Product Marked As Spam

[Eowyn Southmoor]

I think his comment regarding "x box" is actually referring to the old X-street or whatever it was called years ago.

Regarding keywords though, maybe I am confused but how do people manage to see these in listings?  When I create a listing, there's a section where i can put in keywords, but as I understand it, these words are to help people find your product - they aren't actually shown within your listing. 

Is this a case of the OP placing keywords in the listing itself rather than just in the keyword section? Just curious

[Love Zhaoying]

6 minutes ago, Eowyn Southmoor said:

Is this a case of the OP placing keywords in the listing itself rather than just in the keyword section? Just curious

I second this question! I had not noticed keywords in listing for awhile (if they were ever there). So, I went to the OP's listings and looked and could not find keywords.

Maybe the answer will be, keywords are there but we just can't see them..

[Paul Hexem]

57 minutes ago, Eowyn Southmoor said:

I think his comment regarding "x box" is actually referring to the old X-street or whatever it was called years ago.

Regarding keywords though, maybe I am confused but how do people manage to see these in listings?  When I create a listing, there's a section where i can put in keywords, but as I understand it, these words are to help people find your product - they aren't actually shown within your listing. 

Is this a case of the OP placing keywords in the listing itself rather than just in the keyword section? Just curious

 

49 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I second this question! I had not noticed keywords in listing for awhile (if they were ever there). So, I went to the OP's listings and looked and could not find keywords.

Maybe the answer will be, keywords are there but we just can't see them..

They're shown in the page HTML code, and you can get browser addons to display them

Edited November 16, 2023 by Paul Hexem

[Love Zhaoying]

9 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

They're shown in the page HTML code, and you can get browser addons to display them

I had guessed that possibility, should have put my guess down on "virtual paper"!

Do you agree that Keywords USED to be shown in listings? I could be mis-dismembering it.

[Luna Bliss]

Right click on the page and choose 'view page source' to see keywords.

 

[Alwin Alcott]

1 hour ago, Eowyn Southmoor said:

I think his comment regarding "x box" is actually referring to the old X-street or whatever it was called years ago.

Regarding keywords though, maybe I am confused but how do people manage to see these in listings?  When I create a listing, there's a section where i can put in keywords, but as I understand it, these words are to help people find your product - they aren't actually shown within your listing. 

Is this a case of the OP placing keywords in the listing itself rather than just in the keyword section? Just curious

keyword spamming is 99/100 done in the hidden section, but quite easy to find them, and after that report it.

[Luna Bliss]

18 hours ago, Paul Hexem said:

18 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Hey! It's not nice to make fun of entitled people.

Actually, it wasn't just a jab. Had LL been more proactive about this problem, this giant problem on their platform that they apparently put real effort into ignoring until they get multiple reports, then more people wouldn't be surprised by it later when something finally does get done.

Yeah...to a degree I feel as you do...that LL should put real effort into dealing with keyword spam. Instead they've actually outsourced the responsibility to residents. It saves them money, sure, but at what cost to the community -- backstabbing merchants who are excessively competitive report each other, disgruntled customers report merchants in retaliation.  Even here you could see the mean-spiritedness via the OP getting even more of his stuff reported and taken down after forumites saw he was annoyed and apparently wanted to annoy him even further.

On the one hand, as a resident I'm willing to put in the effort to police the keyword spam -- it benefits those trying to find items on the MP -- it benefits me.  But again, at what cost to the community where this is being used as basically a griefing tool.

Edited November 16, 2023 by Luna Bliss

[Paul Hexem]

1 hour ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I had guessed that possibility, should have put my guess down on "virtual paper"!

Do you agree that Keywords USED to be shown in listings? I could be mis-dismembering it.

I don't recall that.

17 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

Yeah...to a degree I feel as you do...that LL should put real effort into dealing with keyword spam. Instead they've actually outsourced the responsibility to residents. It saves them money, sure, but at what cost to the community -- backstabbing merchants who are excessively competitive report each other, disgruntled customers report merchants in retaliation.  Even here you could see the mean-spiritedness via the OP getting even more of his stuff reported and taken down after forumites saw he was annoyed and apparently wanted to annoy him even further.

On the one hand, as a resident I'm willing to put in the effort to police the keyword spam -- it benefits those trying to find items on the MP -- it benefits me.  But again, at what cost to the community where this is being used as basically a griefing tool.

Outsourcing rule enforcement means the rules get enforced inconsistently at best. You wind up with situations like this thread, or worse situations where a single person reports a single violation and nothing gets done, which gives the impression that for some people the rules don't apply. Or you see entire stores in violation and you don't want to spend the next two days taking time off from work to go through all the listings, knowing LL won't pay you for your time...

The whole system is bad.

[Love Zhaoying]

9 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

Outsourcing rule enforcement means the rules get enforced inconsistently at best. You wind up with situations like this thread, or worse situations where a single person reports a single violation and nothing gets done, which gives the impression that for some people the rules don't apply. Or you see entire stores in violation and you don't want to spend the next two days taking time off from work to go through all the listings, knowing LL won't pay you for your time...

