Forum Moderators: open
The issue at hand is our policy on not allowing links to blogs. The main issue is that of trust and accuracy. While blogs can provide incredible vehicles to staying informed, they also pose a risk of misinforming us. The following covers some of those issues - a few more as well - and we'd enjoy hearing from you on the subject.
The biggest change I made recently was taking most of January-March to write the new mod reporting system and thread recommendation system. That system is/was at the request of mods going back 4-5 years. It was designed to reduce mod work load and make their life around here easier. From all accounts and comments - it has been the best addition for moderators ever. I have had mods all but cry on the phone thanking me for it. I think there is no question that it has been one of the most successful additions to the WebmasterWorld software since 1999.
Second, I do try to handle as much stuff in private as I possibly can. Public discussions of personal business are best avoided so that no one gets embarrassed or loses face.
> "no linking to SE blogs" come up?
Changing a major rule like that is not something that can be done over night. If we open up blog links, it is a flood. There is no putting that genie back in the bottle easily. It has to be done at a snails pace.
I have talked and talked with the admins about it for quite some time. We totally agree that there is the need to open things up a bit - the question that no one has an immediately answer for: is HOW can we do that? How do we do it and not get spammed off the net with junk? How do we say a link to Googles Blog is ok, but Fred Pharm and Phentermine blog is not? No one has come up with a line item policy that would work? It would be a nightmare to moderate and admin. Until we can come up with a policy that will work for everyone, allowing links would be a stake through the heart of the moderators. They wouldn't know what, when, how, or why to catch links and we wouldn't know how to explain it. It would turn the forums upside down overnight. Turning on blog links at this point with out a policy would be the worst decision we would make in 6 years here. Hence - I don't think it is going to happen until a policy is formed we can all live with.
I think part of the issue is that of senior member/moderator perception of the current posting policies. I don't think there is an appreciation for the mods that came before and all the work that was done in those early days to set the current policy. One ex admin said, "Other tech forums should get on their knees and kiss the feet of WebmasterWorld for getting the spam out of their own forum". In other words, we don't currently see much of a spam problem here because of all the work and member education we have done in the past.
If you haven't read the Professional forum spammers thread in awhile, it would be a good read:
[webmasterworld.com...]
There are hundreds of people now with the job of buzz marketing in forums. From simple whisper campaigns (we miss many of those), to pure drops, we don't get many serious problems any more. The "blog as propaganda and sales and self promotion" phenomena is growing and only going to get worse. There is no way, that we have the ability to determine the difference between a honest blog drop to an important breaking story, and a promo drop. We all have blogs and would like to promote them, but moderators not self promoting is one of the core tenants of WebmasterWorld life. We want people to trust as much as possible what we say.
What is a bit surprising to me, is the lack of appreciation for recent history here. Did you not see a few old members burn out and leave over the last few years? On their way out, in the Google forum several of them said (and have since maintained the view in public) that we were too close to some of the search engines. One exmember has accused me of working directly for Google in public. Most recently at another forum, someone posted that I clearly work for Yahoo because we named the last Yahoo update - Update Tim. Still another thinks I am Paul Gardi because Paul gets to speak at WebmasterWorld conferences. Therefore, I am hyper sensitive to allowing engines to come in here and drop self promotional/self authored blog links. It is why I tend to give 2nd tier engines some undue exposure to try to lean the other way as much as possible. Fact is, Google is running 60+% of the referrals on the net and getting 95% of the webmaster/site owners attention - so that is where we also focus and also what gets the attention.
It is also important to remember that people have figured out every way imaginable to drop links in the forum as false spam reports. From asking about the site in my profile (which wasn't his), to a blog drop that was really a spam report - we have seen it all.
We must provide a safe environment for people to read and work in. The golden rule of not reporting on thee neighbor is slowly getting tarnished. We don't want to be a contributing factor to that, but rather one that upholds and enforces it in our little corner of the web and encourages others to do so.
> suggestions 6 months ago
There are several in there that have been done and several that are on the drawing board (database forum etc, spam report forum). There are also many that are simply not possible legally (supporters forum suggestions, admin policies..etc).
> conference
Sorry the conference date slipped into the summer, but between new house, new wife, honeymoon, hiring/training people, and the inevitable post-vegas exhausted crash - there just wasn't time to get it done in march-april. Waiting appears to have worked out though with the largest conference we've ever done coming up (it is going to be a blast and we are planning on the biggest bash ever). I appreciate the vote of confidence that we can do all this stuff over night, but I don't have an S on my chest and going from one employee to 4 is a major leap for any business.
> search
I've asked and asked for suggestions on a search engine. I have tried all the major se packages from mngo to aspseek and nothing will work for here - it is just too much dynamic content.
