okay, which is it, 95% or “a small percentage”?
either way, i still think setting the rules behind this decision engine (to put a post into the queue or to let it be published immediately) would be far too difficult
i’m glad it’s working for your forum, though 
95% of the “remaining posts” suggests 95% of a small number. You do the maths.
i’m glad it’s working for your forum, though
Thanks. The thing is, I had less to lose. It was a new forum and I could set the bar high and block anyone who didn’t measure up. Sitepoint, OTOH, has thousands of members who may be accustomed to making trivial, low quality posts. They would howl in protest if they were forced to talk sense. It’s less easy for SP to implement severe new rules, they’d probably have to phase them in. That takes even more mod manpower.
The main reason I’ve been gone is that I’ve been busy. (lolirony)
And really, I haven’t needed help the way I did when I was starting out. If my memory is working, the kinds of stuff I’ve come for help for the last year or two is more difficult. So less people are knowledgeable enough to offer suggestions.
I did start getting turned off about the forums being a bit cliquey, but only a little. That happens everywhere people hang out, communities that don’t do that are very, very rare.
I used to love coming here. I’ll try to remember to stop in more often and see how things are now.
and i already told you that the amount of actual spam we get is ridiculously small
so 95% of a huge number of posts is still a huge number… ~you~ do the maths
If 95% of a huge number of posts are possible spam/fluff, Sitepoint has bigger problems than I envisaged and they might as well give up the struggle.
Based on numbers I’m seeing myself, and adjusting for Sitepoint’s membership base of 368,658, SP should get about 300-400 posts in moderation everyday (if they implemented the strict rules discussed earlier). If half that membership are actually worthless posters who should be culled, revise that estimate to 150-200 posts in moderation everyday.
What’s your estimate?
Hmm… Learning the basics is hardly unintelligent. It usually means that the newbie’s current learning material isn’t explaining things in a way they understand. So the standard response should be to point them to a good article on the subject and tell them to ask questions on anything they don’t get from the article. I know one of the problems I have had learning new stuff is that many articles/books are unclear. Thus, I would love it if someone pointed me to a good article.
Also, not everyone has the time to do a thorough search before asking a question. So, don’t get mad at people who ask a question you are able to find the answer for with a quick search. They may not have had the time, or just didn’t know the best search terms.
Um, sorry, went off on a tangent… I just didn’t like newbie’s questions being called unintelligent. I do think that having a separate forum for more advanced discussions would be a good idea.
As for the fluff posts and moderation stuff, fluff posts are ignorable. Just don’t pay them any attention and don’t let them bother you. For moderation, maybe have a sticky post that explains how users can use the red triangle. And if possible, get more moderators.
I also liked the idea of a separate Q/A system.
I’ve been an SP member for umm …well since '02 (or was it '04??) anyway, I’ve been on less and less simply becuase of the types of projects I’m working on are no longer purely script based (PHP, Python whatever). They seem to be more configuration and plugging-that-cms-into-that-gallery based, if that makes sense?
I would guess that a lot of developers these days are writing less code and spending more time figuring our how to get disparate web-based systems talking to each other.
Even when I am writing code, I might be using an API like Twitter’s for example, which is already very well documented and has its own community.
As a result I use the forums of the CMS vendor/API vendor as that’s my daily bread and butter. I s’pose I might suggest the inclusion of sub-forums based on Joomla, Wordpress, eZ Publish, PLone etc - but like I said before, these guys already have their own forums.
Good luck to SP - I’ll still be around to answer the odd-question if I’m around!
I actually joined sitepoint in early 2003 but changed my nick in 2005. This site was a invaluable part of exploring and learning html, php, mysql and so on. I loved that members took the time to explain code and break it down so I could really grasp it. I too like others slowly began sending less and less time here as my work load increased.
I also agree with mostly everything that has been posted. The fluff posts or one word responses. I was hesitant to post because I didn’t feel like I could add anything to the discussion, but I will say this. Even tho I do spend less and less time I have always held sitepoint to a high standard and have spoken highly of this site to many colleagues.
