Is sure seems like we are getting there. Just like a spammy directory, the good content is hidden as a result of all the junk submitted with little on no editorial policy. Do you ever reach a point in your life as the owner of a directory or forum like this and ask yourself, "Why have I spent hears producing something so worthless?"
While I agree that quality isn't anywhere remotely close to what I'd like it to be (and that should never be the case... things can always be better no matter what), to say we have no "editorial policy" is flat out wrong. You should see what the forums look like when you can see things we've deleted (see bottom of this post)... On the bright side (I suppose), the more popular your site is, the bigger a spam target it is... is spammers didn't want in, then it would actually be rather sad (in a weird way). But it certainly is a never ending battle...
It would be great to have a dedicated person or two that check the directories forum everyday. There are several people who would be good for the job, not only deleting spam but getting the veterans to come back and make it a worthwhile forum again. You've got people who care and want to help and seemingly ignoring them. You could always try some people out and take away their privileges if they abused them.
And maybe this falls on deaf ears, but someone told me that it was the policy of not having experts in the field as moderators as there would be too much self interest involved. Seems to me experts would be the people that would help lead and promote quality discussions, and its obvious that experts are less present now than previously. If there is a concern moderators would have self interest, then surely that is where super moderators would come into play that manage the team.
At this point the best thing to do is Report anything you see that violates our rules... We process every report.
Yes, I agree, and it seems people who once cared about this site that actually contributed worthwhile content are increasingly not here, so absolutely it could be a LOT better. I can take a hint, as it seems my reports fell on deaf ears. The idea that you would treat others as you expect to be treated does not seem to be something important to you, or else you live in a very strange world outside this forum. I tend to doubt that though. Honestly, where is quality here? It's all but gone. A place like Sitepoint is LOADED with quality, and while their traffic might be a "little" less, I am guessing they make a LOT more money. Even a site like Warrior Forum while having some negative elements there has done a wonderful job of stopping the spammers and pushing away the con artists. This mission of this site is cloudy and lacking substance. The priority seems to be fighting off the worst spammers, but not promoting the best content. It's pretty sad. You could have done so much more with this site. I fear you will look back one day and realize this. This site has so much potential, but instead it seems you spend more time thinking about what people are doing wrong, but not what they are doing right. That makes for a continuance of the mediocrity and a site that will see its traffic shrink over time. I can see that trend is already happening looking at Alexa.
I suspect the bigger issue is that you think the forum *is* digitalpoint.com... The site was around for 8 years doing the same stuff it's still doing *before* there was a forum. The forum itself was open begrudgingly because we needed a venue to be able to support *existing* users. As far as reported posts, they are always processed... not sure what you are referring to. Not sure... since I don't know what their revenue is from, and I suspect they don't know what ours is from either. Ours certainly isn't from the forum. It's quite possible that I'm missing the high quality parts of that site, but the general feeling I get is that it's nothing *but* con artists slinging get rich quick eBooks... As mentioned before, I think the bigger issue is that it seems like you are focused on the worst part of the site (the forums). On a *much* smaller scale it's like telling Google they need to work on the content quality of their support forum because they are going to start losing users if they don't get on that. Alexa's traffic measurement is "poor" at best. See this post about it if you want to see actual analytics for digitalpoint.com. And yes... absolutely the traffic has shrunk a bit for the forums.digitalpoint.com... but the growth of the other sub-domains is more than the loss. In fact we've put backend measures in over the last few years to INTENTIONALLY drive traffic down (at least posts and new user registrations down) on the forums. We are far more interested in quality over quantity. Overall there's plenty of things we could do better (and we are working towards that), but we are also looking at the big picture. What you (personally) feel is important to you, might not be our highest priority in the grand scheme of things.
Yes, exactly. This is why I posted in (the forums). http://www.digitalpoint.com/ still says "a new search engine forum". I guess the homepage is not part of the "big picture"? Ok, you would know if you would have looked. Ex. "The idea that you would treat others as you expect to be treated does not seem to be something important to you, or else you live in a very strange world outside this forum." Maybe a good place to start would be doing a better job of pointing the user to those places on the site where quality is sure to be found. How quickly could you do that this very moment? Alexa stats don't paint that picture. Marketplace.dp.com is 1.07% of the traffic and tools.dp.com is 2.52% of the traffic, but I have reason to question your internal stats beyond that. So it seems that mission is far gone and it's time to recognize this is a forum you focus on "begrudgingly". I get it, and I'll stick to everything I said in my last post. What exactly is your highest priority? I've read your homepage, looked at the tools, etc. Whatever it is right now, it certainly isn't very obvious. Sincere best wishes for a better 2013 on DP!
