Concerning review by mod

Deleted member 923340 said:

@I know SEO and @WilhelmScream are two mods I like to see reviewing more threads.

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Agree'd, I think @I know SEO gives the best reviews in terms of effectiveness (ie, if they say its a good product it will increase SEO rankings). @BassTrackerBoats and @Zwielicht are also excellent and balanced.

@Apricot also has done good reviews but doesn't seem to post much anymore.

se900se said:

No matter how long the actual review is if it's approved - this means it was tested and the result was good enough to be approved.

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The mod clearly stated that verification was not done.

SMMnet said:

I agree with some of the things you say.

But, if I had a thread for each unique service, you would hate it because I would own the entire bumping list with the amount of services I offer. (As well as many others).

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You just have a reseller panel

Multi quote (+ quote) is your friend, please use it as it saves mods time tidying posts up. Just a thought.

fasttrak said:

Multi quote (+ quote) is your friend, please use it as it saves mods time tidying posts up. Just a thought.

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Sorry, lots of posts to go through. You're right!

These are all fair points and thanks for raising them. We have a process in place whereby the top service is tested and if delivered as defined in a reasonable manner, with decent support then it's approved. We're working on something that's less open and more targeted to the relevant subform which will be coming in the next 3-4 weeks lead by @Zwielicht and @Society Girl

Check the content standards article written by @Zwielicht for a flavour of what's going to become the standard on the paid for marketplace https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/marketplace-content-standards.1036646/

The intention is that by standardising the process it will make the buying decisions easier and clearer for all.

Diamond Damien said:

Check the content standards article written by @Zwielicht for a flavour of what's going to become the standard on the paid for marketplace https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/marketplace-content-standards.1036646/

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Thanks for a quick acknowledgment of this thread Damien.

This thread is specifically about Society Girl NOT reviewing the "top service" being offered. She just assumed it was a pretty straightforward service to offer, from my reading of her post, without any personal knowledge of the service or testing done. It seems like staff/mods should be voluntarily excluding themselves from reviewing threads they don't know enough about. One post in the Jr VIP forum will find many volunteers who ARE experts, who are willing to help the mods verify the services they are not familiar with.

One problem I also see now is that, for sure threads created BEFORE the content standards were put in place, now do not comply with those standards. Should we just use the report button if we see threads that don't comply?

The only time I was scammed here was my first time.It was this sales thread and the guy scammed 10 days after being approved by the same mod....As you can see me and another member reported and warned that the guy is a scammer, but nothing happened and other people got scammed....

Agree with some of the comments posted, the mod reviews I always tend to ignore and try to work my way through the thread to make up my own mind. What I would like to see as a feature maybe is being able to mark replies as one of the following maybe:

Positive Review, Negative Review, General Comment / I ordered, Question

Then If I could filter to see them replies, would help me make up my mind trying to get a clear picture of what's going on as some "real" reviews are hidden on page 45 out of 100 for example, not many will dive through that many pages before clicking to buy. I think that is a feature is missing from the market place to improve it and possibly take it to the next level, just my thoughts.

Diamond Damien said:

These are all fair points and thanks for raising them. We have a process in place whereby the top service is tested and if delivered as defined in a reasonable manner, with decent support then it's approved. We're working on something that's less open and more targeted to the relevant subform which will be coming in the next 3-4 weeks lead by @Zwielicht and @Society Girl

Check the content standards article written by @Zwielicht for a flavour of what's going to become the standard on the paid for marketplace https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/marketplace-content-standards.1036646/

The intention is that by standardising the process it will make the buying decisions easier and clearer for all.

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The future sounds great but what about now. The thread you linked is a year old and I thought threads were already to this standard.

I spent over $50,000+ on this forum last year. My business basically means I'm outsourcing a lot of work to service providers on the forum.

If we could offer instagram verification that would be great. That's a $15,000 service for the right client.

But I'm fully aware of how hard it is to get these accounts approved. As @t0mmy said IG have clamped down on this hard, if it was as simple as buy some huffpo/forbes/NYT mentions it would be easy, but that's just not the case.

From what @Society Girl mentioned they don't seem to know that and they didn't review the top level service from what you're saying.

That thread has a lot of red flags, poor english, high price with no proof they can do what they offer, no reviews, on other forums they have their location listed as LA, on linked in it's London, their website isn't even on https and more.

It's possible he could have bought the BHW account, spent $100 on Jr VIP and $30 on a thread.

