Gworld, I keep hearing what you are saying... but your argument falls short when you try to classify the systems in place as over-moderation. The moderation here is still significantly shy of what any other major seo forum offers. So while I don't disagree with you on the appeal standpoint, I do disagree with you on what you see as that being diminished. It would be interesting to know how many people have actually gotten banned strictly from infractions since the system went into place. I suspect it a suprisingly low number.
EGS and anthonycea are probably da only ones!! EGS had a few short bans and AC has a LONG ban!!!!! AC thinks he was used as the test subject for the infraction system!!
softgroups is another victim of 10 infractions. http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=113077
Several posts and complaints have been made against infraction. I donnt think it is going to be reverted back so lets take it, no option. Definately sometime you receive hopeless infractions but Shawn is right that it doesnt effect much untill you have a bulk of them.
I asked about what is unique about DP? Those tools are nice but I think iwebtool and many other web sites also offer similar tools. I think that exactseek even gives away a free desktop version of similar tools. The other factor that you should consider is that people can use those tools without posting in the forum, so I don't think that the tools are the reason for the popularity of this forum.
the keyword tracker is what originally brought me to DP and the forum. I think its a very unique concept that I haven't seen elsewhere. The suggestion tool is also very nice too (especially since I don't have to use the image verification, cuz of a donation).
Yes it is... there are 10x more users of the tools than the forum. Most people were sucked into the forum from being regular users of the tools (and the vast majority of the tool users don't use the forum). The forum was started initially just as a way to support the users of the products/tools, and to be honest I would be perfectly okay if that's all the forum was for (would just mean a lot less work for everyone), although I doubt that will be the case. So I'll ask you the question... If the forum lost the ONLY thing that's unique about it with the "ridiculous infraction system", what are you still doing here? There's obviously many other forums that are not only on the exact same playing field now, but actually better since they don't have an infraction system. As it is right now, the forum is actually averaging 1,000 more posts per DAY since the infraction system was implemented and every other stat (new users, new threads, users visiting per day) hits new records every week. Rather odd statistics if everyone is "jumping ship" over the infraction system (or anything else), eh? http://forums.digitalpoint.com/faq.php?faq=dp_faq#faq_statistics
More like everyone Jumping on the ship, This place has awesome info and people on around the clock, you can get answers here in minutes 24/7 I agree as well, why do people say its so bad, yet they keep on posting and coming back?
and there's not even a link to the forums on that tool page... only some small box with latest forum posts.... good job oh and by the way, i never got an infraction but i still post anything i want...
I am at this forum originally because of the tools....I think you would find that 90% of the people with post counts over 1000 got here that way. In fact I bet among those with 2004 join dates, its more like 99% (Before the SE's and Political section were drawing in non webmasters)
I am exception, I came here following shawn's post about some php script in some other forum. Although it took me about 6 months to signup and post, when I saw a hot discussion between ministrel and alucard(The DMOZ editor)..lol rest is history
well it was G that brought me here... actually the first time was another forum, but that was only to check the revenue sharing
I got here by searching Google for who knows what. Never knew about the tools until after I registered and I don't think I've tried them yet. For the size of the community and the number of mods it's run awfully well and is fairly lenient from what I've seen on other forums. While I haven't gotten an infraction (yet), I doubt it would bother me much if I did. Never did take much personally and if this is the system that works best for this place, then let it be. I doubt anyone really cares how many infractions someone else has unless they were considering buying a sig link.
I gotta agree.. It is all the tools here on the DP forums that keep me coming back. Thanks tools! By the way... I think I actually first came here looking for information on Adsense. So that is how I came across the site initially.