Regarding new offers and post counts.

[MannDude]

Have you thought about requiring a certain number of new threads in certain sections (i.e articles) or something like that?


I understand its a fine balance, but honestly we don't need another WHT where everyone only posts for offers.

Well, only Verified Providers can post offers in the offers forum. That is something WHT and no other forum does. The requirements are somewhat lax, but it does require that hosts posting there are operating under some form of legal and traceable entity and have things like public WhoIs.

The non-verified offer forum is more or less useless. Guests who are not logged in can not see the forum and I don't believe it's indexed by Google either. About 60% of all offers posted there never see the light of day because they're useless spam.

 

[KuJoe]

What about a pay-to-post type of subscription? I'm not saying a huge amount but any amount will deter the drive-by-spammers making $0.10/ad or whatever the going rate is these days.

How about something like $2/month with the current restrictions still in place? Extremely affordable even for start-ups and just based on the first page of the Verified Offers section (assuming $1.50 per host after fees) that's an extra $24/month just off of those 16 hosts and when money is involved (even $2) people will be damn sure the follow the rules when their wallet is involved (as long as threads that don't follow the rules don't see the light of day).

Basically, in addition to the current requirements for being a Verified Provider there would be a monthly fee to have access to advertise. I mean some hosts are already paying for ad space so you know they'd pay an extra $2/month to post an ad on the forums.

$2/month is just an example. I'm sure hosts would be willing to pay more if it meant keeping the crap/spam off the forums.

More quality content = more quality traffic = higher quality clients.

 

[rds100]

I wouldn't mind having to pay to post offers, but then we would need to receive invoice for the payments made, and vpsboard would probably need to incorporate for this.

We (as a company) can't just send money to some random guy's paypal address, our accountant would want to kill me if i were to send money somewhere without getting an invoice for the payment.

 

[KuJoe]

I wouldn't mind having to pay to post offers, but then we would need to receive invoice for the payments made, and vpsboard would probably need to incorporate for this.

We (as a company) can't just send money to some random guy's paypal address, our accountant would want to kill me if i were to send money somewhere without getting an invoice for the payment.

Not sure if they are still using it but they were using BoxBilling for their invoicing before for the paid ads, could just as easily use it for invoicing for forum permissions.

 

[drmike]

I wouldn't mind having to pay to post offers, but then we would need to receive invoice for the payments made, and vpsboard would probably need to incorporate for this.

We (as a company) can't just send money to some random guy's paypal address, our accountant would want to kill me if i were to send money somewhere without getting an invoice for the payment.

Mann most certainly can do billing for that....  That shouldn't be a problem.

The non-verified offer forum is more or less useless. Guests who are not logged in can not see the forum and I don't believe it's indexed by Google either. About 60% of all offers posted there never see the light of day because they're useless spam.

This is correct.  Unverified offers are just visible to us logged in folks.

What's going on here with all the ad spamming is someone has software(s) for forum spamming.  In researching stuff recently for clients I bumped into the very same folks all over random sites spamming offers.   I need to map the times and order of the common suspects to see how rapid/close the posting is.  If for instance it appears they hit 30 sites in say  < 1 hour - something that would be nearly impossible as a manual human posting process.

 

[DomainBop]

What about a pay-to-post type of subscription? I'm not saying a huge amount but any amount will deter the drive-by-spammers making $0.10/ad or whatever the going rate is these days.

How about something like $2/month with the current restrictions still in place? Extremely affordable even for start-ups and just based on the first page of the Verified Offers section (assuming $1.50 per host after fees) that's an extra $24/month just off of those 16 hosts and when money is involved (even $2) people will be damn sure the follow the rules when their wallet is involved (as long as threads that don't follow the rules don't see the light of day).

What about a limit of one free ad every two weeks per company and making them pay for posting additional ads to cut down on providers who fill up the new posts page by posting ads in multiple offer categories (VPS, dedicated, colo, etc) .  There are a few companies whose only contribution to the forum is to stop by every two weeks and fill up the new posts column by posting several ads for each of their different product lines (example from earlier this week: a Los Angeles/Dallas providier posting  a VPS ad, a dedicated ad, a colo ad, and a DDoS protection ad during his bi-weekly 2 minute visit to the forum.).

 

[splitice]

Personally I don't think buying ads is the right approach. Having money does not necessarily indicate quality.

I would rather see advertising be a reward for those who contribute to the quality and content of the community.

Maybe "is an active and contributing member" should be a requirement for getting verified?

 

[KuJoe]

Personally I don't think buying ads is the right approach. Having money does not necessarily indicate quality.


I would rather see advertising be a reward for those who contribute to the quality and content of the community.


Maybe "is an active and contributing member" should be a requirement for getting verified?

They tried that and removed that requirement, hence what this thread is about. Since that rule didn't work and only promoted shitty posts, we are looking for other ways to weed out the kids/spammers.

 

[splitice]

My definition of "is an active and contributing member" would be based off an individual assessment, not any post counts. A rule of thumb could however be applied for guidelines.

Either that or ${X} *quality* posts / threads. Then just rejecting those who do spam. Guidelines for quality could just be set with examples, and the bar need not be that high.

 

[joepie91]

Personally I don't think buying ads is the right approach. Having money does not necessarily indicate quality.


I would rather see advertising be a reward for those who contribute to the quality and content of the community.


Maybe "is an active and contributing member" should be a requirement for getting verified?

I have to agree with this. I can't see money improving things here - if anything, it's going to cause a shitstorm if/when users (or worse, forum staff) comment critically on an offer thread, with hosts complaining that "users shouldn't be allowed to trash my thread, I've paid for it".

Monetary compensation doesn't just make people more careful - it also makes them more demanding. I don't think this is what we want.

 

[HenriqueSousa - WebUp 24/7]

I have to agree with this. I can't see money improving things here - if anything, it's going to cause a shitstorm if/when users (or worse, forum staff) comment critically on an offer thread, with hosts complaining that "users shouldn't be allowed to trash my thread, I've paid for it".

Monetary compensation doesn't just make people more careful - it also makes them more demanding. I don't think this is what we want.

To solve those complains of the hosts, they just need to make a ToS for this type of offers.

Mann could always invoke the ToS, if an host starts harassing the community.

- Henrique

 

[MannDude]

Nah, not going to charge for new offers to be posted.

 

[drmike]

Nah, not going to charge for new offers to be posted.

Good, just charge a fee for companies wanting to be listed on offers.  $5 for someones time to vet them.

Benefit of heavily policing the offers is that it gets rid of noise for sake of noise by automated posters who flood site offers areas (which has been done quite successfully on vpsB).  It's a matter of curated offers and better quality of companies represented <-- those are the goals and proper outcomes.