300MB "Movie" that is actually a 75MB clip with 275MB of "image.rar"

[behemoth]

Exactly. The integrity of our smut must be upheld or we are just another spam-bucket!

[Jenny48549]

Originally Posted by behemoth

I reported this as suggested. Here is a perfect example: http://vintage-erotica-forum.com/sho...&postcount=236 A 252MB download for a 43MB clip. The balance consists of 2 .jpg files of 106MB each (unviewable).

Originally Posted by SexObjex

This has been reported to section mods, at least by me. I'm not sure what they're waiting on, the biggest offender is in the Christy Canyon and Peter North threads.

Originally Posted by SexObjex

He's back at it again this morning in both of those threads. Both have been reported. I'm not sure what more is expected of us here, or why VEF moderators reading this thread are unable to take action themselves on such transparently abusive behavior.

Originally Posted by behemoth

Exactly. The integrity of our smut must be upheld or we are just another spam-bucket!

The situation is being addressed at this time.

Please remember, all staff at this forum (including myself) are unpaid volunteers who have lives outside of this forum (real jobs, family, etc.) We are not able to be on this forum 24x7 due to other commitments so please have some patience and give us time to get things resolved.

Thanks

[a435843]

Originally Posted by behemoth

I reported this as suggested. Here is a perfect example: http://vintage-erotica-forum.com/sho...&postcount=236 A 252MB download for a 43MB clip. The balance consists of 2 .jpg files of 106MB each (unviewable).

Originally Posted by captpike

One was called out in a thread but that post was removed and the user still posts clips that are under 80 megs but are a 300 meg download

Originally Posted by Jenny48549

The situation is being addressed at this time.

Please remember, all staff at this forum (including myself) are unpaid volunteers who have lives outside of this forum (real jobs, family, etc.) We are not able to be on this forum 24x7 due to other commitments so please have some patience and give us time to get things resolved.

Thank you, CaptPike & Bohemoth, for pointing this one out somewhere here. I posted a complaint about this particular file, I believe, in the Christy Canyon thread, in order to warn other members, and the post get deleted, but the poster just keeps on f'ing posting this crap.

So mods, I'm the a-hole?! You have to be f'ing kidding me!

When mods do this, it not only makes it appear as though that VEF approves of this sort of behavior, but it also appears as though the mods are supporting both this behavior and the posters. Ultimately, the deletion of my post is an abusive interpretation of forum rules, that hurts the members and the reputation of the forum.

[keefriff]

Originally Posted by a435843

Thank you, CaptPike & Bohemoth, for pointing this one out somewhere here. I posted a complaint about this particular file, I believe, in the Christy Canyon thread, in order to warn other members, and the post get deleted, but the poster just keeps on f'ing posting this crap.

So mods, I'm the a-hole?! You have to be f'ing kidding me!

When mods do this, it not only makes it appear as though that VEF approves of this sort of behavior, but it also appears as though the mods are supporting both this behavior and the posters. Ultimately, the deletion of my post is an abusive interpretation of forum rules, that hurts the members and the reputation of the forum.

Who called you an asshole? If everyone who had a post removed was an asshole, we would have more of them then the complete Buttman series multiplied by 1000. Everyone gets posts removed. It is not personal.

As many have already advised, the best way to alert Mods to problems or issues is to use the Reported Post function. Posting a complaint or an issue in a model thread will always get removed. It has nothing to do with favoring one poster over another.

Jenny mentioned this earlier, we are volunteers here and members as well. We do not have unlimited time to spend on VEF. That also means we have an even more limited time to just be a member and browse. So please understand that our response is not always going to be as fast as everyone would like. Such is life.

This issue was brought to our attention two-three days ago. As Mods we had to go and DL some of his movies to confirm what was going on. We DO NOT download every clip posted on this forum. We rely on members to alert us to problems. Therefore, three days ago was when we found out about these padded files. We have now addressed the issue with the poster/s and we are waiting to see what his response will be. Just because the posts were not removed or addressed on the forum explicitly, does not mean action has not been taken. If you would like further explanation about any issue you could always PM a section Mod.

We do not condone this behavior and have asked for changes and recourse by the member/s in question. We are waiting for their response and subsequent actions or non-actions. If it doesn't adhere to what we required then I suspect that more serious repercussions are coming his way. This issue is being handled. I just ask you to have a little patience as we try and resolve it.

