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This tale is so convoluted I will keep it to bare necessities here. We had a past forum member who died, who was replaced by his grandson, who then also died. I was contacted by the father saying millions of dollars had been left to create memorial hunts in honor of the son. This put up red flags in my world and I distanced myself and the forum from any such effort. Then the wife of the deceased recently joined to carry on where the other deceased members had left off. There have been other red flags regarding identity raised. Hours have been spent by myself, Simon, and Hugh trying to verify what is real and what is not in all this. Questions asked either get no answers, or have been given answers that can't be verified or are clearly not true. Numerous forum members have had contact with these people and I have been told strange stories as a result. None ever resolve the questions I have but only add more uncertainty. It's all now too much for me, way too much drama. I have deleted the last couple threads related to these people, and sadly many kind responses from our good hearted and trusting forum members were also deleted as a result. The related accounts have been banned and blocked. I will have no further contact with or involvement in any of this. I want to be very clear I am not accusing anyone of anything. My answer if asked about any of this is a solid "I don't know". There is simply something very odd going on and I want nothing to do with it going forward. I would make no mention at all and just move on, but I do feel a responsibility to let forum members know that if they are contacted about any of this, to use due caution and diligence before getting involved in anything. I do not want to make a big deal out of this with a bunch of public speculation. My goal is just the opposite, to put this to bed and get as far away from it as possible. I am therefore locking this thread from commentary and ask that nobody start other threads related to any of this. If anyone has any comments or questions feel free to PM me about it. Thank you.

I was looking at some statistics to post on another thread and took note of the top ten pages at this time, excluding main forum pages. Actual topic pages. The list is interesting. The top ten individual pages at this time on the forum as measured over the last month are: https://www.detectorprospector.com/topic/24804-rip-neville-perry https://www.detectorprospector.com/magazine/steves-guides/steve-guide-gold-nugget-detectors https://www.detectorprospector.com/topic/15634-black-rock-covered-in-sparkles https://www.detectorprospector.com/topic/24221-best-pinpointer-to-buy https://www.detectorprospector.com/topic/27074-xp-announces-new-hf2-coil-for-deus-2 https://www.detectorprospector.com/topic/21673-my-thoughts-on-the-minelab-manticore-after-50-hours-and-beyond https://www.detectorprospector.com/topic/11380-my-thoughts-on-the-minelab-vanquish-540 https://www.detectorprospector.com/topic/25956-x-terra-elite-or-equinox-600-which-is-better https://www.detectorprospector.com/topic/17738-aussie-gold-hunters https://www.detectorprospector.com/topic/11422-vanquish-340-preliminary-review By far the most visited was a post that Neville Perry, who starred in Aussie Gold Hunters, died. Second was my gold nugget detector guide. Third was a post of a poor picture of a sparkly black rock! What statistics like this tell you is that post traffic is driven as much or more by Google activity as by actual forum members. Neville Perry has a measure of fame, so people were Googling his name when the news got out, so they landed on that page. Not members, probably never to be seen again. My nugget detector guide gets lots of hits since people are always Googling to find out about what detector to buy. It's the number one draw for years as others come and go. But you never know. Third place is apparently because lots of people Google to find out about black rocks covered in sparkles? That was posted in 2021 by a transient member, and yet to this day ranks in the top 5 pages visited on the forum. How nutty is that? You can also see why I expanded the forum outside the original one main forum dedicated to gold nugget hunting. While still a core interest here it's died off as the gold fields have depleted, and it is more the coin and relic crowd driving activity these days. Good thing I did since most other gold prospecting forums have died off completely, so this helped keep this forum alive. I rarely look at this stuff these days. I used to care about it a lot ten years ago, but these days have not really looked for a year or two, so it was interesting to take a peek, and thought I may as well share.

