Seems like the most passionate mountain goers I know are guides. Are they not allowed here on SP if they share something they did while guiding? Would they be able to share it, it they weren't guiding at the time?

I am against that, if its true. Please don't discriminate against the people that can add some of the best info to SP.

Hadn't heard anything re. guides before. Afzal's down as a tour-operator and his contribution has been quite extensive.

Yea, for some reason if a new member signs up and they list their occupation as "guide" they are asked by other SPers to be deleted. But there are in fact guides and tour operators that have been and currently are members. What's the explaination for that?

I reckon a guide's profile can be deleted if it's used for advertising their services via SP, just like any other advertising/spam oriented account. I don't think stating that you're a guide can be a sole reason to be kicked off SP.

A good friend of mine just got deleted because he joined and posted about a guided Fischer Chimneys trip he did. He opens the post with some great and FREE information about the difficult approach many struggle to find. Then says that if you have questions, just contact him and he'll help you.

here's the forum I'm reffering to:

http://www.summitpost.org/phpBB3/mt-shuskan-via-fisher-chimney-s-t60325.html

kamil wrote:I reckon a guide's profile can be deleted if it's used for advertising their services via SP, just like any other advertising/spam oriented account. I don't think stating that you're a guide can be a sole reason to be kicked off SP.

Seems like there should minimally be a note written to the new guide members about this, rather than just deleting them. I think we all know there is some abuse, but also some great submissions.

This is another case of the owners not putting forth the effort/money to monitor this site in a professional manner. The elves might be less apted to delete without checking on the person, if they had time (aka were paid to be more decressionary).

Kamil has described what I think is elf practice.

Seems sensible to me -- if you just put up a couple photos of your guiding and a link to your website, it's a commercial. SP doesn't get anything from that relationships.

If, like many other guides on the site (like Afzal), you add some content, it's all good.

Ditto for the professional photographers we have on the site (like thephotohiker).

And the guidebook writers (like Flathead Native).

If a guide posted a route, that should be enough to stick around.

Arthur Digbee wrote:Kamil has described what I think is elf practice.

Seems sensible to me -- if you just put up a couple photos of your guiding and a link to your website, it's a commercial. SP doesn't get anything from that relationships.

If, like many other guides on the site (like Afzal), you add some content, it's all good.

Ditto for the professional photographers we have on the site (like thephotohiker).

And the guidebook writers (like Flathead Native).

If a guide posted a route, that should be enough to stick around.

And a good forum post with current route conditions, should be included in that list. We all have blogs we link to frequently. Guides have blogs too.

It was quite unfortunate he got deleted like that.

What Kamil and Arthur said.

Also, as some of you know, SP has been bombarded with spam accounts over the past several days. There have been literally hundreds, and there are more each day. Gangolf and I have deleted around 100 together; other elves may have deleted more. We can't keep up with them and are waiting for Matt to develop a mass deletion tool and perhaps some safeguards to prevent something like this again.

I've been deleting profiles that are nothing but a link and/or an advertisement for a commercial enterprise, guiding or not.

There have been so many that I don't remember if I deleted the one in question or not. I very well may have.

If I snared an innocent user who wanted to share information with the community here, I sincerely and publicly apologize to that person. If the person wants to rejoin, I can even restore that forum post to his account. I know I would not have deleted a user based on that forum post, but it's the new accounts I've been tracking, not the forum posts.

Dan Shorb, you know the person in question, so maybe you can communicate this to him if he is not lurking.

No question in my mind, of course guides are welcome!

My guess is that most people that contribute don't start doing so right away. It can take a while to figure out what's suitable to post, be it in the forum, images or more advanced stuff. Some learn fast, others never (or so it seems looking at some contributions), but you cannot expect someone to pick it up right away.

Therefore, I would say, if a new user registers, and puts his web site on the user profile, let him or her stick around as long as the profile page isn't blatant advertising. And, to me, stating your occupation as a guide, add a few words to that effect and giving your web site, is no problem.

I would be less lenient if the profile would feature a site and have a few words that have nothing to do with what SP is all about (which, for me, is the great outdoors, be it while hiking, climbing or just looking at the scenery). Still, if it's unobtrusive, I'm all right with that, and will hope that that user will start contributing later.

However, I sympathize with the plight of the Elves that have to wade trough all the new users and keep SP free of trolls.

Perhaps an automatic cleanup action might be useful. How about automatic deletion of users that have no other contributions than perhaps one profile image, have no forum posts and have not been logged on for more than, say, one month or one week? It shouldn't be difficult to write a script that does just that, and have it run every night (I presume that testing this script would be more work than writing it - we wouldn't want this script to delete other users accidentally, would we?). This way, the elves wouldn't have to worry much about deleting useless users, since they will be deleted soon anyway, while they can still delete those that they deem offensive in any way.

I would bet that the biggest reason for not allowing Guides to blatantly advertise is they aren't paying for it as others on the site are?

Marmaduke wrote:I would bet that the biggest reason for not allowing Guides to blatantly advertise is they aren't paying for it as others on the site are?

Perhaps though there are plenty of user submitted pages with references to different guide services or places to stay or airlines to take. So long as something is contributed by a new person in the usual recognised ways it doesn't seem to be an issue. Clarity when signing up might be helpful as to why accounts may be deleted so that accidents don't happen.

I totally agree Baarb, just for example HIGHEXPEDITIONS (I think that's his name) guides in South America and is an SP member, it would be great to get more submissions from those guys/gals. They could add such a different perspective, maybe as part of "payment" they would have to submit a certain mount of TR or albums etc per year for "free advertising".

It is possible the TOS with Google Ads does not permit SP to have other forms of advertising.

deleting useless users

rgg, with all the respect, don't you think it is a bit too harsh to label someone as a 'useless member' and delete them from a site if they did not contribute/log in for a month. Maybe if the did not use it in couple of years and never were active...It doesn't hurt anyone that someone has a profile here and did not use it in a month. People register and go on vacations, or have other stuff to do. Would be quite annoying for them to come back and see their profile is gone, even if they did not put much in it.

Moderators have to deal with a lot here. And people that are here to advertise ONLY should be deleted. Guide that is advertising his service, and guide that contributes useful information which advertises his service in the process are two different things. I do not think anyone has a problem with second of these. Guides deserve respect and should be treated with such (as long as they follow basic rules).