Life Expectancy of a Thread on EssayScam

EssayScam exists mainly to expose fraudsters in the essay writing world and to protect students from other related hazards.
The format that ES uses is near-perfect, IMO. Once a thread starts, forum members contribute to it with (often) relevant posts and without unreasonable restrictions. As long as forum rules are observed, no post is taken down for being deemed unworthy. That is left to the judgment of the beholder.

What I might not agree with is the notion by some forum members that threads exhaust their relevance. WRONG. A clueless student seeking academic writing assistance today needs all relevant info about XYZ.com as did a student 5 years ago. Actually, recent and updated forum contributions are even more useful to a visitor than posts from years back. What is true today might not be true tomorrow. A site that is dependable and legit today might prove unreliable after a few years.

See, if I respond to a question someone posted 10 years ago, I'm not necessarily expecting that particular person to benefit from my response. I'm rather addressing the issue raised within the post. This is a public forum utilized by entities with ongoing--pretty much unchanged--interests. There will (almost) always be a forum user in the exact position the OP was in at the time of posting.

Many veteran forum members have been reiterating that students and new users should not take the word(s) of any poster at face value. They (new users) ought to verify claims made here before arriving at their own conclusions. As such, shouldn't they be provided with all possible maps and tools with which to try find and dig for the truth? Who is to say when enough has been shared, or when sharing should no longer be allowed?

All posts relevant to a thread should be welcomed, regardless of the time of posting.
IMO, any thread that was not off-topic 10 years ago can still find relevance today, unless the subject being discussed has since (somehow) seized to exist (...and even then...)!

Sorry but a thread that has been dead for nearly a decade, and was started by a student who wanted information about a specific topic needs no continuation. For example, a student asks about a specific element of essay writing, or advice on a company that no longer exists. The responses he/she got over the first month, or two months, inform the student about everything they wanted to know. The thread has served its purpose, and is no longer necessary (except as an archive to inform other students who come looking for the same company). Reviving a thread like this has only one purpose - to pump your stats. I've been on this forum for nearly 6 years, and contributed roughly 300-320 meaningful posts about relevant topics. In the same time frame, I've seen some posters pump up 600-700 posts that were either completely irrelevant or completely wrong, just for the sake of having their name show up on threads. I understand the need to promote yourself, that's fine, but pumping up your post count by reviving 10 year-old dead threads is not the way to go. Especially not, and this happens often, if that question lost its relevance in the time it passed since it was asked.

I have no problem with relevant old threads being revived for informational purposes, which is entirely different from the way two or three people here, in particular, have been responding to decade-old threads for about a year, for no other reason than to increase their post counts and visibility, quite obviously. Most online forums actually prohibit that and suspend accounts for it after one or two warnings.

That was precisely my point. Relevant threads (such as scam advice or info on a current company, or whatever else) is both relevant and necessary, so updates are quite fine. However, trying to revive old threads just for the purpose of getting your post count up is (in my view at least) just plain stupid. There's no better way to put it. I mean, there was a thread where a client asked for advice about a specific order from a site, and hadn't posted anything since 2006. The thread was revived with completely useless information - who benefits from this, I wonder?


Sorry, but reviving a thread about a specific order almost 10 years after the fact is obtuse.


Maybe, but relevant posts were not the topic of my post, irrelevant ones were as you yourself made clear in your quotes


How can a discussion about a company that is no longer in operation be relevant to anyone?


No, there are ways to assess relevancy objectively - if someone was inclined to try. I was stating that clearly irrelevant, meaningless, and utterly obtuse comments on decades' old threads were not good practice. You disagree?

Here is an example of a thread that has no utility whatsoever, and it was revived after 6 years
https://essayscam.org/forum/es/kenyawriting-good-bad-3544/

So is it the motive behind the act that you have an issue with, and not the act itself? If so then your position is even harder to hold.


And nobody should try to muffle this view, no matter how 'stupid' they might think it is.


Could it be that the thread stands out so much because they (threads that 'need no more input') are so rare?


There's a reason the client came to the forum for advice instead of simply communicating with the site's Customer Support team. That reason has probably caused other students to need the same advice that that client needed more than a decade ago. The specific details may differ but--very often--similar underlying causes trigger visits to the forum by different students.


Completely useless information doesn't benefit anyone anywhere, let alone here. But it is this usefulness--and not time of posting--that should be the measure of a post's appropriateness.


Who said it can? You must have misread something.


Very true.


I agree 100%.
What I disagree with is the notion that it is a select few (not pointing fingers) who get to define the meaning of "irrelevant", "meaningless", and "utterly obtuse". I also take issue with the connection of those definitions to time elapsed since a thread's original post.

