I like this forum, but lately I have seen a lot of thread's started just for the sake of getting a link without adding any real value to the community. Examples being questions like "how do I get my site better search engine placement" with a link to an SEO company. Is it only me who finds this is spoiling the forum.

Originally Posted by webmojo

I like this forum, but lately I have seen a lot of thread's started just for the sake of getting a link without adding any real value to the community. Examples being questions like "how do I get my site better search engine placement" with a link to an SEO company. Is it only me who finds this is spoiling the forum.

Hi Webmojo

thanks for your post, and certainly thanks for voicing your concerns.

Here is my quandry - its my intention to build this forum into the biggest and best specialist search marketing community on the internet. Now as you know I only really started pushing this site about 3 months ago, and its got a huge way to go in terms of membership, amount of threads, daily activity and so on.

I took the rather drastic decision yesterday to remove the nofollows from all posts and sig links as an experiment. Im not actually against people getting linkjuice from the site, Im a firm beleiver in sharing the linkjuice out wherever possible.

Its also no coincidence that the 24 hours after doing this, there have been more members online and more posts than ever before.

Basically I see it like this: if we can keep the quality of the board up, and keep the nofollows off, then Im happy. If however after a couple of weeks the board is just swamped with opportunistic link builders, then I will switch the nofollow's back on, and all their effort will have been in vain.

Im hoping that the quality will prevail, and I also think we should look at punishing users that basically spam with "me too" type comments. Im looking at selective ways of making links dofollow or nofollow, inclyuding based on a users reputation, total posts (not a great solution that one though) or total length of post (a nice idea, but also a bit easy to work around).

So, to sum up, thanks for voicing your concerns, I do genuinly agree with your worries, and if the situation goes south I will make changes for the good of the board, but for now, lets try and attract lots of new members!

thanks and best regards

Well i do agree to MOGmartin. The site is fairly new and should be given time to be build i can understand the drastic measures you have taken of removing nofollow to bribe users to give active participation in the forum. But do keep a watch on useless post and give them a strict warning that they will be banned if they dont stop acting like kids.

You need to decide if a post is relevent to the discussion and providing information or a true call for advice from what I see many of the post are purly added by offshore link building companies . Maybe we need some more volunteer moderators with guidelines as to what is acceptable in the forum and what is not.

This forum has the potential to be a good resource for the professional SEO, It's a shame that you have to wade through the crap posts

Originally Posted by webmojo

You need to decide if a post is relevent to the discussion and providing information or a true call for advice from what I see many of the post are purly added by offshore link building companies . Maybe we need some more volunteer moderators with guidelines as to what is acceptable in the forum and what is not.

This forum has the potential to be a good resource for the professional SEO, It's a shame that you have to wade through the crap posts

totally with you mate - my last major forum (30,000+ posts per month) was a focussed poker forum, and trust me, the spam levels on that were pretty major. I had a group of 8 really dedicted MODs keeping the board clean, and it was really a full on task.

Ive actually banned about 6 people in the last 48 hours, and deleted about 50 posts between them, I will continue to ban anyone caught blatantly spamming, and certainly when/if it gets to the stage that I need MODs I will absolutely ask for them. That however is the other problem with such a new forum, there literally aren't any "senior" members to choose from, so where to get them from becomes a bit of an issue!

So - what I think I will do over the next week or so is make the ability to flag spam really obvious, and mass mail everyone asking them to police each other, and I will go through the flagged posts daily.

Moving forward we will 100% need MODs, but not quite yet, maybe in another two months or so, when we do need some I will either invite people privately that have shown themselves to be decent members, or put it out to a public request... depending on how it goes...

cheers,

@ Admin - Iwould suggest - membership age, total number of posts and other parameters all taken together to allow do-follow links.
Usually, a spammer does not have 15 days - 30 -posts sort of patience. Only a handful will go for it.
If so, then only serious users will come and discuss.
I agree that - you don't have much choice a tthe initial stage - as some kind of BUZZ needed to be created. It isalso true that SEOis avery specialized field - kind of exclusive.
So - one cannot expect it to attract thousands of regular users and posters. If one looks for hundreds of posters per day on this kind of specific niche forums - then the quality is surely going to the wire.

@jhnrang - all good points, but there is scope within the world of SEO to have hundreds of good posts per day, look at the amount of blog comments over on mozrank.html">seoMoz, or even the traffic that DP gets (albeit most of it's shit these days, unfortionately).

Your thoughts as to how to grade posters to deem them worthy of a nofollow status is right on the money. Ive just got to code that functionality - and that will take me some time, and Ive still got other things to sort out first (like the blog area, which is still a bit shit, and I only finished sorting out the SEO tools area yesterday afternoon).

anyway, thanks for your continued support here on the forums! its really, really appreciated!

Seems kind of like being a Mommy, huh? How does one turn the lights out and walk away when the kids like to play in the dark? Rules, they suck when it comes to abiding and doling out but rules keep the world turning in such a messy web.
@jhnrang, I am in full agreement. Support, integrity, appreciation.. it all matters within any collective.

my regards,
ma

Originally Posted by maryzenx

Seems kind of like being a Mommy, huh? How does one turn the lights out and walk away when the kids like to play in the dark? Rules, they suck when it comes to abiding and doling out but rules keep the world turning in such a messy web.
@jhnrang, I am in full agreement. Support, integrity, appreciation.. it all matters within any collective.

my regards,
ma

a fairly deep interpreation still, welcome to the forums, great having you here!

thank you for the welcome.