How To Make Dani Web The Best Forum That Attracts Newbies & Earns Oldbies!

<sarcasm>Brilliant idea</sarcasm>

So, you end up with a support site where the quality of the answers that people see depends on how much someone pays to place them at the front of the queue. Way to go to ensure the best answers are provided and visible. Not.

Why bother actually putting time into answering a question, often a complex question, if someone else can come along and pay you a couple of bucks to put a crappy answer up ahead of you which, in all likliehood, isn't going to help the OP as much?

Here's the death blow to your grand scheme: most (all) the people who provide the most help do so not to make money, but to help others. I know it will come as a shock, but not everyone is driven by greed...

@UI

Something similar and probably more sane exists, see https://bountify.co/

There you can see each solution, unless the parts decide to use private messages. It works like this:

• the requester sets a bounty, the range goes from 1 to 100 USD (before it allowed up to 500 USD) and it will stay active for 7 days
• the requester pays the bounty upfront, on this stage he also pays a small fee to the website
• if users decide to reply they usually use gist.github.com or pastebin & co. to share their solutions
• the requester can discuss with each participant to fix the solutions
• if the requester is happy with one of the provided solutions he/she can assign the bounty to the author
• at this point the winner can receive the bounty

An example: https://bountify.co/help-converting-a-flat-json-file-into-hierarchical-json-schema-to-use-with-d3-treemap

If the requester does not choose a winner, or the winner does not withdraw the prize, after seven days the bounty will go to charity. Right now there is only one available, last time I checked there where a couple more, I think there was EFF also.

They have been up for the last five years and receive 3-4 requests per week.

Most of the time bounties are very low but people answer because they want to compete or try to solve the requests. However, I think this does not fit Daniweb and in general, forums.

If you think your idea can work, then put it up and see what you get.

If you add my suggestions, I'd stick to your forum like a glue and ask as many questions on php as I can and ask for as many code snippets or full scripts as I can and fill-in as many cpa/ppd survey forms as I can just to get hold of the code samples.

These ideas are old, tried and their use already discussed and published. There is nothing really new here (as cereal points out). Not trying to be dismissive and its not personal.

As HG states, the guys here at DW volunteer help - for FREE. DW used to have a "bounty" of sorts where you'd earn $ for solved threads and positive comments etc. Contributors didn't care about it. The vast majority of us never claimed it and it fed back into DW.

Maybe Dani feels differently?

Don't let unregistered post or vote. Or, atleast don't let them vote. (This'll attract them to register).

Unregistered users currently cannot vote or post, and have not been able to for the past 15 years.

Make it easy to signup. Signup with their facebook, twitter, gmail, etc. accs.

You can currently signup through Facebook, Twitter or Google+.

You've seen on WP blogs that when you want to comment, you atleast need to fill-in your email in the form. Make it like this for the unregistered. They must atleast fill-in their email (during posting) and click the link (that gets emailed to them) in order to confirm the post and confirm their email and to confirm they're not bots. (I'm a bot builder, by the way). That's it. Don't bother asking them for their name, etc. Otherwise, it'd be the same as registering.

Upon posting, you can do one-click signup through FB/Twitter/Google+.

To foil bots or deter spammers, make it an obligation that, posters must fill-in captcha.

We have an advanced CAPTCHA in place that does not even require people to fill in anything. Bots were a problem here about eight years ago when we were using vBulletin, but not anymore. We have not had a problem with bots for a very long time.

Allow thread openers or OPs to list their cpm banners on the top of all their threads. That way, they can earn when each time their threads load on others' screens. Don't let every Tom, Dick & Harry list their banners like this. Or, a lot of people would open silly threads asking silly questions just to attract cpm earnings.

This works really well for Webmaster forums where the vast majority of forum members already have AdSense accounts and are familiar with the configuration required to the whitelisted domains in their Google profile to make this work. DaniWeb just doesn't have the right audience / demographic for this.

When a person asks a question and when the answerers answer back, the answers won't be listed/ranked according to first come first serve but whoever pays the most (bid for answer listing).

