaware of these people due to us deleting the posts and banning the individuals as quickly as possible.

In this respect yakamoz is fortunate. His advertisments were removed but his account was not deleted.

With regard to denitsa, this was an oversight and both posts have now been removed (we do miss the odd one here and there!). Robertc and bepush were both looking for accomodation and bepush very kindly posted details of one property available. Neither were making postings advertising services or web sites where they stood to make financial gain.

As I said, we will look at this again and make a decision on advertising over the next few days. Incidentally, another forum with a member base a bit further south than Istanbul has recently banned ALL advertising from its forum other than that by established members.

Whatever decision we make, it would be beneficial for us to hear the views of forum members. So, its over to you... what would you like us to do in order to protect the forum and its members from spammers, advertisors and western female hunting individuals?

JF
with his Admin hat on...

I feel that it should be a fairly simple formula: either members are expats, Turks married to expats or are Turks who've spent a significant period of time abroad and therefore perhaps emphasise more with the expats who live here. Anyone else (with the exception of certain established members who don't fall into the above categories) should be excluded.

If someone who is accepted into one of the foregoing categories is then in a position to provide a service to the other members e.g. Turkish language teachers, they should be allowed to post an advert in a dedicated forum. However at the first sign of spamming it's off you go.

As I mentioned to Starman a while ago, I think if possible it would be best to only grant access to the forum after an applicant has successfully completed a questionaire. In this way you should much more easily weed out the unwanteds.

The idea of someone filling in a questionaire is one that has gone back and forward several times, and each time we've decided against it.

Main reasons against include appearing too exclusive, time needed to vet applications and it then formalises what is a pretty laid back forum (some might disagree with that last claim )

Not saying we wont go there again, just that there are some solid reasons why we are not keen.

As regards advertising by established members, never been a problem with that. Thats what the classified section is for.

JF