Forum Moderators: open
Why not have more places for people to advertise?
If I'm looking for hosting or an ecommerce solution, what would be wrong with being able to ask a question and get honest answers with URLS from the members?
What would be wrong with signatures to highlight the sites of members, many with incredible talents? Why all the anonymity?
What would be wrong with design contests where members can post pictures of their art? Heck, why not interview some of these incredible people and post it right here?
The point is...there is so much talent (and resources) that is being hidden by limiting policies. Google displays images. Yahoo allows URLs in all group forums. Nearly every forum out there allows signatures and most allow avatars.
So what makes WebmasterWorld different?
This may sound like a rant, but the purpose is to bring out the mission and driving force behind WebmasterWorld.
If I'm looking for hosting or an ecommerce solution, what would be wrong with being able to ask a question and get honest answers with URLS from the members?
You are able to get honest answers from members, but once you start allowing urls to be posted then you run into the issue of self promotion. There's no real way to determine a legitimate link being posted and that of someone trying to promote their service
What would be wrong with signatures to highlight the sites of members, many with incredible talents? Why all the anonymity?
Thats what the profiles are for. If you like what a member has to say and they want to be found then they'll put their url in their profile for you to find.
What would be wrong with design contests where members can post pictures of their art? Heck, why not interview some of these incredible people and post it right here?
Not a bad idea. Then again I think the discussions more or less turn out like interviews where one person is asking questions and someone is answering them whether they are spitting straight facts or just speaking their opinion
I'm sorry if I disagree with you, but I've been comming to this place since day 1(I know I don't post much:( ) and have seen forum after forum turn into waste dumps when these types of things are allowed. I only have so much time in my day and really don't want to have to weed through the junk to determine what is of real value and what is self promotion. Do you really find that by not allowing these things to go that you are missing out on a great deal?
There have been a few other discussions about url dropping and signatures and the like, a site search should bring them up :)
The other forums allow all that you mention above. They are also overrun by hit and run posters ‘fix my site for me.. I can’t be bothered to learn html or find the problem myself.. YOU do it”. “Please review my site.. but I’m not actually interested in anything you say about it because this is really a promotional/link-pop URL drop in (bad) disguise”.
Those posters who stay and do have some skills, stay for one reason - because they are touting for work from the novices who post, and therefore tend to do a lot of ‘oh dear oh dear, tsk tsk, you have got yourself into a mess.. better call me and we’ll discuss how much I can charge you’ with minimal actual value added. The other posters with some skills quickly outgrow the forum and move on.
I call these “Give a man a fish” forums. “Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day”.
Contrast WebmasterWorld. This is the “Teach a man to fish, and he will eat for a lifetime” forum.
There’s no pressure here to show your skills or lack of them by flashing your URLs around everywhere, so you can discuss concepts on a level footing with other members. There’s an air of equality about the place – I’ve no problem posting my little bit after Mack who’s got five or six times the posts I have under his belt.
You don’t have to weigh up the title of a post to decide whether it’s worth clicking on it because it’s likely to contain nothing more than someone’s promotional blurb, thinly disguised as a question or piece of wisdom. He11, I can see advertising everywhere else on the web these days. I don’t want it here.
I ain’t evn going near the avatars and such issue. They just hold no interest for me at all.
You also have to remember there are some heavyweights in various fields here at WebmasterWorld. I’m not always sure who they are, but they’re here.. and probably more of them than you or I suspect. These aren’t people I want to get into a pi**ing contest with. These are people I want to sit down and have coffee with and quietly pick their brains. WebmasterWorld allows me to do that.
I hope nothing much changes.
dvduval you made referace to other forums that allow posting etc. how does their popularity compare to that of webmasterworld?
This site is a learning environment where url drops anly add noise. Respect the silence.
Forums are about comunicating ideas. image you are walking down the street disgussing a problem with a friend, you dont really need examples to put across a detailed explination. Words do the same job.
Nick
If you haven’t already, please read my welcome letter. [webmasterworld.com]-
Professional Forum Spammers [webmasterworld.com] as mentioned above.
Will posting example URLs get pulled as spam? [webmasterworld.com]
Recurring Problem - Using email snippets. [webmasterworld.com]
Webmaster web site reviews and references [webmasterworld.com]
Posting product recommendations - Do people resent having products mentioned [webmasterworld.com]
After the several hours it will take to get through that I certainly encourage you to post here if you have additional questions or want to dialogue further on this.
Peace
People come here to learn, not to grandstand or play silly tricks like posting competitors URL's. Those who don't leave quickly after a few posts and go somehwere else where they can play "show-and-tell", and expose their avatar to heaps of people doing the same and nobody listens to anybody else.
I'm of the age where i dont want to see spiderman and animated brittaney sphere avatars and smarty pants sigs with even sillier smart-arse quotes, - and I can get advertising wherever I like. When i want advertising I go elsewhere, and that is very rare.
Just because of these things, WebmasterWorld attracts a higher quality of content and professionals.
Its a rare gem in a WWW gone crazy..
