When I joined back in 2006, the digital point forums was loaded with TRUE marketing gurus who actually gave valuable information. Over the last couple of years I have noticed that the quality of content being shared on DP has went down . I can't even count how many threads that I go in and leave a response, only to have the next 10 responses under me saying exactly what I said, just in a different way. Not to mention the amount of WRONG information that people are providing because THEY think it is correct. Therefore leading people in the wrong direction. In the SEO / Google part of the forum, you have ENTIRE pages with people asking the same question in 10 different ways, and all of the threads are receiving the same response. This forum needs some new moderation rules to get rid of all this misleading junk. Am I the only person who has noticed this?
Nope is not just you .... Sadly only so called experts and noobs stay around here this days In the good old days you could get nicew valueble deals and connexions now ....
You can still get decent gems around DP, once in a while a blue chip site pops up. I use DP to brake up my day and to scout for sites the last few weeks seem to have had alot of junk threads popping up tho, the General Chat section has become a teenage relationship advice forum.
Trust me, we know... Unfortunately it's not just us... it seems all forums these days are just being bombed with Indian spammers that post for no reason other than to run up their post counts. It started a few years ago and has just gotten worse and worse. There are days that I just weigh the good/bad of simply blocking all of India and Pakistan. That would cut 96% of all the spam and probably 99% of the mindless gibberish posts. There are of course some good users from India and Pakistan, but their fellow countrymen are giving the entire countries a bad name. I'm starting to think a big part of it might be companies hired to get someone links are just mindlessly posting to drop their signature link. One option is to drastically change how links are handled. The easiest solution would be to just nofollow any/every link, hide signatures from search engines, etc.
@digitalpoint: Thanks for the response. Why not create an indian/pakistan/middle east part of the forum. Those with less then 50 posts from any of these countries don't get access to post in the main part of the forums. There could also be some type of date range set where members from these countries can't post until they reach both 50 posts and have been a member for x amount of months. One concern you may have is "How would these people be able to ask questions"? Well to be honest, everything that people need to know has already been posted. Force people to start using the search feature. The only problem you will have with this is people bringing back very old threads. In all honesty though, I would rather bring back an old thread with GREAT information, then have 8 threads on one page that ask "What do you think about the new google algo" or "What is new google algo"? Things are just getting so repetitive. You have a lot of new people who want to learn the correct ways to market their business, but have to go through all of the incorrect information to find something legitimate. Alot of the junk that is out there could easily be cleared up by a moderator. It just takes someone actually doing it, and by no means am I saying your mods aren't - i'm sure you guys are extremely busy and the pure size of DP makes it hard to keep up. If you're looking for an intelligent mod who understands the industry, let me know. I would be glad to watch over the SEO part of the forum. My point is... Digital Point Forums is where I got started with internet marketing. I have learned so much here over the last 5 years. I would hate for others to be misled by information that is incorrect - that is what it boils down too. Either way, Please don't let spammers secretly take over this valuable forum.
I haven't been here that long but i must say that the little time i have spent here really helped me. I still see valuable information on here.
It is really shocking that the people from India/Pakistan are discriminated by DP. DP is a general forum which caters all users across the globe. The best solution would be to disable signature links or having nofollow.
@evaadams: It's not about discrimination. It's about taking control of the current problem. That problem just so happens to be that in the last year or two, many new members from the middle east have shown up on DP with the intention of posting spammy or irrelevant information. The ideas I gave above were me being nice because I don't own this forum. If this was my forum, I would ban/block any country that doesn't speak the native language. Why? Because this is an english speaking site, if you can't speak english - either go elsewhere, or create your own site. People are here to learn, and it's very difficult to learn and translate at the same time. Disabling signature links or having nofollow will not change anything. People aren't spamming on here for backlinks, they're doing it for exposure. DigitalPoint is HUGE, and there is a lot of "money making" related traffic.
We don't discriminate against people of a certain country. We *do* discriminate against spammers though.
Digital Point is the place where I began my SEO work. I had many experiences. Some were totally my fault and I lost many good clients which I regret. While some scammed me a lot of times. I also think that there should be new rules, good moderation ( I still see 2 days old spammy threads), need few more good moderators from around the globe who can watch out for spammers at all time.