“Everybody” isn’t in charge of this board-the owners, administrators and moderators are. You have no more authority in deciding what is spam on this message board than I do.
I wasn’t too terribly bothered by this, although I agree that some eyebrows were uplifted.
When I saw that there were several separate threads there (in MPSIMS), I began running out of eyebrows to uplift. I only have so many eyebrows.
So far, everyone in this thread has been tip-toeing around the real issue: Nobody needs to care (much) if this happens occasionally (meaning, rarely), but what prevents this from becoming more frequent? I don’t think anybody here will get real happy if we start seeing a lot of this outside El Mercado.
The present case might have been handled better if all those separate job threads stayed in Marketplace, with possible ONE thread (at most) in MPSIMS calling attention to it, with a link. But even that could get tiresome if it begins to happen frequently.
The policy explained by the mods, above, doesn’t seem to prevent that. Maybe it’s sufficiently okay that this simply doesn’t happen much, even if it hypothetically could. Maybe it’s the kind of situation where we might all be most comfortable with few bureaucratic rules and regulations, as long as it doesn’t, in actual fact, get out of hand.
Somebody has a job they’re looking to fill. We have people here looking for a job. The OP isn’t trying to get money from anyone here or trying to drive traffic to his or her website, which is what spammers are looking to do.
And if you don’t want to read the post, you can ignore it – just as you ignore dozens of other posts you’re not interested in.
Spam is identified by a lack of authorization on the recipients end. The fact that someone may have authorized sending it is fairly irrelevant.
I don’t get this at all.
You don’t want to help a Doper out? That’s pretty cold blooded. And not at all in the spirit of this place, which has a long history of Dopers helping other Dopers, people looking out for one another.
If you don’t like the idea of someone turning to the Doper community to hire, they don’t read the postings.
We’ve always been more than happy to allow users on this site to post jobs they need filled/assignments they’d like to pay someone to do. If a member of the community would prefer to profit another member of the community, how is that a bad thing?
It’s a community service. We do other community things too, again to the benefit of others. You’re not obligated to participate or even to read, you can just skip over them if you don’t like them.
I seriously doubt that there’s hidden spam on this site – or any spam at all – in the wake of someone offering a useful, helpful thing. Spammers don’t work like that. And if you thought they did, you could always report it, you know.
We tell people to state up front they were given permission to do these things that they do – that is to tell you that it’s not spam. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone lie about it. I have seen people make these offers/requests without clearing it with us first; we handle those situations on a case by case basis. Even so, they are rare.
The “spirit” of this place is decidedly non-commercial discussion of often esoteric and otherwise interesting topics.
Even so, maybe one such thread might be acceptable. The guy could list whatever jobs he has available in that one thread, which really ought to be restricted to the Marketplace forum. At the moment, there are three threads by the same poster in MPSIMS advertising different jobs. That’s at least two threads too many.
And I don’t get why none of the mods/admins seem to get it that this is spam. I’m seriously baffled.
There’s nothing at all cold-hearted about asking that this sort of thing be restricted to the marketplace forum. That’s what it’s for. It certainly wouldn’t be keeping the ads away from any doper looking for a job.
Some dopers may be short of cash and need to sell things. Is it cold-hearted to keep their posts out of MPSIMS too?
I don’t think anyone here would have a problem if these want ads were placed in the marketplace where they belonged.
ETA:
Spam in this context just means unwanted advertising. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything malicious. Maybe this is the reason you don’t get why it’s being called spam.
I think one possible issue here is the tacit request by the mods to the userbase to trust them not to approve this kind of thing “too often,” and to come down hard on people who post jobs because they assume it’s generally okay.
Perhaps how you react to this depends on how much you trust that tacit request.
It’s three different jobs with three different sets of requirements.
You don’t have to look at any of them.
We don’t get threads like this every day or every other day. It’s actually a pretty rare occurrence.
This has not been a problem. It’s not been a problem in the past and it’s not going to be a problem going forward. It’s just something that occasionally happens.