[SexObjex]

This guy appears to have gotten his act together and cut out the file padding. Thanks to the mods for stepping in and being fair to all involved.

[a435843]

Originally Posted by keefriff

As many have already advised, the best way to alert Mods to problems or issues is to use the Reported Post function. Posting a complaint or an issue in a model thread will always get removed. It has nothing to do with favoring one poster over another.

Jenny mentioned this earlier, we are volunteers here and members as well. We do not have unlimited time to spend on VEF. That also means we have an even more limited time to just be a member and browse. So please understand that our response is not always going to be as fast as everyone would like. Such is life.

This issue was brought to our attention two-three days ago. As Mods we had to go and DL some of his movies to confirm what was going on. We DO NOT download every clip posted on this forum. We rely on members to alert us to problems. Therefore, three days ago was when we found out about these padded files. We have now addressed the issue with the poster/s and we are waiting to see what his response will be. Just because the posts were not removed or addressed on the forum explicitly, does not mean action has not been taken. If you would like further explanation about any issue you could always PM a section Mod.

We do not condone this behavior and have asked for changes and recourse by the member/s in question. We are waiting for their response and subsequent actions or non-actions. If it doesn't adhere to what we required then I suspect that more serious repercussions are coming his way. This issue is being handled. I just ask you to have a little patience as we try and resolve it.

Sorry, a lot of people still have DSL, and have to be very selective in their downloading. It is not an abuse of the forum to warn members about a particular user's abuse of the forum, simply by stating the facts about a particular .rar file, and allowing other members to decide whether they wish to blow a day on downloading spam, while the mod process continues.

As I said previously in this thread, posted .rar's should include a manifest, so that members can see what's in a file before losing an entire evening screwing around with spam. If this is deemed to be an excessive burden to the poster (which it isn't), then members should be allowed to post a "warning buoy", so to speak, posting the manifest of that .rar file, especially if said file is 87% spam. This warning buoy can be deleted after the mod process, which is time-consuming, I understand, has been completed, and the offending file links have been removed.

It would also be nice if a poster could be "suspended", not allowed to publicly post, only private message with the mods, until the mod process has completed. This did not happen in this case, as this abusive poster just kept chugging along after my post was dropped, however, I also understand that the forum software many not allow for that feature, so this is probably a better suggestion for the developers.

Let's say that a flat-out virus, like a cryptovirus, gets included in a .rar file, and a member gets infected and loses hundreds, or thousands of dollars worth of data, or blackmail money. Then, that member posts, "Hey, don't download that!", do you mean to tell me that that post will be deleted, so that other members can go through that same hell, during the mod process? That's why I say that this interpretation of forum rules is abusive to members. Also, that's the prime purpose of using a public forum, for many users, like myself, that there is "peer review" of what is uploaded.

This is why, IMHO, the deletion of my post was personally abusive to me, as a member, and as a poster, primarily to the tech support threads. I know uploaders, in general, have to be treated with kid gloves, from unfortunate previous experience, but the lack of policy in this area makes this forum less than useless.

[rotobott]

It could have been handled better, thats for sure, the perps seem to have broken numerous rules and still carried on regardless.

I remember getting an infraction within 2 hours when rapidshare put an s at the end of http when I posted a video. The good old days

[MrInBetween]

Originally Posted by a435843

Sorry, a lot of people still have DSL, and have to be very selective in their downloading. It is not an abuse of the forum to warn members about a particular user's abuse of the forum, simply by stating the facts about a particular .rar file, and allowing other members to decide whether they wish to blow a day on downloading spam, while the mod process continues.

As I said previously in this thread, posted .rar's should include a manifest, so that members can see what's in a file before losing an entire evening screwing around with spam. If this is deemed to be an excessive burden to the poster (which it isn't), then members should be allowed to post a "warning buoy", so to speak, posting the manifest of that .rar file, especially if said file is 87% spam. This warning buoy can be deleted after the mod process, which is time-consuming, I understand, has been completed, and the offending file links have been removed.

It would also be nice if a poster could be "suspended", not allowed to publicly post, only private message with the mods, until the mod process has completed. This did not happen in this case, as this abusive poster just kept chugging along after my post was dropped, however, I also understand that the forum software many not allow for that feature, so this is probably a better suggestion for the developers.

