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.
I don't envy your task in allowing links to blogs but not undesirable blogs. If you leave each case to moderator discretion that's asking for inconsistencies and disagreements.
What about an approved blog list that all members can check against before posting a link? Any blog not on the list is not to be linked to. Anyone wanting to add a blog to the list submits it, it gets checked against the undisclosed list of disapproved blogs and gets dumped. If it's in neither approved nor disapproved list is gets queued for an admin to look at.
In my opinion the no link policy is a great one - whether the link is to a blog or another site is a non-issue.
One major concern I would have is "slashdotting" a website that is linked to.
Imagine what would have happened if the person who started the Bourbon update had said "There's a google update, and I have examples of serp changes in <a>my blog</a>.
Not only would there have been hella traffic on his site - the truth is most of us would find it hard to resist finding ways to monetize that traffic - even at the expense of the content.
Finally, what happens when some entrepreneur manages to acquire the domain and slaps lolita porn on it?
When I look at other webmaster forums like "digital point", "a best web", even "search engine watch" - I see clutter, at best 10% content and 90% self-promotion.
Here I see 90% content and 10% conspiracy theory - but still exponentially more valuable than some blinkenlights banner advertising an ebook that will let me make a million dollars on the internet in 10 minutes.
Not every frog you kiss will turn into a prince, and not every prince is destined to be a king.
[edited by: PatrickDeese at 8:16 pm (utc) on May 23, 2005]
And I agree that the spread of blogs makes it much harder to discern fact from fiction. It seems to be a double edged sword.
I applaud you Brett, and all the individuals who worked on WW today and in previous days, for your dedication and fortitude.
As a matter of fact, I’ll be glad to buy you a drink in New Orleans!
To me, it's not about who reports it first, it's about who reports it accurately.
not prolific poster or one of the big earners on WW just a webmaster trying to make a crust and seeking and finding help / information and guidance through WW
thanks
steve
Please keep the blogs out of WebmasterWorld! If we want to read blogs, we know where to find them!
I use WebmasterWorld to:
1) Keep myself up to date with what is happening on the web as it relates to everything about search engines.
2) Find out what other webmasters are experiencing with their sites on a daily basis.
3) Find out (as soon as possible) when there are major SE algo changes, updates and major news.
4) Interact with other webmasters to exchange ideas about the fine art of web site marketing strategies.
5) Add my two cents to threads where I think I may be able to help other webmasters with things with which I may have experienced a certain amount of success.
6) Find answers to technical questions I don't yet understand.
7) Keep abreast of the newest SEO methods employed by the so called "black hat gang" so that I know what to watch out for.
... and many others reasons.
I don't come here to read blogs full of somebody's ramblings, sales pitches, links to other ramblings, etc.
In other words ... Don't mess with success Brett!
It needn't even be carried out in direct WW spamming. For example, someone posts a link to a blog and watch how quickly the blog thread is populated with cleverly veiled comment spam, all neatly prearranged by virtue of some blog commenters working on gaining trust up to that point.
Stick to links to traditional media. If someone posts some particular intelligence in their blog invite the blogger to become a member and post here. Otherwise, "sticky me" remains a viable way to get to source material referenced in a general way in WW threads.
The rest of the stuff posted above is pretty interesting but not at all a surprising. It's clear a lot of thought goes into running this place. Revealing what is assumed is unrevealing, if you know what I mean. ;0)
The linking policy is part of what makes WW such a great place.
Ditto.
"I'm surprised you're even asking the question"
Ditto.
"Please keep the blogs out of WebmasterWorld"
Ditto.
"Stick to links to traditional media"
Ditto.
I can't imagine any reason to have blog links. If you do loosen a linking policy, then let all links in, signatures, all that useless nonsense. And if you don't do that, allow links to html websites, but not blogs. Blogs are the least useful links, less accountability, more idiotic noise, etc. They would be the very last links to allow.
(Now to contradict myself slighty, links to the Yahoo, Google and MSN blogs often have "official" statements unavailable anywhere else, and those three, those exact three, should be allowed.)
Cheers,
Dave.
I had a problem where an offical google poster had their blog link deleted, Jenstar stickied me the link.
One of the problems is that to be given advanced access to some of the major players next moves we need links to their postings.
I have been around for years on the internet and have seen that one of the most important things is to allow the rise and fall of companies.
One thing that could be useful is to take note of what the large stockmarkets do.
You start of with a small defined group of companies, in this case, Google,MSN, Yahoo, Overture, Tradedoubler, CJ etc.
Every six months you review and change the index.
