State of the union - 12/22/05

This is a copy of an email that I sent out today to all registered members:

December 22, 2005

This email is being sent out to all registered FaunaClassifieds.com members who have opted-in to receive admin emails. If you desire to NOT receive such emails in the future, you will need to visit the site and change this option within your User Control Panel (User CP) settings.

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It's been a while since my last email, and with the end of 2005 quickly approaching I felt this was an opportune time to give a "state of the union" message and to let you know about the last happenings on FaunaClassifieds.com. So sit back and make yourself comfortable, please. I think I have a lot of ground to cover here........

The anniversary date of the paid membership subscription plans will be arriving on February 20th, 2006, at which time I will be assessing whether that particular plan has been a success or a failure, or maybe somewhere in the middle. I guess the telling tale will be how many of the current subscribers will re-subscribe when their current tenure expires. That will probably be a good indication of how many people have been satisfied with the changes made and the direction the site is heading in. At this point there are 844 paid membership subscribers, which I guess is more then I expected, but less then what would have been considered an overwhelming approval (considering that there are over 25,000 registered members) of what the general membership thinks the site is worth to them. Par for the course, I guess.............. Still, the money brought in goes a LONG way towards paying the bills incurred and keeps me from having to dip into my main business in order to keep FaunaClassifieds afloat and thriving. For that I am most definitely thankful of those people who have chosen to help out.

As expected, the paid subscriptions plan weeded out a lot of the junk that had infested the postings on the BOI. Quite simply, once a toll booth was put in place on being able to post on the BOI, then the majority of the garbage just ceased. Not so obvious is that some people could not see this as being necessary, and as such, decided that they would not participate at all, regardless of the minimal fee imposed to do so. I regret they took that position, and while some were expected, other people who did take that position came as a surprise and disappointment to me. But regardless, I had to do what I felt was necessary and prudent. The jury is still out on whether my hunch is right or wrong, and regardless of my feelings on the matter, I have no illusions about getting 100 percent agreement from everyone.

More recently, there was a poll floating around on the BOI where I had asked about how people wanted me to enforce the rules. Basically an "all or nothing" sort of thing, because "middle of the road" did not appear to be acceptable to most people. The reponse was overwhelmingly (based on the few people who did bother to vote) in favor of "ruthless" enforcement of the rules. Along this same line, I recently set up an "Insider's Forum" which is accessible only by paid subscription members, which I felt would be a core group of people I could utilize as a sort of guidance committee for helping me with decisions on how to run the site in general. My reasoning on this was that those people who are helping to pay the bills to keep the site running would be the ones most likely to have it's best interests at heart. One thread I started in that forum was entitled "Where am I going wrong with this site?", which pretty much is self explanatory about my feelings about things in general at that time (October 10, 2005). This was in reference to the puzzling statistic that even with over 24,000 registered members, there were never any instances I have noted where more then 1,200 of them were to visit on any given day. So it appeared the site was getting a LOT of people who would register, yet not find enough reason to come back again in order to participate. So in a nutshell, I felt (and still do) that there is something fundamentally wrong in the way I am running FaunaClassifieds. That thread pointed out a few things that some people felt were significant. One being consistent enforcement of the rules, and another being that certainly people engaged in antagonistic and destructive behavior need to be dealt with more harshly then I have in the past. So I took this to heart, at least somewhat.

"Consistent" enforcement of the rules is a "perfect world" sort of thing, which I have addressed many times. Quite simply, neither myself nor my moderators are going to take the time to read every post made on the site. Which, quite frankly, means that some things will just escape notice. It has nothing at all to do with consistency (which in the case made seems to imply some sort of preferential treatment of some members over others). It is just a reality as a result of the work load required in order to be "consistent". Without making the site knee deep in moderators, or requiring that the moderators and I put in a full day each day to stand guard on the site, there is really no solution to that problem that I can see.

As for the issue about problem members, that is being addressed. I have instituted more severe penalties for violators, where the most severe infractions incur an immediate suspension and fine. Anyone getting a total of 100 warning points will be (and one person has been already) permanently banned from the site. The goal of this crack down is to eliminate as much of the downright nastiness and antagonism that some members have been openly engaged in, much to the detriment of the site. I have heard many complaints about this, and in most instances it was via a "goodbye" email as the person was leaving. So obviously this sort of activity was not in the best interests of the site, and as such I determined it will end regardless of how many members I have to remove in order to stop it.

The most important criteria to me, lately, has been the concern that FaunaClassified has my name on it and my reputation is being judged by how I run the site. Lately the garbage that has been taking place on my site has become a black mark on my own personal reputation, and as such, I do not intend to allow that to continue. I believe I have made significant inroads to cleaning up the credibility of the people posting on the Board of Inquiry with the paid memberships, and the next phase is to clean up the crap in general that some members have been inclined to spread all throughout the site with their postings. Those particular members have been put on notice to clean up their acts or vacate the premises, either voluntarily or otherwise. They can permanently exit the site immediately after receiving a fine by deciding to not pay it to come back, or to continue along their merry way until they hit the tripwire for a permanent ban. The results will be the same, as far as I am concerned. No one can claim that they were not warned or did not realize the consequences. If someone has in mind being a destructive presence on my site, then I just don't need them around.

