Suggestion You have to make the BST a paid forum, Shawn. It is a call of time.

Reputation of the forum is dropping each week. People are talking a lot of negative about DP on other forums, even members of DP know that it is no more the webmaster heaven it used to be. Even niche restricted Black Hat websmaster forums are being preferred to buy or sell genuine services. It must have been worse if you have not took some serious steps recently.

The Reason:
DP's biggest advantage has always been it is totally free, even to people who use it to grow their business. To protect it, a lot of rules were made from time to time and strictly implemented by admin and mods, which I am sure has always been painful for them because of the fact that easy opportunities attract a lot of lazy people (potential scammers). The huge amount of spams and scams increased the pain of mods working hard to implement the biggest set of rules any webmaster forum has ever had, and shawn being in pain to create such rules from time to time, all that just to let the BST free.

Cheap people in order to be able to make some quick money, join this forum.
They create 25 posts, mostly useless, increasing the amount of useless threads and posts to be able to post in BST. Now since they are newbies themselves, they not actually make useful posts helping others.
As soon as they get privilege, they impatiently create many many BST threads and spoil other's threads in order to get quick sales and quick money.
Not satisfied by the low amount of orders they get (from rare people who trust newbies because of cheap prices) they start lowering prices and offering things they can not actually provide with quality.
When things become out of their control or they get infractions they bug the suggestions and other forums showing their frustation, attracting more hatred.
Finally either get banned or just leave this account and start a new shot career with a new account and having more experience in cheating.
Loop/

Scam = Indian?
I have heard from a lot of people on DP and outside DP, including DP members that they hate Indian members of the forum simply because they are frustrating. Shawn once said that banning India alone from the forum will cut off half of the spam (or maybe more, I do not remember the percentage he mentioned). He is absolutely correct because he has the stats. Add a few more countries to it, like Pak, Nepal, Indonesia etc and DP will be almost spam free.

I, being an Indian myself, ask a question here. Why do they spam? Do they enjoy it? I guess everyone knows the answer. "to fulfill the requirements of DP and then to make more of easy money". Now, Lust to earn easy money can not be connected to Indians, or people from a specific country. In fact just like DP, Indian members comprise a significant part of every webmaster forum. So another question is, do they do the same on other forums too? The answer? Yes, as long as they are allowed.

How Other Webmaster Forums Are Different:
Most competitor forums have a free and a paid membership, Paid one being mandatory to be able to sell anything. And they have thus solved the issue DP is still struggling from. Indians are there too, but highly trusted and reputed. Indians or Asians there are as much connected to cheaters as here on DP. In fact many of the top sellers there are Indians. People recommend those forums to buy cheap services with peace of mind. All that has become possible because one need to be a serious/paid member before being a seller.

I see in the footer of this forum:
2 Million threads out of which 1 million are in BST (50%). 15 million posts (6.5 million in BST) .
Half million members, 50K of them active. 200 online.
Which can be simplified to: 4 threads per member and 7.5 posts per thread.
Alexa 226

Comparing it to Warrior Forum (say):
300K threads out of which 30K in BST(s) (10%). 4 million posts 1 million in BST(s).
350K member, 2000 online.
Which can be simplified to: 1 thread per member, 12 posts per thread.
Alexa 138
conclusion: with smaller members base they have very high activity. People join not only for BST but also for discussion, no wonder real serious people are there to help them. People open less threads but discuss more per thread. People open less BST threads but get more response per thread.
I compared with other forums and found similar conclusion, though stats are not displayed on all forums.

I Love DP (DigitalPoint, you perverts!)
Honestly, I have never seen such creativity, skills and innovation dedicated to a the success of a forum. Shawn has create so many custom features for the sake of this forum that any other forum owner can either never be capable of to do or will never take pain to do just to keep its members loving it. Shawn is not only an excellent coder, but a great manager to, he things next to what most people think before implementing an idea to enhance the forum. His decisions have always been deeply correct. And he didnt banned Indian yet, lol.

Conclusion:
People love to take advice (discuss) when they know the community members are real, serious and succesful people.
People love to give advice (discuss)when they know the advice seekers respect them.
People love to pay a fees for selling when they know it will attract a lot of serious buyers.
People love to buy from people who have proved their seriousness already.
Paid BST -> Scam free BST -> Spam free non-BST


What do you people say?
It is time to make DP BST section open for paid members only?
How much impact will it make?
Drawbacks, other than a significant reduction in BST threads.