This forum is supported mainly by Google Ads with a smattering of Amazon ad links. Just so people know, I do not control what ads you see. You are the one who controls that. Here are some tips. 1. You can use ad blockers. That's fine, but if the small revenue here dips far enough that it costs me out of pocket to keep it going, game over. 2. Realize the ads you see are controlled by what you view on the internet. It's not a nefarious conspiracy. Google is simply trying to deliver ads you want to see in the hope it will lead to sales for the person paying for the ad. It does them no good to feed you ads you do not want to see. So they track you as best they can, not because they care a whit about you and your private life, but to sell you stuff. The sites you visit and the things you click on determine what you see. 3. The secret then is not to avoid ads but to click on the ones you like. Do this very much at all, and that's what you will see more of. I purposefully click on PC gaming ads from gog.com and so now that's what I see. I also get a lot of detector ads and rock and mineral ads for the same reason. Screen shot below taken moments ago. 4. Lacking any info Google will also try to define a site profile. In this case it's probably something like "old white guys". The default ads will then be ads that might appeal to that demographic. For some reason scantily clad women and conservative politics seem to be a common thread. 5. So either change the flow by clicking on metal detector ads (for example) a lot as you travel the internet, or try and block specific ads. You can do this by looking in the upper right of every Google Ad where you will see a small blue triangle and an x. The small x allows you to mute the ad: https://support.google.com/admanager/answer/2695260? The small blue triangle is an AdChoices link and will tell you more about who created the ad and some general ad control options that are well worth looking into. Most people do not realize they have this control at their fingertips. https://trustarc.com/products/adchoices/ https://support.google.com/admanager/answer/2695279? I rarely resort to blocking as I never see stuff I need to block because I purposefully click on what I want to see more of. Now, this does not work on site where the ads are hardwired by the site owner, only for Google AdChoices ads, which is all this site uses. Your mileage may vary elsewhere. What I see:

Sometimes we get a new member and the wonderful members of the forum are quick to answer their questions. That's fabulous - thank you! Unfortunately the spammers persist. I recently shut off the ability of new members to add/modify profile information, as they were putting full blown advertising in the About Me area. Now you have to reach Full Member status (10 posts plus 30 days) to be able to add About Me info, Interests, etc. Details on new member restrictions. There really is only one thing they can still do that I have not been able to block yet (I have been trying). Including links in their posts. So you get a new member join and ask a question. Several of you respond. They then quote the longest response, which gets stuck in a small quote box that needs to be clicked and expanded to view. Most people will never do that, as it is just a quote of something two posts back. Then the sneaky bastards put links to porn sites etc in that quote box below the visible portion, only seen if you expand the box. I am aware of this and watch for new members who quote older members. If they get caught, and they will, I hit the spammer button, which bans them and reports them to a spammer service. It also unfortunately wipes out the thread entirely since they started the thread. Anyway, it just happened last night with a person asking about tips for a newbie for beach detecting. There may be people wondering "what the heck" at spending time to make a nice answer for the person, then poof, it all disappears. I thought an explanation is in order and want to apologize for the lost posts. There are ways I might have saved the responses while getting rid of the spammer, but they are a bit convoluted and it was late so I just hit the spammer button, and now they are gone, and I'm sorry for that. But not sorry about nuking a spammer!!

This is a Garrett metal detector forum and specifically the Garrett Vortex forum. It is for people who like and appreciate the Garrett brand, and who want a place to discuss their favored brand and specifically the Vortex models without getting trashed by fans of other brands. It's not that you can't comment any way you like, but have some sense about what is appropriate and post in the right place. To compare this brand to that brand, go on a rant about the Vortex if you want, you need to be posting on Metal Detector Advice & Comparisons Forum. People on this forum want to discuss the Vortex and learn about it, how to get the best out of it, tips and tricks, etc. Let them do so in peace. If you drop into their thread with negative commentary about how something else is better, expect your comment to be moved or deleted. To be clear, this forum is also not a place for bashing Garrett’s competition. If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say it here. The idea is to talk about things you like, not things you do not like. Again, the Comparisons Forum linked to above is the more appropriate location if that is your desire.. Don't be a troll, and do not feed the trolls. If you see trolling behavior here do not engage, report it, and let the mods take care of it. Thanks! Having a Vortex in hand and knowing what I know now this might be a fun thing for people with the right attitude. The Vortex is a near infinite sandbox for an engineer. The detector will never be finished per se, because feedback from users will be critical in defining if there are bugs that need fixing, and more importantly, what general free updates or full blown paid upgrades would be desirable. People who get on board with the process with genuine helpful feedback will be influential in driving the platform forward over the coming years. The Negative Nellie’s and those who like to cast firebombs for eyeballs, not so much. I’ve created the Garrett Vortex Forum as a place where like-minded individuals can discuss the platform in a positive fashion, with the promise that it will be seen by the people that matter. People who just want to complain or generally rain on the parade will be excluded. So if that sounds like something you might be interested in, come join the fun! Essential Threads About The Garrett Vortex Garrett Vortex metal detector - new for 2024

I should have done this one sooner. Six pages of posts need moving, tedious at best, and in fact I'm still working on it. But thought I may as well point you at the new forum now. Enjoy! https://www.detectorprospector.com/forum/67-garrett-axiom-forum/

