Reducing Noise, Combating Spam and Conditional Signatures

[Jim Messenger]

In order to increase the quality --not quantity-- of forum members and their posts we have made several changes.

As always we welcome your input on the changes. Here is the list:

1. We added a two stage moderation process for registration. The first stage is an email verification process. The second stage is a manual review of the prospective members profile.

Question: How do you guys feel about adding some required fields such as Name, Company Name, or Location to the profile? This would eliminate anonymous users.

2. We have added some conditions on signatures.

1. If a post has less than 20 words the signature will not display. This will decrease the number of external links to content ratio. And hopefully, it will increase the quality of the post by discouraging the "me too" and "I agree" type comments. Should the word count be raised? I think it should be at least 50, but I set it at 10 to start.
2. A member must have a minimum of 10 posts before their signatures are activated. Personally, I think this should be higher. What do you think?
3. If a member has more than one post on a page only the first post will show their signature. In other words, only one signature per member per page is allowed.

3. At the request of several members we have added a referral script. Visit your User Control Panel and you will see a link with your unique referral id and the following message:

Please help us spread the word about "FamousAgents.com." When referring others to the community you can use the link below which includes your own unique referral ID. Each time someone follows this link to FamousAgents.com and registers as a new member, your referral count will be incremented by one. The total number of referrals you currently have can always be viewed at the top of this box (next to FamousAgents.com Referrals) as well as in your Profile. Please be courteous when promoting FamousAgents.com by not spamming other web sites and/or email addresses with your referral link just to gain referrals.

I hope to have a referral contest soon. What would you folks like the prize to be? Cash, Toy, Gadget, Gizmo???

Again these changes are meant to reduce the "noise" and increase the substance. There are plenty of useless link to me forums out there. We'd prefer to be different.

Our goal was never to become a "Big Board." We'd rather be an Elite one.

Let's hear your thoughts. Thanks!


Updated 4-18-07: Please limit links in signatures to 2 or less. Thanks.

[kensmith]

1. I like the idea of knowing who is who. Name and Location would be a great start. Then make company, first year licensed, and designations as optional.

2. a) I think that 25 words would be a good minimum word count.
b) Think that it should be at least 20 posts before signature shows up.
c) Agreed

3. Very cool.

As for the contest, I think that a free website for one year.

[kensmith]

BTW, I agree that it would be better to have less members that know what they are talking about, then a large forum with a bunch of bs posts.

[Mert]

Agreed with most of it but I donot understand why you care so much about those external links when they all got the nofollow tags??

Also how about removing the nofollow tags from people who truly contribute good text and bring quality people to the forum as a reward. I know VBSEO can do that.

[Jim Messenger]

Originally Posted by Falcon Living Agreed with most of it but I donot understand why you care so much about those external links when they all got the nofollow tags?? Also how about removing the nofollow tags from people who truly contribute good text and bring quality people to the forum as a reward. I know VBSEO can do that.

Mert, Your assumptions are incorrect. The only links on this forum that are nofollow have been hand edited. By default, signature links do not have the nofollow value attached to them.

If you have a hard time being able to tell the difference between links that contain the nofollow value, I suggest using the FireFox browser with the Web Developer add on. It will turn all links with the nofollow value to pink. That's how they got the nickname "Pink Links."

[Jim Messenger]

Just to make sure the rest of the forum members are clear, Mert's comment

they all got the nofollow tags??

is 100% false!

[Andrea Messenger]

Mert, Please check your facts before making reckless accusations. Your comment about the nofollow links is not true - any of our members can verify the facts by following Jim's suggestion above with the FireFox tool.

[Mert]

Hold on, I was not accusing anyone.

Nofollow is and should be a proper procedure for any website section (especially forums) where any one who does not own the website can freely input a link to help google. This is a straight quote from Matt Cutts.

It was not an accusation. I am also in the process of installing vbseo myself to my forum and I believe it is a great tool to use in that manner. As a matter of fact I should praise Jim for following such a white seo tactic and simply tried to encourage it rather than accusing anyone.

[Mert]

Also just to add on to it. if any one is here to gather links rather than learn a thing or two from real estate and seo is also pretty much diluting this forum anyways.

[Jim Messenger]

Ok. One more time.

You said: "I donot (sic) understand why you care so much about those external links when they all got the nofollow tags??" (emphasis mine) That is an exact quote from your post.

Here is my final response: THEY DO NOT ALL HAVE THE NOFOLLOW TAGS!

You are wrong!

Any questions?