$2870 of possible profit from a highly sort after service for a low low price. It really should be looked at in more detail, but I'm not telling you guys how to run the place.

It's good to see a lot of conversation went through on developing Market place Review. I would like to contribute my thought about the review process.

Marketing threads are approved based on the review of top service provided by the seller. Based on the review we can only judge about the quality of top service. Why because the seller didn't provided the basic package which is much lower in price and quality. So based on the top level review we can't judge how much the quality difference is between basic and top service.

My suggestion :
Marketing threads should review the basic package also. Because we can fix a border line with that review for basic package and expect not the quality of the seller can go below.

Why Basic package should be considered for review ?
Ex: A content writing thread offers top level package with native writer and it gets approved by meeting the quality. But what about the basic package offered in the thread like "Non-English speaking writer or Basic English writer etc. .". In this case we don't the quality of basic package. Whether the basic writer can write proper English or what about the research? etc. .

So if a Basic package also reviewed by mods then we can fix a border line with that and not to expect more. Hope this reduces the hassle faced between seller and buyer.

BTW, This suggestion came when I saw these :
"For buyers: The quality of the product or service that I receive is what you should expect, or better. If you feel that the quality of the service has dropped significantly, please let us know via the report button."

Thanks to you @Zwielicht

t0mmy said:

100% if they didn’t get an account verified during the review process then they shouldn’t have been approved to sell it as a service.

We were one of the biggest for verifying accounts, I think we still rank for a lot of the terms. We’ve done accounts for the Hilton’s, political parties.. even an ex president of a country that was running for re-election. I can tell you first hand it’s got A LOT harder now.. almost to the point of being impossible unless the person is truly credible. We do the odd one now and again, but don’t offer it any longer on our site, it became way too much of a headache from day dreamers that had no business being verified.

Articles, press, a Wikipedia page and so on mean nothing, instagram are wise to this long ago.. they know all of that can be purchased.

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I agree, very hard to get it done. (Another valid reason why it is expensive). We do not say we can get it done for everyone. In order for us to even do the hard part, we have a separate service that enables a member of our team to analyze the account and we are able to recycle out the accounts that we think would be impossible to get done. After our Analyze and Eval, we still slaim it is not 100%. But, we offer 100% money back if we fail at that point. So, it's impossible to be a scammer and still offering services on BHW. I think staff knows that as well.

As a buyer, I am also highly effected by the reviews on the thread especially if they are coming from MODs and other reputed members.
Just saying, "Thread Approved" or "Report was received on time" etc. really doesn't help me as a buyer if the service is good or not.
I have been a regular buyer in this forum and I will say that I did many bad purchases. Yes, I cannot call any seller scammer if they have delivered the report.
But most sellers Refund Policy says that "We will offer a full refund if we didn't deliver the report on time".
But what about all the promises made in the sales thread? And why does the quality goes down when you get overwhelmed with new orders?

Anyways, BHW marketplace has been a roller coaster ride for me. I had bad experience but I also had excellent experiences

What about making the marketplace section into a true marketplace. Where we can buy and sell directly through BHW, incorporate an escrow system where funds are held for high priced items maybe, let verified buyers leave ratings and reviews as well.

Kind of surprised this hasn’t been incorporated yet. Anyone use other forum centric markets? The well run TOR marketplaces of the past come to mind but I’m sure there are lots of examples.

J.Oldschool said:

What about making the marketplace section into a true marketplace. Where we can buy and sell directly through BHW, incorporate an escrow system where funds are held for high priced items maybe, let verified buyers leave ratings and reviews as well.

Kind of surprised this hasn’t been incorporated yet. Anyone use other forum centric markets? The well run TOR marketplaces of the past come to mind but I’m sure there are lots of examples.

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The escrow would cut down on the shit list as well and would allow a better ruling i.e offering consequences rather than just a forum ban, which If I decided to rip of a bunch of people if that was my only downside a forum ban, id happily take that risk.

J.Oldschool said:

What about making the marketplace section into a true marketplace. Where we can buy and sell directly through BHW, incorporate an escrow system where funds are held for high priced items maybe, let verified buyers leave ratings and reviews as well.

Kind of surprised this hasn’t been incorporated yet. Anyone use other forum centric markets? The well run TOR marketplaces of the past come to mind but I’m sure there are lots of examples.

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BHW would be liable for payment (both sides) on transactions for things like @secondeye dodgy identity service and social media services that IG/facebook and others send cease and desists over.

So it would mean removing these services that people need for fear of legal action against the forum, which would suck.

