Where am I going wrong with this site?

Thats actually a very good analogy Shrap. Now let me see if i can cast the characters for that analogy in fauna land.

1) Sam = Rich (of course)
2) Dianne = Lucille ( Sams helper)
3) Woody = DanD (the joker)
4) Norm = Wes (the guy that never leaves)
5) Carla = Teresa ( lovable yet contraversal at times)
6) Rebecca = Sasheena ( all heart, and that avatar )
7) Cliff = JimO ( outspoken but not always clear)
8) Frazier = Me of course (the intellegent one)
9) Coach = Chris ( good at getting his way)
10) Lillith = Karen H. (intellegent and opinionated)
11) paul = Shrap ( the guest thats always around)

It took me a while to think that one out to make sure the cast fit the characters. Now all we have to do is think up a type of forum for everydody to frequent and keep people coming back to!!!!( Cheers forum-lame, meeting place??, society club??? ) I am terrible of thinking up good names for stuff like this.

Originally Posted by nicolai

There is the million dollar question!!!!! To answer that question one must be able to answer the 6 questions leading up to the million dollar question.

1) Why do the people that actively participate do so?
2) What keeps the others from participating?
3) How can i find out what will make more people participate?
4) How can i get the members to help encourage others to participate?
5) What can i do to stop some members from keeping others from actively
participating without losing more active members?
6) Is all this actually worth it?

P.S. Dam rich, 40-50,000 hits a day is a very respectable number!!!!! especially when you getting 8-11,000 unique hits a day.You may just get to be a millionaire yet!!!

Perhaps the quote from your signature area should be question number five and a half:

Why aren't more people voting to save HELL?????Please VOTE!!
http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/foru...361#post316361

As for becoming a millionaire, from THIS site? Not a chance. What's one million dollars divided by $25? 40,000 paying members? Hah! Not in my lifetime....... If I think I'll be able to retire on the income from this site, I guess I had better start developing a taste for dogfood.

Originally Posted by WebSlave

Perhaps the quote from your signature area should be question number five and a half:



As for becoming a millionaire, from THIS site? Not a chance. What's one million dollars divided by $25? 40,000 paying members? Hah! Not in my lifetime....... If I think I'll be able to retire on the income from this site, I guess I had better start developing a taste for dogfood.

You are absolutely right as far as that question goes. For some reason it is so hard to get peple involved and talking about an issue. I have literally seen multiples of people in HELL yet now when its on the line very few people are stepping forward to say anything. Maybe people are afraid of getting caught up in controversey or something, i wish i knew. Dam it.. I like Hell and i just need to think up a good motivator to get more people involved!!!
And to the second thing. You figure between the upkeep of the site, mortgage, bills, food, women the most you should need to retire is 4,000 people at the contributer level for 100,000 a year salary. That is completely feasable given the growing popularity of the hobby. Besides once you get to a certain point, not exactly sure what that point is..this site will be financially seductive to other business people looking to make an investment and may want to buy you out at an incredible sum of money. How much did amazon.com sell for. It could happen.
And if it doesnt and you never strike it rich with the site and you have to work into your eighties while still breeding snakes on the side to help pay the bills, just remember...You will still have all of us here to kick around!!!

Originally Posted by WebSlave

Just an off the cuff comment here before I have to go back to the salt mines and deal with the animals.

Do you know what, in my opinion, makes a great message board? The simple courtesy from ALL members that NO question from ANYONE goes unanswered. NOBODY is ignored. I have been to other unrelated message boards myself, and NOTHING frustrated me more then just simply being ignored. When my questions are unanswered and my comments ignored, I simply do not got back again, ever.

No one has to be an expert to make someone new feel wanted and welcomed.

Just my opinion......... And certainly I am as guilty of it as many other people. I SHOULD be in the cornsnakes forum, but I am not. So I certainly cannot throw stones at other people's glass houses.

That very thing has turned me off with other forums. Nothing is more annoying/upsetting to post something and have NO ONE care enough to post a reply. It's even worse when someone is in genuine need of help.

I spend most of my time in the Leo forum - they are just my "thing". What's great about the Leo forum is that I can't even remember the last time someone started a thread and didn't get a responce. Something as short as "Nice _______" can make a person's day, and can make them come back. There has been a pretty large flow of newcomers in the last couple of months, and I think they stay because of the (mostly) welcoming enviroment. I'm not saying we don't get a little BS floating through every now and then...but maybe you can see what's going "right" there and try to spread that to other forums.

Do you know what, in my opinion, makes a great message board? The simple courtesy from ALL members that NO question from ANYONE goes unanswered. NOBODY is ignored. I have been to other unrelated message boards myself, and NOTHING frustrated me more then just simply being ignored. When my questions are unanswered and my comments ignored, I simply do not got back again, ever.