I think this one will get busy so here you go: https://www.detectorprospector.com/forum/68-garrett-vortex-forum/

There have been too many people dropping in and posting too many photos of common rocks, a bucket full sometime, and expecting them to get identified. The photos eat up server space and far too often the posters never return. Just post and gone, not even a thank you most of the time. They are not really joining the forum or contributing to help anyone in the way they expect to be helped. In other words, all take, no give. That being the case effective immediately only Full Members may post on this forum. Just like the Classifieds it is a benefit for Full Members who may need help with rock and mineral identification. You’ve earned it by being a participating forum member. Anyone joining and posting a pile of rocks on some other forum here to circumvent this restriction will at the least have the post deleted and probably get banned. In other words, don’t join the forum just to post here unless you are planning on being a contributing member for some time. Reaching Full Member status requires at least 10 posts spaced over a span of a month or more to be considered legit.

Many of us know about the present forum problems and hope Steve finds an easy fix. It has already taken too much of his time. We'd like to think our posts and this forum are going to be around forever but we know that is not the case. This is at least my 4th Forum that I use almost on a daily basis. I've gotten to know some of you pretty good. It was one of the reasons I went to New Zealand. I know a Forum Member. I have enough private messaging with him now that we'd still be in touch with each other if this Forum had an unrepairable crash. If that were to happen which is unlikely, where do other members hang out? I hear mention of the Dankowski Forum often. I know there is Prospecting Australia but I don't use it. I know there is another Treasure Site. Treasure Net I don't know about other nugget forums. Where do you guys hang out when you are not here or if you are not here? I don't Facebook but you could list it and then we'd all know where the active, sensible still posting spot is if we dying to post some finds.

The forum had a database meltdown that required loading a backup from 3/30/2024. All posts since them are gone, and all members who signed up after that date will have to register again. I can understand why you might not want to but this is my first forum failure since 1998, so maybe give it another try. We had lost the years of accumulated post "likes" and the good news is those have been restored. Knowing which posts got the most attention over the years was very valuable in zeroing in on the best information. I have upgraded the database software to the latest version and turned off all the third party plugins that were running in hopes of avoiding another meltdown. Work to stabilize and optimize the forum for better stability will be ongoing on a daily basis the next couple weeks. One plugin in particular formatted the thread titles so each word had the first letter in caps. It looked nice I think, but it was out of date and unsupported. So I shut it off and thread titles will be whatever people put in them. Might look messier but I want to get the forum as close to vanilla operation as possible. There was a plugin for "Member since" under your avatar and one that allowed me to bump topics - both gone for the same reason. We are now just running plain vanilla Invision in the hope that it wil prevent whatever caused the previous database corruption to occur. Main lesson learned is I will be implementing automatic database backups to replace my haphazard and ultimately lax manual backups. No more rolling back two months if another meltdown occurs. I apologize to everyone who had posts go away, and members who have to register again. Thanks for your patience and for supporting the forum. Steve Herschbach P.S. Just before this happened the forum went to not allowing user name for login since everyone can see what your user name is. It got set to require your email on file and password to login. I have reverted this temporarily to allow login with user name, but do update your email on file and start using that to log in. If you made that change in the last couple months you need to do so again. Also, if you have Newsletters turned off under notification settings I can't email you. I sent everyone an email for like the second time ever, and 28% of people had it shut off. Just saying. I won't send you anything ever unless it's super important, I promise.

I once hoped this forum would recapture some of the magic of the old days at the Alaska Gold Forum. It is obvious now that is not to be, with almost no posts here anymore about gold dredging. It makes sense as I gave that up in favor of metal detecting myself over 25 years ago, and without me driving discussion about dredging here the idea was doomed to failure. By and large the main posting action on these forums is about metal detecting. I got curious where if anywhere the dredgers ended up at, and a brief search of Google results has me thinking the TreasureNet Dredging & Hi Banking Forum is now the place to be if you have an interest in the subject. Looks like lots of good posters and posts there. Not much has changed in the dredging world from what I can see except the dubious fascination with whiz bang magical mats. I doubt anything will change here as regards gold dredging so best bet for those interested will be to head where the action is, and as far as I can tell TreasureNet is the only place getting any substantial number of new posts on the subject on a regular basis.