So im saying WebmasterWorld is what is is just because it is different. Otherwise it would be like all the rest. Its the maturity and depth of discussion here which does it for me.
This is hard-earned reputation. It doesent come easy and is hard work. Every "rule" has the purpose of enhancing good discussion. It may be not obvious at first, but after you stick around for a bit, you understand the very smart reasons behind how it is run.
I think you are certain to lose a segment of people who aren't necessarily all that bad
The other forums lost me! This forum will lose me if it becomes like the other forums (of course this forum will still go on regardless of what you or I think).
What would be wrong with signatures to highlight the sites of members, many with incredible talents?
If you talked very specifically about how well placed your site is on Google, we would look up your site and reverse engineer your steps and you may find your site ranking suffering as a consequence.
Google displays images. Yahoo allows URLs in all group forums. Nearly every forum out there allows signatures and most allow avatars.
I don't see WebmasterWorld hurting because they don't copy them.
The point is...there is so much talent (and resources) that is being hidden by limiting policies.
I'm sure we each made a few "accomplishments" we could show off about, but we must all be humble -- because thinks can tumble -- contributing the concept of what you did should be good enough. Leave a little guesswork for us so we can feel good that we figured out the last piece of the puzzle on our own.
The rules are there for good a purpose. The result of the rules is that you have the WebmasterWorld constituency as it is - would you really want to change that?
The objective of the major players is evident even by browsing the profiles. How many even put a URL in there, let alone in messages?
The block on sigs and URLs in messages basically reduces the number who post for personal gain.... isn't that a massive plus?
A board like this is a delicate balance. I think most folks would agree that the balance is currently about right.
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 for members to discuss the process of doing business. We are here as a forum for the members to share their knowledge or how to acquire the knowledge as part of your extended site development and process team. We are not here to actually do business.
>advertising
We currently do not accept advertising at WebmasterWorld. The buttons running in the upper right hand corner are our way of the thanking the PubConference sponsors for making the conference happen. They did not even know that was going to occur. It was just something I felt strongly about and felt was appropriate and was a good way to add integrity to the conference.
The only direct revenue currently generated by the site is 100% in the form of donations by generous members. Thank you.
That is not to say I personally and some of the moderators do not benefit in the form of professional contacts and leads generated from the sake of the site being here. I do fine in that regard and I know several moderators who've been approached and closed on many clients looking for services. Those leads are completely generated solely of the power of the profile based referral (imho - one of the most powerful referrals net wide).
I do not envision adding advertising to WebmasterWorld in the foreseeable future. However, that option is always on the table and I won't rule it out as a possibility.
>extremely limiting on posting domain names,
>pictures, avatars, signatures, etc.
One at a time:
Domain names are almost always promotional in origin. Most often, without even realizing that it is promotional or with any alternative intent.
The philosophy is simple: we want to help educate people to educate themselves. We don't want to fix Joes CSS file, we want to help Joe find the info on CSS he needs to fix it himself. It's that old, give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, vs, teach a man to fish and you'll feed him for a lifetime parable again.
In that environment, specific domains are a nonissue and tend to cloud issues as resolve them.
>sigs
Are advertising. Member profiles offer members the opportunity to identify themselves as they wish. Signature files lead to lower quality messages as people post just to drop there sig file url.
>avatars
Are unprofessional. If I turned on avatars, we'd lose 50% of our membership overnight, and message quality would quickly erode to useless in short order.
>pictures
We generally look the other way when it is ontopic, in context, and appropriate for the discussion on a clean professional domain.
Our whole focus on WebmasterWorld is on user contributions. It is about the messages. That is the entire focus of the page. What you have to say and contribute is what is important on this page - it is all that really matters. I take that philosophy to the full extreme when coding: Everything else on the page and on the site is noise.
That focus and commitment to your contributions is what has made this site a success. The less noise and distractions a site has, the easier it is to say on topic and on mission. We do very little new member education here, yet most tend to pick up on and endorse the philosophy without asking. How is that possible? Because of the policies and philosophy we've put in place.
Take for example the the last few months and weeks. I've been here about 3 hours total the last two weeks while my dad has been in the hospital again. I actually think there were fewer problems with me not around all the time ;-) That's a huge credit to the members and moderators who've taken ownership of the site. Thank you!
ARGUMENT
Signature files should be allowed (I personally have found some great websites/resources through signature files)
COUNTER ARGUMENT
Allowing signatures will flood WebmasterWorld with "dead-beat" members. And even
without signature files, your website can be found by other members through "user profiles". Members will generally check your profile as soon as they read good posts.
SOLUTION?
To maintain the quality of members, we could set some rules - for example - your signature file will be visible only after you make XXX number of posts.
I suggest the value of XXX should be around 100. That is, once you make 100 posts, your sig. file will become visible.
I am not interested in being able to inlcude av's and all of that sort of stuff. I am interested in getting to the facts and learning from the vast array of web profesionals that frequent this top rate forum.