No one has to be an expert to make someone new feel wanted and welcomed.

I think you may have hit the nail on the head. I never really considered it before. I'll make more of an effort, because I'm guilty.

I don't venture much out of the boa/python areas, because I don't keep other animals (except for one obnoxious monitor, but that's a whole different topic). Reading these thread made me realize that I'm missing alot by not participating where appropriate in other forums as well.

Very good suggestions.

Originally Posted by Wilomn

Consistency. Spell it out and stick to it.

I assume you mean that every post will be treated equal by all mods here? Meaning that each and every post MUST be read and must be treated the same by myself and the mods?

Well, let's look at some statistics. Over the past week, we got a peak of over 500 new posts per day. Average is probably around 350 per day, so let me round that to 360 posts per day to make the calculations easier.

What do you figure, maybe one minute, conservatively, per post to read, analyze and decide whether it is in violation? Should that mod confer with the other mods if there is any doubt about their opinion being out of line with a general consensus? How long do you suppose it would take one mod to get replies back from the others if there is a question? And how many posts might stack up awaiting replies to make sure he was being "consistent"?

Heck even at just 1 minute per post as an average, the workload JUST to read all of those posts will be roughly 6 hours per day. If I turn this task over to the three moderators and simply consult with them concerning questionable decisions, that leaves each of the three mods with 2 hours of MANDATORY reading to do each and every day to stay "consistent". That does not include the gray area posts and the time necessary to consult with anyone else about their decision. And if one mod just has to spend the day with their personal lives, the other mods taking up the slack need to put in 3 hours each for that day. Hopefully we won't have two mods wasting their time on their personal lives during the same day.

And how am I going to know that each of the mods are pulling their share and putting in that 2 hours every day? Maybe they need to annotate each post so the other mods will know that that particular post has already been analyzed. Plus I will be able to make note of who is doing their job and who isn't and thrash soundly those who are not helping to maintain this "consistency". So let's see, it appears that I need to look over each and every post myself, just to verify this "consistency", so figuring on it only taking me 30 seconds per post, it looks like I have 3 hours to put in each day just to verify the posts have been viewed by at least one of the mods. How much time should I allocate for consulting over those questionable posts each day? With 360 posts average per day, maybe 10 percent of them might be questionable? What do you think, maybe 5 minutes per post to analyze it properly and come to a consensus? Ok, so that is 3 more hours per day I have to put in, plus that time divided among whatever mods had those questionable posts in their queue.

I'm being facetious, of course, and assuming that is what you mean by being "consistent". But certainly you can see that logically and reasonably, the workload being proposed to maintain this perfect world "consistency" is not at all reasonable. Sounds good when you say it, but when you look at the practical details of what that actually means, I don't think any reasonable person can truly expect that here.

Sorry, but no, I am NOT going to make any attempt to suggest that the mods must read every post and must all act like little robots, thinking exactly the same, and acting exactly the same. I know I have my own personality quirks, and when I am in a bad mood I may interpret a post much differently then when I am in a very good mood. I can expect no less from my moderators.

Heck, even with something such as "profanity", what exactly IS that? Do I make up a list of words that are a no-no? Any word that is not on that list is OK for members to use and those on the list automatically get them a fine and suspension? Well what happens is someone posts profanity in Portuguese or something along those lines? Those words weren't on the list were they? Or suppose they just spell those words differently or phonetically? The robot mods must not classify them as profanity because they are not on the list? Should I have to expand that list of profane words to include phrases that mean the same thing? Is calling someone a "horse's ass" worst then them being called "the southernmost orifice of a northbound equine"? All such a thing would do is to make members be more creative trying to figure out exactly how close to the line they can get without putting any skin of their toes over the line. And yes, one mod may laugh at your wittiness and abstain from the warning points, whereas another might not find it all that humorous at all. Non-robotic moderators are like that....

I have stated this numerous times, but I guess I should put it in a text file just so I can cut and paste it on demand when this sort of thing comes up over and over again. I have often stated that rules are enforced here much as a traffic cop will do. Spot checks. The radar gun may not see all of the speeding cars, but if it catches YOU, then that is just your bad luck. Just as the cop will not be concerned that you may point out 3 other motorists speeding by, I am not concerned that someone else may have posted in the same manner but just did not get caught by the "radar gun" of one of my moderators. Simply look at YOUR post. Was it a violation or not? If it was, you just got caught. Next time you might not and it will be someone else. The arm gets tired of holding up that radar gun all day long.