It actually is... unfortunately it's not as easy as pressing a button to migrate www.digitalpoint.com to a new framework because it had somewhere around 800,000 lines of custom code built around it (not for the presentation of the site, but things like the tools that were part of the www subdomain. I certainly wish I could snap my fingers and have it all rewritten from scratch, but well... it just takes time time. But it *is* being worked on. For example if you look at the tools section on www.digitalpoint.com, everything there has been rewritten from scratch and moved to tools.digitalpoint.com and uses the vBulletin framework (everything was rewritten from scratch). Other areas are (slowly) being migrated (which is why so many parts of www redirects to the new location now). I still have no clue what this means or what you are implying. We *do* treat users exactly like I would expect to be treated. If I spam a site, I would expect to be banned. If I post a bunch of gibberish, I'd expect all my posts to be deleted, etc. Which is what we do. Pretty quickly... it's in the main navigation... http://advertising.digitalpoint.com/ (not for adverting here necessarily... rather a platform for site owners to sell ads) http://tools.digitalpoint.com/tracker World's largest historical search engine ranking tool. Over 100,000 registered users tracking millions of keywords across hundreds of millions of points of data. For example... tracking the phrase "buy site" for digitalpoint.com in Google and Bing over the last few years... Or maybe you want to see how Google has logged links to cnn.com over the last few years... http://products.digitalpoint.com/vbulletin-sphinx-search.php If you run a large vBulletin, you more or less HAVE to use the search engine we built for it. etc, etc... Not sure what to tell you... Personally, I would rely on Google Analytics for traffic analysis over Alexa any day... but that's just me. Running a forum isn't begrudgingly, just starting it was. But if the forums subdomain just went away someday I wouldn't be terribly sad about it. For stuff being built/managed on digitalponit.com, the forums is 95% of the work for 0% of the fun. The highest priority right now is secret(ish)... But I suspect you (and everyone else) will know before too long. Back to the actual topic of post quality... yes... post quality is often idiotic (at best), and when we see them, we ban the user and delete all their posts just for asking idiotic questions. It would be absolutely insane to see what it would look like if we pulled the plug on all the custom filtering we do (as well as moderation). And while we do a lot (most of which you can't see on the backend), there's always more than can be done. And a lot of it is stuff that we have been testing and getting ready to roll out. But yes... there are days that I feel like I should just make certain sections of the forum a honey pot where if anyone posts in them, they are automatically banned (Link Exchange, Link Sales, Politics & Religion, Directories, etc.) If you have ideas for how to improve post quality, we always listen for good ideas (and in some cases we might already be doing it). But just stating the obvious (that post quality should be improved) isn't terribly helpful... we know that even more than you do since we can see all the backend stuff.
I appreciate your reply, and it does sound like you are working hard to make something worthwhile, even if the forums are hard to manage. I would love to have permission to PM you about 2 items that I think would make the forum better, as for one of the items it seems you don't quite understand what I am referencing.
If it's something to make the forum better, it would be better to start a thread about it so it can be discussed with everyone's input. "Secret" things to make the forum "better" tend to be things that make it better for one person (like someone wants a group of people banned or start a category for their company, etc.)
Ok, it was not any of that, but difficult to help you this way. I can understand that you only confide in a few people, possibly with little decision making power. It just makes it hard for me to be here, and some others that care about the forum. I've been told this is a lost cause by a number of people I have a high respect for what they do. I have not taken their advice so far. It kind of seems this is a large forum, but very small at the top, and that makes for many problems that just don't get addressed. I get it, and maybe they are right. You'll have to decide for yourself.
Truthfully, I can't think of any suggestion someone could make that would require me to confide something to them. But sure, I guess if you have a secret suggestion that can't be openly discussed for some reason, shoot me a PM. If the idea involves "better ways to monetize the forum", we aren't interested. Again.. The forum was started as a support venue, and I have about 500 ways already that I know I could easily make more money with it. But making money with it is about as interesting to me as Google trying to increase their revenue for their support forum. We do have a few things that are attached to a cost, but for the most part the dollar amount is an arbitrary barrier to prevent everyone from doing whatever it is. For example I could sell the Sphinx Search system for $1,000. But I don't mind giving it away... The only reason it's attached to the premium member cost is I don't have time to support 100,000 different users trying to use it that don't actually need it. I think we had somewhere around 1,000,000 posts before we placed out first AdSense ad (or any ad). So anyway... If your idea can't be discussed publicly, doesn't involve personal interests and isn't some "great idea to make dollarz!", go ahead and shoot me a PM.
Nope, none of that and of course I PMed you. If you REALLY wanted to focus more on other parts of the site, and the forums aren't a central focus, why not just require a login to see anything. It will reduce the spam by 90% overnight.
Unfortunately it wouldn't... The problem is that spammers are too stupid to know what they are doing even now has no value. The site has been "nofollow" for years and signatures aren't seen unless you are logged in (Googlebot does not log in so they would never see it), yet we still have hundreds of spams per day with people trying to link spam. If spammers were smarter, they wouldn't be wasting their time as it is, but unfortunately they aren't.