 

Personally, I like it just the way it is. A paid BST just brings a different type of crap and different problems. Do you not think spammers will pay a couple bucks for the right to sell crap?

I do have one other comment, I doubt Shawn has ever said he "hates" Indian members of the forum as you suggest in your post. I am sure he hates spammers (don't we all) and I would not doubt that he says a majority of them are from India (probably a fact on this forum), but I would doubt that he has ever said he hates Indians as you seem to imply.

Lots of people have opinions on how this forum should be run. Lots of people predict its imminent demise. Lots of people say other webmaster forums are better. If they are better, why not just go there? Why should he turn this forum to copy those? This model seems to be working pretty well.

 

No, he didn't said that. But I have mentioned his quote. And please do not make that the actual topic of discussion. We surely dont want such a discussion.

 

It was the only interesting part of your post.

 

nice approach and a really good thinking, Shawn. I wonder that wouldn't be more people then the weeded off ones will subsequently become active on DP once again knowing that it is now a safer place to buy and sell. Moreover what is the contribution to corruption ratio of the members who are supposed to be weeded off due to this change. I am sure for any product or service, no matter how cheap and how small it is, the member fee or the listing fee, whichever applicable can be recovered very easily from profits if you are serious about long on.

 

I've always liked you psharma (and maybe have done business with you before? Not sure..) but I have to say that thinking adding a dollar sign to the BST will make this a better place is quite short sighted.. I agree it would rid some of the nuisances, but it would also compromise the beauty of DP - the fact that DP is free yet just as good as those 'premium' marketplaces, makes it all the more respectable really..

The answer is to find a solution which ONLY affects the scammers.. Obviously that's a tricky thing to figure out but charging everyone for a service that doesn't need to be charged for, just because some people spam/scam, is not cool.. And some would actually resent DP for that..

Personally however; I would rather pay than put up with all the b/s members on this forum.. But it's not fair to force that on everyone because of the poor behaviour of select people..

 

Talking about warrior forum, which is these days much successful than DP (compared statistically) has much lower upgrade fee ($37 for lifetime membership compared to $125 per year on DP). The purpose is to the make it very very affordable. Even fees of Article forum subscription for the same forum is $60/year and adding banner in signature fees if $60/year too. It means that premium membership fees is kept very affordable knowingly.

The Result? they have the best BST anywhere in the world. Best how? I have seen stats of sales for some popular products listed there, many of them sell 3000 copies and 5000 copies. That fact alone is enough.

 

I must say that psharma you are wasting your time on lifting up this shit forum. Shawn hardly listens to people suggestions. As for the reputation its not even worth a pussy. There are hardly any real sellers/buyers. Is that a problem for Dp. Not at all. How does it matter when members or any other people hate DP when google likes it. The only reason this site has so many views and is in top 200 sites its because google thinks the pages are worthy which they are clearly not. As for Warrior it is ten times better forum in comparison for quality. Go a general chat thread and OMG i you wont find this amount of shit posts anywhere.

 

Alright, then go and use WF. Why wasting time here?

Its YOU who is wasting his time and not the OP.

 

Yup, your concern is correct. But I love DP and I love shawn. Everyone is aware of the spam and scam DP is known for, so repeating it can only be counted as another vote to 'who wants to make DP cleaner'.

When I was not a member, I used to google my problems and many times the first result used to be from this forum (eventually I decided to join it after getting a lot of help being a reader). But now the situation is changed. I cant prove that statistically, But I now see warrior forum and BlackHatWorld a lot of times when I google my problems.
The reason maybe that my search intent has changed (or become more specific, more pro, more depth). Even that will mean DP has help only for newbies (because here only newbies are active, talking generally)
Another reason maybe DP has lost (and still loosing gradually) its reputation in google because of the amount of shits posts.