Doesn't it make more sense for answers to be listed in order of most helpful? Why would people PAY for the privilege to help other people? And, even more so, why would they try to outbid each other to pay for the privilege to spend their free time helping others? I can see this working in a marketplace-like setting, but not in a discussion forum where everyone volunteers their time to help others.

Newbies can ask for code snippets as if they're hiring olbies on freelancers.com, etc.

Still not quite understanding why people would PAY to provide answers to other people's homework questions??

Motivate newbies to ask questions

Yes, this is something we definitely struggle with.

Motivate oldbies/experienced to answer questions by fight over backwards for their answers/replies/posts to get better ranking. Thus, pushing below their competitions' answers so the OP only sees their answers and answers of a few others near their answer positions.

This is NOT something we struggle with. In general, people with the knowledge to answer questions posted on DaniWeb do so. If a question is posted on DaniWeb, and someone knows the answer, then as long as the question was asked nicely and intelligently and respectfully, you can bet it will be answered. Getting people to answer questions is not a problem here, thankfully.

If you add my suggestions, I'd stick to your forum like a glue and ask as many questions on php as I can

If you ask as many questions on PHP as you can, then as long as your questions are asked politely and respectfully, you'll get responses. You should want to ask questions because you'll know you'll be getting great answers to your questions, because people are volunteering their time to help you.

Ok. I have LIKED every single one of you's post. Even Diafol's. ;)
Frankly, I did not think Dani would bother replying. Thanks for replying. This is encouraging. I now feel confident that my future suggestions wuld be taken seriously (providing ofcourse they are good).
Well, I did say that, my idea is not fully developed yet. Just thought of these on the spot (so to speak) when I was reading some thread where others were complaining about paying to get their questions answered. I thought, I might aswell see if I can find another way to help the forum get an income so questioners' don't have to pay (be it to get answers faster or whatever) as that puts members off from asking questions and if nobody asks enough questions on a forum then it dies away. And so, wanted to help the forum by seeing if I can come-up with a solution because if the solutiuon works then the model can be copied globally (even on my own future forums).
I was hoping others would chisel my ideas off of flaws here and there on the corners and improve on the idea.

Cereal, thanks for that bountify link. I had forgotten about that site. Read it on some top 20 or 50 list once upon a time or twice or thrice upon a time.

Anyway, since, this community has bothered to atleast to read my half-cooked ideas and bothered to to give some serious thought and feed-back then I will keep this thread at the back of my head (subconsciously) and see if I can improve on the ideas myself.

My main concept is not to have the money as a barrier to getting what you want.
A lot of people would want to hire freelancers to get code snippets for but most of the time the "I don't have enough money/budget" reason stands in the way.
Want to rid this barrier so people can ask as much as they want without having to check the metre. And, the experienced can answer as much as they want or can bear or more than their usual volunteering time. As you know, nobody can volunteer 8hrs per day. Hence, the incentive to get the questioner to fill-in ppd/cpa forms (better to spend time filling in survey forms than spend money) that will earn the answerer money so it influences the answerer to answer more questions by spending more time than they usaually would spend during volunteering.
That way, more code samples would be available online and more people (with less budgets) won't have to google 5hrs per day searching for the perfect and rare "free code samples" provided by volunteers or go empty handed.

Yes, this concept or business model, I reckon would work on fiverr.com or bountify.co type of sites. On commercial sites. Maybe not on forums. On commercial sites, the answerers would be willign to bid for their answers placements so that they attract the questioner's attention to their answer and link and commercial profile. (Upsells can be made later-on when the questioner is on the answerer's site. So, the bid for placement is sort of a tactic to attract upsells). Ah swell! This concept is more likely to really work on freelancers.com type of site. Don't you agree JamesCherril and HappyGeek?
But, I am not a quitter when it comes to solving problems and I ain't quitting now. I want Diafol and JamesCherril to take-off their hats to me one day. Lol! ;)

And yes, Diafol, I do know volunteers prowl the forums. I mean, you ain't paying Happygeek to answer your questions. Now, are you ? I can see that clearly very well. Thank you!

