Suggestion More Admins?

digitalpoint (Shawn), please don't view this post as a negative thing, that's not what it's about.

I've been around for a while, General Marketing section used to be my favorite section. I still send people here that I speak to on Skype and such that may want to get into Internet Marketing because I think it is the friendliest place online to learn the basics of how to market a website. The issue for me now though is that just today I went and visited and felt like about 80% of the posts are spam. It is becoming diluted with people giving "tips" (AKA, advertising their marketing blog). I totally understand that content = revenue for this website. But I also think valuable content will only expand the userbase further than what it currently is.

Any chance we could increase the number of admins here? There are a lot of long-standing members on these forums that I think would do a fine job and help clean up some of these sections getting overrun with what really amounts to spam.

 

Just to clarify, I went through the top 15-20 threads in the General Marketing section, I would classify all of these as spam:

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=2372752
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=2372806
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=2372627
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=2371370
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=2372637

That means based on those numbers that 25% - 33% of the threads being posted in that section aren't really discussion based, they are simply there to spam their website or service.

 

I know exactly what mean, users take advantage of this section to do some quick advertising here and there..

 

Smyrl, thank you for your response. Again, please don't take my thread or posts here as purely complaining. It is legitimately a suggestion and really has very little to do with me. I just see a growing problem is all.

I'm not knocking the system, but why not assign additional people who want to give back to the community by ensuring that the most informative threads are the first ones seen here? I don't even care if I'm made admin or not, that's not what this is about. But I would like to see additional people active on the forums and actively policing the forums without relying on us (those of us with no pull on the forums) to police it for you. If you give some people some responsibility and ownership to take care of something, they will be much more inclined to do so.

For example, in real life, there are citizen arrests that are possible. But how many of us have ever capitalized on doing a citizens arrest when we see someone doing something against the law? Never once have I ever called the police on a driver going 10 miles per hour over the speed limit. If you gave me a badge, you could bet on it that I would take action on some of the idiots I see driving on the streets.

I've reported 5-10 posts maybe, if i'm feeling utterly frustrated. Other times i'm thinking, "Surely an admin will get to that eventually." It seems like it's only a growing problem, not getting better. The admins that are here seem to be doing as good of a job as possible, but there needs to be more in my personal opinion. Just curious, why aren't there any admins being added? There are plenty of capable people here that are active enough to do a good job.

 

The problem is
x number of mods (Which remains static, more or less)
xx number of members (which keeps growing daily)
those xx members create y number of 'spam' posts daily with a sole intention to gain some visitors.

so xx * y = a high figure which the static number of mods can't handle (I've seen threads taking a week or so to vanish)

I don't think Shawn personally goes out moderating threads, outside this section.

So the solution would be increase mod count

 

Honestly I'm amazed things aren't worse given the simple mod:member ratio. Speaks well of those on the job, but even if the active mods are over performing, that's a lotta territory for a few volunteers to cover. If you doubled them they'd still be spread thin.

Personally think moderating the WTS section here should be reserved as punishment for violent offenders and people that fail to pay child support.

And yeah, anyone that'd actively seek the mod role usually wants it for the wrong reason, but there's gotta be a few w/the right ethic. Maybe try the guys in p&r with multiple IDs. They're good at multi-tasking and seem to have LOTS of time to spare.

Added: just a suggestion, and it's free so if you don't like it at least you didn't lose money on it. One thing that might increase efficiency regardless of the numbers... stop the revolving door when someone clearly proves "rule-averse". Rather than making bans longer for repeat problem children, make it permanent. If you've temp banned someone twice and they're still failing to follow guidelines, shut the door. No need to keep moderating the terminally ban prone.

 

Yeah, I'd imagine that there is some concern with giving more people authority, generally people you don't even know. I suppose this is part of the issue too. I know a lot of the current admins have very high post counts, but rarely, if ever, do I see them make posts related to internet marketing. There is a disconnect between users, even those of us who have been here quite sometime, and Shawn himself as well as the other admins. It would be hard to give some random person who you've never spoke to such authority.

However, with that said, I wonder if the current admins could transition their focus from instead of looking for offenders on the forums themselves, they could train 4-5 others to do it for them. Not that they would have to stop moderating all together, but their focus could become additionally about training moderators on the way things work as a moderator of DP so that those of us who visit the forums could see an improvement in the quality of the posts here on the DigitalPoint forums.

There are ways to grow the moderator number, I just wish it would happen. Shawn, would you mind responding on what your view is on this topic? Just curious, you're the big man here, why not increase the moderator number? You can see by this thread that several people who have spent quite a few hours (days?) here reading topics definitely prefer this, although admittedly our point of view is not worth anything.

 

I don't know, maybe use the data you have at your disposal to find some good candidates? I see General Marketing as the biggest area that could be improved upon when it comes to the quality of the posts. A quick MySQL query could identify multiple people who are active in the General Marketing section, have been around for quite sometime, and maybe even provide helpful posts (a good indication would be posts with more than so many text characters). Just throwing it out there on a possible way to get a few names to start looking at.

I think most people who spend any amount of time of here would be more than happy to help out if you were to ask them personally.

 

Pardon me, whats p&r?

 

Politics and Religion

I would just like more policing and care taken over the internet marketing sections that are probably what make this forum popular.

 

As a general rule... a zoo.

 

I nominate robjones for moderator! He seems to know the truth about what's going on around here.

 

Oh, my bad. I've never been inside that forum section

 

Probably for the best

 

Even if this place had a hundred moderators, it would still stink and I'll tell you why with a stupid example: let's say there is a hole in the ceiling and it's rainy outside, so it's dripping in the house. What the mods do is put a pail right under the hole and then leave it until it's full, NOT fix the actual problem by closing that hole.

 

I would imagine you are talking about all the people from the Middle East using this forum and you have a desire to get rid of all of them.

I think a better analogy is this: Wal-mart has a hole in their ceiling. Unfortunately, it's not just rain that is pouring through the whole, but also gold (Clearly, content = money, and not all Eastern people abuse the forum). However, instead of hiring enough people to remove the water from the gold, the Wal-mart employees are expecting the customers to do the sorting for them, only they don't get the gold for themselves. However, multiple people would be interested in doing this for them because they have such awesome prices and enjoy visiting walmart, they don't want to see it fall to the ground from all the water damage that seems to be increasing. Word has it on the Walmart aisles that they are contemplating finding the necessary people to sort the gold from the water.