ex-webby

Following the graphic display of anti-community spirit and selfishness by a small group of vocal individuals, but at the same time, a fabulous and heart warming display of the true and genuine support of our true community members, I have come to the following decision.

It is clear to me that the signal to noise ration on scoobynet is indeed at a state where it needs to be dealt with. We have a wonderful and decent community, sometimes hidden by a vocal minority intent of self gratification and hateful abuse.

I give you all my word, that as of now, I am putting all of my available time in to measures to solve this problem.

To receive so many emails of support, and to see the good and decent people actually being vocal in support of us on the Google thread, has proved to me that there is something incredibly valuable (even at the scale of membership we have now) lurking just underneath the surface of the spoilers.

The solution will not happen overnight, but it will absolutely be my main focus, and I will be discussing it with the moderators over the next few days to come up with the ideal solution. I will also ensure that we have detailed discussion here in the public forum so that we can all have an input in to the best solution.

---

I would like to open the floor up to positive and constructive suggestions now.

IMPORTANT Guidelines for this thread
-Discussions about the reasons behind this decision will be deleted
-Discussions about individual "trouble makers" will be deleted
-Anything off topic, muppety or anti-community spirit will be deleted
-Anything argumentative will be deleted.
(The entire post will be deleted if it contains any of these things)
(Any posts which respond to any offending posts will also be deleted)
Please also, try to keep suggestions to the specific subject of controlling the negative element, and giving more benefit to the true supportive community.

Thank you in advance to the true scoobynet community for your input.. My suggestions (based on those suggested by the membership), to start the ball rolling are as follows..

More strict moderation of anti-community spirit posting
-Any posts showing anti-community spirit will be removed, and also any posts responding to those will be removed. Possible a system where an entire thread is locked IF too many people engage in conversation with the person spoiling the thread. This may encourage people to ignore idiots which we all know is the most powerful form of moderation.

More advanced rating system
To allow members to incrimentally rate users - No negative ranks will be available, only positive ranks (to avoid people trying to attain negative ranks as some kind of statement). Intelligent system to reduce the possibility of abuse.

Specialised Subscription Only Forums
-Fight Club. A place for anyone who wants to have an argument to keep it out of the main forums.
-Ladies and Gentlemen. A place where an even higher level of moderation will be implimented where ONLY gentlemanly and decent conversation will be tolerated.

Organised Official Regional Meets
To allow the true and decent community a place to meet and enjoy each others company IRL.
Plus investment in to more extensive and officially supported events.

Increased Plus Member Functionality
-IGNORE facility (allow members to switch off irritating users)
-Private Forums. I would consider a trial of this in order to allow people who actually pay to support us a place where they can have far more say and control over how things are moderated and what they discuss.
-Improved For Sale / Classified section.
-Avatars and signatures (with the ability of any user to switch them on or off)
-Private Messaging
-Any other ideas?

Thanks again, I hope this thread can start a new trend towards our common goal.

All the best

Simon

ex-webby

PS.

The reason for this change of heart is this. I have realised that shaun, the moderators, and I spend the majority of our time pandering to the moaning and complaining minority. I have come to realise through all of this, that we simply do NOT want them here. We would rather they go, so will spend no more time than is absolutely necessary dealing with them.

Please be SURE that I do NOT class everyone who complains, or even everyone who has dissagreed with the Google ads in this group. It is everyone's right to dissagree or have an objection. It is the small minority of time wasting and irritating complainers who demand what they want regardless of anyone elses circumstances, desires or situation. These people need to be ignored, so that the decent genuine members of this community can have more time spent on them.

All the best

Simon

NACRO

A 2 tier BBS will be a worthwhile exercise, I'll be down in the pits with the non-payers and quite happy to mix it with the great unwashed. Those who want to pay will do and hopefully get the service they want. Everyone will be happy.

Geddon

Like the idea of the fight club forum and ladies and gents forums.
Please improve the for sale section though
Keep up the good work

Eder22b

Well said Simon

ex-webby

Geddon

Good point re the For Sale Forum.

What I would like to do is this.

Split the forums up, but have a very small charge of something like £5 a month (or £15 a year) to post new threads in them. Anyone can reply...
-the starter can moderate their own posts to remove anything they don't like.
-Plus members get the service free of charge.

Would this work?

All the best

Simon

Fatman

I suggest that SN LTD's best way of increasing revenue (SN+ subscription aside) is to tap into the For Sale 'market'. A fixed fee per sale or (capped) percentage fee would probably be accepted. However it would need tight T&C control and disclaimers etc.