> New mods
Are coming on line at a pace. Engine is slowly doing that for us. Thanks! It takes alot longer than one would imagine to setup a new moderator. There is alot of back-n-forth that goes on. I think a new mod takes about a month to setup and manage.
> Db/SQL forum
Will happen. Just a matter of finding a mod, and then the day it will take to set it up and move a bunch of posts into it.
> other stuff
Some of the other work has to be delayed. Like that recent change that took about a week to program, there is another one coming up after New Orleans that just has to happen. We are breaking the file system here with over 500,000 files now - that can't be continued. So, what I'm saying is that for every public minute we do something (like an sql forum), there are 10 support minutes (fixing the db system) that is going on under the hood.
Quote of the day:
One of the things I like best about WW is I perceive it to be a place that helps people learn how to learn about - almost how to think through - web issues and develop their own solutions, as opposed to only handing out solutions to immediate problems all the time. - ken_b
> but why not link to the actual source,
> and in some cases cover it first?
I still think that would have some serious repercussions. The biggest being deciding what is and isn't news of value.
The issue becomes even stickier when it is a moderator that is wanting to "break" the story on his/her blog site. We have had numerous incidents where mods have wanted to promote their own site in the forums. Sometimes in the past, we stuck our head in the sand and looked the other way.
See, policies are fine-n-dandy and look good on paper and give you a crutch to lean on. However, given the nature of the bbs system, the nature of human interaction, of our vast communication differences, not to mention sex-politics-religion, and the general nature of textual communication - the ultimate policy is simple: keep the peace. Sometimes that is easy to do and other times it requires bending a rule here or there. It also often involves me falling on my sword for the site or for a admin/moderator.
Then there is also the issue of keeping the doors open. Trying to do this site without any direct advertising income (yes *wink wink* on the "exhibitors" logos) is more difficult than people think. aka: [searchengineworld.com...] The subscription model is very difficult to sustain and has required many choices I have not been comfortable with. It didn't always work (eg: see WebmasterWorld 98-2003 in the hole for well over a hundred grand building the site and keeping it afloat. There were numerous days when the doors were almost closed. It was only by the good graces and commercial inspiration of a few mods that the system even exists today.)
Then there is the issue of competition. After doing forums/bbs's for 21 years... ummm, I've learned a thing or two you know? Given that some mods do mod their own forums, and others have come from/gone too other forums, - sure, I flat admit there are some strategy points I keep too myself. After all, I don't' know of too many people who put their own biz strategy on the web for all to see. Most of the bigger points about forums are already out there anyway. However, I get the question all the time about why WebmasterWorld can do 7 figure page views while others struggle to hit 5 figures a day? It is just an accident really - you can't do WebmasterWorld again today ;-) ya, that's the ticket, it's just an accident ;-). Then there is all the legal stuff and work that has been done. I know it grates on a few people here, but I do not talk about the legal work/rulings we have had done here, and on going stuff that is even being done right now. All that costs a fortune, but I feel it is the difference between being here and not. It is hard to see how that relates to this conversation, but when you think about some of the legal actions that have taken place by large companies/sites against bloggers, forums, and the like - it is very significant.
back to frogs and blogs:
Right now, there is so much junk on the web (multitudes more than ever before) that people don't know what to believe. They are reading stuff generated out of thin air and taking it as fact.
In the last couple of months, I have seen two blog stories go mainstream that ended up to be wrong. One even involved a top 20 sites legal department to get corrected. Those stories involved WebmasterWorld members to a certain degree. They also were blog entries that people wanted to put into the forums here as news worthy. At the time, I did not know if the stories were correct or not, but I knew we weren't linking a blog for the source on it. As it turns out, the policy served us in spades. We also did not get into a soap opera tit-for-tat drama-of-the-month with them on the story.
With soo much inaccurate info being shoved on the web, I feel strongly that we must link to accurate, authoritative, and generally accepted as high value sources. That is true for code and education matters, and it is 10 fold as true for timely news sources.
If we did implement such a policy (link to quality blog stories...which is sorta what we having been doing off-the-cuff anyway - eg: first define blog), it would come down to a judgement call on a per moderator basis. Those would sometimes be right, and sometimes be wrong. I believe those kinds of conflicts would cause difficulties on moderators and problems with members and hurt the quality of postings out there. I believe that the quality of the postings in the forums is a good - if not better on the whole - than they have been in quite awhile.
WebmasterWorld's existing policy forces us to think through our issues and describe them in a way that keeps discussions relatively self-contained, rather than depending on linked materials to make our points. That limits us in some ways, but on the other hand it makes WebmasterWorld's archives significantly more useful than some boards which over time become polluted with broken links.