One of the main criterias is only public companies, no private publishers/bloggers etc.
Just my 2 pence
dregs33
I have to agree, the no link policy is one of the things that keeps me coming back to WebmasterWorld.
As another poster said, instead of sorting out fluff self promotional posts, all we have to do is sort out conspiracy theory posts (which are much easier on the eyes).
No links is a great rule.
That being said, I like the suggestion posted about how blog links could be slowly introduced:
What about an approved blog list that all members can check against before posting a link? Any blog not on the list is not to be linked to. Anyone wanting to add a blog to the list submits it, it gets checked against the undisclosed list of disapproved blogs and gets dumped. If it's in neither approved nor disapproved list is gets queued for an admin to look at.
I guess the only question there would be what are the guidelines for getting a blog approved. What makes a "quality/authority" blog?
I agree with the positive response on keeping external links on a restrictive level, but in another thread i just linked to w3c.org - ok, this site is beyond doubt, but it also shows, that some external links would help to explain things better.
if you want to "open things a bit" as you stated, it might be time for a "WebmasterWorld trust label",
a list of sites maintained by mods and admins, which are accepted for external linking.
Financial times, cnn, googles blog, etc.
It would suprise me, if you come to a figure of over 500 sources, which would be allowed to link to. If 10 people control that, you come to 50 sites each.
Just and instant idea... your own little resource dmoz, not linked, just for maintenance...
enhanced with a "negative" list, this could be a handy tool for all mods and admins: check on post submission, if such links are used and flag if negative links appear... or notify automatically...
I have no insight in your forum software, but I guess some stuff is already in place?
If something like that is not wanted, I would stay with the restrictive "no blogs" order!
My 2 pennies...
P!
I also will join in with saying that Blog links are not a good idea.
On other forums more time is spent weeding out the self promoters than in posting.
Sometimes you need to link, but I check if the site has ads or obvious commercial purpose. Even then I only link if the thread has already outlinked.
I believe it is best to have no links. It's gottenpretty obvious how "traditional media" has started keyword stuffinf and stripping dates off their articles, recycling content, etc. They don't deserve a free ride any more than anyone else.
The worst abuse IMHO is when Google links to itself to showoff a new feature or whatever. It reaks of favoritism and quid-pro-quo. Every webmaster knows where to find Google's stuff if they want it.
Common sense does seem to prevail most of the time and I think a list of 'authorative' sites would be impossible to manage and to agree upon.
The golden rule of not reporting on thee neighbor is slowly getting tarnished.
DaveN
Breaking stories and being the first to announce a big change in the industry is part of what made WebmasterWorld as big as it is these days. GoogleGuy posting here was another thing that made WebmasterWorld big. The biggest part of the success are by far the users. I'm personally part of a lot of communities and have to say that WebmasterWorld is by far the best community and has the best userbase.
So whatever the majority of people wants is fine with me. I simply want to ensure that WebmasterWorld gets the press coverage it earns because it's one of the leading portals in the IT industry providing up to date news.
If Google would announce that they go PFI on their blog and we would have to wait till somebody writes an article about it, I'm pretty sure people would have appreciated breaking the news earlier and referencing the blog post.
The key imho is to differentiate wether it's an average blog by Joe Public or if it is a blog by a multi-billion dollar company that has a huge influence in our business.
Thanks for sharing that. Most take for granted that we can come here most every day and learn - and not wade through self promo stuff.
I personally think the current external link policy has served WebmasterWorld well. But just the same as 'authoritative news sources' are acceptable to link to - maybe as DaveN said - the OFFICIAL blogs of the major search engines themselves are now becoming part of that 'authoritative news source' pool.
It sort of becomes a criteria based on 'if the site is big enough that they don't really need the link from WebmasterWorld - and the link benefits WebmasterWorld members by providing 'official' info - they can probably have the link'.
In terms of the Yahoo/ Google/ MSN blogs - linking to official SE press releases has always been ok. The SE's are starting to put stuff in their blogs that isn't necessarily 'newsworthy' in a mainstream sense - but its still 'official', and often of interest to WebmasterWorld members.
Either way Brett - you and the team are doing a superb job. Its your call, and thanks for sharing.
Breaking stories and being the first to announce
I want information as fast as possible. This is why I belong to several different online communities. My business can not afford to discriminate against "blogs", especially since most company's are now launching official blogs.
Did you not see a few old members burn out and leave over the last few years?
I have, but I still very much appreciate the current link policy. It's kept the site from turning into a spam-wasteland.