Any seller will try to provide the best service for the review/approval process. But that does not mean that the same seller will provide the same quality to his other clients.
So far I have created 3 marketplace threads and the last one was reviewed by @Society Girl. She gave me a pretty tough task (I didn't expect that, to be honest) to finish in order to get approved, which was pretty OK for me as I/we were tested whether the service is capable for any solution.
Nonetheless, it is pretty hard to keep a track on each seller in the marketplace. Without checking it, I guess there are 1.000+ active marketplace threads running at the moment and there are only 4-5 marketplace mods/admins (keep in mind that not every mod has the permission to review marketplace threads).

As some of the mods once said, if you get a low quality service from a seller or he didn't fulfill the task as expected, you can always report the thread and give a short detailed explanation about the thread and/or 'shitlist' the seller.

In my opinion, a simple (red?) notification bar above each thread in the marketplace stating that everyone should report the seller/thread if the service's quality is not as stated in the OP will be more than enough.

SocialManager said:

Thanks for a quick acknowledgment of this thread Damien.

This thread is specifically about Society Girl NOT reviewing the "top service" being offered. She just assumed it was a pretty straightforward service to offer, from my reading of her post, without any personal knowledge of the service or testing done. It seems like staff/mods should be voluntarily excluding themselves from reviewing threads they don't know enough about. One post in the Jr VIP forum will find many volunteers who ARE experts, who are willing to help the mods verify the services they are not familiar with.

One problem I also see now is that, for sure threads created BEFORE the content standards were put in place, now do not comply with those standards. Should we just use the report button if we see threads that don't comply?

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I'll address that particular service as I saw the approval process.

carmamag said:

Hey,

So I'm a buy, I browse this forum to buy links and other services I need.

The main reason I do this is your mod testing system, compared to other marketplaces I find it helps sort the wheat from the chaff as well as avoid scams and shit services that you find elsewhere on the web.

Today I read the sales copy for a new thread that offered premium instagram names and verification. For a $3k price tag I was intrigued, it's a "rare" service to see offered and the price looked good.

@Sherb raised some points about the seller not being active for 4.5 years and possibly using false/fake information on their website, a little concerning.

He then asked the mod (@Society Girl) about how she reviewed the thread.

https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/i...e-you-would-like-below.1105802/#post-11910185



For a $3k service, by an account with no credibility, why on earth was this not reviewed? This seems like a risk to members, a risk that could be removed by you guys reviewing it like your rules state.

I don't want to call that mod out but they also give consistently poor reviews such as:



When compared to reviews by @BassTrackerBoats or @Zwielicht who post much more comprehensive reviews it's really weird to see such contrast.



As a guy that spends a fair bit of money every month on the marketplace ($3-6k between me and my marketing team) can I make some suggestions that are useful for buyers:

• Services are actually reviewed, not reviewing a $3k service from an account with no credibility other than spending $97 on a membership is disappointing to see.
• A consistent review format, the second review type that BTB and Z use is brilliant. Could you make this the standard?
• Could mods post samples of what they received? I know posting some service reports like links leave the seller at a risk, but for copy writing a screenshot of a page from the mod review would be so helpful to see if the seller has dropped the standard. About 70% of the content I buy seems to be from non-native people who decided to stick "California" in their location and catfish us.

I don't mean this to be an attack or anything like the sort, but if the new BHW standard is to not review things properly then there 's no real point continuing to buy here if you're like every other marketplace.

Thanks

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@Diamond Damien addressed that there are upcoming improvements in the BST approval process but I'll address this particular approval.

There are 18 posts in that approval thread so this was not a rubber stamp approval for the paltry 30.00 that BHW would put in their pockets. A bunch of back and forth between the seller and SG which took both their times.

That is not unusual BTW as we often go back and forth with those that want to sell for a variety of reasons... compliance, legitimacy, offer in line with BHW rules, etc.

We also try to help in the area where the seller has an original post that could use a little cleaning up to help them sell. That takes time and energy and we are happy to do that.

I'm sure I'm not allowed to share what those 18 post were as they are behind closed doors but @Society Girl absolutely vetted that service. Maybe SG was not as verbose as some when approving but there was a decent amount of work involved in the approval process.

I saw the request for a BST and didn't pick it up as I didn't see myself as qualified as others who are Marketplace Moderators but did follow that BST approval as I follow many other BST approval threads.

It's a legit service from what I saw and from the due diligence @Society Girl girl did and SG did a better job in that thread than I would have done.