To make another analogy, the IRS cannot possibly audit every tax return filed within the USA. They spot check. You, knowing this, try to fill out your tax form as accurately as possible, or at the very least, in such a way that your lies are believable. If you are audited, and found in violation, then you just lost the toss of the dice. The IRS knows that certainly other people are cheating on their taxes as well, but it is YOU that got caught, and what other people are doing does not excuse what you did. To carry this further, once you get caught, you might just find yourself getting closer scrutiny from the IRS because of the history YOU created of cheating on your taxes. Yes, it may certainly seem that they are being biased against you, but perhaps you have given them reason to look at you closer and harder. YOU gave them reason to suspect that you may do the same thing again in the future, and it is reasonable and prudent for them to anticipate it.

I can't see any reason why applying the same methodology here is unreasonable. If you post ALL of your messages as if that one is the one that a moderator who maybe has caught you in violation in the past will be looking at closely, then what do you THINK you should do? If you post it in a manner that could even possibly be construed as being in violation of the rules, who exactly is at fault here? You have the entirety of the English language at your disposal when you post here. It is your choice of the words you use and how you put them together that results in how you will be interpreted.

Quite frankly, I have gotten complaints before about one mod or another being unfair about assessing warning points to one or more members. When this is brought to my attention, I simply LOOK at the post in question and rate it from my own perspective as to whether or not the warning points may have been justified. Although there may have been a few times when I would have done it differently, the percentage of times that has happened has been so negligible that it is my opinion that there is more of a problem with the person complaining about such action then any wrong doing by any of the mods. Trust me on this: If a mod gets too big for his britches and exceeds his authority by engaging in a personal vendetta against anyone, he will be gone. Abruptly and finally.

On the other hand, no mod is asked to give up their personalities, their opinions, nor their likes and dislikes. They are free to post and act as individuals whenever they please. It is only when acting as a moderator that they must not take advantage of the moderator powers to act upon another member with those powers.

They have all been asked, and expected, to keep the best interests of this site uppermost in their minds no matter what they do here. That is their job. That is their goal. And to be perfectly honest, I think all three of them, Ken Harbart, Jay Owens, and Dennis Thomas, are doing a hell of a job here.

Now will I turn a blind eye to any wrong doings? No, certainly not. This is, after all, my site, and their actions can dramatically affect everyone's participation here, which is exactly contrary to my goals. But I will level with you. If there is any benefit of the doubt, I will give that to my mods. I think that is only fair, since what they are doing is often tough enough as it is, and in many many instances, their actions are the results of a judgment call based on their own perceptions and interpretations. Sometimes I may disagree, and only perhaps because I am in a different mood then they are, but unless I see something that is simply BLATANTLY WRONG (in my opinion), I will not interfere.

Anyway, this went on far longer then I had intended it, but I hope this addressed the issue about "consistency" enough to satisfy at least some people.

If you took packerfan, IP, cornman1979, Jicin, hornedfrogguy, and several others like them, gave them all tons of rep points, a couple of them spell checkers, and let them post whatever they wanted on cs.com, it would be just like Fauna.

OTOH, if you ran Fauna the way you did cs.com, Wilomn, JimO, Critical Bill, Dennis1, and probably quite a few others would be banned within a week.

Whether or not that is a good thing (or if it means you are "going wrong with this site") is a matter of opinion, and is for you to decide.

As far as rules go, I understand the "consistency" issue and agree fully with your traffic cop analogy. But I don't see how someone who has 150 "warnings" is expected to get the message with the 151st warning. This isn't a matter of inconsistency in enforcing the rules, though. Seeing people with that many warnings just tells me that the "rules" have no teeth, are constantly broken, and nobody cares. How many speeding tickets do you need to get before you lose your license? I'd bet it's fewer than 150.

Also, I don't think the reputation system is having the effect you were hoping it would. I'm sure it would be impractical, and why would you want to spend good driving time with it, but if you were to do an audit of the rep system, looking at whom has given/received green and red dots to whom and for what posts, it would probably be very educational, to say the least.

Since that is impractical, I'd think the next best way to handle such a system--if you want to have one--is to implement it like the trader ratings and warning systems, where all points given/received are displayed along with the comments and URL to the relevant post. Allowing all users to view this information would create its own auditing system. It would probably eliminate a lot of "usage that is not in line with what you had intended," and users would be able to decide for themselves whether someone's "reputation" was earned or not.

Rich, you asked and I answered.

What you did NOT ask was what I personally wanted. I have also not answered, in completeness, that question that you did not ask.

This is not about me. Of course it relates to me as one of your mods and I have a bit of a thing going at the moment but that is hardly my point in making my statements to you.

You do need more consistency here. It's that plain and simple. I have never asked that a point I've gotten, whether or not I agreed with its getting, to be removed.

serp, I don't know what you have against me but perhaps you should let me know instead of sniping from the sidelines as you have more than once.