The whole system is bad.

AI and even "search" has come a long way in 20 years (yes, I know MP is  < 20 years old).

My point is, LL COULD build a better "mostly automatic" system.

"Bunch of keywords" + "keywords SEEM unrelated" = Warning to user

User ignores warning for multiple entries = trigger a review by a human

Report from user on Keyword spam = trigger warning + review by a human

 

[Alwin Alcott]

56 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

My point is, LL COULD build a better "mostly automatic" system.

they could, but always refused, and if we go to long about it somebody gets mad.

[Love Zhaoying]

5 minutes ago, Alwin Alcott said:

they could, but always refused, and if we go to long about it somebody gets mad.

Hmm, interesting.  I suppose that I missed the "refused" part, although "let the buyer beware" etc. makes sense.

The fact that LL DOES take action on reports of "Keyword Spam" means this is "different" than a "resident-to-resident dispute", or a "copyright infrintement complaint".

[Alwin Alcott]

Just now, Love Zhaoying said:

Hmm, interesting.  I suppose that I missed the "refused" part

it's asked dozens of times in the past. Always waved away with it's residents task. 
Paid to run the business, not to maintain it.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

5 hours ago, Eowyn Southmoor said:

I think his comment regarding "x box" is actually referring to the old X-street or whatever it was called years ago.

Regarding keywords though, maybe I am confused but how do people manage to see these in listings?  When I create a listing, there's a section where i can put in keywords, but as I understand it, these words are to help people find your product - they aren't actually shown within your listing. 

Is this a case of the OP placing keywords in the listing itself rather than just in the keyword section? Just curious

There's a whole bunch of "hidden" data in the page that's just not visible by default.

[Love Zhaoying]

46 minutes ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

There's a whole bunch of "hidden" data in the page that's just not visible by default.

That's cool, I just went to "page source" and search "keywords".

 

[Prokofy Neva]

On 11/14/2023 at 6:34 PM, LittleMe Jewell said:

Relist, paying special attention to all keywords and make sure they really are applicable to the product.  

Keyword spamming is a major nuisance to us shoppers because it results in all sorts of unrelated crap popping up in response to our searches.  I report products all the time for keyword spamming when I get a bunch of pages of unrelated stuff in a search.  My guess is that your product was returned for an unrelated search and thus was reported.

I'm not sure you can re-list a product when it is removed this way. Can you? I haven't had that experience but I only sell a few things. 

I do wonder why you don't get a second chance -- if they permanently delist you for one offense. So I'd like to clarify that.

[LittleMe Jewell]

48 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

I'm not sure you can re-list a product when it is removed this way. Can you? I haven't had that experience but I only sell a few things. 

I do wonder why you don't get a second chance -- if they permanently delist you for one offense. So I'd like to clarify that.

I assumed it was possible - that the product would not be permanently banned for spamming keywords.  Unless LL removed the store entirely due to many infractions.

[InnerCity Elf]

Just saying, but even though, as a market place user, I detest keyword spamming, I didn't check the merchant's listings, nor did I report anything, and while there may have been one or more forumites who did, once the platform got a report by a disgruntled marketplace user (or even did a random check itself, by the way) about one or more listings with keyword spamming, the probability that the same merchant has more of them simply is super high, so, they might look deeper, and not necessarily all on the same day. 

[Phil Deakins]

On 11/16/2023 at 2:32 PM, Luna Bliss said:

Even here you could see the mean-spiritedness via the OP getting even more of his stuff reported and taken down after forumites saw he was annoyed and apparently wanted to annoy him even further.

It may not have been forum users who reported the spam. Dakota Linden gave a 'thanks' to the 5th post in the thread - Wulfie's post that pointed out keyword spam in the OP's MP products - so it may have been staff who dealt with it. I'd guess that's what happened.

[Love Zhaoying]

1 hour ago, Phil Deakins said:

It may not have been forum users who reported the spam. Dakota Linden gave a 'thanks' to the 5th post in the thread - Wulfie's post that pointed out keyword spam in the OP's MP products - so it may have been staff who dealt with it. I'd guess that's what happened.

Agreed, imagining Forumites gleefully reporting someone's MP appears to be some kind of projection.

[Luna Bliss]

6 hours ago, Phil Deakins said:

On 11/16/2023 at 8:32 AM, Luna Bliss said:

Even here you could see the mean-spiritedness via the OP getting even more of his stuff reported and taken down after forumites saw he was annoyed and apparently wanted to annoy him even further.

It may not have been forum users who reported the spam. Dakota Linden gave a 'thanks' to the 5th post in the thread - Wulfie's post that pointed out keyword spam in the OP's MP products - so it may have been staff who dealt with it. I'd guess that's what happened.

Well, Phil, I guess we'll never know unless someone fesses up to flagging a good percentage of his MP merchandise.

