What criteria do you use when evaluating a submission from a forum? Does it have to be "established" with x number of members? Do you decline acceptance if it is new and the only posts are obviously from the owners? Do you leave it in the queue/tickler file and recheck after some time has passed?
Do you leave it in the queue/tickler file and recheck after some time has passed? If it is bare new, then yes. Never knowing what it could end up to be, at times the forum owner gives up on it and spam bots takes over with post like Meds and Viagras.
forums i would look for 3 things, the right side column which states last reply ... the focus being the date... which tells me the kind of traffic it has,... understandably some forums bring more traffic than other niches but if more than half the boards are 6 months stale! ... then its a no-no. 2. just like wwws says, look into recent posts for spam! ... if they have more of it,... (and not recent) then out again.. 3. if its a blank stand alone forum,.... if attached to a site, it may just get traffic, but if its stand alone AND blank,... then i rather not link to it. M.
As with every new site you have to ask yourself if that site is going to be around one year from now or you are going to add potential dead link you have to deal with later. If you thinks that site have good subject and will stick around, then you list it, otherwise why bother. The same applies to forums. If forum has potential and owner has been actively writing article, then why not but if 2 years forum whereas last article was written 3 moths ago, then chance it will make it "0" thus why bother with that one, just go to half of dozen other forums that waiting for your review. fastreplies
Well i know how hard it is to establish a forum so if its showing signs of being very new i would have no problem in accepting the submission. Though with forum submissions they are very rare for me, any forums in my directories, apart from maybe one or two, i have actually added myself.
Having two niche sites, I don't see a great deal of forum submissions but most of the ones that I do are newer or less populated. The one that spurred this post is brand new. Part of me says it will always be empty and new if no one is willing to link to it to get it going but then again it had only 5 members and 12 posts. Someone is trying to get it going but it's a sad little forum at the moment. The subject is popular but as far as forums go it has some really stiff competition from established sites. Interesting that I'm not the only one that leaves it in the queue and re-reviews at a later date. I try not to penalize sites just because they are new (we've all been there) but I also focus on quality over quantity I haven't seen any submissions from what amounts to dead forums but I agree with the others that it's a no-list without some evidence of a strong effort to revitalize the site.
Yes, yes and maybe. Basically it has to meet a minimum activity level before I'll add it, and if it's nowhere near that then I'll reject it straight away. I'll only leave it pending for about a month if it's borderline. 5 posts and 12 members isn't my idea of borderline, though. A forum needs at least 100 threads before it stands any chance of growth. Otherwise visitors assume it's dead and no-one new will register.