Status check on health of this site.

Originally Posted by hhmoore

Gary, in many cases, if you look back far enough, you will see where attempts at education were made long before those members got "punched in the face". The "punches", while perhaps over the edge at times, are often the equivalent of banging our heads against the wall & smacking the person upside the head. The question frequently coming to mind being Is this person really that stupid, or are they just trolling? Granted, the extreme response doesn't help either situation (DON'T FEED THE TROLLS!!!! vs don't yell at the dumbass), but they are a natural response from people that care to people that refuse to accept & heed the advice they sought.

I agree there are some posts that are trollish and maybe even a troll just starting things up.

And the pnching happens everywhere not just here. It is hard to control. And shoot I bet I have been a person throwing the punches.

Brian the owner of BHB said it best.

This hobby is fun. Brining the fun to everyone will open so many doors. There are so many people that do not even know about this hobby.

Also here is an idea that I have said in the past for the BOI.

You rarely see good guy posts. If I come on here and search for a person that is truly a good guy 75% of the time they will not even come up on search. This is an issue IMO.

Also we see people say that a BOI thread is started on so and so post your bad guy post there. IMO I think every situation a person has bad or good should be posted. Why. If I search say a bad guys name I will get maybe 10 threads instead of one HUGE one I have to read. I see there is 10 bad deals right off the bat. Works the same way with good guy threads. I see they have 0 good guy posts they are pretty good.

But back to the idea I had. Instead of all of us that like to post so many off topic posts use that time to post good guy threads? I know you all have bought from people. Build the database for people to search. When you get the feeling to argue here or post an off the wall post make a good guy thread about a good deal you got.

I would love to see 90% of the BOI used for the good guys. IMO that would be great.

I'm not sure if this was mentioned but maybe there could be an expiration date for all the ads so they don't get bumped up 5 years later. Like it could be 10 months max or the user with the ad could set a date...
Just an idea...

Originally Posted by llort

Now im Confused...haha
hopefully we have brought it to attention to whoever has the power to delete/move those annoying adds

This has been addressed before. Even the old ads on this site are still residing in the search engine databases. And they frequently bring in viewers that possibly will become members. Courting the search engine rankings is an arcane subject and a moving target. But I doubt anyone could argue against the fact that the number of keyword hits is an important factor to consider.

Originally Posted by Dragondad

Well Rich based on what I see, you do need to deal with off topic. I know its a fine line and tough enforce, but so many of the threads are hijacked with the fluff. A funny pic or personal attack has nothing to do with the thread yet that seems to be the means to handle any situation that brain power is lost for. Amazing how some of the most intelligent human beings can be reduced to simple ridicule when confronted with something that is beyond their grasp of reality...or just ridicule as a way of life.

I agree Dragondad, of course the same could be said about wormy hidden slurs. Take your post for instance,

Originally Posted by Seamus Haley

I have a few thoughts about the general decline in traffic.

I believe a forum oriented message board will always maintain some exponential levels of participation when it comes to the membership. There are people who register and never create a post, there are people who register post a few times and dissapear, there are people who log in and participate infrequently and there will be members who are active and engaged and interested in shoving their two cents anywhere they can... and all kinds of nuances in between. For every hyperactive participant, there will be exponentially larger numbers who are less active. It also takes a certain number of active members to maintain the interest of the less active ones- some users will not create threads, but might reply to one- fewer active people means fewer inactive people bothering to log in and open a thread. Without login purges done on a regular basis, this only becomes truer over time. That addresses the issue of total membership versus site use but not the specific issue of a decline in site participation when looked at over the last year.

I'd explain the general decline as being primarily a result of schisms. This is not... and I want to be absolutely clear on this... saying that there is blame on either side. I am blaming the catalyst, not the participants. When debates were ongoing about site changes, people drew up sides and, if a decision didn't go the way they wanted it to, some people left. Some left loudly while in the middle of a heated argument, some just quietly wandered away and- this is an important part- given the level of personal investment I was seeing, *someone* was going to be walking away from the sandbox no matter which conclusion was reached because opinions ranged all over the place. When an active members walks away though, they take their participation with them, anything they would have contributed to various discussions, any comment that might have sparked the interest of a less active member and prompted them to reply themselves. So the loss of a person who checks the forums daily and responds regularly takes with it the interest and potential participation of theoretical additional people.

Unfortunately those debates have come more frequently and a few have seen both sides expressed in practice. I'm going to go back a bit longer than a year and throw out a specific example.

The BOI required a member to be a paid (low dollar amount but there it is) participant for awhile. There was debate, there were discussions, there were pessimistic predictions of doom and optimistics predictions of utopia. A decision was reached, a plan implimented and some people decided they no longer wanted to participate based on that policy change. Some more active users stopped using the site (I did, as an example. No animosity, just didn't like the decision and decided myself I wasn't interested for awhile) and stopped contributing. Time passes, the outcome is analyzed and reversed and there's more debate and more argument and some people decide they don't want to participate any more as a result of *that* direction. Some people who stopped or slowed their participation after the first decision hear about the change and come back, but not all of them. Subtract the returners from the new people who aren't participating and the net result is still a loss. So there's an initial negative impact on participation, then a change is mitigated by those who like the switch up, but still has a negative impact on participation... and figure that the loss of those active people can be applied to a general decline in the interest of others who are less active but are now seeing less content they have an interest in...