Agreed - For Sale needs cleaning up. Good move.

Would the all of the 'subscription only' forums fall within the SN+ product?

Is there any intention to introduce a subscription other than SN+?

'Ignore' would be good, but would that provide sufficient protection from the many-profile users? Can you implement a deeper level of verification other than username/number?

If even more austere moderation is to be deployed, please spell out very clearly what is acceptable and what is not.

IMHO private messaging would not be particularly worthwhile. Better to give name@scoobynet.co.uk email addresses to SN+ members.

I wouldn't bother with Avatars or signatures, tbh. They just clutter the page and are distracting. They would, IMHO, bring the same criticisms as the Google ads.

The rating system would probably work. Good idea.

jasey

The Ignore facility could be extended to include "Ignore forums" - there are a lot of forums on here and a lot of the info that gets sent to my Machine through browsing the All forums section is completely irrelevant to me. If I Had an All Forums that ignored For Sale, Muppets & Regional stuff other than Scotland it strikes me that the Bandwith & performance problems for this site might well be improved.

ex-webby

Hi Fatman

Thanks for the suggestions on the for sale forum.

Plus members would get all forums and all facilities available.

Subscriptions other than SN+.. we might have some isolated subscriptions, like specific forums, and for sale forum facilities, but SN+ members would have access to all of this.

guidelines for stern moderation. Agreed.

name@scoobynet.co.uk is quite difficult as it takes a lot of admin.. but would be interested in any solutions to this for plus members. Good idea.

Avatars. Any user can switch them on or off, so everyone gets what they want.

Thanks for the feedback...

---

jasey

Ignore forums - good idea. Ability to "minimise" or hide forums?

All the best

Simon

+Doc+

I understand fully the ideas behind the new look For Sale forums and anticipate their arrival but for the time being please can we have three forums to "tide us along" until the new changes are put into practice. Cars For Sale / Parts For Sale / Anything else. Would save the community a lot of time.
Thanks
Doc

fullonloon2

1) Get rid of the monumental waste of bandwidth, namely the muppet section. Removing the huge juvenile threads in the muppet section may have some effect on the rest of the board by bringing it back in to line with the rest of the world. It's a huge waste of resource. Rather than give them a section to feed the desire to talk about rubbish, remove it and expunge it from existance. No other boards have this, it's purely detrimental.

2) Add the ignore button as standard.
2a) Self moderation. If you don't want to see it then you don't have to rather than have 1,2 or 3 people agreeing that the rest shouldn't see it.
2b) Community moderation. If enough people click ignore user then they get added to your ignore list. If you want to unignore then you have the choice whether you want to view or not.

3) Improve for sale section with a proper car form to fill out as per autotrader (etc) Charge a nominal fee to place an advert.
3a) Have a seperate section for everything else to be sold.

ex-webby

Hi Doc

Understood, and thank you for the respectful and polite request. I will discuss this with shaun and the moderators over the next 2 days and assuming we can get over the complications we had previously (which may have been resolved now) we'll sort something out. Please support us if we say it is still a problem though.

All the best

Simon

Adam M

simon,

I think you should clearly define what is meant by anti community spirit as you may alienate those who egt on the pc gone too far bandwagon by not making it clear what you mean.

Personally I don't like the idea of these extra forums. The signal to noise ratio you mention has gone down hill because this site no longer makes it clear what kind of signal it wants.

I think an entirely subscription based membership will do you no harm. Thos who value the forums will pay, those who don't are not wanted anyway.

You WILL get a lower hit rate and the site WILL be less popular but the improvement in quality will be drastic and the benefits for everyone marked.

I would be inclined to bring the focus back towards the cars, keep the for sale forum free to paying members and get rid of wstes of bandwidth such as the muppet forum.

I don't see the need for a gentlemanly conversation forum with different degrees of moderation, this will make life harder for moderators.

If this sie is to remain under the guise of a subaru enthusiast forum then it should return to being just that.

If you think the market exists for the non subaru related forums, then why not create an affiliated bbs with joint user names open to those people whose interest is less subaru relevant.

ex-webby

fullonloon2

2b) is an interesting idea.. clever thinking. I wonder if this could be open to abuse?

Be careful on the Muppet Show statements. Bare in mind that a vast number of people enjoy this forum. Respectfully I would suggest that your statements could (in that case) be bordering on anti-community spirit. Would it be better to impliment the suggestion above to allow you to simply ignore that forum?