Ok, since getting people to answer questions is not the problem in this forum but getting people to ask the questions (haven't I been asing questions too often ? But that's only 1 person, right ?, which does not really count) then I will see if I can come-up with an idea to attract questioners then. And, I expect fair criticism so my idea gets shaped into something tough at the end. Foolproof.
But first, let me see how much other members of this forum can cook-up.

Thanks!

And yes, Diafol, I do know volunteers prowl the forums

Yes, that being the whole point of forums. Free help, based on the good will of contributors.

Why would people PAY for the privilege to help other people? And, even more so, why would they try to outbid each other to pay for the privilege to spend their free time helping others?

That'd only work if the people you want to "answer" questions are spammers and other nefarious types who make money from the "answer".
Which'd inevitably lead to "answers" becoming little more than links to shady websites.

Having people pay to post questions might be a somewhat better idea as it'd at least get rid of most of the "do my homework for me and do it now because I'm more important than all of you combined and all your jobs" type of questions, but it'd also make the site utterly irrelevant for actual real questions as there are free sites like StackOverflow out there already.

Yes, this is something we definitely struggle with.

Nah, we struggle getting to ask meaningful questions, rather than just copy-pasting their homework assignments.

Why not focus solely on newbies?
Not the homework solver seeking kind, but the kind that says I'm new on php or python or whatever and I have this or that issue, here is my code. I have the idea, newbies get overwhelmed by the kind of questions they see here and they think, that's all too high or ambitious for me and as a cosequence won't pose a question.
Some kind of cozy corner(No need for pampering!), but some place where they can feel safe and not have to fear sometimes harsh answers.
Well, call it my two pennies worth of advise.

By solely focusing on newbies, the more experienced people (those who volunteer their time to answer) get easily and quickly bored answering the same newbie questions over and over again. A lot of the reason why people volunteer is to challenge their minds by helping other people with interesting problems. We lost a lot of members over the past few years because they got tired of asnswering the same beginner-level questions over and over again.

Also, it's incredibly difficult to tailor your audience just to a specific niche beginner level, but not people who are in school and need help with their homework ... and not too advanced either, and just this but not that, etc.etc.

Having people pay to post questions might be a somewhat better idea as it'd at least get rid of most of the "do my homework for me and do it now because I'm more important than all of you combined and all your jobs" type of questions, but it'd also make the site utterly irrelevant for actual real questions as there are free sites like StackOverflow out there already.

Well that's more in line with that we do, which is allow people to ask questions for free, but ask them for a donation for featured status.

Frankly, I did not think Dani would bother replying. Thanks for replying.

Why would I not have replied? I reply to every single thread in the feedback forum, and take absolutely every suggestion that anyone makes seriously :) Polished or not, thank you for your feedback :)

Yes, this concept or business model, I reckon would work on fiverr.com or bountify.co type of sites. On commercial sites. Maybe not on forums.

Yes, that's the point I made in my last post.

Ok, since getting people to answer questions is not the problem in this forum but getting people to ask the questions

We all answered you, afterall, didn't we :)

Nah, we struggle getting to ask meaningful questions, rather than just copy-pasting their homework assignments.

Nonono. We struggle with getting people to ask questions in general. There are just far fewer questions being asked in general nowadays, so the crappy questions are significantly more pronounced, and they have therefore become a bigger problem. However, I think we have an overall bigger problem getting people to ask questions than answer them. If there were a significant amount of questions posted daily, even with a similar ratio of good/bad, all the good questions would have someone to answer them. Our problem is not that people are asking all these great questions and we don't have any volunteers.

well, it's a bit of both. Many of us gave up wading through the platitude of "do my homework for me" questions to find the few worth answering and stopped answering altogether.
We come back once in a while to see if things improve though.

There has to be a balance, a way to educate the homework kiddos as to why they should do their own homework and ask meaningful questions about details rather than dump their entire assignments and wait until someone gives them a prechewed cookie cutter solution they can hand in to their teachers as their own...

