upd: FatWallet adventures
May 14, 2008 
A user on FatWallet Free Stuff forum keeps posting these religious item “freebies” which all require signing up with the same church. Some threads get deleted, some don’t. I got annoyed with this broad clogging up my RSS with the same thing almost every day, so I finally sent a note to the mod. The response? “I don’t see any link between the site and the user.” Um, what, you thought her church group would have the same name as her username on FatWallet? Does that mean I can post daily with some barely concealed agenda too?
Hi there,
I know at DealTaker.com the way that we avoid this problem is by adhering to a strict “no self-promotion” standard. By keeping a vigilant eye on stuff like this, we are able to squash most issues that arise from situations like that AND it allows our boards to have an unbiased and legitimate “voice” because they aren’t being unduly influenced.
Hi!
I apologize our moderator didn’t reflect back to you a careful consideration of your concerns. You wisely alerted us to a combination of personal agenda and message frequency, and that indeed is a problem for our community. After all, when freebie posting becomes agenda-driven, we need to step in!
I hope you appreciate that at FatWallet.com we value all individual contributors and hesitate to squash anything, anyone, or any viewpoint through over-moderation. (Self-promotion is a separate issue, and is never allowed because it would compromise the integrity of our forums.)
Again, thank you for caring enough to highlight this problem so we can learn and improve. Going forward, please feel free to share your frustrations either up the line at FatWallet or in our FatWallet forum. Usually when we turn the powers of our community on an issue it works its way to a logical conclusion pretty quickly. Also, please let me know if I’ve missed the mark with my reply so I can make it right.
Peace
Steve
Their should be a rule that requires seperation of Church and FreeWallet. lol