I think it would be a great way to improve the forum, and to decrease bans, notices, infractions etc. Especially in the people we want to stick around here, and that want to stay themselves. I fear being banned by accident, but I have helping many people here and made many good posts and have solid iTrader building up. I would be willing to be a mentor for new members. I think other people would be willing to do this. I would also love to receive in house admin training. For me, that would just be reviewing the rules and the DP way of doing things. I've been a forum administrator many times before in many different forums since text based BBS system. The fact that I can even receive an infraction in this forum is an error, because if it were my forum, errors would be auto-corrected. My forum will be ready some day, or maybe it will be made in conjunction with DP. Until then, lets do all we can and spread positive energy. Any admin here that agrees with some or all of that, please contact me so we can discuss this. I would like to get started right away, and it would be doing some of your job for you on a volunteer basis. Cheers.
If people don't bother reading the rules, what makes you think they'd want to be "mentored?" The rules are there. They're not a big secret.
I'm a normal human being, so I have "what's in it for me?" in mind right now. (This isn't really a very practical suggestion, most people come here to do business, some don't have time to waste getting mentored - unless they get something out of it)
Are the users forced to read the FAQ when they register? I don't remember as I signed almost an year back.
You aren't forced to do anything. You don't have to pass a test. You don't need a referral or a license to be here. Some of the best forums do not have open registration for reasons like not needing to ban people ever. I don't want registrations to get closed I'd never do that myself. Some people do need help doing things right. Some people have language barriers. What's in it for _me_? I like to teach, I enjoy it. I'm starting some e-learning projects and it will help me get them going, and some people being mentored by my want to be involved in those things. I already have people who consider themselves my students, so why not bring it to DP. I guess I should get one of them in this thread to talk about this as well. Thanks for discussing this with me. I hope to get more opinions and would like it if you could expand on your meanings a bit more as well. Cheers. Quote: Originally Posted by jhmattern If people don't bother reading the rules, what makes you think they'd want to be "mentored?" The rules are there. They're not a big secret. I would like to be mentored, by you or another member of the staff. I would like to have no worries about the threads I post anytime. I've read the rules. I've gone back to the rules, but everybody makes mistakes. If we started like a group mentoring system for newbies, it would eliminate accidental bans of people who don't _want_ to break the rules. How many times have those of us who are not moderators made posts like "I'm interested but I think you meant to post this here" "I like what you're saying, but you're gonna get banned if you don't do it properly" "That's a good idea but read the FAQ or the rules etc" See what I mean? My goal is to improve the situation here at DP. There's a lot of extra "Policing" left to the moderators that could be alleviated with more community teamwork. Don't you think? See I just double posted by accident.
Shawn implemented a nag a while back where you have to confirm that you've read the rules. At that point I believe even existing members had to confirm it; not just new ones. So there's absolutely no excuse for anyone to not have read them. If they removed the nag but didn't bother reading them, then they lied and deserve absolutely no sympathy when it comes to getting caught. The point is that people who don't care enough to read the rules won't care enough to be mentored in any way by peers either. So it wouldn't likely have much effect on rule-breakers. And with so many people not knowing the rules well anyway, it wouldn't make sense for them to be mentoring others. There's already a place (here) where they can ask questions.
Wanted! Donations! WILL PAY though. Positive helping Movement! GAIN REP! + iTrader http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1571760 do hope that's not "+rep and +itrader" club as that would not fit in with the rules as far as i can see.
Deleted. Any reference in ad designed to give / get rep in any way is rep abuse. You can't advertise that people will get it -- you can't guarantee it unless you give it yourself, and you can't advertise that you'll give rep. You also can't start a thread to get people to respond posting their freebies for you. That's what the freebies forum is for. Browse the listings there if you want to know what's available. That thread was basically just an invitation to bump with duplicate offers.
Do you still really think people don't deserve to be mentored? Did I receive more infractions? Look I was all over the place asking for help and confirmation. I also left that nag stick up after I had read the new rules. I did some reviewing of some sticky posts too. I still made some mistakes. A lot of people here work through the week hours of the morning and have insomnia like me. It's easy to make mistakes, especially with lack of sleep. I don't think any of us computer nerd insomniacs are going to stop doing that. None of us want to break rules if we're avid forums members. We still might. If we had groups together, so we always had 'online buddies' around, it might not happen. I'd have somebody on msn right now going through my posts with me. We'd edit them before anyone else read them. The post could have been edited to depict my true meaning properly, without any problems. Also why I put a note for admins, etc. When you take all the steps it usually doesn't go bad if you have all the intentions, and think it through. I thought it through. I knew it's hard for me to make sure I don't break any rules right now, as I hang up on words typing and nod off for a second. Don't have anywhere to sleep in the office here except a chair. It's 6am here now. Check my time stamps. I'll be around a bit more today, but sometime today I will be able to get to a bed where I can sleep, and I will rest and make less mistakes the next day.... Until then... Who knows.... I hope my desire to help people, improve the forum, and make the world a better place with more respect and kindness.... doesn't get me infractions or cause any problems. Thanks so much for your help though. I needed a moderator checking on me right now to avoid problems, or I had to stay away from DP until after I slept. I'm happy here and would like to stay here a bit longer. I thank you for the positive energy.
