But, there is a benefit provided by people coming from these countries. I will give you one small example. Take a look at this chart of the top traders on DP (middle column) - 4th person down. This individual appears to be from India, and is the fourth highest buyer and seller on DP. That alone would indicate this over-generalization isn't very accurate. My own personal experience may not be reflective of the average experience on DP, but I've done a lot of buying and selling on DP -- and, I've never been "scammed." I've done business with people in the United States, Europe, but also with members in India, China, and Pakistan. I understand if people were to say there seems to be a higher percentage of scammers from certain areas of the world, but to label them all doesn't seem like the way to go.
True, I agree with that. BUT they were all from few years ago (join date, at that time when there were still quality people joining regardless of countries), those joined in recent years are just plain crap.
If you look at the Top Traders list again - it appears that ALL of the top traders have a join date of at least a few years ago regardless of where they're from. (Everyone on that list has a join date from 2004-2008). From this, I wouldn't conclude that were not quality members joining after 2008. Instead, I would be more likely to believe it is because it takes time to accrue i-trader, find your niche, etc. Consider as well... Look at this user map. I don't know the percentage of people we have here from India - just eyeballing the map, it may be somewhere around 25% (maybe not quite). But, lets say in the top traders list we have 3 people from India who are top buyers and sellers here with great feedback. To me, it may represent, or indicate that members in India stand their own in being high contributors to this forum, at least in that metric. While buying and selling is obviously not the only measurement, I think it is a strong one as the buy-sell-trade section is one of the things that make DP so great.
By going through the readings in other forums, they say that DP is full of spammers. Mods are very loose, ban without a reason or something like that. In my opinion, Yes, DP has spammers. Maybe DP needs more Mods who can work around the clock from different timezones. Therefore DP needs to have different Mods from different countries. There should not be straight ban. I saw many reputed old members getting banned. This is, I think, bad because DP should not be loosing old reputed members. Everyone makes mistakes, I did for sometime and I have paid the price. But members, specially old ones, know the real meaning of keeping clean community in such important forum, which most of us make a living from it. There is should be open ground for discussion for issues and reasons for a ban. I stayed away from this forum for a quite a while. I think I see now Shawn is also more active than before which is very good for this forum. Lastly, I just want to suggest that go easy on banning people ( old, reputed members who have stayed here for years). Other than that, new members with spammy post can be toasted asap. Other than that, there are of course lots of competitions. Other forums might say bad things about the forum, but I think DP is the forum that started the whole BST thing in the first place.
Ok, Let me tell you how DP is so different from other forums and this exactly is its problem. I bought some articles from a member here and he mixed some duplicate articles in between them. Clearly for cheating. I asked for refund, he ignored. I started a paypal dispute and at the end he was forced to refund. Now, I didn't want other members to be deceived in a similar manner. So I gave him a negative rating. Now he also gives me a negative rating in retaliation. I reported it as a bad rating. But its more than 3 weeks and yet the DP moderators has not taken any action. The implication is that, no one will report a bad member because it will result in them giving you a negative rating in return. If this happened in another forum (NP, WF etc), the member would have been banned within a week. If DP has to remove the scammers, it has to take action against the scammers. Else, it will continue like this.
Another drawbacks.. DP says some link building strategies are not allowed but I see many of them staying alive for months and months till today. Why don't mod take serious actions against them? Are they becoming lazy lately? or have hangovers? If something is not allowed in here, such threads should be deleted permanently. It's sad but true..., DP is not taking any serious consideration of their own rules.