I would vote for maintaining the existing policy or something very close to it.
We totally agree that there is the need to open things up a bit
My earlier suggestion was on the assumption that you would be going ahead with opening it up in some way. If the question of whether blogs links are allowed is itself up for discussion I'll add my voice to the nays.
The userbase of WW has changed somewhat. Have a look at the Bourbon thread [webmasterworld.com]. Then imagine all those posters having their own blogs or their own favourite blogs. Then imagine the Bourbon thread with links to blogs of the same quality as the bulk of the OMG! posts. Is there a way of getting around imposing on the mods? I don't see a whole lot of suggestions.
Public discussions of personal business are best avoided so that no one gets embarrassed or loses face.
I would 100% agree with this but it must be applied across the board and not allowed to go through in some cases as it was recently.
What if an SE blog released a story that involved WebmasterWorld?
(this is going to happen tomorrow morning.)
Years ago, I had to clear things I put in our company newsletter with my boss. I would research the interesting bits, he would go read them and approve or edit out what he did and didn't want to appear.
Only you can decide to whom you want to give the keys to the store. If you feel the mods or just the admins should make editorial decisions, then go ahead and make the decision. Just please don't open it up to every Tom, Dick and Harry Blogger out there!
Maybe, just maybe you might want to open another forum just for linking to blogs and keep that stuff out of the rest of WebmasterWorld.
"Blogger News" might be a good title! ;)
This would allow graphs, charts, nicely formatted lists, as well as screenshots of interesting sites.
The screenshots would allow people to make an informed choice as to whether they thought the site was worth visiting by manually opening a new window. There would be no advantage to spammers or self promotion of junk as there would be no direct link.
Off the wall thought - Perhaps you should allow image attachments instead of links.
I think that would increase the moderation time required here in dealing with the inevitable spam problems it could create.
SPAM is not so much a link issue as a self-promotion issue.
TJ
Well ... its your site Brett. I suppose if anyone can "bend" the rules, it should be you and you alone.
In my experience when only the site owner(s) and/or mods are allowed to "bend" the rules, the conspiracy theories abound and these people become the subject of much criticism. Not a bad suggestion though, I was thinking of proposing it myself, but in the end, it would likely mean many more problems for the mods. In the best case, those people would be bombarded by a portion of the membership to post a URL to a blog once a story broke. In the worst case, you end up with flaming discussions about how a mod posted/didn't post a particular URL.
What about a genuine "news" section? Though I personally don't come here for the news, they are an important tidbit that helps to keep me informed. I don't think we really need news dropped in every single forum, and if a news item was particularly relevant to a forum, a mod could link over to the WW news post internally from that forum.
I think the commercial exchange is a fine model to follow for the news. The commercial exchange has kept a lot of "I need someone to do X for me" out of the way of the regular discussions, but is still available to members who need it (I did last year). I think the news could work in much the same manner, and would give you a better throttle over releasing the linking ban in a controlled manner.
In the end, the linking ban could remain in place in 95% of the forums while still providing the timely information that some of our membership seeks. This solution does have its own problems as the moderation efforts behind this new forum would be significant, but at least it would be in one location rather than spread throughout WW.
They won't get spidered, because it's a SUB ONLY forum.
Other people won't know about it, unless they've paid before. And those who are paid and post here, know better than to spam this forum anyway, but aside from that, what good would it do to put a link in here anyway?
Nothing, other than the purpose intended for allowing links anyway, which is for information/reference purposes.
I can also use a search engine if I need to find stuff like that, and often do.
What about creating a single new forum which allows link drops? and controlling it with the 'no follow' attribute... deal with it the same way bloggers are facing comment spam. You'd only have one area to police, and if people found it necessary to link out, they could refer to a WebmasterWorld thread in this forum?
In the last couple of months, I have seen two blog stories go mainstream that ended up to be wrong. One even involved a top 20 sites legal department to get corrected...They also were blog entries that people wanted to put into the forums here as news worthy. At the time, I did not know if the stories were correct or not, but I knew we weren't linking a blog for the source on it. As it turns out, the policy served us in spades.
Brett, I think your time can be better spent then investigating whether a blog is legit, and your money can be spent better than going into the pockets of lawyers. If you decide to change the policy, then I agree, limit the blogs to the SE corporate blogs.
This is a business. Businesses should concern themselves with, among other things, user satisfaction and market share. Better news coverage should increase user satisfaction and SOM ... and should also lead to higher revenues (!). At that point, the issues that remain would primarily revolve around controlling costs. Just like any other business.
Manhours and linkrot are two good concerns to raise, but the news organizations have been dealing with these issues for years now on their sites, and must have figured it. Is there learning to be had by digging into their best practices?