And apply it to every change in any policy, no matter how minimal the impact on the site itself should have been, about which there was debate and the cummulative result will be a decline.

I'm not saying that some of the threads that have gone harsher lately haven't had some impact, I just think the decline in the numbers that were given over the period of time they covered probably are showing as they are for the above reason, rather than any threads or posts that happened in the last month. Those posts and any resulting enforcement be it harsh or forgiving, may form their own catalyst for some individuals which will be shown over time to have an impact but can't be said to be solely responsible over the time frame covered.

Hmmm, boiled down to the lowest possible interpretation, it becomes:

Change is bad.

So the best course of action would have been for me to consult a psychic, set this site up as it needed to be from the start, and not change a thing, EVER......

Originally Posted by WebSlave

Hmmm, boiled down to the lowest possible interpretation, it becomes:

Change is bad.

So the best course of action would have been for me to consult a psychic, set this site up as it needed to be from the start, and not change a thing, EVER......

Change is not bad, but when everyone adjusts to the change that that is put into place, then it seems to change again. IMO, it would be nice to make it the way you choose, let everyone adjust and leave it at that. But changing it over and over just seems to cause confusion.
JMHO.

Wow...where to begin.

I'll go "off topic" for a bit first, remembering that the topic is the pay to advertise requirement. This thread has meandered into complaints about "off topic" posting. The question has always been how do you decide what is off topic.

In "Case A" Joe Schmoe posts on the BOI that Joe Blow cheated him out of $300. The story meanders around and it turns out that Joe Schmoe is really the bad guy, not Joe Blow. It sometimes takes a lot of posts and a lot of effort, and sometimes some of these posts seem "off topic" until the truth comes out. Start warning for "off topic" posting and the truth may never be found.

In "Case B" Joe Schmoe posts that Joe Blow owes him $300. Someone else comes along and says "I'm surprised, I've done many good deals with Joe Blow". Or someone comes along to say "Wait a minute, Joe Schmoe is a bad guy and tried to rip me off" or "Joe Blow owes me money". Strictly, the topic is the deal at hand. Any of those posts can be considered "off topic".

Now I'll indulge the people who do not like an occasional Photoshop "enhanced" image. Sometimes humor can lighten a mood in a tense thread. Gee whiz, calm down about it. That's not the worst thing on the BOI. I know, I know, I am as guilty as anyone of doing it, but heck, it's hardly character assassination.


Now to address the questions regarding moderators guiding threads, editing and deleting posts, etc. This is also a difficult situation. In addition to being a WS mod, I am a moderator for this forum. I've been watching this thread since its inception and have read all of it. It started to get a bit out of hand with various parties attacking one another. Then it quieted down a bit yesterday but was in full swing early this morning (my time). At that point I stepped in as a moderator, warned one user, advised him to step away from the keyboard, and issued a blanket warning to everyone to stop the personal attacks. What was that user's response? Let's see...among other things I was called a "POS". That was the final straw and he is now on a three day vacation. Just to be clear, if I quoted some of the things I received in PM's after warnings, I'd receive a bunch of warnings here myself. Some of them make even my skin crawl. So what's the upside for moderators trying to move things along?


Now "on topic": the question of pay to advertise. Advertising is a valuable service and worth the money. If overall posting is down I doubt that it's related to the issue of paid advertising to any great degree. Tweaking it so that someone can buy five ads over one to two months for $5 or something similar may be a good idea, but going back to free advertising would, IMHO, be a step backwards.

I am new here and therefore speaking from essentially an outsiders viewpoint. I also do not have a thorough understanding of all of the previously mentioned changes that have been enacted on this site. With that said, the one thing that stands out to a newcomer on this site is the manner in which personal attacks are allowed, and in some cases appear to be encouraged.

I repeatedly see threads where even higher level members engage in outright name calling and other derogatory behavior. In my opinion, that does this site a dis-service. Obviously, Webslave has put an enormous amount of effort into creating and attempting to improve this forum. For others to degrade his work and the credibility of the site in this manner exhibits a great deal of disrespect.

Bottom line is:

It's Rich's forum and some changes definitely need to be made, whether it's in having members delete their own old ads, (I delete mine after I have sold the animal), enforce stricter posting rules on us Mods as to what we can or can not do *I personally thought that our job was to make sure that the members that were not mods stayed within the decorum of good manners* not join the fray ourselves, except to post other perenient information such as links to other information or to ask for information that may not be in the post.

While Rich may want specific information relating to the pay for ads situation, as I said before, it's not that simple a problem (as the various posts proved). There is no one fix cure all for what ails Fauna.