But in any event, the site is being cleaned up. I have encouraged everyone to help in this manner by being vigilant in reporting problem posts so myself and the moderators can learn of problems quickly and deal with them in a timely fashion. Although WE cannot read every post, certainly SOMEONE is reading them and they can be our eyes to help out. If you don't report a post you see that seems to be a problem, then don't blame us for not being there to deal with the problem. NO one will be treated as a "squealer" and all reports will be kept confidential.

I have also taken the time to post site wide Terms of Service rules within the FAQ region of the site to make it easier for everyone to review the rules whenever they want to do so. I am still working on this, with the intention of eventually putting every Frequently Asked Question in the FAQ section to help people find what they need to know in order to get the most value out of their use of FaunaClassifieds. The fact that it may save me from a ton of emails asking such questions will definitely be a benefit as well.

Recently we went over the 25,000 registered member mark and have logged over 30 million hits since the latest incarnation of FaunaClassifieds.com was set up. I am still amazed at these figures. I thought the site would have topped out at around 5,000 members when I first started it. There is an average of 25 NEW member registrations every day, and quite honestly I don't know where they are all coming from! But as mentioned above, something is missing in order to give them all staying power there and become participants and not just drive by visitors.

The Board of Inquiry Good Guy Certification program is doing very well and we now have 130 certifications assigned to interested parties. So it is encouraging to see people willing to state up front that they intend to do GOOD business in this manner and voluntarily put the spot light on themselves, and publicly volunteer to be obligated to do so. To date, only one person has had to be evicted from the program due to a failing on his part for not being diligent about doing "good" business. So hopefully this project has taken one more step in order to help clean up the way we all do business in this industry.

In related news as to new functions and sister sites set up, the following is a brief rundown on those developments.

• FaunaAds.com - I set this advertising site up for a number of reasons, not the least of which was to save my sanity. Banner advertisements are an effective way to help make a site pay it's way, but the method I was doing it in the past was so manually intensive that it was taking up a signicant percentage of my day just taking care of all the details. The script on FaunaAds.com pretty much fully automates this process. Anyone can register there and set up an account. They pay via a PayPal account which automatically adds funds to their account and this account is drawn on for any of the many types of advertisements they may wish to set up. Each account holder can set up their own ads (banner, text, etc), depending on what they feel would be most effective for them. They can change their ads every hour if they so desire to do so in order to see what seems to be most effective. They can also view statistics on all ads and basically manage their account however they wish to do so for what they feel is the best method of advertising for their needs. And I don't have to be in the middle of it. No one has to wait for me to apply funds to the account, or set up their ads for them. If changes are needed, they don't have to forward those changes to me and wait for me to find the time to implement them. This is ALL done on the fly via their own account logon and takes effect immediately. I wish I had found this script a LONG time ago.
  
• BoardOfInquiry.com - I have had this domain name for quite a while now, and in the back of my mind felt that eventually I might want to use it for something other then as a link back to the BOI on FaunaClassifieds.com. Well after hitting a number of rough spots in my dealings outside of the fauna industry, I had finally had enough and felt that perhaps it is time to expand the BOI methodology into other lines of interest. So that is what I have done. BoardOfInquiry.com is set up along the same lines as the BOI on FaunaClassifieds to provide a venue for anyone to use as a clearing house of information concerning business dealings in many forms of businesses. Yeah, I know, this can possibly become a huge headache, but I doubt you will find me saying anywhere that I felt I was the smartest guy in the world.
  
• FaunaLinks.com - This is another script I have had laying around for a while and finally found time to implement it. This is a general link display program that allows people to register and set up various links to thier websites. It allows them to be categorized and displayed in various formats and seems to be quite comprehensive in the tools it provides. Quite honestly, I have simply set it up and started it running, and have not had the time to explore every nook and cranny in the code. So there are things going on there that I have not even touched on yet. But I think it does a really good job for what it was designed to do, and well worth your while to investigate if you are interested in getting your own website listed and exposed to the public.
  
• There were a couple of new buttons added into each post a member makes in the forums that will allow a viewer to go directly to the posters ads posted in the classifieds section, or to their photo gallery page to view their photographs. This makes it much easier for a casual viewer to be able to access those sections from someone they are interested in possibly doing business with.
  
• Please be certain to keep your registered email address current. If you have an email address that lapses and is no longer valid, your account will either be removed from FaunaClassifieds.com or it will be locked and your access denied until you notify me about the changed email address.

I know I am forgetting some things since the last broadcast update, but I guess this will have to do it for now. If you think you are tired of reading this by now, believe me, I am getting worn down right now by typing and editing this thing.

Sorry about being so long winded with this. It's a tradeoff, I guess. I can either send smaller notices more often or larger ones at less frequent intervals. Probably six of one and half dozen of another as to which is the best method.

But in any event, I hope you all have a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year! And thank you for the support you have given me over the years as incentive to keep plugging away at all this stuff.

WebSlave (Rich Z)

I DEFINITELY have to get into the database and clean out defunct member registrations. I have over 3,000 bounce backs so far from dead email addresses!