Frustration!

[wimiadmin]

You know what I find very frustrating?

People sign up for this forum and post questions. Current users/new users do our best to answer these questions and provide detailed information along with any related site links. In other words anyone who answers questions, takes their time to educate others and expect nothing in return.

Here's where the frustration sits in. The original poster NEVER comes back to follow up to see if answers were given or more information is needed from them in order for us to give the best answer possible.

I can only hope that another surfer may stumble upon our forum and need similar answers to questions that these 1 time question droppers have asked.

I appreciate everyone who answers questions here....especially those who take the time to sign up just to answer that one question to ultimately help out a perfect stranger.

[fuzzman54]

I found my answer on here, and it was to someone who didn't check back. I definitely understand your point too. I always get my answers through googling and I've never understood why someone would take the two minutes to register somewhere and ask their questions, but not the ten seconds to check back and see if it was answered.

[heepbigchief]

Originally Posted by wimiadmin

You know what I find very frustrating?

There are several things that cause people to post and run. (most really do look at the responses, they just don't log in so it has the appearance that they never came back)

1. Guilt before innocence, their posts do not show up, they are alleged spammers right off the bat and must be censored. The poster had a need, the post not showing up does not provide for that need so that need that existed in their mind and emotions was not satisfied (no different than the frustration a child has if the only answer they ever get from many adult is "we'll see") so all they feel is that their post is lodged in someones inbox with no notice of when the post may appear, these things are a huge turn off so they go to another forum that doesn't do that to newcomers. Boiled down for what it's worth, right up front they are not made to feel welcome so they move on.

2. They are not techies so they by default don't fit into a place like this so they just make an inquiry and leave it at that. They needed help, not a place to hang out with like kind.

Those are the top 2 reasons why people post and run and I don't blame them because I have done this myself, especially when I was new to computer use back in 2000.

From what I can see there is 1 Administrator and 2 Super Moderators and not a lot of traffic.

I currently have about 5 posts submitted with 3 of them still in limbo so whoever approved the first two missed the other three. How they did that I don't know but there is nothing any more objectionable in the missing 3 than there was in the first 2. This post is going to be added to that making 4 posts in someone's holding pen.

I have run many forums in my day and the #1 reason listed at the top is a forum killer.

In a high traffic forum it's not equitable for forum popularity if posts are detoured for approval. In many cases that I have seen, the site Admin has 3 paid moderators on staff, one each for three shifts a day and the rest of that is self explanatory for their forum success since there is always someone on duty and no one is gagged until they actually make an offense. That's innocence before guilt but it takes effort and resources on part of the host.

Then the flip side of that in a low traffic forum the host is lax and may check for submissions once or twice a day and that drives first timers away. In most cases, by the time a newcomers post is approved, they have already gotten a response/answer on another site or finally found it in a search engine.

Reserved speakers, normal talkers, spammers and blabbermouths all equally hate being gagged and you lose any headway in every quarter by gagging by default.

Like it or not, you are going to get spammed, you know that because a waiting period is not going to turn a spammer into a non spammer who converts to being interested in IP addresses, home networking, servers, packets or DNS and as soon as you hit the all clear button they are going to spam you. Even if they do spam right up front and their post never appears that only tells them to go get a different name and email address and post something seemingly sincere then when they get privileges then shows up all the links to porn and drive by malicious downloads.

It is also savvy to have web addresses in posts to appear as plain text instead of actual hyperlinks or outright hide such links until approved but the rest of the post is visible then if someone gets infected or offended by the site reference it's their own fault because they went out of their way to dig it out of the markup.

A forum host is the owner of the forum making the forum private property which is why there is no freedom of speech on such a forum and I think that malicious posters should be tracked down and prosecuted for vandalism just the same as if they vandalized brick & mortar property.

Given the fact they you're gonna get spammed either way you might as well give the innocent a pass through and at the same time have a mod on duty all the time. It's easy since the mod on duty only has to click the new posts link and delete anything unacceptable. A mod should also have a different interface to include a lock, ban or mute link by a users name instead of going through a lot of rigamarole to turn off a spammer.

Those are the two tricks to forum success, only gagging the bad guys and having a mod on duty at all times.

A little advertisement helps too.

[wimiadmin]

Thanks for the feedback heepbigchief!

1. Guilt before innocence, their posts do not show up, they are alleged spammers right off the bat and must be censored. The poster had a need, the post not showing up does not provide for that need so that need that existed in their mind and emotions was not satisfied (no different than the frustration a child has if the only answer they ever get from many adult is "we'll see") so all they feel is that their post is lodged in someones inbox with no notice of when the post may appear, these things are a huge turn off so they go to another forum that doesn't do that to newcomers. Boiled down for what it's worth, right up front they are not made to feel welcome so they move on.

I agree in a sense, but when a user can come to a forum that is 100% spam free, to me, even if my posts have to be moderated in the beginning, I'm willing to wait. Quality over quantity.

