Articles forum

I'm guessing that one of the mods might know the answer to why that was done. Paul would be a good person to ask on that.

To be honest I never even looked much into that before, but if you're talking about having a section where people post articles, a normal forum setting for it I'm not sure would be the best use of it compared to having a big WF blog where hand picked articles get posted on it (that's not a bad idea) from its users. That'd be a cool way to get some extra rankings, read up on quality posts (where there's not a ton in there since you're hand picking ones from submissions), and something that your newsletter could point to the latest topics on.

- Brian

I don't think that it should be moderated at all. If a person is paying a yearly fee, he or she should be able to post at the maximum 5 per day like it used to be and have their articles LIVE right away.

I think that you should have guide lines and rules so that the writer knows that it has to meet the standards.

Saying that you don't think it should be moderated, yet also saying that there should be guidelines in place that they have to meet, is kind of like saying you want there to be laws in place but no police to enforce them if one is broken.

I can tell you from running an article directory and a press release service myself before that even with very clear and obvious guidelines, people will always try to take the easy way out and break them, submit crap, etc..

- Brian

I have never really paid attention to that section, but your thread created enough curiouslity for me to go and look. I read the three stickies and a couple of articles on the first page. I then went to the back page where it all began. Wow, what a difference.

That section in it's beginning, was of huge value! I see that it is/can be that way again.

This suggestion may or may not help, but here goes.

This forum can be a huge asset to someone who uses it right. Perhaps an alternative to fixing each section, wandering around asking random questions to members and seemingly ignoring their suggestions and leaving us all to wonder why you're not asking your investors what they want (Facebook did the same), how about a new way of creating a membership?

1) Free to join!! You can read, learn, get on the mailing list of your newsletter. You cannot post.
2) "I just want to be able to ask questions" (post and reply in the section(s) about their (new member) niche. In the registering process, a new member must check a box for the section they are most likely going to want to participate in! Charge a low monthly or one time low fee. Have a fee for each section and an "add to cart" type of feature if they are interested in more than one section. (Sig file is bonus or add to cart feature).
3) "I want to strictly advertise WSO's". Posting fee + monthly membership fee and restricted to that section. I (as a member) would consider that a business write off, cost of advertising. Same would go for the other paid sections (excluding War Room). Members are using this forum as an advertising tool. Maybe sig file??
4) The all-in-one membership package. Access to all sections (I don't know about including Kindle and Video here). In this membership APPLICATION, there are questions that need to be filled out. No bots are going to do this. Idiots just might not be able to comprehend the questions, therefore, the good members see the value in investing in this community and have access to the War Room. Sig file allowed.

That particular section had a lot of value! I can see why the valuable posters went away. I use this forum for many reasons, but one of my main reasons for not using any other sections at this time is because of a couple of reasons. One is a lot of great members are no longer here. Why they left, I have no idea, but I'm starting to figure it out. (Hint of the century).

The second reason is the take over of the sub sections. No matter the quality of a post, some members feel the need to debunk it, or post in a way that makes the poster feel like a fool for even bringing up a subject. It's a great tactic for getting your branding done in all the wrong ways. It's also made it even more intimidating to post your opinion/question/reply for fear of the backlash.

I'll go ahead and add a third. Perhaps this forum needs a change. I can see the market value in new and upcoming members versus the value of established members. Having it part of a publicly traded company means you have a lot more people to answer to than "one owner-my rules". Paid moderators :confused: It was mentioned in another thread (I believe Suzanne said it), but taking away the moderators that are here and have established familiarity with the members means you have less of a community and more of a marketing platform. Somehow the marketing community got separated.

Having said all of that (sorry for the rambling), as to the Articles forum, yes, it does need to be a paid section, but pay to post, not to read. Pay per article (five for X amount of dollars), or something like that. It really did have a lot of value! If it's possible for the new owners to focus of creating more value to this forum, then just imaging the growth in the years to come. Even though this forum has grown to the largest IM forum .. ever ... it still always felt like a secret society. Now, the feel is turning into a free for all. No one will learn anything from here! Too much crap, bad information is over riding the good, solid information that your established members take their time to post and help, and so they are leaving. All that will remain is going to be similiar to the spam in my inbox.

I wish the new owners the best! We are all waiting and hoping!

~ Theresa

I don't think you're realizing how much you're realistically asking there... If you want an almost instant approval or denial in 2 to 4 hours, you do realize that it then requires A LOT of work and effort put into it. That means that as the hours and cost to do that goes up, so too naturally does the fee that you'd have to pay for it to make any sense.

Plus you add to that that if it's turned down, the mods should give a detailed reason why. I can tell you from running a $49 to $99 / month service that included some of that stuff, it was starting to get a pain when we were telling people what was wrong with their articles or press releases. There'd be some people that we'd go back and forth on over a dozen times to the point where it'd be almost easier for us to write it ourselves for them (which some almost expected).

