Suggestion for Website

[swb115]

Hello,

My name is Sean and I've been using this website for about a month. It's been invaluable in providing information in one central location, on one of the hardest industries to track on the net. It is well respected in the Casino community, and Casino's take it seriously when information about their respective casino's are posted. I will be using this site to make my determination whether or not "invest" any money anywhere casino related on the internet, as I'm sure hundreds or thousands of others do.

As a semi-serious online gamer, one thing that comes to my mind is the question of the validity of some of the responses to complaints in the Casino topic forum. I would like to inquire if the webmaster here has any interest or plans in the future, of implementing any sort of identity verification process of the posters. I can imagine a process involves investment of money and time, however the money this site has potentially saved me, I personally would be happy to send a $10-$25 registration charge, annual fee, whatever it takes to be able to establish that the people claiming to have nothing but positive experiences with a casino arent actually casino employess themselves. Or the responses to people who have had bad experiences claiming the complete opposite experiences.

I know not everyone here spends enough money in this industry to make this kind of investment in this site, but the people that do, the ability to make a judgement call on a post based on whether the poster had actually registered on this site, and verified their identity as Non Casino Employees or Affiliates, would be invaluable.

There are certain posters that I already tend to listen to over others, mainly the CasinoMeister, and certain others that seem to have true experience, but over time, with this new process in place, this would truly add a great value to the already Best Online Casino Player Advocate Site anywhere, any place. All it would take is the recognition of the users of this site to realize how priceless this collection of information is, and the time and effort of the CasinoMeister.

Thank you for considering my suggestion.

Sean

(Message edited by swb115 on April 18, 2003)

(Message edited by swb115 on April 18, 2003)

(Message edited by swb115 on April 18, 2003)

 

[Casinomeister]

Hi Sean,

Thanks for the kudos and suggestions.

You make some good points:

[color=0000ff]one thing that comes to my mind is the question of the validity of some of the responses to complaints in the Casino topic forum. I would like to inquire if the webmaster here has any interest or plans in the future, of implementing any sort of identity verification process of the posters.[/color]

I've been running this site for about five years now and determining who are legitimate posters and who are not comes with experience. Unlike some other message boards or forums, complaints made here are usually followed up on by me. Perhaps the casinos respond directly, or the complainer takes his/her case to the "Pitch a Bitch" section. If someone is whining about a casino and doesn't back up their sniveling with a legitimate complaint, they are usually counseled harshly by the regulars.

The same goes for any spammers or shills. Most everyone knows that there is a section set aside for posting ads and many webmasters and advertisers take advantage of this. Most everyone also knows that shill postings are very transparent (except to the shills themselves) and these types of posts are usually shot down in flames. Normally, I welcome postings from shills since these postings end up being quite entertaining. The good casinos know better not to use shills. The ones that do shoot themselves in the foot when it happens.

I monitor the board as well as I can. Not to say that a few posts slip by without me checking them out. But when and if they do, some of the regulars will jump in and keep things going. Whenever I doubt the legitimacy of the poster, I have the means to check IP addresses and five years of messages/emails/etc. to do any snooping around. This place is pretty safe from misinformation. I will bust anyone out who is trying to use this forum as a form of deceptive advertising. It's been a while since this happened last.

As for charging a subscription fee, I would be against it since I consider this like TV. Free access to the signals, but if you like what you see, patronize the sponsors or "my wishlist"

I have tried different forms of access to the forum. At one time you were required to sign in and register in order to read the messages. Personally, I hate this when I have to do this, and so did a number of visitors. But I did this to squelch a number of evil posters who were attempting to abuse the forum. As for banning posters, I have only done this to a number of spammers, and one or two abusive posters who were eventually given the opportunity to come back.

 

[swb115]

Bryan

I appreciate your response. It makes complete sense what you are saying. This verification process or "voluntary paid registration" would be entirely optional, it would just show up next to their post that they had or hadn't "registered" yet. When I was reading Casino forum last night, and I saw a number of posts, both for and against casinos, and saw that some of these posters had only posted 1 or two messages, it just caused me to ignore the thread, although I would have liked to had a way to determine the seriousness of these posters. I understand you have close contact with these casinos, and closely scrutinize the board personally, and this suggestion over time would cut down on the amount of direct interaction needed by you personally. In a matter of months, you might have 10 "voluntary paid posters" the newbie such as myself knows that he or she can trust. The ability to change your IP address and setup a hotmail or yahoo email account in a matter of 5 minutes certainly doesn't stop some of the rogue casino "affiliates" from doing so if just to create confusion or extra work for yourself. I can imagine doing the type of work you do creates some bad feelings among the casinos that choose to ignore your inquiries on users behalf, and a casino with a few employess with extra time on their hands could easily manipulate the board with limited computer knowledge.

I respect what you are saying, and I admire the amount of personal effort and dedication that you put in. With this idea in place, what you would have over time is a group of 100 or so serious or semi serious gamers that knew that they could trust each other, without the need to wait to see if the post in question was validated by you. It would cut down on the need for you to be directly involved with every single post that occurs on this site, and it would really give the rogue casinos something more to think about.

The idea I'm talking about wouldn't happen overnight, as with everything, it would grow over time. It would probably get the lurkers like myself more directly involved with the site, knowing that they are talking to the average weekend user such as myself.

I know some new users of some forums are "intimidated" sometimes by the "regulars" that seem to have the wealth of knowledge that they are seeking, and the new users also have to "hang around" the site long enough to determine who the regulars are and who they can trust. This would a be a way for a newbie to quickly determine (not that im impulsive or anything LOL....tell that to the dealer)the answer to thier question, and see immediately the value of this site.

But thank you for your quick response, and thank you again for the site, it's incredible. I will be using it regularly, and keep up the excellent work!

 

[jpm]

Interesting idea about the ID verification swb, the problem with the fee based system though is that the shills would just get reimbursed by the deep(er) pocket casinos for the fee. So I don't think that's the answer. Not sure what the answer is, other than having a user 'sign' a form certifying they are not affiliated with any casino, etc etc and make that part of the user's profile (ala ID Verify on ebay). That wouldn't stop some scumbags from signing it falsely of course, but then their posts would most probably betray them down the road.

I think you can kind of tell the real players from the shills already, like when you see someone say they won $10,000 at (scumbag of your choice) casino and got paid in 2 days while everyone else can't get $100 out of them in a month. But I wouldn't mind seeing an ID verify type system as well.