Sidenote: I see that the number of ads supporting the Conferences is increasing ... always a good sign, and one that indicates that some publisher wiggle room exists. Personally, I see no reason why the logos supporting the Conferences could not link out to the advertisers. In fact, I've always found it sorta odd that they don't. There is a text link there for those who want to get to the Conferences page. So let the graphic ads link out, and charge a bit more for them. That doesn't have to be a slippery slope.
But does it meet the critera for a mention though? If the content is relevant & helpful to the members then you should report it and link it up just like you do for any other notable story worth the mention on WW but that shouldn't indicate that it's open season to drop blog links in WW should it?
I'd vote against the blog links. I spend a lot of time deleting comment spam in my own blog and it's not worth the hassle.
Start by creating a list of "generally reliable, non-marketing, quality blogs" or other sources. Create this list by opening up a "hidden thread" (qualifed members only) for awhile to accept suggestions. Start off with that list then add criteria for posting newsworthy articles from the pre-approved source.
Once you are ready to launch make that a premod sub-forum, only open to posting by members that met certain criteria.
Then only allow submitted articles to become visible IFF X number of authorized WW members vote to release the particular submission. This way you keep the mod burden to a minimum.
Give mods a supervote - that can place a member approved submission on hold - pending a review for any special concerns.
Once a link goes up I see pressure to add more links. You will need a high pressure valve to control that. The only approach that comes even close is having control over who posts in reply.
Whack-a-mole comes to mind when I think about this. Run it as a test and see what happens. I suspect that once people see links going up the tendency to attempt to post links in other forums will rise.
I'd agree that any change shouldn't happen until there is are effective controls in place.
I cannot see this working with a blog that allows anyone to post in reply. The minute WW links to an article in a blog the spammers will line up in droves to post their most clever comment reply spam.
"Really interesting article. I think you should consider blue widgets as an alternative. They're much prettier." Signed, Rick Smith, Buy-Phentermine-Here-Now-Cheaper-By-The-Dozen-I-Love-WW.com
Make a gossip forum if you want to link to that junk... and yes it is junk 95%+ of the time. The amount of drivel written on "seo" blogs is greater than posted on webmasterworld (where people can disagree with the drivel), which is saying a lot. Sure there is some good stuff occasionally, but a half dozen times a year is hardly worth daily links to poppycock rants.
Again, I personally consider MSN, Google and yahoo blogs completely different. Those are official press release-type entities, even if written conversationally. I can't imagine why anyone would object to such links, but it's hard to fathom some of the stuff around here sometimes...
When I come here I see links and they are either spam (newbies) or they are links ill trust because of the people posting them.
News and Discussion for the Independent Web Professional
The news that is featured here is for the most part simply injected to what are really Discussion forums (yeah, it's called "Google News," but c'mon, it's really more Discussion and Q&A).
There are obviously a lot of knotty issues. But this is the sort of editorial process that publishers have been making for eons.
I know it's not quite this simple, but having an admin or very trusted mod make editorial choices on what to feature seems an entirely reasonable way to start. Thousands of publishers/editors do that every day.
Primarily what's needed:
1) a basic editorial policy statement (public);
2) a clear set of guidelines as to what may and may not be featured (internal);
3) an understading that there's a difference between:
• making news (e.g., when GG says something newsworthy),
• reporting news (or events of interest), and,
• reporting what other sources think is news.
...plus some good upfront legal input, and an understanding that at first there will be some bumps in the road.
It really depends upon what Brett wants WW to be.
an admin or very trusted mod make editorial choices on what to feature seems an entirely reasonable way to start. Thousands of publishers/editors do that every day
Dead on, caveman. Not everyone will like this, but editorial choices are made every day and at no time is everyone going to be happy. A link to an official google blog (which is basically their press release platform anyways) about what they are doing about redirects (ok, just a made up example) seems just as appropriate as a link to a Rueters story about google being page jacked.
The editorial decisions about what constitutes news (trusted sources is a stretch these days with anyone) can be handled by your new editorial staff of admins or handpicked mods. Limit it to a pre-mod forum which can be referenced by others.
You only have three choices - 1)status quo, 2)open the floodgates, or 3)a compromise subject to change as you see what works best.
People do crappy stuff like that and I appreciate Brett for keeping the pool clean (of course all current mods would never play dirty - but ya never know about the future ones ;-). Sticky mail is available for those that want to dig deeper. It's not that the potential for communication is being repressed here - just the potential for spam .
WW has always been a source of quality dialog without slathering self promotion. I recommend it all the time and all I get is thanks.
(If you want to post a news item, do so, you're the owner. )
You know that if you kind of open the door to this but not all the way, that you're going to spend your life dealing with exceptions, right?:).