I will try and get involved again. I hope others will too.
phptek has a good suggestion. I would love to see a Drupal forum here. The forums are Drupal.org are not very good. I’ve posted several questions there, and I either don’t get an answer, or get something like “use this module” without an explanation on how that module would help.
I would love to see a Drupal forum here. The forums are Drupal.org are not very good. I’ve posted several questions there, and I either don’t get an answer, or get something like “use this module” without an explanation on how that module would help.
Well, we have that here too (bad answers) and I have seen many many good answers over at Drupal as well (just as we have here). That isn’t to say it would be a bad idea to have CMS/framework sections, though.
Other posters have suggested we have too many subforums and that SitePoint is too fragmented. How do these two ideas go together?
I agree with your rule regarding the engaging in conversation and actually saying something useful that will benefit everyone, or at least one person. Maybe give some alternative options with some advice, recommendations. Perhaps it would be beneficial to the SP Forums if this was implemented on a slightly loose (not so strict as it reads) scale.
Absolutely. I think HAWK is the iron fist we need now though. HAWK - Lay the law down on these people who can’t even string together a small paragraph of text.
If I buy your book will you be a moderator again please? -coughs- I mean, I was going to buy it, when I had finished learning basic PHP & MySQL and needed to get a full grasp of SQL on it’s own. But I would buy the book much sooner if it meant you’d be a moderator again here 
There are a lot of posts that I’ve been annoyed by but I have the feeling that moderators wouldn’t delete them because they were in some way beneficial to the poster. I’m talking about posts in the Website Reviews Forum. Most of the actual reviews given are terrible. I’ll come back to the Website Reviews Forum later in my post though.
That would be very nice. It would certainly make the user experience in the forums a much better one. Seeing as there wouldn’t be any dribble posts.
I concur 100%. There will often be a new member who will post exactly the same thing or 5 words in 5 different threads within 4 minutes and they just need their account deleting and IP address blocked. It shouldn’t be about the amount of registered members the SP Forums have - It should be about the quality of the threads and posts by whatever amount of members there are here.
I think SitePoint could go somewhere with this actually. This is a great suggestion I think. SitePoint could have a separate section on the main Website which was like a little “Web School” or something. The current mentors, advisors and other staff could be the mentors - Literally. Or having a small Mentoring programme within the Forums whereby anyone who is a Mentor or higher can be paid a small commission from a premium / learner membership fee. I think it would certainly help motivate them too.
What is it that I want from you SitePoint? Well I’d like much stricter moderation in the Website Reviews Forum. I want people posting reviews that consist of at least more than 3 - 4 sentences or 1 paragraph of text. If they can’t meet that then it simply isn’t a review. It’s hardly a review at 1 paragraph either really. I’d like something to be done about the Website Reviews Forum to be honest and that’s about it.
I know you’re all working your socks off though to improve the SP Forum community though and I appreciate all the work everyone’s done to make it a great community - Without it I wouldn’t be knowledgable as I am, even with the brilliant SitePoint books hehe. I know that the SP Forums are going to have some great changes brought about though and I think this summer is going to be a great time to be an active member on the SP Forums.
Andrew Cooper
As others have said, I don’t post much as I don’t get many, or any, replies to questions. I’ve been working on sites for a few years, but only recently had call or reason to look beyond HTML and CSS. I want to learn more, but not getting assistance is aggravating.
New changes sound good, hopefully they will work as planned.
At least one person I know of at my work is registered at SitePoint… who knows how many others. IP ban? Great, I do ask many of my questions here while I’m at work, and I have the same IP.
At least one other person at home is registered at SitePoint. Same thing. I realise banned people could make new accounts, but that’s something I’m willing to live with if it keeps me from getting hit by shrapnel.
The lack of moderators is not my problem as a forum poster. I may report posts but it’s arrogant to assume you can impose that job on me or guilt me into doing it out of “community spirit”.
My personal reaction to that is (besides that I want a p0ny), this is a community forum, quite different from pure Q&A of Stack Overflow. If nobody wants to hit the red triangle, then they want a different place (like WW, which I do not visit partially because their draconian rules about urls prevents me from easily helping others with web site problems). Or we could just get psychic moderators, but I dunno where to buy those. It’s not my problem what the neighbours do, and the police should be stopping them of their own accord, but then again, how are they supposed to know what all of us living the building know? Psychic police!
