What's Happenning on WebmasterWorld?

[Harry]

So I don't visit for a few weeks to a few months. I come back and what do I see on the front page? The same type of headlines I would expect from Mashable and Techcrunch. Over half of the headlines are about Twitter, Facebook Groupon or another Web 2.0 or smartphone related post.

What's happening here? I have problems with being current, but the very value of WBW is that it strays above the obvious headlines of the Techcruchs of this world. I mean, if I want to read about Groupon, I can go straight to Techcrunch. I'm pretty sure there's a minimum of one article a week about that.

I understand the shift in readership that has happened recently. As Webmasters, we all experience it. But the site for webmasters should be more than a collection of headlines from popular and a valley-based clique.

Can we go back to real and insightful contents and headlines again?

[Brett_Tabke]

At the bottom of every thread is a link "recommend". Please use it when you find quality posts you think should go on the homepage.

[Lexur]

I understand the shift in readership that has happened recently. As Webmasters, we all experience it.

I'm intrigued by this paragraph. Could you develop it a little?

[caribguy]

shift in readership

This part I noticed, but

we all experience it

-not so sure.

Webmasters play poker (chance games) without cards. Some information we have (locus of control) and some we don't... Once you get a feel for the game, most of the 'recommendations' only serve to validate what you already know.

But then, I guess seeing 20 questions about rewrite rules, or "I got dropped from adwords" make it easy to click the X and get back to work.

[tangor]

So I don't visit for a few weeks to a few months.

Things change. The web changes. The Buzz is what it is. Visit daily and the jolt won't be as great.

That is to say, I've seen no changes and the tech krap remains the same day in and day out, as well as the same questions and answers week in and week out. Delivered by gents and gals, too!, with cheerful face and generally good grammar.

[jecasc]

In a way Harry is right. When I look on the homepage right now it's only news. "Men of the year", Ebay acquiring Fashion Daily, Goodbye Del.icio.us, Facebook Will Beat Revenue Targets This Year, Twitter Publishes its Top Trends of 2010 From 25 Billion Tweets

Nothing practical from the technical forums like PHP, HTML, Apache, CSS.

Another thing I noticed recently: I think it is strongly advisable to merge some subforums that are not frequented very often with other forums. I noticed this a few days ago when I had a problem with Google Merchant Center. I went to the appropriate subforum:

[webmasterworld.com...]

Then I noticed that the last entry was from October, and came to the conclusion that I should perhaps not bother posting my question because nobody would probably be reading it. Or only those who use the "recent posts" or "unanswered posts" links. So I didn't post my question. The problem with "orphaned" sub-forums is that it dicourages people from posting. If you consider it unlikely to get an answer it discourages you from investing the time to describe your problem. And there are a several of them here on webmasterworld, some of them with not more than 10 threads/year:

[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]

[wheel]

hat I should perhaps not bother posting my question because nobody would probably be reading it.

You'd think that, but my experience has been the opposite. I've posted in some dormant forums in the past year and received better than normal help. Some of it in the form of PM's from the mods. I no longer look at dormant forums here and think I shouldn't post.

[SteveWh]

I've looked at the WW homepage maybe twice this year; that's including just now when I was curious what the OP was talking about. My entry to the forum is always Recent Posts (that's my WW browser bookmark). Sometimes I scroll through Unanswered Posts. Which is to say, it doesn't matter what forum a post is in. If it refers to something I know anything about, it has an equal chance of getting answered no matter which forum it's in.

BT, thanks for the reminder about "recommend". I've seen it, but it never occurred to me that it was there for me to use.

[Harry]

Ah, the good old days of WebmasterWorld coming back, when junior users would peruse every scrap of post for insight into SEO information that could give them an edge. And then, senior WebmasterWorld members would carefully dilute any possible kind of information that would give any possible competitor some kind of edge. At least that hasn't changed!