And you don’t have to allow them to clutter up a purportedly non-commercial forum, but for some inexplicable reason you are. Those threads should be restricted to the Marketplace. The only reason not to restrict them to that forum is a tacit admission that the Marketplace is a dead forum that isn’t drawing flies, and should be removed because it was a bad idea to start with, and surely that can’t be the case, can it?
People often post “I’m looking for work in such-and-such area” so why not “I have a job in such-and-such area”?
I’m baffled that anybody would complain about this. A Doper is trying to help fellow Dopers find work. Hell, I’d suggest that posts like this shouldn’t even require mod approval in the first place.
But, and with my apologies to Onomatopoeia, an old friend, it’s a POWERPOINT specialist. I though it was a Doper goal to wipe out Powerpoint, and you’re encouraging it? 
It may be spam (I disagree) but it’s authorized spam. Get over it. As has been mentioned several times, this is a very rare happening, so MPSIMS is the logical place to put it because that’s where the traffic is. Marketplace barely gets more traffic than The Barn House (Still love ya, Ed!). But I see they’ve been moved and will tell my wife about the pharma copy editor gig.
That’s their entire point, It was authorized when people didn’t want it authorized. And “get over it” is the opposite of a good argument. It’s practically an admission that something was wrong, as, otherwise, there’s nothing to get over.
And, I wish people would stop trying to characterize this as a Doper merely trying to help other Dopers find work. That would be acceptable. This is a Doper leveraging the popularity of the Dope in order to find applicants for a job. The difference is in who benefits from the filling of the job.
By this logic, all an advertiser is trying to do is inform you of their product. That’s ridiculous. They don’t want to help you out. They want to sell things. The Doper in question doesn’t want to help out fellow Dopers out of the goodness of his heart. He wants to find people for a set of jobs he needs filled. It’s advertising.
And advertising goes in the Marketplace. The fact that it’s so slowly moving is an asset–that means more people are likely to see what you’ve posted on the front page. It’s not going to be buried by other threads.
If anything, having it in MPSIMS makes people not read it: they will just assume it is spam and that it’s going to be deleted. In the Marketplace, we know it’s legit since only members can post new topics there.
I mean, I wouldn’t have even opened this thread had I not noticed multiple replies on it. It’s just a horrible spammy title. My first thought was actually about how bad the spam was. “Who in the world needs a PowerPoint specialist in this day and age?” I thought. “Doesn’t everybody have to know how to use PowerPoint these days?”
If anything, this thread probably helped Onomatapeia out, since now more people can see his thread. I sure missed it in MPSIMS, but there’s no way I can miss it now, since it’s on the forum front page.
I’d actually suggest that approved posts from non-members be moved to the Marketplace so we know they are legit. That’s a lot better than them just saying they got approval. That’s like that PayPal Survey scam that tells you to email PayPal to see if it’s legit. It makes you not want to check.
Thanks for the positive post, but prior approval on almost anything of this type is required.
Jesus, plus one, like, etc. Why is this a problem at all? What’s the big deal? (Although I do think that mod approval should be asked, and that it should be confined to marketplace, with maybe one thread in MPSIMS linking to the forum. But really I could not care less.)
Me, neither. It’s almost as if people go out of their way to find things to be offended about. And it doesn’t only benefit Onomatopoeia. It’s mutually beneficial. As has been noted, there are always Dopers who can use jobs. They benefit even if only getting a lead on one. I’m baffled that people don’t see this and react as if their email accounts have been flooded.
If this is spam, then why’s it not listing the Viagra price?
I don’t have a problem with this sort of thing at all. We’re allowed to promote charities in the Marketplace forum, so why not a job … as long as it’s from a known member and has received approval? I would think any objection would be more with the cross-forum postings than with any perceived spamness of the post/thread. But I don’t see any harm in making the odd exception, and I hardly think this is going to open the door to a flood of advertising.
Another vote for no issues with this at all. When I first seen the posts I smiled thinking how many bright dopers would be sending in resumes and the resulting Pit thread about how Doper A got the job over Doper B 