Don't dismiss an approval based on how one of us communicates as we all communicate differently.

Pro tip - although you see "regular mods" approving sales threads, the BST approval subforum is managed by Admins and the Admins will call us on the carpet if we violate how that is supposed to be managed.

Bottom line in my response: @Society Girl vetted the noted BST in a manner that is consistent with what is required by those above us who make the rules.

Should you have an issue with any staff member's approval of a BST, hit the staff member up. We welcome the interaction and are all happy to explain or learn from your commentary.

BassTrackerBoats said:

Should you have an issue with any staff member's approval of a BST, hit the staff member up. We welcome the interaction and are all happy to explain or learn from your commentary.

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As I noted earlier, I attempted to hit the staff member up, when I noticed immediately, within 2 seconds, that (likely) all of the accounts a member was selling were banned. When I brought my concerns to her, and even explained how she could check herself that the account she was provided for review was banned, this is the reply I got:



To me, this reply is not indicative of welcoming an interaction, or being happy to explain or learn from me. It tells me that I am annoying her, and she is happy to leave the thread open for an additional 72 hours while I wait to see if a Shit List thread can be open, rather than taking less than 30 seconds to check the account she was provided and seeing it was banned. Again, I explained exactly what she needs to do to check if the account was banned.

Luckily, the seller was responsive and honest, and requested their thread be closed while they worked on improving their product. But what if they were a legit scammer? They would have had 72 hours to milk the users of this forum while I wait for my shit list thread to be reviewed and possibly approved, and all I could do is post 1 single negative review on the sales thread which would have been buried by dozens of other users asking for free review copies.

carmamag said:

The future sounds great but what about now. The thread you linked is a year old and I thought threads were already to this standard.

I spent over $50,000+ on this forum last year. My business basically means I'm outsourcing a lot of work to service providers on the forum.

If we could offer instagram verification that would be great. That's a $15,000 service for the right client.

But I'm fully aware of how hard it is to get these accounts approved. As @t0mmy said IG have clamped down on this hard, if it was as simple as buy some huffpo/forbes/NYT mentions it would be easy, but that's just not the case.

From what @Society Girl mentioned they don't seem to know that and they didn't review the top level service from what you're saying.

That thread has a lot of red flags, poor english, high price with no proof they can do what they offer, no reviews, on other forums they have their location listed as LA, on linked in it's London, their website isn't even on https and more.

It's possible he could have bought the BHW account, spent $100 on Jr VIP and $30 on a thread.

$2870 of possible profit from a highly sort after service for a low low price. It really should be looked at in more detail, but I'm not telling you guys how to run the place.

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If it is just about services over $1K +, it's perfectly okay to raise the question.

About your comment on poor English, I can say at least 55% seller I came across belong to countries like Bangladesh, Pakistan, and India. Also from many other not native nations. So, I surely and definitely object this. One can write good English just by hiring any native writer and paying 5-20 bucks.

About LA and London you may have 2 or more offices most of BHW sellers work in the US and non native countries too.

Vitarank and market mongoose are the example.

$30, $100 is large sum of money for some geniune sellers , a scammer can pay $1k for approval if he can get $3k with a single order.

I’ve read the replies here from a lot of people, some great points made. But no one, not even the staff members have confirmed if the OP of said service got an account verified for them??

This is the whole point of this thread, but it seems to have been side tracked by a discussion on the finer details of BHW’s review process. Society Girl said he “has seen similar services working before if they had x, y and z in place” such as Wikipedia pages or press on big sites. I (and many others) stated without a shadow of a doubt from first hand experience that he is wrong, I’m not having a dig at him or questioning how he carries out his review process.. but he is flat out wrong, instagram do not hand out blue verified badges if you have a bit of press and a Wikipedia page - all of which can be bought and insta know this.

So again, I don’t understand how a service can be approved if the reviewing mod himself has even admitted the OP of the thread didn’t fulfill a full review.. he just assumes (without any first hand knowledge) the OP can do it because of x, y or z. That doesn’t really instill much confidence for buyers.

Is there a new rule change allowing sellers to use fake reviews in their sales images?

The Marketplace Content Standards posts says that reviews should link back to the original, and cannot be form other forums. So when a new seller has three testimonials in their sales image with no source, and a google search shows that all three were pulled from a competitor with only the business name changed, that make me question just how thorough the rest of the review really is.

I did submit a report with links and screenshots, but the fact that such an glaring issue slipped through the review in the first place is concerning.