That's my point, though. If there were tons of people asking tons of great questions, we wouldn't have a tough time convincing the answerers.

We've been struggling with getting lots of quality askers. That's been the problem.

If we had lots and lots and lots of quality answerers right now, and nothing else, our situation wouldn't change at all.

If we had lots and lots and lots of quality askers right now, I have confidence they would get answered, and our problems would be over :)

Do you propose answerers ask some "quality" questions to which they probably know the answers but that may stretch fellow answerers? It may sound a bit feeble but short of attracting these questioners which we've failed to do over the last few years, I'm wondering about alternatives.

Do you propose answerers ask some "quality" questions to which they probably know the answers but that may stretch fellow answerers?

No, because we are all about building a community, and community is made up of people and personalities. If people around here earned a reputation for posting questions they already knew the answer to, we'd just earn a reputation as a community of being fake.

Answerers would start to feel like they were wasting their time helping with even the interesting questions, for fear the askers already knew the answers and they weren't really helping.

Right now the answerers don't have the patience to answer the crappy questions, but we don't really have a big problem getting answerers to answer the interesting questions. If answerers felt they were wasting their time and being tricked into helping people who didn't need help, it would really hurt morale.

You know what would definitely help though? We are not just a Q&A site but a discussion community ... Start interesting discussions about things you're interested or passionate in. Ask questions you really don't know the answer to. Start interesting topics that you actually do find interesting.

Well, let's say I know a few things and I may call myself an 'answerer', but in the mean time I'm also a seeker of answers.
See my last post.
And diafol(devil as he is :) ) will tell, "He must have known the answer to his question", well I didn't, and rproffitt helped me out here!
I knew you could move with the arrow keys through a textbox, but I did not know you could do it in say a VS editor! Learned already lots of things on this site!

Answerers need to stop thinking of themselves as "answerers" and more as equal members of a community ... technology is constantly evolving, and no one can claim to know everything. Everyone has things they can learn from others.

I'm using the August newsletter to encourage people to post a question that has always bugged them and they have never got a good answer to. I'm framing it as giving the DaniWeb experts a challenge to tax their brains. Hopefully it might stir up a few interesting posts.