The only thing I do know is that this was not a good outcome. Not good because LL loses out on a bit of income from his rent payments and a cut of his store sales, and not good because our OP went self-destructive and will be losing out on being a store owner/merchant (apparently that provided some satisfaction to him) as well as losing out on the money earned from doing so.

Both you and I, as store owners, are also customer support people and I'm sure we have ideas about how customer support is best handled.
Unfortunately, quite often a forum is not a good place to get support issues resolved, and I wish he would have just opened up a support ticket instead.

[Alwin Alcott]

6 hours ago, Phil Deakins said:

so it may have been staff who dealt with it. I'd guess that's what happened.

that would be new, they never acted before unless there was a report.

[Polenth Yue]

30 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

Both you and I, as store owners, are also customer support people and I'm sure we have ideas about how customer support is best handled.

Unfortunately, quite often a forum is not a good place to get support issues resolved, and I wish he would have just opened up a support ticket instead.

A support ticket would have resulted in all the products being taken down, because they'd have checked them and seen the keyword spam. The point of raising the spam issue here was so the original poster could get the remaining listings fixed before anyone official checked. It's very likely that the other products were already in the queue to check, so the only way to save them was to get those keywords edited fast.

I haven't had this issue so much with the marketplace here, but I know on POD sites, I've had listings saved because someone warned others that certain keywords were getting products deleted (usually because of a weird copyright/trademark claim). The point to take away isn't that forum people are evil meanies who will report all your stuff and destroy your dreams. It's that when you're given a warning about something that breaks the rules, you've got to sort it out quickly. Realise that most other merchants are trying to help you when they explain why a product was deleted or why other products will be deleted.

[Luna Bliss]

38 minutes ago, Polenth Yue said:

1 hour ago, Luna Bliss said:

Both you and I, as store owners, are also customer support people and I'm sure we have ideas about how customer support is best handled.

Unfortunately, quite often a forum is not a good place to get support issues resolved, and I wish he would have just opened up a support ticket instead.

A support ticket would have resulted in all the products being taken down, because they'd have checked them and seen the keyword spam. The point of raising the spam issue here was so the original poster could get the remaining listings fixed before anyone official checked. It's very likely that the other products were already in the queue to check, so the only way to save them was to get those keywords edited fast.

I haven't had this issue so much with the marketplace here, but I know on POD sites, I've had listings saved because someone warned others that certain keywords were getting products deleted (usually because of a weird copyright/trademark claim). The point to take away isn't that forum people are evil meanies who will report all your stuff and destroy your dreams. It's that when you're given a warning about something that breaks the rules, you've got to sort it out quickly. Realise that most other merchants are trying to help you when they explain why a product was deleted or why other products will be deleted.

It's possible that if our OP had only submitted a ticket for the listing that poofed then support would have informed him about keyword problems in that specific listing and his other listings would not have been reviewed.  And...after he learned of his mistakes he would have gone on to correct the other faulty listings.

That's what I'd do as a customer support employee.  I would not hastily check every other listing and take them down if found to be in error, and further disturb my customer. I'd assume that the customer lacked knowledge and, once having that knowledge, would correct any mistakes. I'd assume he was acting in good faith. After all, if the customer was truly trying to cheat the system with spamming would he even open a support ticket??  It's obvious he simply did not know he broke any rules.

Edited November 29, 2023 by Luna Bliss

[Luna Bliss]

37 minutes ago, Polenth Yue said:

The point of raising the spam issue here was so the original poster could get the remaining listings fixed before anyone official checked. It's very likely that the other products were already in the queue to check, so the only way to save them was to get those keywords edited fast.

How do you know for sure what the point was (for raising all the additional listings with bad keywords)?  I don't see that the point was so he could get them "edited fast" before any official checked them.  I only saw that his mistakes were pointed out and he was advised to correct them. I don't have a problem with someone bringing this up -- I just don't see that the reasoning you have here is accurate, as we aren't inside anybody else's head.

Edited November 29, 2023 by Luna Bliss

[Polenth Yue]

1 hour ago, Luna Bliss said:

How do you know for sure what the point was (for raising all the additional listings with bad keywords)?  I don't see that the point was so he could get them "edited fast" before any official checked them.  I only saw that his mistakes were pointed out and he was advised to correct them. I don't have a problem with someone bringing this up -- I just don't see that the reasoning you have here is accurate, as we aren't inside anybody else's head.

I'm a cynical person, but there isn't realistically much to gain in someone answering thread after thread of help questions on a random internet forum. That means the most likely explanation in this scenario for why someone seems to be trying to help is that they're actually trying to help. Which means they aren't going to offer advice and then quickly report someone in the hopes that there won't be time to follow the advice.

You're defending a support system that's already shown that they delete as their first action, to say that they wouldn't do that. Yet the people here are assumed to have the worst intentions without evidence. I don't need to hear your reasoning on why you do that, but it's not going to fly with me.