Forum Moderators: open
Even though he KNEW that it was against the rules, he nevertheless did it due to some desperation on his side.
I wonder if it might be a good idea to have a special forum for "peer reviews" of websites, especially for design or technology questions.
Of course there is the risk that spammers might use such a forum to praise their products or services, or for people simply wishing to benefit from WW's good pagerank. But I think this can be managed:
Spammers:
The intial post to the forum is moderated. The moderator (or a team of moderators to cover timezones and guarantee swift handling) looks at the URL in question. If it is clean, the moderator then enables the thread and makes it visible. After that, it's not moderated any more but of course subject to the general rules.
PR-harvesters:
The forum will be disabled in robots.txt so that spiders won't spider it.
What do you think? I'd like to hear pro's and con's
[edited by: pmkpmk at 4:12 pm (utc) on April 7, 2004]
What HAVE you identified as negative issues for peer review sites?
case closed.
There in lies the rub - 4 msgs into the thread and it was already spammed with a link for you to "review".
What site was that? The Usenet text newsgroup I pointed him to?
edit_g: In the particular thread I mentioned the tone was neither aggressive nor arrogant. There came - from my point of view - valid input in a normal and factual tone.
I agree that a forum like that probably needs close moderation. That's for sure a diligent task to do, probably something for more than one moderator.
But if all the other stuff on the web is so bad as described here, shouldn't we be encouraged to make a difference? I don't know if I'm any good in evaluating sites, but I would volunteer to invest quite some work into a forum like that.
pmk, I personally like "site reviews" and enjoy them in some of the other groups I participate in, in different types of venues - where they're appropriate and consistent with the focus and mission of the group.
Sure there's a demand! But we have to realize that at a certain service level, while there may be a demand, there are a lot of people who do provide that type of service, on a professional level - for a price. :)
We have to look at the time factor and breadth and longevity of usefulness, too. Let's say a site is reviewed in January - with a link to it. Suggestions are made and changes made. Yes, it's helpful. Six months down the road, in June, others may read that discussion and by then the site in question may have had a 210% change and not bear any resemblance to the site being discussed originally - rendering the entire discussion meaningless, for both the original poster and those afterward who read it.
We have to look at the target audience of a particular site (or other type of venue), the focus and the mission - and from there deduce what's appropriate and consistent with achieving and maintaining the goals.
On a personal note from myself:
Your attitude of generosity and willingness to reach out and contribute whatever you're capable of to others is commendable beyond what words can express. It's the type of attitude that's foundational and is at the very core of what makes an online community like we have here far more than just an IP address, a Perl program and a bunch of bits and bytes.
We deal mainly with practical matters, but it's members reaching out to other members, with caring and concern, that gives a site like this a human heartbeat and brings it to life.
Thank you for being one of us. :)
But we have to realize that at a certain service level, while there may be a demand, there are a lot of people who do provide that type of service, on a professional level - for a price. :)
That's a valid point - I have not thought along these lines before. But again, this is true also for other areas, especially for SEO where we have a lot of service providers AND (potential) customers in these forums.
Six months down the road, in June, others may read that discussion and by then the site in question may have had a 210% change and not bear any resemblance to the site being discussed originally - rendering the entire discussion meaningless
Again true. However this is easy to countermeasure by some sort of timeframe mechanism: each thread gets - say - two weeks and is then rendered invisible (maybe except for the thread starter).
We have to look at the target audience of a particular site (or other type of venue), the focus and the mission - and from there deduce what's appropriate and consistent with achieving and maintaining the goals.
An honest question: is there a written motto or mission statement for WW? I admit I haven't especially looked for it, I can't even recall what problem brought me here in the first place. It seemed a place both friendly AND professional so after lurking around for half a year or so I stayed. But as far as I can recall I never saw a "to server & protect"-like motto.
Thanks for the rest of your post. I'll answer to it in private.
is there a written motto or mission statement for WW?
[webmasterworld.com...]
News and Discussion for the Independent Web Professional
FYI, we've considered and made some attempts at peer review situations in the distant past. It simply never "fits" well here... My perception is that, over time, the focus of the board drifts from professional discussion to "Help Me!" discussion.
Let's say that back in August, when I assumed the duties on my site, I came here and got a review. And let's further assume that either no-one bothered to review my site, or worse yet, gave me a good review.
Based on that review I might not have - taken it upon myself to find out more about CSS, or MySql, or php, or Content Writing, or PPC... you see where I'm going. Actually, I would have been in a state of disbelief to get a positive review of my site (last August), but that may well have been enough for the site owner to dismiss my concerns.
I wanted to know what my customers were doing on my site, and how they felt about it. So I learned how to read a log file, and how to build a survey. And today, my customer reviews of my site are more than enough to let me know I'm on the right track.
Does peer review have a place then? Sure it does. I've got one site that I made a small change to, then came over to WW only to find out that the big G frowns on the very thing I did. A peer-review from someone who knows a bit more than myself (not hard to accomplish) might keep me from wading into the shark pool. On the other hand, now that I know I'm treading on thin ice, I'll keep a close eye on the changes, on what other people are saying about them, and maybe even learn something along the way.
And that opens a new scenario. "OK I fixed this, look at it again.", or "Hey, these changes are great, what do you think about my site now?" Obviously, a time frame for repeat reviews would have to be established to prevent that sort of abuse. But the whole idea is that I'm not learning anything that way, nor am I contributing anything to the greater whole.
<sarcasm>
Brett-you may be missing out. Open a pay forum for reviews, give a glowing (or not) review of a site, then give them the 26 steps to a good site, maybe suitable for framing.
</sarcasm>
Dave is member #2 or 3. (he has been here since the start). He mentioned that we'd tried a forum in the distant past.
Ever read Lianes story?
[webmasterworld.com...]
We'd started at thing in 1999 we called "WebmasterWorld Answers" (no, that is not a typo and yes, that was the name of the subforum - interesting, no?). It was just that - a peer review project forum where we took on a case to help out. It was pretty interesting. Unfortunatly, it was not sustainable.
is there a written motto or mission statement for WW?
Yes.
Mission:
We are here for members to discuss the process of doing business. There are enough B2B and B2C sites out there. Running a website these days takes a great deal of knowledge. The design, coding, maintenance, promotion, marketing, and management of a website is almost an impossible task for one person alone without extensive training. We are here as a forum for the members to share and gain knowledge in operating and promoting a website. Think of us as part of your extended site development and process team. We are not here to actually do business with one another.
From: [webmasterworld.com...]
But, I do fail to see how peer-review wont fit WebmasterWorld's mission though.
