Another Dmoz Scandal that has totally taken me off my feet.

Thanks Chuck!

 

I know she will be back, but for how long forums will remain is the major question here. Ghost forums help no one.

 

Automatically subscribe members to threads. This can be done via ACP for vB... it'll remind them that they had a conversation going, should the conversation ever start up again. Such tactics have brought me back to forums I forgot existed!

You have your handful of core members, you just need the trickle in....and those that trickle will drip back out once they have their questions answered, so maybe offer something else?

Encourage article submissions by members of all status, and give them a place to put them. Possible add in a few mods to make the place fun.

Heh, hell...add games or other diversions for the core members. You can likely make set them by usergroups, so that it will not distract from the main purpose of the board.

For more tips check out the forum management forum here at DP, or wait a week, I'll write an article on it

 

No, it's not.

I haven't got a clue what traffic DP gets, I doubt anyone else posting here has a clue. Or cares. What matters is that you often get interesting discussions and debates, a variety of opinions which are tolerated even when you disagree passionately. Quality counts, traffic is immaterial.

It isn't traffic that is a turn-off for editors coz they really couldn't give a shit (or they wouldn't edit niche categories with only a couple of bots visiting once a month). The turn-off is that traffic and marketing appear to be primary purposes of the forum. A turn-on would be a desire for quality accurate information and lots of it at the heart of the objectives.

Or they see it as irrelevant to the lives they should be living. Or they post on other forums and there is only so many hours in a day you can healthily spout forth on the evils of the ODP.

It seems you can't survive these days on both sides of the divide. We all pick our sides. If I shut up I could have been reinstated but I chose not to. I think that is wrong but life's a bitch, live with it.

Help that is available elsewhere in a crowded market. And participants are a dying breed as the importance of the ODP itself declines into obscurity.

I post here and sometimes help people, and haven't posted elsewhere else on ODP matters for as long as I remember although I used to be prolific on RZ when it you were actually allowed to give out information people wanted to know. Before it adopted the Stalinist approach to forum moderation. I am helping you out now by giving you objective feedback, not bullshit platitudes. And I have only limited spare time and am collaborating on another volunteer project startup that hopefully people will find very worthwhile - far more productive than stressing day and night over the antics of the ODP. Suggestions? Quality informative and balanced articles on the pros and cons of the ODP. Limited competition there. Site reviews - is my site listable and if not why not type of thing. No-one else does that.

That would be a quick way for them to lose their ability to give a status check. But status checks, despite being popular with webmasters, always were completely and utterly useless. A site has 3 statuses. Listed (no point, you can see it listed). Rejected (mostly spam and who wants to encourage spammers to resubmit their spam and clog up the queues - doesn't help genuine submitters or editors). Waiting - most common status check result - with zero way of telling when the category might be visited, when the site will be reviewed, or what the result might be apart from rejected or accepted.
The main fun about the RZ status checks were exposing the spammers and tagging their sites - it was a real spammer magnet, up to 50% of requests I reckon. See above for possible edges but why not try asking your own members for suggestions.

You would have to check the rules on those sites and see whether the removal was legitimate. If not then use the processes on those sites to complain.