The most active forums are:
Design & Development (Forum): There are currently 610 users browsing this forum. (4 members & 606 guests)

General Chat (Sub Forum): There are currently 155 users browsing this forum. (10 members & 145 guests)

Buy Sell or Trade (Sub Forum): There are currently 614 users browsing this forum. (139 members & 475 guests)


Design & Development Forum as a whole has 610 users online. Looks impressive, but reality is that they are all guests (means either bots or google search visitors), which is saying that the Google is still loving the work, the Good work, which was once put on this forum by its older members. Only 4 logged in members are online, most of them surfing for help, not many posts are now made there.

General Chat Sub Forum on the other hand has most posts to threads ratio. All of them crap. Its Ok for a forum to have activity in the general chat section. But is never Ok to have the forum's only activity in the general chat section. The reason? People need to increase their post count firstly to get upto 25 posts counts and then to increase their post count and get green reps which are currently this forum's measures of reputation along with itraders.

Coming to BST, It is no doubt the most active forum, In fact it has more logged in members at a time than the all other sections combined.

Close BST and General Chat, and Shawn can peacefully sell 9 out of 10 of his servers (loosly speaking of course, I have no stats, but I am sure that those two subforums consists all the activity of DP, unfortunately)

 

1 My wish
2 I stay there mostly.

Do you think i hate Dp just like shubhi thinks. Of course not. Do me a favour and go and read the first 3 random threads in General chat. Crap posts are everywhere but mostly in GC. As for BST do you know that i can create 10 fake accounts, give you 10 neative itraders and even after mods know al of them are from the same accounts they wont be deleted. Do you know how morons can easily fuck our reputation. Just create 10 accounts and give someone negative itraders and let the accounts be banned. Its that easy. I knew a member with 60 itrader but 15 itrader from 15 different accounts. Thats the kind of support you have here man.

 

@Laxman: I do not find any relation between your last post and the mine post you have quoted in that. Why have you quoted it, I can not understand that.

 

Psharma you have a decent idea but there is a fine line between market control and market suppression , if Shawn or any other community admin would be to harsh he would see both seller and buyers run far and away .

Honestly i don't know what other forums you're talking about . IMHO warrior sells a lot of snake oil , while DP is mostly cold hard web , not potential success recipes .

 

No, my interest was not in suggesting you to sell premium cheaper or allow signature banners. I was suggesting maybe a new type of paid subscription, the "BST privilege" can be cheaper than premium. I added example of Warrior forum because some people were saying that restricting BST to premium members will make it unaffordable to most people.

I agree to that and it makes me happy. Though websites have a very very poor chances of successful sales, domains have a fair chances of successful sale too (comparing to other forums). I am active in domaining and flipping myself for last few months, and my experience is that you can sell domains or websites here only if you want to get rid of them at any price. Dont expect premium things to be sold for premium buyers. I have myself purchased 70 domains from 2 different sellers for less than $1 per domain, while these domains are not expiring soon. the registration cost itself is $10 per domain. The reason seems to be, again is that serious buyers (and sellers too) have left this forum already. I am sure, you want to lure them back.

I like your idea, not looking your forum as a forum primarily, but a supporting thing to your website. But other members, thousands of them, do not think the same, maybe you have a lot of buyers to your tracker tool, but doesnt mak sense to not let the forum overgrow the website it is supposed to support. Afterall, you are the owner, and you idea, your decision wins, nevertheless.

 

Not a bad idea really, why not simply have an Access Only forum identical to BST but for premium members. Maybe just an extra benefit, sellers/buyers can still trade in both the free market place and the premium one but at least the premium one would be less susceptible to fraud/scams etc...

 

They could make a High Rollers BST, like a High Rollers room in a casino where they keep the riff raff out. So everyone could play in BST and only those that want to lose big money would go into the riff-raff room*.

*Yes, I would call the High Rollers BST the Riff-Raff-Room, just because I like alliterations and it sounds cool.

 

Not quite sure what you mean, surly you are more likely to lose out in the free market place more than you would in a premium BST. In addition, 'high rollers' would not really work, since the value of the product doesnt change simply because your in the BST Premier section but the trust and success of transactions does . Nothing is ever going to stop fraud and i think that keeping the market place free is a great thing to do but giving 'options' to premium members would also be great, it would probably attract more memberships also.

 

@Brown There is no need for a high rollers room since the premium members have threads that stand out from the rest . Also i can point out a few premium guys that shouldn't be trusted and i can also point out a lot of regulars that are highly trustable .