Realize that in every case there's an "ideal" for you as the client and an ideal for the owners. The trick is finding the right balance.

- Brian

This is what I would suggest. You have more freedom on your blog too.

Never catch a falling knife.

The article section was never used by forum users. It was just bait for search engines when article directories were in vogue.

When it was finally clear that articles dumps are not helping with SEO it was abandoned.

There is one web site that can be used to learn:
Ezinearticles.

They always were paying attention to quality. Then Google dropped article directories. They tried to counter it by increasing the quality. For a short time it looked like they had a comeback but now it is obvious that they are continuing to head down.

https://siteanalytics.compete.com/ezinearticles.com



If they are not able to pull this out why should WF waste time and money only to try to catch a falling knife.

It appears to have been a place where users posted entry level material of low to no value in an attempt to get their sigs seen. I would disable all sigs in that section to start with.

Wow! Thanks to all that have posted! I read the stickies and saw how that section could have been helpful to both posters and readers. Now, after reading a bit more I see where that section has gone astray. My previous post still stands for all sections.

If the new admin is going to make changes, they should be looking at making the right changes. Thank you Kay for pointing out the oh-so-obvious that, on a Monday, escaped me.

~ Theresa

I think that any moderators that are currently in place throughout the entire forum, are already busy enough trying to keep a handle on the amount of spam and questionable posts that are lingering as we speak.

I would probably work on getting that under control first, before starting up yet another section that would take away from the already lacking moderation power.

Moderators seem to be using their own discretion when deciding what to approve, disapprove, delete, comment on, etc. Therein, in my opinion, lies the problem, and is part of the cause of the article section getting out of hand. There are no strict yes/no rules, just guidelines.

We direct newbies to the rules section, yet many so called rules that I've seen, are not black and white, but shades of grey, leaving many so called rules open to interpretation.

If there are currently posts in the article section, or posts in the general forums that are questionable, and or blatant self promotion (as I would view them), then this is the fault of no other than moderators who use their own discretion, because as mentioned, the rules are not set in stone

Knowing this, people tend to try and get around some rules, and from what I see, they do it successfully.

Example: You should either be able to place links back to your own site(s) in articles, posts, etc, or NOT! (Where "not" is probably a better rule).

In the general forums I see threads that continue to stay live and are not deleted, where the OP is talking in detail about his/her own project and asks for feedback on his/her squeeze page, with url(s) back to their sites, etc, and the OP's signature file is clearly related to the business in question.

But on the same thread list, another warrior asks a very similar question in much less spammy detail, but that thread gets deleted.

Why?? Makes no sense.

So should you reopen an article section? Or start any other section?

Why not entirely rewrite all the general rules first, for all threads, including the WSO's etc, and make them BLACK and WHITE!

This way people will know what they can and can't do, and or won't try as much to get around the rules. (because sometimes they can).

And maybe, then an article section (and this forum) might work smoother after all.

Because there's no such thing as black and white rules.

If you have it be bluntly against the rules to do one thing, people will find a way that technically is within the rules but pushing the limits where a mod might see that as easily against the general idea of the rules, but a black and white rule itself won't.

That's one of the reasons why the FTC and a lot of government organizations don't always give out black and white rules and just general guidelines. I know it can be super annoying at times, but there's a few reasons for them doing that (not saying I agree with all of them).

- Brian

How's that working out so far...

Don't quite know what you're asking or implying there, but I was merely saying that one reason why it's not as easy as you think to create black and white rules is because there's always people that will find loopholes to them.

The previous owner and the mods have been around a LONG time, and if it was as easy as just changing a rule or two to make it black and white, it probably would have already been done a long time ago.

You can see this play out in a lot of bigger places / markets like Facebook or Adwords marketing... There's some rules that are fairly vague when they talk about squeeze pages and the like, but can you give me a definite answer of what the difference is between a page with the sole intent of information harvesting vs. just having an opt-in box there?

Or what exactly is an "approved" Adwords squeeze page?

It's very tough to give set black and white answers there because someone will always find a way around it, even though individual workers or mods can somewhat judge what is or isn't following the guidelines. The sucky part is that in all of these instances, yes, you'll sometimes get something deleted that you could easily argue shouldn't (or the opposite).

- Brian

I've reported dozens and dozens of articles in that section that were straight copy and paste jobs from the web. IMHO the section was heavily abused, so I think if it is opened again it will need to be strictly moderated for stolen, pirated and plagiarized content as well as for PLR.

Cheers

-don

I only visited that part of the forum a few times. To me, it looked like a wasteland of crap, and really that is an insult to all other wastelands of crap.

If you want to have somewhere to post a bunch of low quality junk, Ezine Articles is still open for business as far as I know.