Cheers

Simon

Fatman

The admin of email addresses right now may be time-consuming. I imagine this is because it's provided via a webmail service, isnt' it? If another mail gateway were used then you could automate the entire sign-up procedure. i.e. user and email details would be driven by your dB rather than your Hosts's dB. You just 'push' that info to their mail gateway. Once provisioned, the mail need be no more 'hands-on' than the private messaging scenario you suggested.

1/ ScoobyShop (sign-up user details)
2/ Payment gateway (onsite or third party)
3/ Activate account, send password and 'welcome' note and auto-provision email.

[Edited by Fatman - 1/23/2004 11:14:34 AM]

Tiggs

make ppl pay for it...so simple it hurts.

Fatman

Simon - your comment of "I would suggest that your statements could (in that case) be bordering on anti-community spirit" further backs up the need for clarification on quite what is viewed as 'anti-community'.

I don't think it's fair to accuse such mild comments as the above of being 'anti-community' without actually defining what that means.

CraigH

Simon,

You need to define "anti community" What is "the community"? Subaru owners, japanese car owners, non car owners, or just petrolheads? You've accused me of being anti community before, but I haven't, I've been anti snet mentality. Theres a big difference.
From an unbiased view, I think some of your posts (the tone) can be overly provacative to certain mentalitys (mine included) - and can incite reaction. Not being anti community there or argumentative, just want you to appreciate things from both sides

Re For Sale, will posters pay say, £5 per month, when many of the items are low value. Look how long some things take to sell, if at all on here, do you think it may have the negative effect of driving posters away rather than attract them? Something needs to be done and I'd say catagorising must be the simplest but most effective? "Cars for Sale," "Subaru parts for Sale" etc. If you are committed to charging, then can you have 2 scales - £5 for cars, sliding scale for other things depending on price? Perhaps Plus members get to sell things for free.

Personally, I think the easiest thing would be to have a membership for full use of snet. How many members now, 30ish k? How many would be prepared to pay £10pa? I would. You wouldn't have to limit newbies, by having a 5 day free trial period for instance, so if they need help they could realise the importance of snet as a resource before paying the money. People that don't pay can still view the forums and access the adverts so you keep advertisers happy.
It wouldn't stop all the trouble makers, but if the've only go access for a few days, most will give up after a while.
And can you implement proper emails only? No hotmail etc, some proper accounts so that would limit "instant" trouble maker profiles.

Agree with Fatboy re Moderation. I also think that the moderators need to conduct themselves in a manner which you expect others to adhere to, no matter what the provocation and not be clouded by personality clashes. Over moderate and people will go elsewhere, we're (mostly) adults and a few (within reason) insults here and there harm no-one. It happens everyday, at work or wherever, so here need be no different, again imo.

I think there's a few too many forums. Wheels, tyres, brakes gets more usage than suspension, so do you REALLY need 2? Combine them, it then leaves room for another new forum if needed.

Would it be worth you having an advertisers "specials" forum? They pay £xxx and can post what they want about special deals they want to run - extra revenue, gotta be worth £50 per ad?

Craig

CraigH

Re Muppet Show,

I think most of the posts on there are a waste of time, but the posters on there don't, and some are responsible for good, intelligent and thought povoking posts in other areas of snet, so whilst personally I think it's a daft place, the community probably is the better for it.

dnb

I like the idea of more officially organised meets.

A decent FAQ (both technical and info about Scoobynet) would be a good thing too. I am willing to help with the tech one however I can.

More plus member benefits are nice too. Most of what I buy for the Scoob doesn't come from Scoobyshop, partly because of where I live and a few other reasons. (Mail order to where I live is silly money, as are the ferry fares... There is currently not that much + member benefit for me.) More benefits in the forums would encourage me to part with the cash for membership.

The search facility would benefit from a rework - such as selecting the forums searched - I don't want 1000s of returns from Muppets & General when I want to know about dump valves or intercoolers! This could address some of the "clutter" issues in places along with the (searchable) FAQ!

Regarding the for sale, I'm not sure about the legal position of accepting money for adverts, but it seems like a good idea for larger items (eg cars) provided that they got their own uncrowded space to be displayed. (Maybe Plus memebers could get a couple of free ads per year???)