When you signed up you gave an email to authenticate your account and also to act as a password recovery email. You also created a display name. When you sign in / log in you have been using your display name and password to sign in. This is going to change to you signing in with your account email and password. It is a good time to be sure your email on account is still one you have access to. Some people get new email accounts and never update it here. That can be a huge problem if you need to reset your password for any reason. In the help post at the top of every forum there is a link to password recovery. It sends a recovery email to the email you have on file here. Wrong email, you are not going to get it. New Member Signup - Click Here! Lost Password - Click Here! <- Password Recovery Forum Tips & Tricks Advanced Search Tag List/Index And again, you will need to enter your email to sign in from now on. Below is how you check and change your display name, email, and password. It is important you update that email. It is very hard now to contact me if you get locked out as I no longer have a contact page on the website. I got 100 marketing messages a day and got tired of it. The only way you can normally contact me is PM on the website, but you need to be logged in to do that. If you can't log in, you need to use the password recovery. And if you do not have a current email in the system - you are screwed! Well, not quite. If you are reading this you will see my contact email in the screenshots below. The spammers will probably miss this so I will leave this up unless I get inundated again. But making a note of it someplace will allow you to email me if you have a problem signing in. Please do not email me with metal detector or gold prospecting questions. I'll just tell you to post the question on the forum. The email is for emergency forum support only. For big screen device click on your name in upper right. Click on account settings. You will see your email and if it is not correct, you can change it. Big screen Step 1 Big screen Step 2 On small screen devices it takes more steps. In upper right click the three horizontal bars: Small screen Step 1 Small screen Step 2 Small screen Step 3 Small screen Step 4

I know others have shared their gratitude in the past but I would like to do the same. Thanks Steve, for this forum. Thanks to all the contributers who's input, ideas, questions and expertise make this a great source of information, interest and an avenue to help pursue the hunt for buried treasure. I'm sharing a photo of my wife when she found her first ring; priceless. And one selfie with both of us wandering around Nevada having a great time looking for for some yellow stuff. Love learning more about detecting, the technical stuff, tips and tricks, geology and seeing some of the finds people have made. Again , thanks.

For those interested, Tom Dankowski’s detecting forum has finally been upgrade to a new host platform. It is accessible via a link on the old site at the top of the page. You will have to re register for the new forum but can use your old login. The old site will remain as a read only source of information.

Says Unknown User Error???

Just wondering if anybody knows what happened to Monte's forum.

I have moved most all posts regarding the older X-Terra models the new forum here, though I will probably still find a few relevant threads. The main reason for this forum though is the new X-Terra Pro breathing new life into the old name. Enjoy!

I just posted a new topic and it seems that it needs to be approved before being visible to others or if I want to edit it. I haven't seen it before. Is that a new rule? Cheers!

Hi Steve, I recall you said you were going to set up a location on the site for 3D models of use by the community. I can't seem to find it - I have a couple of models I would like to contribute to give a little something back to this site. Thanks

New members now have limited access until they reach Full Member status. New members may not add profile information until reaching Full Member status - too much stealth spam is being created there. There is no ability to edit their own posts until they have made 10 posts and been a member more than 30 days. There is no access to posting classifieds until after 10 posts and 30 days. Finally, the PM function is disabled until Full Member status is attained. To many scammers joining just to PM people junk. Any new account that has not posted at all in the 30 day period may be deleted. Anyone with more than one but less than 10 posts will simply remain in the regular Member account status indefinitely. The accounts that make at least ten valid posts and have been a member at least 30 days will automatically be promoted to the new Full Member status. This will give access to the Classifieds, remove the PM block, allow full profile editing, allow links and post editing, preset "signatures" and more. This does not affect any existing accounts!! Any current members with less than 10 posts etc need not worry as all accounts as of this morning were promoted to Full Member status. Anyone with no posts however should at least post once or lose your account after 30 days have passed. This was done to stop the excessive spammer activity after consulting the current membership over the last month. It should pretty much put a complete halt to that sort of thing, while also encouraging new members to be more active. Lurkers are welcome, but will need to post at least once. Thank you everyone for the valuable feedback on this subject. I will monitor the new setup but if anyone experiences anything odd due to the new setup, please let me know. I changed quite a few forum settings and hopefully got it all right. Finally, I want to say why I am doing this. It is to protect the core participating members from spammers and scammers. It is to help insure that you are dealing with good people on the Classifieds. The idea of this forum has never been about having lots of members, it is about having high quality members. In that I think it is succeeding - kudos to you all.