However if I flag a bunch of crap and it’s still sitting there a day or two later, I’m less inspired to bother. So I call the cops when I hear them beating the kids but if the cops don’t bother to show up I’m going to stop calling, and maybe move away so I don’t have to hear it through the walls anymore.
I know I should use the forum more often and it is usually a great resource. The trouble is: as a web designer and developer there are just so many forums etc to keep an eye on (including the ones specifically for the site software I use) that I often end up just looking at one then getting back to the job in hand. How do you all fit in reading forums as well as trying to make a buck?
Yea, scrap that IP ban idea, I didn’t think that one through 
. I’ve just had my college lift a filter on SitePoint.com so I can recommend it to others and use it in college as well - I just realized there are some pretty silly people in my class. If they got IP banned I’d get hit by that same shrapnel too. 
Andrew Cooper
Been very busy.
Loved the forum as a noob, but then the forum educated me and as time went on, the same questions being repeated by every noob just got boring. There were no intelligent conversations for people that were a bit more experienced or if there were they just got drowned out by noob questions.
“and I’m hoping I haven’t bitten off more than I can chew!”
Wading through the posts,it looks like you have a lot to chew on.
I thank you for the email too. I’m not a frequent denizen, but when I need help that can’t be found elsewhere, like the mentioned Google search, I usually turn here and I’m usually satisfied with the help I receive. When I’m on I also try to spend a little time looking for something I can help with.
I like the idea of being able to vote how useful a response is, which has already shared by several.
Something to improve on this might be a running survey for the original question poster on how satisfied they are with the solutions provided, e.g.
Something like that anyhow, and keep sending me emails when responses are posted until I mark “No longer seeking a solution” or “Problem solved”
Let this run parallel with the everyone gets to vote idea on how useful a response and/or question is. If the original poster fails to respond ever, you might also want something where staff can mark, “apparently no longer followed by poster”.
Sitepoint is a place I like and I share with people who show an interest in coding.
Anyhow, I do think you have your hands full. Best of luck!
Thanks for sitepoint…
The feedback here is brilliant and I appreciate you all taking the time to write.
I need some time to digest it properly before addressing the issues, but I am reading it - so keep it coming.
Back again. Over the years I needed less help. I just looked inside and found an answer to my problems. There was a lot of stuff posted. Keep going on and I will be very lucky and I can imagine so will a lot of people. You are doing a good job!!
[LEFT]Hello All,
Just to explain right from the beginning, I’m one of those evil people from the other side of the business called a [insert pause and scary music] a project manager. There I’ve done it, and now we can forget it and move on.
I came to Site point a while ago because at the time I was working on a project that was very server side and web design heavy. I had a small team of specialist working for me and as you can imagine if I was going to have any chance communicating clearly with them I had to at least have a general working knowledge of what the hell they were going on about half the time.
Sitepoint filled that gap I would read through posts, bought and read a few SP books. So all in all the forums and the people in it were useful and helpful.
I don’t visit often now because the forums really aren’t designed for people like me and frankly neither should they be.
I still visit from time to time because I still run allot of projects that are web design or developement heavy and I like to keep up to speed.
That being said I most likely never will be a contributor so I can’t honestly say that my point of view should really count.
SP is meant to be for specialists and as I read though many of the post here it seem that most of you are voicing the same opinion.
The purpose for SP (from what most of you have said) is to be able to give and receive objective knowledgeable feedback on ideas and/or problems, share the odd joke and a place to store and find those little cheats, tricks and tips.
What SP shouldn’t be (again from what you’ve been saying) is a bill board for non-constructive contributors to advertise their wares, a place for elitism and were rudness towards the inexperienced is the normal code of conduct.
If you really want to rebuild SP then it’s best to start from scratch with your big picture objectives.
This is your chance to influence the future direction of a valuable online resource that could both enlighten and from time to time entertain you.
I look forward to see what you guys come up with[/LEFT]