Jul 21 2008
Has Digital Point Forums Lost Its Appeal?
If you have been around a while as a webmaster, I am sure that you have heard about Digital Point Forums. It is the largest known webmaster forum. It was once one of the best market places for webmasters. Is it losing its appeal?
In the past few months many changes have been made. Some are good and some are causing problems with doing any business on the forums. There have been many new moderators added and some are so young that they lack the maturity to run a forum of that size. The forum is running over with spammers and scammers and the sad part is that some of the scammers are long time members who seem to be protected by the forum leaders. Threads started about this member are closed and many people have been scammed.
The rules have been updated to include a 7 day ban for bumping threads. Of course, the general chat forum has tons of threads that have nothing to do with webmaster related topics and they can be bumped over and over. They say it is to clean up the market place but the market place is beyond repair. If you post an offer, it is quickly buried or overrun by people willing to work so cheap that a member from an Industrialized nation would starve with those rates.
The freebie section is a joke because it includes anything from free up to $5 deals. This is not free, it is a joke. Every time this is brought up, the thread is quickly closed with responds like “It ain’t going to happen” or “Only Shawn can change it.”
Shawn is the owner of the forum and he only pops in now and then and seems to have no interest in members’ concerns. That is sad to see since DP was once the greatest webmaster forum on the Internet.
The rules seem to change all the time and there can be stickies found all over the forum but not consolidated in one convenient place. We are told to report violations of the rules. However, it depends on which moderator you get rather it will be dealt with. Shannon (Smyrl on the forum) is the only moderator that can be relied on to handle issues the same all the time.
I am not trying to trash the forum because there are some great members on there. I have done a lot of business on DP since I joined in the spring of 2006. I am just expressing my concerns and the concerns of many members on the forum. I have tried to express those concerns on the forum and the threads are shut down quickly. I would love to see DP restored to a webmaster forum of high quality. It is sad to see General Chat garbage threads getting hundreds of replies while honest webmaster related topics may not get any. Is DP still a webmaster forum?
The problems have drawn me to ask the question to both myself and other members, has Digital Point Forums lost its appeal for webmasters?
Utah SEO…
Great Post! I always enjoy the content on this site….
Just like you said - it’s becoming more and more a playground for spammers and scammers. Veteran members are getting infractions and even banned for some stupid reasons.
Quality of discussions is dropping day by day. I used to have DP open in one of the browser windows at all times but now I visit it may be once a month mostly when I need to outsource some work for cheap.
I don’t know if there is a way up from current status for DP forums… May be this trend was the main reason why John Scott sold his v7n portal together with forum…
I think the reason is mostly the new generation of web masters (ok, let me say web site owners instead) which I coin the term msn generation. They are after quick money to replace their cellphones.
Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong in getting rich quickly. However, it is a fact (usually overlooked) that few will make it and this they do not accept.
@unguided, you make some valid points. There are lots of threads started each day asking how to create the get rich quick sites. It is all about quantity not quality.
@webmaster den, I sure hope there is a way up but I am becoming less of a a believer that the forum will improve. I think the money blinded Shawn to the true purpose of the forum or it was the lack of hands on.
I have to admit, I’ve been a lowly lurker at DP for ages now, I’m not even sure if I ever got so far as to register an account even. But it was one of those places I would frequently visit to see what was going on in the land of online marketing, etc, and usually, I would take away *something* of value from each trip. Over the last few weeks I’ve been getting back into the marketing side of things, and visiting there once more… and I find it just seems a whole let less, enriching to me then it did a year or so ago. I thought it was just me.
The lurkers are the one that DP needs to attract. Without new quality members the forum will die. I hope it will approve but the outlook is bleak right now.
Tom, your post is spot on. I’m a new member, I joined early this year.
I’ve noticed that some good threads are raised and commented on. I’ve learnt quite a lot of things, and had questions answered within minutes.
I think too many people are on there just writing garbage, and commenting on threads just for the sake of it. Like you implied, it just doesn’t seem policed correctly.