I posted an offer of irises for postage on the 8th, a person who joined on the 8th requested 3 boxes of irises. Long story short, when I clicked on their named again today to see if they had posted anywhere in any forum or posted any information about themselves yet I got a message that said URL not found or something like that.
Does that mean Dave deleted them? If so, that is a good thing. If not I was going to start asking some questions before I had any further communication with this person.
Any idea what is going on here?

Lori, I wonder if it was just a momentary computer/system glitch ... I'd try refreshing the page and click on the persons name again and see what happens.

Actually it sounds like the scammer who frequently gets banned when the subject is irises. He/she keeps rejoining under new names. My guess is Dave or one of the iris moderators took care of it.

Oh, ok. Good. I won't concern myself with it then.

I deleted his thread and banned his account. We don't need that kind of trouble here on our happy and friendly website.

Thank you Dave. I was getting ready to contact you about his tree mails. You are the best!

Aaah ... I didn't realize we had such scammers lurking around here! Glad to know he's gone for good! We sure don't need negative people like that around here!

Dave is good at catching them right away, so we aren't be-grubbied by them.

Actually, usually I don't catch them but they are pointed out to me by various people who notice it first.

We usually have to remove a scammer or spammer about once a week. You don't really see it happen because they come in, post their spam, and it's noticed and deleted all within the space of a few hours. Our moderators are the best moderators in the world.

The best

and deserving of every accolade they get!

Well, I don't know who watches over the iris world but they are doing a great job! He was back at 9 am with a new account and gone before 1:58 pm when I checked my tree mail.

I am so happy with ATP, you guys are doing a wonderful job here! Keep up the good work everyone, I know keeping a site like this under control is not an easy task.

Lori, you were specifically targeted for contact by this guy and I got pretty uncomfortable when he kept coming back with new names after I banned him numerous times.

This is a good lesson to keep in mind: when a brand new member signs up and starts asking for plants, you should almost always simply ignore it altogether. Let them get established in the community a little bit before extending offers for plants.

I have learned a valuable lesson here. I looked at his membership page after I communicated with him. I won't make that mistake again. Thank you for watching out for us, I can't speak for everyone but I pretty gullible most of the time.

Trading and co-op buying is 100% user risk, meaning that we don't get involved at all. That's different from scammers, though- we're happy to keep the place cleaned up of any riff-raff

I totally agree that we our moderators, and members for that matter! All working together on the same team to grow ATP and keep it the BEST!

I've had people tree mail me asking for plant(s) and I always look at their profile ... if they have not posted anywhere else on site or contributed to the site in any way ... I ignore the request. At first I felt guilty about not responding with a reply ... but not anymore.

enidcandles said:I have learned a valuable lesson here. I looked at his membership page after I communicated with him. I won't make that mistake again. Thank you for watching out for us, I can't speak for everyone but I pretty gullible most of the time.

You are not gullible - you just have a very kind heart and we all appreciate you for it!!!

That is so sweet, thank you.