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Bill 486 480 Leicester	Re: Troubleshooting-Situations in Adlandpro 12/28/2006 1:00:36 PM
	Hi Mary, I would like to respond to Bogdan, The first point I want to respond to is blocking. Yes I agree we can block those that are on our friends list in various ways if they become irritating shall I call it to remain polite. However we cannot preempt the receiving of adverts from people that are not even on our friends list. This practice is totally out of hand. Firstly this is nothing more than spam. Secondly the people doing it are in actual fact "stealing" from Adlandpro because they are not using the Direct Contact option which is based on credits (either monthly allocation or purchase if more are needed). Point two. It appears that there is too much importance placed on the number of posts one makes. From my observation there appears to be a race to see who can make the most posts and no consideration made about the quality of the content of the post. I am not referring here to the posts congratulating members on becoming POTW and the various other award threads. There is after all only so many ways you can say well done. I am referring to the one syllable posts like "Very interesting" or "thank you for the info" that are rampant in many threads. Point three. You ask why are people not staying. Could it have something to do with the fact that in most cases when a new member joins they are attacked as if by savage wolves with invites to be friends that are nothing more than pages long adverts asking them to join the program of the person inviting them? Point Four. In my short period here in Adlandpro I have seen Rule 3 of the terms broken over and over again by repeat offenders with no action taken. I refer to threads that are pure discrimination, and I see personal attacks where there is no reason for it. This does not give a good impression to the world at large. This should not be allowed to happen irrelevant of the status of the poster.
	Bj Co Owner LowCost-Webspace, & LowCost-Backup. The Vital Tools
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Bogdan 7095 4629 Winnipeg	Re: Troubleshooting-Situations in Adlandpro 12/28/2006 2:09:06 PM
	Hi Arthur, You said. having looked at some of the forums that are available but which I am not able to post to, I do see that I will remain a second class member until I am a 'friend' of every member (especially those who use forums other than for advertising). You might be misunderstanding this part. You don't need to be invited to any public forum in order to participate in it. If you find an interesting forum, and want to be part of it, you can click button which is at the top of each forum or just reply to any post in this forum. Any of the two actions will automatically subscribe you to the forum without invitation. I have also noticed some discussions where members believed that they are not allowed to post in forums to which they are not invited. As you know main reason you are not invited to someone forum is that you are not a friend of that person. Most people would like to have as many members as possible in their forums, so nobody should be afraid of posting in any forum they find. There is also one extra feature in each forum which allows on monitoring of activity in specific thread of that forum even before joining it. e.g. When you click on this link. http://community.adlandpro.com/forums/thread/554730.aspx you will see a checkbox just above the topic title which says. Email me when someone replies to this thread When you select it, you will be notified about any addition to this thread. This checkbox also can be selected when posting to this thread. You said then. As it stands, a newcomer could start the most fascinating and valuable forum but nobody would visit it because the newcomer knows nobody to invite - so it would die. This is true to a degree. As with any group online of offline, you need to first listen until you start talking to just understand how the group operates. If you have lots to say, you can participate in other forums as I explained above and make interesting posts. Others will see that you have something to offer and will be inviting you to be their friend and this will snowball from this point on. Also you can become a friend of a person who have lots of friends and once you get more familiar with that person, you can ask to be introduced to her/his friends. I see this all the time done by people with large friends lists. Bogdan Fiedur
	Hello
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Mary 2384 3481 Lima	Re: Troubleshooting-Situations in Adlandpro 12/28/2006 3:18:03 PM
	In regard to good forums with few posts. When I see a new member with a new forum, I make it a special point to post. I then send an e-mail encouraging them and complimenting them. I also point out to them that with 75 friends they may not get many responses. If they are discouraged about the poor response, they may soon disappear. My first forums threads had about 6 responses but I just kept on putting up threads, and inviting more and more friends. Hopefully I built interest and trust. Many have told me that my name in the title means they will open the forum. Once people know who you are and what you stand for you will attract readers. I would guess that of those new forum builders, 90% don't stay around. They just don't want to work to build. The biggest problem in all the internet is that people believe in instant success. The word "build" means work and when they discover that, off they go looking for that magic place where they can make instant money. Bogdan, thank you for giving us perspective. Many believe that 40,000 people will see their ads, respond to forums, vote on contests and become friends. I knew their beliefs were wrong but did not realize that so few are the active ones here. Then there are the ones who never post on forums, quietly gather information, and spend time doing their business. Could we do anything about friends lists? I know that only about 15 pages of my friends list are active people. Will I accumulate people with pages and pages of people who do not use their account. I am pleased that you do not believe that we are responsible for friends becoming inactive. You see it as a natural event of the internet. Would you describe how you handle abusers here? Some have expressed that they have sent complaints and see no results. I think you have warnings, & punishment, but do you stop with warnings. Do you believe forum/threads with ads are wrong? I thought if the purpose of the thread was to present an opportunity, an ad was acceptable. Most would concer that in discussion forums, stories, awards or articles that would be bad behavior. Thank you for taking time to address our concerns.