Most of my points are well deserved and some of them were not deserved at all. I have NEVER secretly given bad or good rep points and I almost always have a comment to go with them and have not a concern in the world if my entire record is printed. I think you think I am other than I am. But I, in all honesty, do not care what you think, so educate yourself about me or not as you see fit, but know that I think you are wrong.

Your analogies were apt Rich. Let's look at it this way whilst we're on the subject.

Who better to know the flaws of a system, be it taxes or speeding, than one who frequently, shall we be polite and say "pushes the limits" of such systems? I know the question is coming from a quadrant not frequented often but it is a good question.

Rich, think about what you know about the kind of person I am, not the kind of games I play. And make no mistake, as serious as this gets sometimes, it's just a game. As I mentioned once before, it's a matter of mere weeks until no one remembers who you were, I know this and you know this. When was the last time Darren Chappell's name was mentioned?

This is NOT about me.

It's about consistency. If a mod gives anyone points for an infraction and then that mod is seen reading and not giving points to someone else for the same infraction, that is not consistent.

It's NOT about reading every post. But it IS about being consistent on the ones that are read. That is absent at present. If it arrives I suspect it will be a good thing.

So Wes, if someone else receives the warning points, does it lessen the blow to you? Does it make it more fair? What concern is it of yours whether someone else gets the speeding ticket, er warning points? The only question that is really valid and the only one I need to answer concerning YOUR warning points is, were they warranted? If you avoid acting in a manner that causes ANY moderator or myself here to give you warning points, then you have no worries at all about consistency. That is the goal, or should be. To try to prevent people from acting in mannerisms that I feel are not in the best interests of this site and the members who frequent it. As far as someone else acting in the same manner escaping without points, well his/her time will come. At that time YOU were on the radar. Consistency CAN come one step at a time, one member at a time, when their time is due.

Serp brings up some good points, and clearly shows I have been lax in using the warning point system in the manner in which it SHOULD be used. I'm not sure why that is the case, but obviously I am and that DEFINITELY needs to be fixed, and real soon.

I am in the process of overhauling that system (or actually my programmer is with my specs), and hear me now that there will be a real change here pretty shortly. I don't expect the BOI to ever be a friendly place to visit, but that forum, as well as the others here, are going to be frequented by members who are much less antagonistic. This site will not be overrun by people who seem to believe it is their own private playground where they can bully who they like, when they like. I don't care who you are, how long you have been here, or anything else you may think should matter to me about you. I don't care if you are my biggest advertiser or my best customer. The downright nastiness that I see from some people WILL cease even if I have to fine and suspend 90 percent of the active members on this site in order to accomplish that goal. The moderators are fully with me about this, so don't be at all shocked is a sweep takes place very quickly when everything is in place. This is not going to become an all "peaches and cream" type of website, as disagreements with anyone will still be welcome and expected, and people are pretty much free to speak their mind (within rational limits). The only difference is that people will have to act like adults and speak as professionals and/or rational human beings.

"Stalking" will be a new warning level that will bring an immediate fine and suspension. I don't think I need to define that concept to anyone who has been on this site for any length of time. So will blatant abuse of the reputation system, both in the cases of irrelevant negative posting, and obvious "tit for tat" positive point trading. I do like the idea of public viewing of the reputation comments, so I may have to look into that. I may very well zero out the entire reputation system and start over from ground zero, because obviously it has been abused to the point of ridiculousness. I am seriously considering one additional penalty of the fine and suspension being zeroing out of your reputation points and power. It may also entail loss of your paid subscription membership privileges as well. I want to but some teeth into the penalties to make the changes I see needed here to happen QUICKLY and EFFECTIVELY.

There is a poll on the BOI asking whether people wanted "ruthless" enforcement of the rules. I assume people fully understand what that term means. Because overwhelmingly, people are saying YES to that question, and perhaps are telling me the path I need to take now.

Once the modifications are in place, things are definitely going to change around here.

Rich, I've answered your questions about my points everytime you've asked.

IF you really want to get into my opinions and what you and I have said previously, are you sure this is the proper place and time? Afterall, while I may be something of a pain in the ass at least I'm not always easy to deal with.

Modify away, you surely need to but don't mistake what I say as antagonism or pissing and moaning. I mean neither at this moment and I'm sure that YOU know I know how to express both quite adequately should I choose to do so.

You've got your back hairs up because I've said that I agree with you and I've told you to do what you, probably, deep down know you should have long ago. So it seeems to me anyway.

Don't you ever wonder WHY I push somethings the way I do? Don't you suspect that there may be someone else trying to accomplish things here in a roundabout fashion? Sometimes you have to look under the facia to see what something is really made of.