Page 3 - Concern with the Level of Discussion here at SEOChat

I know how you feel Rand. I started out in another community as just a guy who was posting. But I was an avid poster and, eventually, I became a sort of icon. Now I'm the board admin, a twist I never could have imagined.

You make the most clear and concise posts on SC. More importantly you're the guy who goes the extra mile (how many people on these forums have made their own SEO tool, let alone made them available to the public?). You're not just Joe Poster who posts stuff here and there. You might not think of yourself as an SEO Guru but what I've found through experience is that it's less about what you do and don't know but how you present yourself. As such, people begin to see you as authoritative on the subject. You may be #29 in posts but to many people you are THE authority on SEO. I've noticed some sandbox posts dry up after you've thrown your $0.02 in.

Welcome to iconville ;)

As far as quality of posts... well, that's community for you. The best communities out there have a lot of chatter that's not necessarily on target or even contributory. What it means is
1. There's a lot of people who read the boards
2. There's an influx of new people (who don't know how to do things like search for posts)
3. There's interest in being part of the community

Is it a bad thing? Not usually. As long as you have competant mods and admins (which SC does) you don't have to worry about things like needless spam or posts in the wrong area. Too much moderation and the community goes elsewhere. Too little and you get choked out by weeds.

Highland.
Blushing... again. I don't know what to say. I needed those tools myself and everyone else needs them too. I didn't know how to build them until I came here (and got lots of pointers from Dan Thies too), so it seems unfair to secret away that knowledge. In 6 months, I learned so much about SEO and if this latest update holds (still datacenter-dancing as I write), I'll have given my client number 1 positions for dozens of relevant keyword phrases/terms. Clearly, I am the one who owes SEOChat, and since there's no good monetary way of giving back (and I won't be seeing any real income for several more months), the tools and resource site are the best I can do.

The more I think about it, the more I'd really love to have a sub-forum for these more advanced posts. We don't have a thread on on-topic analysis here at SEOChat, which I think is probably one of the most important subjects in SEO today (even though I'm still struggling to understand it). We don't have threads on other topics - fractal analysis, block-page analysis, even TrustRank.

Let's hope to hear an answer soon from the moderators on this issue - mods, maybe you could tell us how the process is going?

the process is moving along, rand.

I recalled the where's PK thread, from early September. Just went back and read it. No wonder Cygnus recalls it...he started the thread. And he is absolutely correct. A lot of the comments on this thread are just like the ones from that thread. I guess these issues continue to come up. I guess the mods and the admins can experiment with adding some new topics and see if it works. Who knows?

Meanwhile, that was 5 months ago and SEO Chat continues to zoom along. I suppose it works well for most.

Dave

Rand, your feedback has been heard loud and clear - the new forum is called Search Engine Technologies - enjoy everyone!

I'm a new guy here, but maybe some of my perspective would be of value -

I run a smallish forum, and discovered from some candid discussions that many people didn't register or post in our forum because it was intimidating...but in a good way. Of similar forums, I efforted to make ours 'top-shelf'; extremely clean, higher level discussions; these discussions could really only have participation if the member already had a good deal of experience in the topic. This has kept even some of the perennial trouble-makers away; they exist in all their glory in other places, and though they are members at our site, you never hear a peep out of them. From the discussions I referenced earlier, I believe it's because we have established an expectation for behavior. While that expectation cost us in member numbers early on, it is now working to our advantage, as people who are just discovering the joy of forums feel very comfortable at our site.

I think much of this is the same here. Massive censorship isn't done here because it isn't needed. And that is a credit to the people who launched and participated in this site at the beginning - that reputation and expectation has continued to grow. I found this site through another SEO forum site - but this is the one I visit every day.

Regarding the high level discussions Randfish laments are missing, I think it's analogous to our forum - people don't participate because they can't speak without exposing their lack of knowledge. It doesn't mean the information isn't read or isn't appreciated - just that people like me would prefer to not look stupid talking about something we have no business talking about.

So in a nutshell, I'd like to continue reading the stuff you contribute. I probably won't reply (for the reasons above), so it'll probably be a thankless job.

BTW, in the hopes this will get me caught up for previous contributions - Thank you.

Oh - and Jasontnyc - getting the kind of encouragement you offer is a great draw to keep people like me coming back.