Shawn, When searching in the history of the forum I see you used to be part of the forum, and chat more and generaly seem a nicier guy, no doubt this post will get me tons of red rep, as we all know some peps LOVE you, and you are a nice dude, I just think your starting to sound a little corporate. Meh, just me! - ^Yours TvCC Also I need to point out, this is a joke. I know shawn has more to do nowdays!
Shawn didn't change, the forum did. It used to be a small community where we could have a chat and discuss all kind of interesting seo stuff. You would sometimes get a general nonsense thread where everybody could joke around, but the real focus of the froum was there. Then it started to get invaded by people from eastern countries... loads of new boards started popping up, and suddenly 99 out of 100 threads were just stupid stuff. Now you see people promoting free ebooks and tips on how to make easy money, selling yahoo accounts although it isn't allowed, starting stupid threads about what color underwear people use... etc. Not only Shawn, but most of the regulars have stopped posting here. Me included, It takes a long time before I find a thread that actually has something interesting in it.
Ive been here longer than my U\n surgests. And yes I agree. It's always a shame to lose that community aspect of a forum.
For a change, I must say I agree totally with Fryman. 90% or more of the posts here are total crap now. But I don't know that it's because the number of members increased. I think it's more that the type of members changed and the monkeys took over the forums.
SitePoint do? Geez that is a crap way to shoot your members in the butt. The group are not bad, they just need teaching. And I see alot more hidden spam now. Ala posting in Review section not for reviews but for hits.
Crap polls. Adolescent flirt threads. Pointless political/religious debates. Sig link selling. Blatant self-promotion. Self-styled SEO experts who got their first internet connection three weeks ago. And then, every now and then, an occasional gem buried in a mountain of utter garbage... that's what keeps me coming back.
I don't want to join the good old days syndrome complaint, especially since I only got here 15 months ago, but I agree with the sentiment. I came across Digital Point initially when I first getting back into internet publishing and the rest. It has been an awesome source of information and discussion. I can't count how many useful threads where I got tips. I used to scour the boards and go into every category and find good information. Now it is harder to find the real worthwhile stuff. Seems like the noise ratio has gone up a bit. Can't say it is good or bad, it is what it is. Of course when it comes to my forum usage, I am a specialist. I am not a fan of general discussions for the most part, as there is a speciality forum for almost any subject you can think of, so if I want to talk about something like that, I can go there and talk about it. Even the business side of things have taken a turn where there is more focus on the quick buck/sleazy easy side of the coin instead of the put in the long hours and hard work and make something of yourself.
He probobly doesn't post anymore because the site got bigger and he has to work on all his sites. Maintaining a site is hard work havent you noticed?
I still post, there are just so many posts that my posts are a tiny fraction of all the posts (before when there was less posts, if I made the same 100 posts, it was a higher percentage).