It might not be a bad idea to limit the introduction of new threads in the hosting offers section under WTS, etc., to one per week or something like they do at other forums that offer such services. It might reduce a lot of the clutter and duplicate copy/paste threads that are intended to do little else than bump a past thread by way of creating a new one.
I just feel that it is not moderated really up to the quality. If it is well moderated, i am sure that out of 10 users posting their hosting offers, 5-7 will be kicked out. better idea would be to have a limit of 5 itrader to post in there to avoid scams.
Better yet would be to limit it to 1 thread ever... no time period. If people are limited to 1 per 7 days, they would still post one every 7 days. Best thing to do is just report duplicate threads and they will be taken care of.
Coming Back on topic.. You might wan't to have a look at "Similar Threads" Displayed below the last post on this thread.
Another idea can be to make it somewhat like WHT has it: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/web-hosting-providers/ There can be "Categorization" ways, like the top hosts would be the users who have the highest amount of itraders for his hosting co. I hav the top votes? EDIT: You can also add some type of uptime measurement, like make an account which DP uses for monitoring the uptime of that host, and disqualify anyone who has less than 80% (unless it was because of a breakdown, DDoS, etc and not lame excuses)
Should we then start monitoring the quality of content before letting content creators advertise or force everything through a duplicate content checker? Should we make theme creators make their themes available to us so we can review them and make sure they're functioning properly before letting them be posted for sale? Should we verify all link building services to make sure a certain percentage of links are actually approved on average, like with directory submissions? It's a slippery slope. There's no reason one type of service provider should be treated differently than others. It's up to the buyer to make sure something is a legitimate service before buying; not up to DP. As for the duplicates, they're already disallowed, so keep reporting them.
I'd have to agree. They have a model that works pretty well. Add to this a slew of subcats that cover things like: hosting reseller hosting dedicated servers colocation etc... I think you'd be able to better control the clutter... At the very least separate the WTS from the WTB completely. That or just get rid of the WTB entirely... Doing that would eliminate the need for that dumb ass rule about not listing "package deals"... If you simply have a WTS only area then those interested in Wanting to Buy, could just go through the WTS offers and start asking questions or making a connection. The original thought here in my suggestion is to 1) reduce clutter and 2) ease the burden of moderation that has was born the minute that "posting of package deals" rule was ushered in. There has been more clutter as a result, and obviously a hell of a lot more work for the moderation team. In the end, its been relatively ineffectual and almost entirely unenforceable to the degree that it is a rule that is obviously ignored, and rarely enforced to the degree that it could have a lasting affect.
You can filter WTS/WTB on your own (bottom left of any forumdisplay.php page. And to be honest, there is a bigger problem with WTS than there is with WTB so if one was going to be banned it certainly would be WTS. All the duplicate threads, hosting "companies" selling nothing but affiliate links, etc.
dp, any word on my suggestion? PS: Someone here (i think Helvitica or watever the username is) posted link to an IQ site, and i score 133!
You can always report the topics but I find that becomes time consuming after a while when 75% of all topics created are either duplicates, under $5, warez hosting or affiliate link based asking users to pm for coupon + affiliate link