On my travels I have been turned off from forums that have a mass of noise and it was one reason that initially caught my attention when I first came lurking.
I like it as is and the fact that the forum distances itself from the seedier end of the market (link dropping by forum members who have built up post history etc). The law protects us and ultimately the quality of this gaff.
Cheers
Added: I did it the other way round from many, ie this was my first regular forum (techincal/learning type forum that is). I went out looking thinking there were great places like this all over and I'd been missing them. Imagine my dismay :)
"I never quite get why people want signature lines anyway"
I have never found any other use or function to a signiture other than for advertising.
I know I havent seen all the forums on the web :) but you just get a feeling that with the quality of the members and the information that you read in every thread, that not having a URL's, sigs and avatars doesnt change a thing.
With every thread that I read I learn something new, this site is priceless and should stay the way it is.
It is the best forum I have ever seen, and the only one I come back to on a day to day basis, i spend hours here just educating myself.
To fill it up with signatures would be silly, and if i ever want to find out info on the person writing the threads i just read their profile.
Ive been to other forums where all this takes place, it slow, not indexed well, banners all over the place, and confusing, and more space is taken up with useless graphics than meaningfull posts. And i stay on these forums for approx 5 minutes before i get fed up and leave.
These days i dont bother looking for other forums anymore as Webmaster World has it all for me, so please dont change it
:)
thanks
I'm still fairly new to the whole webmaster game, and these forums have gave me the meaning of professional in the work that people like us do.
Deejay, you are right with the heavyweight analogy- I remember I could "almost smell em" when I came to the boards!.....CSS, PHP, Perl, SEO, Niche specific directories, database management, marketing........you can name one or two people in here are time-served in each, some in many.
WebmasterWorld is all about information for me, quality information, from people who have tried and trusted methods of success online.
The people here can't preach "CONTENT is king" if they are not going to emphasize quality posts :)
Do I agree with all the policies? NO
Will I keep coming back? Of Course!
My weak attempt at a comeback:
A well moderated forum will prevent and discourage spammers and "Professional Forum Optimizers". Period. Allowing signatures, pictures, avatars, and URLs can work fine, but it can increase the load on the moderator team.
Finally, a URL is not a disease. For example, www.webmasterworld.com is a great URL, don't you think?
For example, www.webmasterworld.com is a great URL, don't you think?
Suck Up! ;)
Only kidding.
Chris.
I know WebmasterWorld appears to be a well-oiled machine, but -trust me on this- some days we are pedaling as fast as we can down in the engine room. I just checked, there are now well over 35 thousand posts in the moderators' forum directly related to managing the board's content and policy. The debate never ends -Isn't this promotional? But look at his past contributions. yada, yada, etc., etc. I'm a past/current director or trustee of more than a few bricks-and-mortar organizations -bank, charitable foundations, college, and small corporations- and I can tell you from firsthand experience that we make more hands-on policy decisions here in a week than I do in a year of all the other board meetings combined. WebmasterWorld is in a constant state of evolution, often due to threads like this.
That said, I believe most of the mods are basically in agreement with the underlying complaint voiced by dvduval --WebmasterWorld IS very limiting and overly strict. It is VERY frustrating sometimes. The problem comes from the mix of experience, temperaments, and even cultures we have represented here. (I won't even begin to tackle the liability issues that start to crop up with less stringent policies.) Some issues we hope that Brett will be able to "program around." We're constantly discussing things like increasing the profile for members with 500 posts, or allowing some threads, or even new forums, to be accessed by members only or members with X number of posts. But we're also very wary of inadvertently creating any sort of elitist system within the membership.
But, taking all of the above into account and my membership in several other forums as well, the phrase "No noise!" seems to be the key to keeping the heavy contributors here.
:) If you'd like to personally subsidize a "spam police" salary for me, I would be perfectly happy to single-handedly monitor the appropriate use of signatures and URLs here. Of course, it would have to be a very large salary, to make up for the fact that I'd never get a full night's sleep again...
Avatars, OTOH, are a definite NO, IMO. I know you don't look like Batman, and you know I don't look like the princess from "Antz," so let's not pretend, 'k?
The non-commercial tone of WebmasterWorld is what makes it unique. Let's face it, moderating a major forum full of amateur, semi-pro, and professional - er, um, "internet promoters" and trying to keep it from being commercialized is no small task. ;)
In setting out with a distinct set of rules WebmasterWorld adds to the variaty of the places for discourse available to us all.
Enjoy the lack of advertising. My main web site has no advertising because that's they way I like it.
I do disagree with the restriction on signature lines, but I don't have to agree with everything.
I've always thought avatars were silly. A small picture of someone, fine, but a dragon or something silly like that? no thanks.
I post occasionally, but much less than before. Why? Busy. Full time job managing a crew that maintains almost a thousand servers, writing articles daily (1 to 3 each and every day) for my own web sites, writing a novel, attending school on weekends, performing my duties as a minister, keeping the wife entertained, painting fantasy miniatures, walking the dog and feeding the cats. Whew.
Richard Lowe