2. They are not techies so they by default don't fit into a place like this so they just make an inquiry and leave it at that. They needed help, not a place to hang out with like kind.

Realistically, this isn't Facebook or MySpace for IP Addresses. We don't care if people hang out or not. We want them to get the information they need so they learn, possibly refer us to friends, and maybe come back to either learn more or contribute later once they've gained enough knowledge to feel comfortable to post in our forum.

From what I can see there is 1 Administrator and 2 Super Moderators and not a lot of traffic.

You are exactly right.

I currently have about 5 posts submitted with 3 of them still in limbo so whoever approved the first two missed the other three. How they did that I don't know but there is nothing any more objectionable in the missing 3 than there was in the first 2. This post is going to be added to that making 4 posts in someone's holding pen.

I'm the only one on the payroll and am very fortunate to have 2 mods I can trust with AboveTheLogic and ClanMills. As we go through the forum we sort of do a triage. If someone is asking for help, we'll reply as soon as we get the notification. You can understand that in most cases, feedback threads are low on the priority so those are answered at our earliest convenience.

In a high traffic forum it's not equitable for forum popularity if posts are detoured for approval. In many cases that I have seen, the site Admin has 3 paid moderators on staff, one each for three shifts a day and the rest of that is self explanatory for their forum success since there is always someone on duty and no one is gagged until they actually make an offense. That's innocence before guilt but it takes effort and resources on part of the host.

Again, exactly right.

Then the flip side of that in a low traffic forum the host is lax and may check for submissions once or twice a day and that drives first timers away. In most cases, by the time a newcomers post is approved, they have already gotten a response/answer on another site or finally found it in a search engine.

WIMI is only a small part of my full time job. Nevertheless, my email is open all day so no matter what I'm doing, if a notification comes in about a new thread/post, I mentally triage it and either answer it right away or postpone it until I get time or one of the mods gets it for me. As a matter of fact, if you read through a lot of the threads, you'll even see users thanking us for such a quick response. In a lot of cases the WIMI forum is almost as good as live tech support.

Reserved speakers, normal talkers, spammers and blabbermouths all equally hate being gagged and you lose any headway in every quarter by gagging by default.

Like it or not, you are going to get spammed, you know that because a waiting period is not going to turn a spammer into a non spammer who converts to being interested in IP addresses, home networking, servers, packets or DNS and as soon as you hit the all clear button they are going to spam you. Even if they do spam right up front and their post never appears that only tells them to go get a different name and email address and post something seemingly sincere then when they get privileges then shows up all the links to porn and drive by malicious downloads.

Our forum has been 100% spam free since putting our prevention methods in place and even though you disagree with our methods, we still get users signing up and awaiting our response to their post(s). They know they're going to get quality answers from us. And if they find their answer somewhere else after posting their question, so be it. We still answer the question(s) in hopes that other users will find our forum and the answers they're looking for.

[quote]
It is also savvy to have web addresses in posts to appear as plain text instead of actual hyperlinks or outright hide such links until approved but the rest of the post is visible then if someone gets infected or offended by the site reference it's their own fault because they went out of their way to dig it out of the markup.
[\quote]

I'm lazy, I'd rather click a link than hunt and peck to find out how to get to a web site we're referring someone to. I think our users prefer it this way as well.

A forum host is the owner of the forum making the forum private property which is why there is no freedom of speech on such a forum and I think that malicious posters should be tracked down and prosecuted for vandalism just the same as if they vandalized brick & mortar property.

Agreed!

Given the fact they you're gonna get spammed either way you might as well give the innocent a pass through and at the same time have a mod on duty all the time. It's easy since the mod on duty only has to click the new posts link and delete anything unacceptable. A mod should also have a different interface to include a lock, ban or mute link by a users name instead of going through a lot of rigamarole to turn off a spammer.

I disagree. If we lose a few users vs. having to spend hours and hours sifting through a forum full of spam, I find that very acceptable. We can't please all the people all of the time and I think the methods we're using is pleasing the vast majority. We know this because our traffic is growing, our user sign ups are growing, etc.

A little advertisement helps too.

The only thing we use right now is Google AdSense. I'm looking at other effective means of advertisers that will allow us to mix our ads with the forum without inundating our users. Again, we're focusing on user experience and quality. I feel that using quality as our core puts us head and shoulders over our competition.

[heepbigchief]

Originally Posted by wimiadmin

Thanks for the feedback heepbigchief!

I'm lazy, I'd rather click a link than hunt and peck to find out how to get to a web site we're referring someone to. I think our users prefer it this way as well.

I was referring to posts made by newcomers in the event that no posts were reviewed before they were seen by the public.

That way if it was spam the link is hidden.

I think vBulletin has a per user setting for hyperlinks to make them into plain text or to hide them or I may be thinking of YaBB.

[wimiadmin]

You make a good point. To be honest, I'm not even sure if vbulletin offers this feature. I haven't looked for it....but can see where it would be useful.