“discussion of (or comparison to) competing companies is not permitted”

Reasonable discussion is fine, as ever. Flaming and shilling are not.

Cheers!

Since p2pnet has a long history of allowing free no-holds-barred discussion, it may come as a bit of a shock to many regular site participants that comments about a company (in this case, a major sponsor) that are not “on message” are likely to be deleted. Maybe they fail to realize that this is, after all, a paid endorsement that puts food on the table, not an invitation to debate — as any “normal” P2PNET article would be.

Because P2Pnet has been pro-people and pro-consumer, it’s bound to have attracted similar-minded readers who feel the need to speak their minds. While it’s certainly possible that some comments might be made by shills working for another company, or anti-P2P trolls happy for a chance to rub salt in the wounds, it’s also possible that sincere, well-meaning people (possibly long-term readers) could become alienated and be driven off this site by this routine deletion of their comments without any *apparent* justification.

I’ve just unapproved a post that was, and probably still is, on Slyck where there is, or was, a series of exchanges on the pros and cons of Giganews and another provider called Astraweb, which I’d never heard of before posts about it here on p2pnet.

Giganews also advertises on Slyck.

The clips start “vociferousonion said on May 22, 2009″ and centre on someone calling himself ‘vociferousonion’ who’s actually an employee of Giganews. He touted Giganews while he was pretending to be a visitor to Slyck.

There’s no such need on p2pnet because people from Giganews are, and always have been, free to post comments and answer questions here. I made sure that would be the case well before Giganews actually started advertising.

I’ve deleted most of the post because I’m not going to let a slagging match develop here.

However, I’m leaving the portion quoting Gignews’ CTO Philip Molter to clear things up:

vociferousonion is an employee of Giganews. He made a poor decision to misrepresent himself as a customer of Giganews in an overzealous attempt to defend the service against attacks in this forum. We are a small company, but one that is big enough that employees can do things to try to help without the people who make decisions actually knowing about it.

We don’t need to represent ourselves in this way, and we’ll address that internally with Liz and the person behind vociferousonion. The important thing to me, as one of the original employees of Giganews, is that the customers who do talk about their experiences with our service, whether negative or positive, don’t get unfairly labeled as Giganews shills or trolls. Most employees represent themselves as employees, as Liz does on this board. As far as I know, vociferousonion is the only employee that has not posted as such. Hopefully, this will be the last time this happens.

I have also seen the Slyck “review” for Giganews posted by vociferousonion. We’ll be asking Slyck to remove that review.

Philip Molter

I have a Gignews account, but I’ve never used it. I’ll get around to it one of these days.

For now, the revenue from Giganews (which believe me isn’t a whole lot) helps to keep p2pnet online. I’ll continue to run posts on it and its services, and I’ll do the same for anyone else who advertises here.

This is the end of this thread. Anything further will be deleted as soon as I see it.

There’s enough bullshit going on without us adding to it.

Cheers!

Giganews’ Liz was clearly named as a company staffer from Day One.

As for Astraweb, I don’t know of anyone shilling for the company on p2pnet, although I can see how that impression may have been given. But I did stop a comment poster praising it not so much because I thought s/he was a shill, but more because s/he went beyond comments (see @ Messy above).

p2pnet advertisers are part of the scene and are free and welcome to join in and post aticles / Reader’s Writes. Or not. It’s up to them.

Cheers!

An ardent Giganews “customer” is suspected of secretly being an employee, and faced with strong circumstantial evidence, the company CTO appears and admits the deception.

P2Pnet appears to have determined that Astraweb employees are also shilling for their company in a similar manner. Is there any actual evidence of this?

Delete these posts in peace. I will no longer bother you.

Hi Néssy, Nessy, Nes, Messy, Thanks and Readers Write, etc . Deleting your stream of posts wasn’t censorship. It says clearly in red at the top of each commment box, “Please no Spam, flaming (attacking others), trolling, and posting off-topic.”) Cheers! And all the best …

I keep deleting your posts because they seem to be bitter flames (and promos of a rival app) rather than genuine comments.

Cheers!

I’m a GN subscriber, BTW

What is coming will be a benefit to all and will reward our Premium Customers greatly- two biggies actually. One announced very soon and one in early fall.

Cannot wait.

I was with Astaweb for two or three years before switching, but back then they only had 10 day retention, I think the service was good though as best I can recall, Giganews were over 100 days retention and I found I was missing a lot of stuff I wanted due to it not being posted to newzbin fast enough for me to get it on Astraweb. Now I don’t feel like moving as I am happy with the service and willing to pay what I do for it, I’m lazy and the grass isn’t always greener (a lesson learnt with age )

Does anyone in the world really require 50 connections?

Eagerly awaiting this upcoming BIG announcement from Giganews

I nice fast proxy for torrenting through, encrypted and no logging would be nice :]

I’ve been with Giganews for a good few years now, and never had a single cause to even consider changing service. It might not be the cheapest but I am darned happy to pay what I do for the unfaltering service I have had at 50-130gb a month or so.

The next few months will be a very good time for Giganews Members- were investing in new technology- which quite frankly kicks a$$!

stw