Let's say that a flat-out virus, like a cryptovirus, gets included in a .rar file, and a member gets infected and loses hundreds, or thousands of dollars worth of data, or blackmail money. Then, that member posts, "Hey, don't download that!", do you mean to tell me that that post will be deleted, so that other members can go through that same hell, during the mod process? That's why I say that this interpretation of forum rules is abusive to members. Also, that's the prime purpose of using a public forum, for many users, like myself, that there is "peer review" of what is uploaded.

This is why, IMHO, the deletion of my post was personally abusive to me, as a member, and as a poster, primarily to the tech support threads. I know uploaders, in general, have to be treated with kid gloves, from unfortunate previous experience, but the lack of policy in this area makes this forum less than useless.

Before I became a mod myself, I vaguely imagined them all as sitting round in a call centre, ready to respond immediately to incoming messages. I used to wonder what had gone wrong if they didn't come up with a solution quickly to a problem I'd given them. Now I realise the reality of the situation. The forum is very large and the number of moderators very small by comparison. The mod that I contacted might not be able to take the time out of their own life to come to the forum, and when they do, they might have more pressing problems than the one that was so important to me. Or they might not know what to do and have to find someone who does, or start a debate among all the moderators if the answer isn't obvious. Contact might need to be made with the members who've caused or reported the problem, and they have real lives too, so they might not respond quickly, even if they cared to. And if action must be taken against a member, that action depends not only on the problem but also on what is accepted practice and on what else that member might have done in the past. For these and other reasons, moderation can be slow to come to a resolution.

From your references to the 'mod process', you appear to accept this, albeit reluctantly, but, you ask, until that process is complete, could not another member be stopped from posting or messages allowed in the thread warning against them? But until the 'mod process' is complete, how would we know that those messages were reliable? Would you like it if another member could report you and the mods would immediately take away some or all of your access - guilty until proven innocent? Or messages saying there was a reason people shouldn't download your files were allowed to remain in the thread, when there might not be? Even a sincere report of a virus-filled download might turn out to be a peculiarity of the downloader's computer rather than of the download itself. Whichever way round you do it, you end up waiting for the result of the mod process. In some forums, posts have to be approved before they appear to the other members, but VEF works on the opposite principle, allowing a post until there's shown to be something wrong with it, and allowing a poster to post, until they get to the point where they're banned or suspended or otherwise stopped. Because of this, we're indeed reliant on the reports of members such as yourself, and very grateful for them.

And because of the limited resources mentioned before, moderation has to be prioritised. It is unfortunate if some people downloaded a file that was larger than necessary (while still getting what they wanted), but nothing like as unfortunate as if the forum was shut down because the posting of certain kinds of material (that I'm sure I don't need to mention) was overlooked; or if the forum became unusable because every thread was clogged up with spam - or possibly spurious reports. Dealing with these two issues gets as near to an immediate response as we can muster, which is why the casual observer might assume that those things were hardly ever posted; everything else takes a little longer.

[a435843]

Originally Posted by MrInBetween

Or they might not know what to do and have to find someone who does, or start a debate among all the moderators if the answer isn't obvious. Contact might need to be made with the members who've caused or reported the problem, and they have real lives too, so they might not respond quickly, even if they cared to. And if action must be taken against a member, that action depends not only on the problem but also on what is accepted practice and on what else that member might have done in the past. For these and other reasons, moderation can be slow to come to a resolution.

Sorry for the "debate", which is evidently not wholly welcome. However, as I've stated twice now, a simple, non-burdensome forum rule change would alleviate the issues arising from this abusive poster (especially given the fact that file lockers have policies with promote spam & abuse). That rule change/addition would be "If the download file is in a compressed format (zip, rar, etc.), then the poster must list the manifest (list of file names, at least; more information appreciated) of the compressed file in the posting containing the download link." That's it...this would either make spam & potential viruses obvious to members, or create an instant forum violation if the manifest is inaccurate, no gray areas allowing for potential abuse. I'm simply trying to make VEF suck less...please don't assume that members don't have lives either, I'm trying to save my time, as well, sir.