Fatman

Another idea. Perhaps some form of 'moderator moderation' could be deployed? This would be to provide feedback on whether future moderation is in-line with what 'the community' (definition pending) needs/expects/wants. If opened to all this could be grossly abused. So, tie its availability to the user feedback mechanism. Once 'the community' (def. pending) has voted a particular member to a certain status, then that user is able, themselves, to provide qualitative feedback on moderation/actions.

fullonloon2

Simon.

Re: Community moderation, well yes it could be but then you would have your personal ignore list which could pop up a message when you log on so that it shows if new people have been added to your ignore list. If you don't want to ignore them then you can uncheck them. You always have the ability to uncheck them at any time in the future.

Re: Muppet forum.

That wasn't a statement, you asked for constructive suggestions. One needs to ask why this forum is so popular. As for anti-commuity spirit, I'm sure there are many people who feel the same, I'm more sure that these people are the backbone of the bbs. Quite why this forum is seen as beneficical to the scoobynet community is somewhat disturbing, at least to me. Please find below the latest semi-long threads, there are obviously far worse.

http://www.scoobynet.co.uk/bbs/thread.asp?threadid=277321
http://www.scoobynet.co.uk/bbs/thread.asp?threadid=291394

Q

CraigH

Fatman,

If Simon implements a user rating, then that would cover user feedback for moderators wouldn't it? If it gets below a certain point then Simon/the mod team need to question why the rating could be so low?

Fatman

dnb - Simon's alread commented on page 1 that "Plus members would get all forums and all facilities available." For non-SN+ users, I think it would be more useful if the fee is payable post-purchase. That way, nobody is charged for placing an advert that doesn't result in a sale. I'm not sure how this would work in practice yet, so as to avoid SN LTD being cut out of the loop.

Hanslow

Agree with Craig in that if you do go down the subscription route, then it would be good for newbies to see what they are getting for their money before they sign up. They may just be after some initial info before possibly buying a scoob so may not yet require full membership.

SiDHEaD

Sounds good so far.

I think its a good idea to spend a little time to get it cracked. This will shut up the people whinging about the for sale forum etc. Get it all done in an intesive slog. Get as much of the new features implemented as possible and sit and reap the benefits of a better BBS.

I like the idea to bring SN inline with other forums allowing (albeit SN+ members) to add small self hosted avatars. I also beleive people's personal ability to NOT display these is important.

Andy

what would scooby do

You will find that the muppet forum is a breeding ground for community spirit. Just because they((we)I) act the fool in there doesn't mean we don't contribute.

The muppets also tend to meet socially more than other groups on here and the majority do have serious scoobs .

Adam (STI5 Type R)

I agree with comments about for sale section etc needing improvement.

Fatman

CraigH,

Yes, I imagine that the original feedback suggestion could still apply to moderators. After all, not every post by a mod is actually an act of moderation. I think that any feedback on moderation itself would need to be more proactive and better quantified than you suggest.

Wizzbang

Simon,
I dont own a scooby, have never owned a scooby, and am never going to own a scooby, yet I am a part of this community, and as a part of this community to see the goings on of yesterday shocks me. I want to contribute to these forums financialy to make sure I can still use all the features in full, however I feel objected to buy snet+ because I wont see any of the benefits offered due to my opening statement other than the 'unbroken' view of snet. My suggestion is to become a member of the forum for a fee of £5pa and have the same forum 'rights' as a snet+ user just without any of the snetshop discounts etc.

What do you think


WizzBang

Boro

iTrader: (1)

Hi Simon,

Personally i think the For Sale Forum should be priority as this "could" generate more revenue and benefit the whole community as it has become obvious this is a bone of contention with alot on SN Members. I wont bore you with the different sections as this has been discussed a million times already but we really need Subaru Cars For Sale and Subaru Parts For Sale.

Agree with SN+ Members getting advertising FREE.

But would like to see some sort of Pay As You Go idea for NON SN+ Members, i recently advertised my scoob on the For Sale Forum, within 30mins it was on page two. However, it did sell and it was thanks to SN that it did. However, i would have glady paid for advertising space if required.

I think the key to revenue is to generate more SN+ Members and that means offering more or better features and benefits.

Here are a couple off the top of my head.

1. Can advertise in For Sale
2. Can post pics/links
3. name@scoobynet.co.uk email account
4. Picture uploader, linked with 2.

I think the more features/benefits you can create (non expensive), the more appealing SN+ Membership will be.

Obviously these are just my opionions but the above would have persuaded ME to obtain SN+ Membership but every1 has different opioning and i think this thread is a great idea.

Paul aka Boro