I've visited these forums regularly over the years. Perhaps I don't post as frequently as others, but I've found the level of thought and discussions some of the best on the web.
For me, many of the best threads start when someone kicks off a conversation with a thoughtful how-to, an analysis something they've seen, or an attempt to answer a lingering question. Those are the threads that I tend to flag and refer to year after year. (See the many best of WebmasterWorld threads.)
In the past year, I've felt like the quality of the threads overall have dropped a bit. That's a very subjective feeling, of course, but it feels like there's more dross and fewer gems (even in the private forums).
Last week, I caught myself asking whether it would be worth renewing when my subscription expired. So far, my answer is still yes, but it's not as hearty of a yes as it has been in the past.
I'm pointing that thought out because to me, I really don't care about (or want) blog links. I come here for the discussions and analysis. Encourage that, nurture it, and help it grow. So, as new traffic comes to the site, there are still people contributing new, great content.
That's what will keep me coming back time and again.
Thanks to Brett and the WebmasterWorld team for all your work (up front and under the hood) on these forums. It's still a great place to visit, read, and post.
[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 1:20 pm (utc) on May 26, 2005]
[edit reason] see sticky [/edit]
(Emphasis is mine)
Amen. I sent Brett a sticky while you were posting that bit. The timing is uncany. :)
I like the lack of linkage and think that we are all (or if not, should be) sophisticated enough to be able to Google-up a source on our own given enough hints. Keeps us sharp. ;-)
Yet, posting links to blogs will invariably promote self-serving behavior that will be too difficult to police.
This doesn't need to be overly-complicated. Tech may change but business standards need not necessarily follow.
Go ahead, mention Blog's or any other news source for that matter explicitly if you think it contains information useful to webmasters. [use some quotes] Just don't link. No exceptions.
In the end, a members value will become self evident by the information he/she chooses to share. Let not the rules allow someone to feel welcome if only for self serving intentions.
Conern yourself with what is required to run WebmasterWorld effectively.
The rest of us, well, we will figure it out.
Just seconds before reading this thread, we had an example there of the current policy. Someone had asked about links from a drop-down menu, I mentioned free extensions but would not drop the URL since it was a commercial company, they stickied me and I sent them the URL to the DW extension.
The company involved there is the largest DW extension developer by far and they offer a large range of free javascript snippets with GUIs which are recommended by Macromedia. So, on the face of it, a clear example of the present policy adding hurdles to easy information retrieval.
But it's not that hard to write an extension. And what if the reference had been to JoeBob's DWExtensionsRUs portal, with one free and 100 commercial scripts? Or what about the spectre of someone linking to a script which opens a vulnerability? (The earlier "formmail" recommendations all over the web spring to mind.)
What does all this have to do with blogs?
As someone spends most of his days on the subjects of this forum, I have less than 10 blogs in my bookmarks. And only half of those are to do with any of the subjects that WebmasterWorld covers.
>>How do we say a link to Googles Blog is ok, but Fred Pharm and Phentermine blog is not?
Because blogs are inherently worthless. Their popularity lies in their opinions and commentary, and whether that is meat or poison is a matter of opinion for the individual reader (or WebmasterWorld poster).
Yes, as ThomasB rightly mentions, there are commercial blogs which offer important breaking news - but those are blogs run by players rather than commentators and they are the exception.
If you do decide to do this, and I would join the chorus against, then perhaps only allow blog references by admins or mods and with a blanket ban on blogs run by web marketers?
Doing otherwise, along with the current rules that you mentioned about mod non-self-promotion, would also place a heavy burden on them. All of the few relevant blogs that I have bookmarked belong to current or former WebmasterWorld mods. Why should a mod see his or her "competitors" getting publicity on the largest webmaster forum when their own are covered by a ban?
If a user makes a post with a link in it then in the left hand column under user profile and sticky mail links there could be a "spam" and a "ham" button.
If a ratio of "spam" to "ham" clicks reaches over say 10:1 then the link is automatically removed and replaced with a "spam link removed" type notice instead of the link.
That way the first few readers of any posts can help filter out crap without all the work falling back to the mods.
Each user gets only one SPAM/HAM vote on a link and as soon as the spam ratio is hit the link is removed and no future voting is possible. Though a mod could perhaps come and override a spam ruling and reinstate the link without voting continuing.
There is definitely valid NON SPAM links that could be of value to us. At the same time not having the boards full with self promotional crap is a great feature of WW.
Hey hold on a minute I might have to do a "Bezos" and go patent that idea myself ;) Perhaps I could just licence it to you Brett for complimentary renewals to my supporters forum membership. lol.
