With regards to the viglinks, this is not something we add but viglink does this and you can see the disclosure comment "link added by viglink" when you hover over the word. This is random and programmatic, not targeted or controlled on a user by user basis.

More info on that can be read in this thread: https://forums.clubtread.com/9-site-f...ver-top-6.html


Thanks,
Nate

Also, I would like a representative of Vertical Scope to address my earlier concern about the claim that the content we publish here stays here.

FYI the TR that I edited still do not have new links added into them...yet.

Nor am I, but if I choose to remove my content at any point, where does it say they can keep it stashed somewhere? Is it the word "irrevocable"? That isn't in the Wordpress TOS as far as I can see.

Again from Wordpress, their legalese takes a fairly different tone in my opinion:

"By submitting Content to Automattic for inclusion on your website, you grant Automattic a world-wide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, modify, adapt and publish the Content solely for the purpose of displaying, distributing, and promoting your blog. This license allows Automattic to make publicly-posted content available to third parties selected by Automattic (through the Automattic Firehose, for example) so that these third parties can analyze and distribute (but not publicly display) your content through their services. You also give other WordPress.com users permission to share your Content on other WordPress.com websites and add their own Content to it (aka to reblog your Content), so long as they use only a portion of your post and they give you credit as the original author by linking back to your website (the reblogging function on WordPress.com does this automatically!). If you delete Content, Automattic will use reasonable efforts to remove it from WordPress.com, but you acknowledge that caching or references to the Content may not be made immediately unavailable."

Please stop with this incredibly disingenuous line of reasoning. You use the viglink service and therefore you actually do add these links by proxy. Also, no one cars that it isn't targeted or controlled on a user by user basis. The fact that it exists at all and that Vertical Scope endorses its use is the concern. You could simply stop using the viglink service as a revenue generator as the users of this site have overwhelmingly implored you to do.

Also, I would like a representative of Vertical Scope to address my earlier concern about the claim that the content we publish here stays here.

How I read the TOS is that it only gives VS the right to use our content only.

Hahaha! Sasquatches and searches for gold have come up a couple times now recently... Coincidence?

Yes, I do know your thoughts on links being added to the text in our posts and support you wholeheartedly. I don't blame you at all, but it's unfortunate that yet another long-time CTer is signing off. For the time being, I've (perhaps naively) decided to hang around, use a disclaimer on my posts, and push back on the site admin until things change or I, too, get banned. I backed up all my posts (that weren't already duplicated on Wordpress) in MS Word docs a week or two ago just in case I got banned and my posts were deleted.

Leaving. This site has lost it's value to me. I used to use it to look for hikes to do and to share about hikes I have done. I'd just not come back here, but my text is being used for those ads and, well, you know what I think about that. I have a plan. I'm going to start a thread about how the sasquatch has a lost gold mine where Trump lives. That should get me banned in about 5 seconds.

Also, what is this sasquatch and Trump's gold? I am obviously missing something here.

Long ago on this site, some non-hiking people would start discussions about Sasquatches, Lost gold mines, hunting/guns, just to stir the pot. The discussions would always deteriorate into name calling, so such topics were banned.