	Mary Hofstetter aka Panda Lady The Internet Works For Me Retirees Supplemental Income
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Jenny 938 1902 Granada	Re: Troubleshooting-Situations in Adlandpro 12/28/2006 3:47:33 PM
	Hello Mary, You have really started a tremendously interactive forum here - which are the best kind - as they make us think! I would like to comment on a couple of points raised by Arthur and a couple of other posters here. Firstly the flood of adverts in the "wrong place". Adverts can go on the Offers/Requests or in Classifieds, or as Bill Brown reminds us, Direct Contacts. If they go on forums - they wreck them. If they go in Personal Messages they waste an enormous amount of member's time just in deleting them and then one stops reading PM's in the end, or miss something personal. This could be stopped by making sure that it was not allowed in the terms and then enforced. It is a tremendous turn off to many people. Secondly the concept of the "numbers game" in posting - (that there is merit in posting lots of posts - with a special button for Top 25 Poster etc). could well be counterproductive to the health of the Community. Why is it relevant for us to know that someone posts a lot? If we follow the forums we will see that. It says very little about the value of the posts. For those of us who use AdlandPro to get exposure for our businesses, I cannot see the validity of having a meaningless post spidered by the search engines - it rarely brings business, whereas a quality one might. Quality not Quantity should be the goal in posting. This feature could be removed to great advantage and stop the "posting race" of silly posts just to get numbers up. Thirdly, Arthur and many others talk of forum quality and forum conduct, which is often, coupled with abuse of advertising, a major influencing factor in many people's decision to leave. In Bogdan's own forum asking for suggestions on how to resolve conflicts at AdlandPro back in September http://community.adlandpro.com/forums/473845/ShowThread.aspx many comments and suggestions were made. One thing that came through clearly was the suggestion that forum Moderators or mediators would be welcomed by many members. This could be done in many forms - possibly by Forum Category - with the forum owner responsible in the first instance to maintain the smooth development of the threads. The purpose is of course, not to intefere with the freedom of speech of members, but to recognise that, with that right to freedom of speech, we also have the responsibility to ensure that our freedom does not infringe on another person's human rights and does not break the terms - which we all voluntarily agreed to on joining Adland Pro. I would like to quote a post from that forum by Dave Cotrell "I think the terms of service are quite adequate and clear. It is sometimes difficult to enforce some things quickly enough, but still, simply enforcing these terms in as timely a manner as possible would, in my opinion, eliminate most of the problems we are having. As Adlandpro grows, it may become (in fact it may already have become) necessary to have more people monitoring the forums. It's sad to have to go that way, but it is realistic in a large community. God bless, Dave" I hope you dont mind me borrowing this, Dave, but it says it far better than I ever could. I have seen this role in other internet communities and it does seem to help keep things on track and i have never seen anyone complaining about losing their freedom of speech.. Clearly, if an issue could not be sorted out by a Moderator, then Administration needs to become involved to ensure that these terms, designed to protect the Community and its members, are enforced Fourthly, on forum invitations - most new members go to Categories to find their way around. And here we do have a problem - both of duplication of topics and also a tremendous number of threads which are off topic. Making it very difficult for a newbie (and quite complicated for some not so newbies.) to use Adland well. A solution here would be to permit on topic threads on other people's forums - with notifications going out to a wider audience than the forum owner (instead of the one notification at present) That way one could look for info about Scams under Scams, Internet under Internet, Travel under travel, Art under Art etc. I appreciate that this would be a major change in the Adland policy of forum ownership and notifications and also a large programming task - but I honestly believe that it would make a remarkable difference to the way in which we use our time at AdlandPro and for the better - bearing in mind that not everyone has indefinate time to spend there and would like to get the most benefit out of it. Mary, I realise that this forum was about why people leave - but the sheer confusion of off topic forums is maddening for a lot of people who give up before they start. In my own case, I stumbled accidentally across a forum by Linda Carroll (i didnt know what an Advisor was and didnt know to look there for info about websites) and received a very helpful response to my post and decided to become an Adlander.(no charge for this comment Linda! lol) But if I hadnt, I dont think I would have stayed very long. Bogdan, pèrhaps this is not the place to raise this point, but I think that it is a factor that stops new people staying. And to end, yes Bogdan, your suggestion that we should start up some new and interesting forums is spot on and is one that I hope that we will all be putting into operation. Quality not Quantity should become the norm again at Adland Pro. So, forgive me for such a long post, but this forum has got my brain ticking over to find solutions to return this Community to being one of the most special, useful and friendly places on the Internet, so that we can all stay forever! Thanks for letting me have my say and hope I have said something positive. Love Jenny

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Mary 2384 3481 Lima	Re: Troubleshooting-Situations in Adlandpro 12/28/2006 4:00:44 PM
	Bogdan, Bill and Jenny have both touched on a subject that affects more than forum users and I refer to ads in our personal mail box. Can you please give us an opinion of how we can slow down or stop that practice. I for one see it as spam. Looking forward to your response as well as people monitoring this forum. If I were a new member and received what I am getting now from people who are not even my friends, I would be walking away.
	Mary Hofstetter aka Panda Lady The Internet Works For Me Retirees Supplemental Income
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