Dani,

It seems ddanbe is having problems with Diafol too!
Dani, why don't you checkout my profile to see how many threads I have opened asking how many technical questions on php and then check who has replied to my threads in what manner and behaviour ? That will (no doubt) show you that I was a regular contributor (questioner) and I was getting answered regularly until some of the members found out that I have been asking the same questions on other forums too and expected me to apologise for not revealing this to them. When I refused to apologise arguing that I have not broken your TOS and if it was a big crime here to ask the same questions that have been asked elsewhere or if it was a big crime to ask the same questions elsewhere which have already been asked here then that should have been made clear in your TOS. I gave a fair answer and found your mods and senior members grouping up against me and making silly remarks or answers trying to drive me away.
Do check my latest threads and you will see they hardly got any replies/answers apart from down votes. And you expect newbies to ask questions on this forum without getting offended ? When I refused to apologise, JamesCherill tried banning me which HappyGeek overruled (if that is the right word). What kind of a mod is JamesCherril who tries to appease one senior member (AssertNull) and tries banning another (newbie regular contributor who never broke your TOS) ?
When I found my latest threads getting no answers but downvotes, I wrongfully suspected HappyGeek to be one of the downvoters. But does that give the admin the right to call a newbie regular contributor "an idiot" and constantly "troll" ?
If you PM me Dani, I will give you link to another forum, where I have asked the same questions and opened threads under the exact same titles and with the exact same content (word for word) and the members, mods and admins over there know I am and have been asking the same questions on other forums (like this one). But guess what ? They still reply to my threads politely and without giving any abuse or name calling. No cold shoulder.
I tell you what, if you PM me now then I will give you the links to my threads over there where you can check them out to see for yourself how well I have been treated over there. And then you can do a search on your own forum for the same titled threads and see how well or bad your staff (volunteer or paid) have answered my questions. How they have behaved. How they have ridiculed me time and time again. Non stop! How they have given me the cold shoulder time and time again. And then compare their behaviour and the behaviour of the members at the other forum.
If I was really a bad guy and a "troll" as your admin HappyGeek puts it then don't you think I would get the same treatment in that other forum where mods and admins tell me I am a "troll". If I was really a bad and rude guy then won't I get told this on the other forum ? Infact, my threads in the other forum (and 8 others) are an exact twins (word for word) of all my threads in this forum. But the replies and the behaviour of repliers/answerers differ greatly!
Diafol, JamesCherril and HappyGeek I am not pleased with. Their behaviour are downright bullying.
I'll go easy on HappyGeek since he did have the sense to overrule JamesCherril biased and illegal banning of my account and he only went beserk when I wrongfully accused him of downvoting my posts. But still, your members would make mistakes and that does not give your admins the right and it should not give them the excuse to call your members "idiots" and "trolls". Especially, the new ones.
Newbies would always feel excited when they hop aboard a new ship. They will always write a little more compared to the seniors and older members. They expect encouragement from the seniors or discouragement (if that is the right thing to do but in a polite and proper manner where they don't feel they're getting the kick at the backside). Not expect to find themselves called trolls simply because they wrote a "little too much" to your admin's liking.
I can understand if members behave immature. Member conduct is out of your hands. But come on! Mods and admins ganging up against a newbie regular contributor should not be excused. And from the looks of ddanbe's post, your admin Diafol is a downright accuser. If I remember correctly, when Diafol criticised one of my website venture ideas, he asked me what drugs I was on or something of that sort. At another time, he asked "what regime I live in". And so on. Just plain insults one after the other. For his information, neither do I drink alcohol nor smoke drugs or tobacco. And, I'm also a citizen of an "English" speaking country. All this may come as a surprise to him and a bit too much for him to take in one take. Therefore, you may pass on this reply of mine yourself to your enquisiting staff, if that would help him get a lesser shock than he;d get had I told him myself.
ddanbe and I have complained against Diafol. We have made it clear why we think you are losing questioners. Time to change your staff. Else, watch your forum's prestige take a further dive. Your choice. Google is indexing all those forums where I have become the victim of your staff. And the waybackmachine.com is going to keep those pages on record for ever.
All those threads they have contributed in the beginning before behaving irrational, I was going to add their contributions onto my php scripts and then license them out under the GPL license. On the README file, I was going to mention all the forums and all the members' profiles who have contributed in the works. Along with the forum thread links. I was going to do all that, so that the websites that do use my scripts aknowledge your forum and the contributors. But now I am thinking, why bother do all that ? What good will it do ? It will do more harm than good. Users will flock by to your forum and find me getting ridiculed. My prestige might or might not take a dive but I can assure you that, your forum's reputation would definitely take a dive.

I am not going to dictate to you how to run your own forum. But isn't there a saying that, you should not let the boys think:
"She maybe the boss but only on paper and stage.
The puppet we control and tame.
She can't manage without us and so she'll dance at our every call. Running to our rescue hither and thither, now and then.
But, we're the big shots who really run things around here. Run things our way. The way we want, the way we please. We pull the strings behind the curtained stage."

No offence but ponder well.

Take care.

ddanbe,

I am happy with rprofitt myself. Never sarcastic, like the others (Diafol, JamesCherril, HappyGeek).

Maybe he should have been the admin!

"went beserk"

ROFL.

I apologised for calling you an idiot, even though you continued to behave like one. I will not, however, apologise for calling you a troll (see below) while you act like one.

Members here have tried to help you, but you have consistently ignored the advice given. That you have a 21% post quality score has nothing to do with some imagined vendetta, indeed 10 members have downvoted a total of 38 of your 180 posts. Hardly sounds like people ganging up on you as you suggest.