Oh dear God. So, let's get this straight. I can't assess the usefulness of a thread because I'm "stupid", but you in your infinite wisdom can - now isn't that convenient, and completely illogical? Why doesn't that surprise me.

The fact that some people are reopening decades' old threads for their own benefit is something I take exception to because its meaningless, it obscures the fact that those who are doing such things have very little of value to offer (they appear in search more frequently, therefore they must have something of value to offer), and are generally pretty clueless about this industry.

As someone who has been here for a while, I tend to give myself the benefit of a doubt about what is and what is not relevant to students, simply because I've experienced almost every single form of abuse/praise/scam/success that is discussed on this forum, as have other reputable writers at one point in their career. This allows me some authority, which I don't purport to have, but is there nonetheless.

I never said you can't. I'm saying you can't impose your assessment on everybody else.


Oh dear God. I never implied you are "stupid". I was just turning it around on you--playfully, I might add--to make my point. Not that it matters, but it was actually you who used the word first. Check above.


Is this really necessary? Surely we can debate without such, right?


Then call them out for this right here, publicly. Every instance they demonstrate how clueless they are is an opportunity to highlight it, while neutralizing (at least somehow) their apparent motive for posting.


And you are probably mostly right, but that's not the point.

If I did think that you called me stupid, we'd be having a wholly different discussion. But, as the rules of the forum state, take everything at face value, believe nothing, and question everything.

To your point - there is a very objective measure of utility (as I mentioned above), and in the case of obsolete forum posts it is very simple - does it have value in the current moment (the criteria is open for debate, but all it really takes is a grain of salt in your head and some basic observation skill to see what is relevant - it's not that hard). I never stated that I alone know what is useful in every instance, but I do know what is useful to students in general. And most other members do as well. If something works, no problem have at it.

But you can't tell me that your view of utility is so different that you fail to gauge the (sometimes) severe lack of meaning in many of the posts that appear in these long forgotten threads. I linked an example above, that revives a thread about a DEAD company. And there are many similar examples - that tackle issues that are of 0 relevance whatsoever, regardless of your measurement standards.

There are also examples of useful threads revived (albeit rarely), and that was never in question; something FW pointed out and I should probably have accentuated in my original post.

What is in question is the objective value (not subjective, mind you - mine or yours, or anyone else's) that the viewers receive from such revivals, and does that measure of value justify them being revived. I say it does not unless they meet a tangible criteria. We can have a different discussion about the criteria if you'd like, but the point stands. That's all.

P.S - whoever reads this thread will know instantly of whom I speak, no need to call them out. You're new, but you just have to browse a bit (say last year), to see the pattern quite clearly.

Student issues are always going to be the same. Some new concerns may come up, but basically, the student woes remain the same year round. The pattern of scams run by the essay companies are also becoming more intricate so the students need to be kept abreast of those new information. However, old information will always have some sort of usefulness. More along the lines of educating the students about how the scams evolved or, for some students, the old postings that are revived become part of their learning experience. Let's think of the situation along the lines of history books.

History books never lose their relevance. The lessons taught and learned educate the students and, in some instances, become useful to them when dealing with certain situations or learning demands. The same goes for the threads here at ES. There is no expiry date on the posts. The posts need to be kept active so that students can always find a reference to whatever it is they are looking for or, simply to educate them before they get scammed.

There is nothing wrong with reviving old posts. The students are going to benefit from it, regardless of the opinions of the old guards at this forum. It is their "expiry date" mindset that will eventually make them irrelevant at this forum.

There's a big difference between commenting objectively and informatively about an issue raised by an old thread and responding directly to the OP as though someone who posted a question here in 2008 has been waiting on the edge of his computer chair for a response for 12 years. Anybody who considers himself a writer should be able to phrase a response in objective terms and still comment freely on any still-relevant issue raised in an ancient post without phrasing his response as a direct "response" to the OP. There's also a big difference between posting a genuine response to an occasional old question or concern that might still be relevant a decade later and deliberately mining dozens and dozens of ancient threads day after day just to increase one's post count and rack up star ratings, starting the day one joins a forum.

Well, it appears that the life expectancy of threads at this forum is not something that should be discussed. I believe that it is up to the Admin or mods to lock up a thread, close it, or delete it, as the case may be. They are the ones with the power to decide upon the relevance of a thread and how long it should stay in the directory. It is incorrect to assume that the people posting on those threads are doing so just to keep their numbers up and remain visible in this forum. Those are the posts where participation is still counted and would still be seen as relevant by some students. As for reporting about sites that are no longer active, I am sure there are those who appreciate the heads up, since these students do not normally check on the existence of these forums and whether they are legit or not.