I thank you very much for your help, and I hope that we are able to speak more in the future. I figured out how I could have got the meaning of that post out that you deleted so I might be able to rewrite the thread, maybe tomorrow, or maybe if you're still on and kinda help me, or edit it immediately to be sure or something.... The idea is like to explain to people how to use the forum well. People will want to do that if it tells them they will get more reputation and iTrader. I want to explain to people how to network and make more transactions happen properly, so itrader ratings can be more useful to the general public. So many people have less than 100 iTrader here and are good people. Think about Ebay and how saturated it is..... What would you say a minimum + feedback on Ebay would be for you to be comfortable it's a respected seller... and what's in place there.... we are lacking a few things in fraud prevention. Community being more aware and working together, and discussing these issues particularly is my overal goal. Everyone wants more iTrader and rep if they want to do good business here. For that to happen, they have to be honest people and not break the rules. You guys do a good job here. I want to help people like me who've made mistakes, and I want this to be a forum full of great people, and less accounts with 30 posts because people get scared away with infractions.... etc...
I understand that your idea is molded from good intentions, but it is almost no use to mentor people who are not interested at getting mentored (or have the time to spare). I know I've had my share of confuzzlements in this forum, & it would have been easier had someone just sat down & taught me the ropes. BUT, I don't think I'd have been too willing to listen to what they were saying. I've always just been eager to participate, & since I've always been a regular forum-user (aside from DP), I assumed same rules applied. (Seriously, who likes to read rules right?) But anyway, in the long run, everyone learns.. My only point is, it won't be easy teaching people who aren't paying attention.
Well that's kinda my point of the suggestion in the first place.... Somewhere you can get help easier when you're willing to... Somewhere you can learn... Keep in mind, despite the rules some people here are under age children. Even ones that are of the age required for this forum, are still kids. They are going to mess up time and time again for years.... We shouldn't turn away the early starters. We should have somewhere here on the site where they can participate together and learn. Like a Classroom online or something.
The entire forum is a place where they can participate together and learn. And being young is not an excuse for not reading the rules. It's not about mistakes. Short of a really serious issue like a duplicate account, they get to make multiple "mistakes" while learning the ropes. That's why infractions exist. So you quickly learn not to do the same things again. You'd have to get several pretty quickly to end up actually banned for any significant period of time.
Yeah, I don't usually report newbies if I see them breaking any of the rules (it's the least I can do).. I know no one should be exempted of the rules, but really, all the infractions & banning discourage people. Not in a way that they won't like the forum anymore, but it's more of like they'd be ashamed to come back thinking the infraction / ban was a big deal - older members know it's not in this forum (but not everyone has been here long enough to figure this out). You see, most mods here are so used to it already, they sometimes forget it really makes people feel bad & not wanna come back. In other forums, an infraction/ban is a BIG DEAL. You're like a complete idiot-criminal once you get any of these, so it is default for everyone to get upset over a ban. To anyone who is new here & who cares about his reputation in this forum would immediately assume that he is not wanted here, & it would be embarrassing for them to come back after receiving any of these. An infraction would probably not be so bad, but to 7-day-ban a newbie, that's really harsh. I know they were prompted to read the rules & that they should have, but how many of us actually read the rules when we signed up? I guess most of us did not bother - thinking same rules applied with the other forums we've been to. Most of you will probably think, "well if they can't read the rules they're not the kind of members we want here" but exactly how long are we standing by this kind of mentality? There are lots of valued members here who I bet only learned the rules in time.. Seriously, this forum is spewing out so many infractions/bans, no one would mention it if it weren't true.. - I've wanted to say this for a really long time now but never felt like typing this much for no reason, glad I got it out -
Yeah you're right for the most part. I think there's a hole in duplicate account issues though... At least I don't know how to get around this problem without another person, which could cause that problem for somebody. What if you lose a domain, like a domain expires.... but it's your email address here in DP. Then you can't use the password reminder tool. How do you get back into an account you're locked out of that really belongs to you if you don't know somebody that can help you, who do you email if something like that ever came up, how do you get your email address reset if you can't reset your password and you forgot it?
This forum spews out a lot of garbage posts, spam, and scammy deals too all because people can't bother to read or care about the rules. That's the nature of a large community, especially with a free marketplace. There is no excuse for not reading the rules. If you don't, that's your choice, but then you also lose your right to complain about it when you're caught and you get an infraction. Then you have a second chance -- learn from the infraction or don't and continue to break the rules and get caught. It's nothing more than common sense. If they're so sensitive that they'll be offended by an infraction and not want to come back out of shame or whatever, then they should be equally sensitive to the role they're playing in littering and spamming the forum for others. You have a choice to join a community. You have a choice to learn how that community operates. You also have a choice to learn the hard way, and that's what many members choose to do. That really has nothing to do with user training and isn't within the scope of this thread. However, the simple solution is to be a responsible seller and remove / change all references to that domain before making the sale. That's not in the hands of DP staff. It's your responsibility to keep email addresses and passwords safe and up-to-date. You'd always have the option of asking the buyer to give you access to the email account just long enough to change it here and wherever else you needed to. But that's a private business matter between the two of you.
LOL... @@! Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think we're arguing, we're having a healthy debate where a lot of questions of mine are being answered. The purpose of a forum, and more proof for me of how great this forum and a lot of the people here are. Glad to be a member and hope to do better than I have in the past with the couple infractions I have. One thing I don't get though... Being able to change your username. I'm worried about a copy right infringement issue with a previous employer, the original reason for my name... but no reason why my account should be deleted, recreated or anything else. I don't know what to do about it and it bothers me. It's not right for me to have a username that references to a company I used to work for and quit, especially not without their written permission, and due to the fact they are in the same industry, and local, it's a concern for me I haven't solved. P.S. would like to know what you charge for Press releases. Don't want to be the one writing my own for our website's official grand opening.
If you really want to mentor people and you think people would *want* it, post your service in Buy/Sell/Trade -> Services. But as others have mentioned, I don't think people are going to want to be "mentored" when everything is right in the rules and they don't even want to read those.