There is a long thread about issues I have been having with new members here. Long story short there are spammers who can evade automated spam checks by setting up endless new email accounts. They often join, post once, then edit the posts later to include links. This means I spend way too much time now reviewing new members who only post once or twice, going back for months. More obvious have been the spam attacks where we get hit by a bunch of new members who post dozens of crazy links in very short order. So here is my plan. I will create a New Member account. New members will not be able to include links in their posts. They will not be able to download from the Downloads area, or post in the Classifieds. They will have a limit of three PM messages a day - enough to contact somebody with an ad in the Classifieds who has not included contact info. I am looking for feedback on this. People may only want to be contacted by longtime members, and don't want to hear from some person who just joined. If you want that, well, then include contact info in the ad. But maybe you don't want to put your contact info out for people to know? Not sure, but allowing a new member to PM while limiting the number keeps them from spamming the entire forum with junk mail, so works for me. The system allows for automated promotion, so after ten posts and 30 days, the person will automatically be promoted to the full member account. So this is easy to set up and requires no ongoing work on my part. It will get rid of both the sleeper spammers, and the massive spam attacks. Very few spammers are going to spend a month and ten posts when so much easier marks exist out there. One might argue this penalizes lurkers by not allowing them to download owner manuals or use the classifieds. The simple reality is those are rewards for participating members. It's the people who post regularly and help answer questions that make this forum what it is. People who join just to sell stuff or download stuff are using the forum while not contributing anything in return. That being the case they can't be missed since in a way they really are not here anyway. I've not done this yet but the more I think about it the more I like it, and just wanted to toss it out one last time for review or suggestions before implementing it. And I will use this as an opportunity to thank all of you who do post interesting content for others to read, and most especially thank those of you who answer questions for those that have them. That is what the forum is all about, and it is you all that make it happen. Without you, there is no forum, so again, my heartfelt thanks.

I admit I am getting tired of the folks that join, post a bunch of "what is this" photos, and then never respond when people take the time to answer. No thank you, nothing. I've wondered if it is some sort of scam, but I follow up and watch, and most seem to be hit and run members - one post, gone forever. And a few sleeper spammers. Maybe people posting photos here to use elsewhere, as it always seems to be a bunch of photos at once. So I'll ask the longtime members - what do you think of this forum? Is it worth having? People ok with it in general? I'm only asking because these one time posters of whatever they found in the driveway are kind of putting me off answering here. But as long as you all are happy I'm happy, so just checking in.

I have had my iPad not let me post - the keyboard does not appear. Doing a hard close of the app or hard reset fixes the issue. Another user reported the same issue. It appears to be an issue with Apple and Safari - never seen it on my PC. One user, Carolina, seems to not be able to get around the problem at all, though I'm not sure what devices or browsers he has tried as alternatives. I can't find anything on my side checking the software, and when I do a test post from his account is works just fine. A bit of a mystery and wondering if anyone else has seen issues recently. If so, what devices or browsers were involved, and what was the fix?

Hi Steve, Wanted to kick this around for consideration. I know some of us have come up with models for 3D printed devices that are useful in this particular art of prospecting with detectors. Would you consider a new category in the Downloads section for such printer files? I know I and others have uploaded objects into various threads, but they do tend to get lost in the shuffle. I've got another object standing by to start things off if you would agree. Thx,

In general please use the default 14 point plain text formatting. People think they are doing those with poor eyesight a favor posting in all caps, or all bold, or in larger text. Well, if you are posting you probably know what you are posting, so you do not need it to read your own posts. For the rest of us it is the internet version of yelling "look at me" and more importantly, eats up space fast on people using a phone to view the forum. On my 42" PC monitor it may only look like largish text - on a phone I see 10 letters! If people have bad eyesight, they can use various options built into their browser or viewing device to increase text size. Look for the Accessibility Option in your device or browser settings, or both. There have also been people here that were promoting videos and such that think they need to get attention with big text and colorful letters and other fancy stuff. But the latest problem has been people copying from a translator and posting here. It formats into one long sentence in large text that runs off the right side of the screen for eternity. So here are some tips. 1. When you paste, use the paste as plain text option built into your device. 2. Look for the paste as plain text instead option built into the forum. 3. Paste into a simple text editor like Notepad first to strip the formatting, then copy and paste to the forum. 4. Finally, when posting videos, go to the YouTube page and look for the share link for that video. Copy and paste that link, and the video will appear here. I'm fine with videos. I'm less fond of links posted that make people go elsewhere to see stuff. It's more work for the viewer. If the video does not appear, try again until you get it right. As the police like to say, thank you for your assistance in this matter.