1 liner posters trying to get 30 posts - an influx

Michael, It's interesting that you assume that we don't like any new posters, simply because we don't like new posters who abuse the forum. splorf!

Dude, here's an announcement I posted on February 4th, 2001, Ironically, exactly 8 years to the day before you made these comments. If you want to verify it, go to this link, at Archive.org.

The exact text of the original post:

Yep. You had to use your real name, AND a working email address. If I found out an address didn't work, you didn't get posts approved until you fixed the problem.

When I say that using a real name changes the way people post, I'm not talking out of my hat. I saw the difference, first hand. It was very significant, and very positive.

As you can see, the problems with affiliates abusing their access isn't anything new. It was old before that post was made. You may not believe it, but we've seen all of this stuff before.

You have to have 30 posts before you can send a PM? Take a look at the row of phrases in [Brackets] there. Those were the functions available. Do you see PMs in there? Or blogs? Or groups? Or even a function for a sig file? You pasted your sig file in manually, if you used one. Most of us didn't bother.

People offering WSOs these days are required to include contact information that's outside the forum's systems, so even new folks can reach them if there are problems. If you find that someone has failed to do this, use the help desk to notify the Powers That Be. Such things are taken quite seriously.

You think it's tough to participate enough to hit the posting mark before you're allowed to make a WSO? (A whopping 30 posts, at the time of this writing.)

The requirement back then was not so easily finagled. You had to get past me. They went right in the main (single) forum, and I only approved them when they offered significant value, and when they came from people I personally considered to have earned the right, by way of their contributions to the group.

One of the big rules back then was, quoted exactly: "Them that gives, gets."

By the way, there was no such thing as a "Made for WSO" product in those days. You had to be actively selling it to the public, and offer Warriors a discount on that price.

Notice the part about posts not being approved if they broke the rules? Yes, that really does mean that Allen or I read every post, and refused a lot of them. You had to get past one of us before your post was even visible to the members.

Say something stupid and get blistered for it? The philosophy at the time was, "Hey, if you can't handle it in a discussion forum, you're just not ready for prime time. Real customers will eat you alive." We had some ferocious battles back then.

May the best idea win.

At the end of the day, we learned about and developed respect for each other. We found out who was really thinking, and who was just running off at the keyboard. New folks who played by the rules got treated with decent manners, certainly, but that was it.

If you wanted respect from the Warriors, you damned well had to earn it.

People who came in and demanded respect, while spewing nonsense as fact when we knew it was wrong or dangerous, got treated the way they deserved: Like idiots. You were saying?

This is neither bragging nor complaining, and it's certainly not saying things were necessarily better back then. They were just different, from a technological perspective. Certainly not as easy as today, but we didn't care. It was just what was possible at the time.

But, as far as your completely inaccurate assumptions about how the old-timers here think, or what things were like back when we joined, I have a recommendation: Get facts before you start making assertions.

Dude, we were all newbies at one point or another. And I remember exactly what it felt like, too. It felt like, "Cool! This is going to take some figuring out, but look at the possibilities!" It still feels like that.

There are a lot of people here who remember this group in 2001. There are some who were already here when I joined, in '97 or '98. Those people are the ones who walked a ton of newbies through the learning stages, and who made the place what it is. They've seen all this stuff before. It goes in cycles, and none of it, absolutely none of it, is new.

There is one huge difference: The number of people. A lot more newbies, so the cycles are shorter. A lot more experienced people, so the potential for learning is higher. A lot more posts, so you have to be more careful of how you mine the information.

A lot more opportunity. A lot more tools and proven information (much of it developed by those same old-timers). And a lot more whining about how hard it is to make anything work.

Those weren't the golden days, in terms of potential. These are. Do you want to take advantage of it, or waste it, talking about how "tough" things are?


Paul