PDA

View Full Version : is it true? - Mark Shuttleworth pays people to strom forums?



ice60
February 5th, 2007, 02:44 PM
i only just heard about it. apparently mark shuttleworth is using somekind of underhand ways to make ubuntu the most used distro. he pays people to storm forums and spends 1000s on advertising.

does he really do that? i thought ubuntu was doing so well because it was a great distro and that made people use it.

ubuntu-geek
February 5th, 2007, 02:46 PM
Seems like fake information IMO.

Adamant1988
February 5th, 2007, 02:59 PM
i only just heard about it. apparently mark shuttleworth is using somekind of underhand ways to make ubuntu the most used distro. he pays people to storm forums and spends 1000s on advertising.

does he really do that? i thought ubuntu was doing so well because it was a great distro and that made people use it.

I can see Shuttleworth spending money on advertising, but honestly, why go through the trouble of paying people to browse the forums? That does absolutely nothing, at most Shuttleworth may be paying people to act as "Community managers" which would be the people that moderate and maintain the forums, and that is very highly unlikely in my opinion.

PriceChild
February 5th, 2007, 03:03 PM
at most Shuttleworth may be paying people to act as "Community managers" which would be the people that moderate and maintain the forums, and that is very highly unlikely in my opinion.The staff team are all unpaid volounteers.

sabdfl only pays his employees in Canonical, which for example include Mr. Jono Bacon who is Community Manager :)

Adamant1988
February 5th, 2007, 03:04 PM
The staff team are all unpaid volounteers.

sabdfl only pays his employees in Canonical, which for example include Mr. Jono Bacon who is Community Manager :)

Ah, thanks for clearing that up. I didn't look up Jono's duties, I just assumed he worked directly with the community by title (and forgot his name), but we all know what they say about assumptions, haha. *facepalm*

maniacmusician
February 5th, 2007, 03:05 PM
who knows.

I'd take that job though. Easy money.

PriceChild
February 5th, 2007, 03:13 PM
who knows.

I'd take that job though. Easy money.Me first!!!

RAV TUX
February 5th, 2007, 03:18 PM
i only just heard about it. apparently mark shuttleworth is using somekind of underhand ways to make ubuntu the most used distro. he pays people to storm forums and spends 1000s on advertising.

does he really do that? i thought ubuntu was doing so well because it was a great distro and that made people use it.

please place a link for your source, I would be interested to read more.

az
February 5th, 2007, 03:49 PM
Ah, thanks for clearing that up. I didn't look up Jono's duties, I just assumed he worked directly with the community by title

Even before he was hired by Canonical, Jono was active in the community and would often argue that these forum's contributions to the community were not being appreciated enough by the developer community.

Despite that, he is not a member of the forums, AFAIK.

ice60
February 5th, 2007, 10:12 PM
please place a link for your source, I would be interested to read more.
actually, i just lost it abit when i started this thread lol. i'm sick of windows users spreading FUD about linux. i'm not a windows basher, and i don't mind if someone doesn't like linux, i really don't. but one thing i hate is people making stuff up about linux, why do people make stuff up??

anyway, this is what i was talking about -
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=937620&postcount=24

there's only one person on that forum that always tells people to try ubuntu, and that's me ):P all the other linux users suggest other distros, so some of that post was aimed at me.

it's not important, but just to show, here's a current thread where i recommand ubuntu -
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=163836

aysiu
February 5th, 2007, 10:16 PM
According to dictionary.com (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=strom), strom is a Czech word for tree:
the largest kind of plant, with a thick, firm, wooden stem and branches
Example: We have three apple trees growing in our garden. I'm not sure exactly what you're accusing Mark Shuttleworth of. Is he paying people to be on the forums? I don't see why he'd need to. Plenty of people (like me and other staff members) post on the forums for free. He'd be wasting his money.

What word did you mean instead of strom?

Brunellus
February 5th, 2007, 10:20 PM
i only just heard about it. apparently mark shuttleworth is using somekind of underhand ways to make ubuntu the most used distro. he pays people to storm forums and spends 1000s on advertising.

does he really do that? i thought ubuntu was doing so well because it was a great distro and that made people use it.
if sabdfl is paying I haven't gotten my cheque yet.

aysiu
February 5th, 2007, 10:29 PM
Never mind. I read your first post again. You put strom in the subject title but storm in your post. So you're saying Mark Shuttleworth is paying people to "storm" the forums? What does that mean?