Originally Posted by MrInBetween

From your references to the 'mod process', you appear to accept this, albeit reluctantly, but, you ask, until that process is complete, could not another member be stopped from posting or messages allowed in the thread warning against them? But until the 'mod process' is complete, how would we know that those messages were reliable? Would you like it if another member could report you and the mods would immediately take away some or all of your access - guilty until proven innocent? Or messages saying there was a reason people shouldn't download your files were allowed to remain in the thread, when there might not be? Even a sincere report of a virus-filled download might turn out to be a peculiarity of the downloader's computer rather than of the download itself. Whichever way round you do it, you end up waiting for the result of the mod process. In some forums, posts have to be approved before they appear to the other members, but VEF works on the opposite principle, allowing a post until there's shown to be something wrong with it, and allowing a poster to post, until they get to the point where they're banned or suspended or otherwise stopped. Because of this, we're indeed reliant on the reports of members such as yourself, and very grateful for them.

And because of the limited resources mentioned before, moderation has to be prioritised. It is unfortunate if some people downloaded a file that was larger than necessary (while still getting what they wanted), but nothing like as unfortunate as if the forum was shut down because the posting of certain kinds of material (that I'm sure I don't need to mention) was overlooked; or if the forum became unusable because every thread was clogged up with spam - or possibly spurious reports. Dealing with these two issues gets as near to an immediate response as we can muster, which is why the casual observer might assume that those things were hardly ever posted; everything else takes a little longer.

Also, allow me reiterate my point about the concept of peer review. First, there are worse fates than being temporarily barred from posting, or being warned about a post and subsequently waiting for a few days to download a file, to make sure that a file is not spam. Those fates are getting files that are at best spam, that merely make your anti-virus program put out the red alert, or at worst, are a full-blown virus, costing you thousands of dollars. Additionally, my temporary ban suggestion, was (a) the lowest priority suggestion, and (b) was for posting only, not reading or PM'ing (this would give an incentive to the abuser to move along with the process in a more serious manner). After the mod process, "third-party" warning posts would be deleted, so no reputation would be lost. So, the worrying about a peer-based check on a user is overwrought.

There seems to be an enormous disconnect here on the value of a forum membership versus the significant loss of personal computing hardware and data. You speak as though there's zero risk in going to file lockers...really? Furthermore, non-compressed, standard video files, when used, provide little risk, relative to weird formats and compressed file sets, especially if using VLC, or a good player, rather than products which may require risky codecs.

I appreciate the "non-approval" approach of VEF, but it's prudent to take precautions against spammers & viruses. If members abuse the forum to post false warnings about a file, then they should be banned. However, I don't think there will be a ton of false reports, in fact, mods should know what the stats are, as far as false reports percentages go (I may be wrong, but it's probably not super high; the problem is probably in repeat reports of the same post/poster). In legitimate abuse cases, there should be the ability to peer-review uploads, and warn fellow members, while the mod process is completed. Add in the concept of a manifest-required rule, and potential virus posters will get the message that nonsense will not be tolerated here.

As the Internet becomes more dangerous to use every day, and with big corporations and governments willing to do anything and everything to stop "things they don't like", for whatever reason, popular porn forums, like VEF, could become an enormous target for anyone with the means and the ability. This could be anyone from a government looking to score cheap points, to a big porn operator like Mindgeek looking to make life tougher for people from whom they expect big chunks of money.

The other issue is that there is too much oversensitivity afforded uploaders and mods, and treating regular members like chattel. It's this kind of experience that drives users to torrents & social media, and away from forums, Reddit, etc., which is unfortunate, because the latter ultimately provides a better, more searchable, more comprehensive archive for this material. I've seen a few Reddits, newsgroups, and forums dry up over the years, that primarily discuss & trade softcore, because of either one extreme of spam, or the other extreme of overzealous rule enforcement (they became intolerable over at the Playboy Yahoo Group).

Now, of course, I know that I've wasted my time here, but at least I can step away from this knowing that I at least made a proper suggestion, and not just bitched and moaned.

[johndonson]

Originally Posted by behemoth

I reported this as suggested. Here is a perfect example: http://vintage-erotica-forum.com/sho...&postcount=236 A 252MB download for a 43MB clip. The balance consists of 2 .jpg files of 106MB each (unviewable).

I ran into this, too. Out of curiosity what the image might be, I changed the suffix to .avi and got another playable clip of a different pornstar! A nice surprise, but like the rest of us, I prefer to know what I'll get & smaller files in the first place.