As of this post, the forum has these stats:
Threads: 346,176, Posts: 2,103,850, Members: 233,206 1. So are you saying Mark Shuttleworth knows and/or interviewed then hired 200,000 (or even 100,000) people separately to sign up for accounts and post bogus support threads and bogus help just to generate more activity on the forums? Not feasible. Too much work.

2. Or are you saying Mark Shuttleworth paid one person to sign up for 100,000 separate accounts and then post and answer her own bogus support threads? Again, not feasible/too much work.

3. Or are you saying that Mark Shuttleworth pays someone to create bots that automatically set up accounts and automatically post support threads and support "solutions"? The threads are too distinct from one another in form (if not content) to have been posted automatically.

4. Or are you saying that Mark Shuttleworth pays people like me, who have the highest number of posts, to actually help people. If that's the case, I can assure you it's not true. If he wanted to pay me, I wouldn't turn him down, though!

No scenario of "storming" forums really makes any logistical sense and wouldn't give a good return for the money invested. A much better idea to generate interest in a distro and gain it some press coverage/popularity would be to make the distro free, ship discs freely (including postage) to anywhere in the world, and once in a while do something that makes a great Digg or Slashdot headline (say, inviting the OpenSuSE developers to work on Ubuntu after the Novell-Microsoft deal). Oh, wait... Mark Shuttleworth already does those things.

If you had thousands of dollars and wanted to popularize your distro, would you pay people to "storm" forums?

Brunellus
February 5th, 2007, 10:31 PM
Never mind. I read your first post again. You put strom in the subject title but storm in your post. So you're saying Mark Shuttleworth is paying people to "storm" the forums? What does that mean?

As of this post, the forum has these stats: 1. So are you saying Mark Shuttleworth knows and/or interviewed then hired 200,000 (or even 100,000) people separately to sign up for accounts and post bogus support threads and bogus help just to generate more activity on the forums? Not feasible. Too much work.

2. Or are you saying Mark Shuttleworth paid one person to sign up for 100,000 separate accounts and then post and answer her own bogus support threads? Again, not feasible/too much work.

3. Or are you saying that Mark Shuttleworth pays someone to create bots that automatically set up accounts and automatically post support threads and support "solutions"? The threads are too distinct from one another in form (if not content) to have been posted automatically.

4. Or are you saying that Mark Shuttleworth pays people like me, who have the highest number of posts, to actually help people. If that's the case, I can assure you it's not true. If he wanted to pay me, I wouldn't turn him down, though!

No scenario of "storming" forums really makes any logistical sense and wouldn't give a good return for the money invested. A much better idea to generate interest in a distro and gain it some press coverage/popularity would be to make the distro free, ship discs freely (including postage) to anywhere in the world, and once in a while do something that makes a great Digg or Slashdot headline (say, inviting the OpenSuSE developers to work on Ubuntu after the Novell-Microsoft deal). Oh, wait... Mark Shuttleworth already does those things.

If you had thousands of dollars and wanted to popularize your distro, would you pay people to "storm" forums?
sabdfl did something great when he got Kevin Carmony from Linspire on these forums last year to defend Click'n'Run. What a perfect forum firestorm THAT turned out to be.

CarpKing
February 5th, 2007, 11:43 PM
I think the accusation is that he pays hundreds of people to post on other forums touting Ubuntu, the implication being that ice60 was one of those employees. I seriously doubt that this is the case.

aysiu
February 5th, 2007, 11:43 PM
sabdfl did something great when he got Kevin Carmony from Linspire on these forums last year to defend Click'n'Run. What a perfect forum firestorm THAT turned out to be.
I thought it was to defend selling Firefox and OpenOffice?

kerry_s
February 6th, 2007, 12:04 AM
Hey, that reminds me he still owes me from the last time i stormed/browsed i need to call him up and get that $1. :lolflag:

old_geekster
February 6th, 2007, 12:07 AM
Can we say "Urban Legend", boys and girls. This is the type of info that makes UL's.

It certainly makes people talk. He probably started the rumor, himself, to get us to talk about it.

aysiu
February 6th, 2007, 12:15 AM
Since no one in the last nine hours has been able to substantiate the rumor in any way (either through logic or documentation), I'm closing this thread. It's gotten more attention that it deserves.