You are quick to jump to conclusions, such as that ddanbe is upset with diafol (if you actually read his post you would see that he really isn't at all) and then state them as fact. You are slower to accept people pointing out your mistakes.

Some losers go to every one of my threads, like low lives, and give minus votes without making any posts. So, what does that do to me ? Does it harm me in any way ? No ! The losers have forgotten that this forum is not "God Place" or "the only place" to get answers. It just makes me laugh unstoppable when I think how much some members can stoop low to. I'll make more threads just to watch them sneek-up on my threads like thieves to my garbage can. It's like me pressing the button and watch them drag themselves out of their rat holes and come and smell the cheese in my trash can. In a sense, I sort of get my slaves to come-out from whatever rubbish hole they were in and bother to contribute to my threads rather than see it get no contribution atall. Ha! Ha! What a bunch of low life slaves!

HappyGeek,

What is your definition of a troll, may I ask ? And no, I will not google it because there are 10 types according to one article. And, I can very much say the same about you and the downvoting gangs here that they all atleast belong to one type of troll that I can see clearly.
And, what advice exactly have I ignored of your downvoting members ?
And, just why have they been downvoting my posts without any explanation why they are doing it ? This is creepy behaviour on their part. Grudge bearers.

Like I said before, whatever threads I have opened in this forum, I have opened in 9 more forums and none have downvoted my threads but here. I won't claim that I have not and will not face trouble makers in other forums but I can claim that not a single post in other forums have been downvoted. You get downvotes in this forum all for nothing.
You people are killing whatever reputation is left off this forum.
And one day, you will all wake-up. Ofcourse.
And grow up. Indeed.

I don't linger in this forum to get answers. I am very much pleased elsewhere. I'm just hanging around to share codes here that I am learning and getting from elsewhere as a sort of repayment for the help I did get once upon a time before some of you started showing your true colours.

Well, if you're not going to apologise for calling me a troll then atleast I can admire you for not wanting to apologise for something you think you did not do wrong and apologised for something you knew you did wrong.
But, would it not have been better for you to introduce the "troll" terminology to me by making it clear the definition and why people are labelled as trolls. What is acceptable and what not. You should have given a warning first before starting labelling people's action with a silly sounding word like "troll". You need to change your attitude towards your members. Approach them in a polite manner and explain things to them without offending them. If after that, they still continue then no one can blame you for calling them "troll".
Not everyone that heads this way are old internet users. You should not jump to conclusions that they are. A lot of people would be new who are not aware of these internet or your forum terminologies. It does not hurt you to approach them in a civilised manner at first before you start wielding your clubs and pounding on their heads. Else, to a newcomer or visitor (outsiders), your forum staff would seem like barbarians.
Ponder well what I said.

No need for you to start another endless bickering apart from answer my simple questions without giving any aggravation this way.

Take care!

The up/down voting mechanism is anonymous by design. It enables members to see at a glance if a particular post is deemed to be helpful or unhelfpul, is liked or not, by the community as a whole. The 'wisdom of crowds' approach.

If someone feels strongly enough that they want to leave a comment with their vote, then it becomes a reputational vote and that anonymity goes.

As for defining a troll, you did it yourself. In your own words: "I sort of get my slaves to come-out from whatever rubbish hole they were in and bother to contribute to my threads rather than see it get no contribution atall. Ha! Ha! What a bunch of low life slaves!"

In Internet slang, a troll (/ˈtroʊl/, /ˈtrɒl/) is a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting quarrels or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory,[1] extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the intent of provoking readers into an emotional response[2] or of otherwise disrupting normal, on-topic discussion,[3] often for the troll's amusement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll

Such a waste of your talents.

JamesCherril,

And just where exactly did I do all that, that so-called "trolls" do ?
I'd like to see the very sentences or paragraphs that did all that which HappyGeek claims. So far, he has failed to prove it. So, you might aswell help your partner out. ;)

Such a waste of your talents.<<

You can't find your own faults but others can. So, if you're wise and not too much into self-loving yourself then best get feed-back from them regarding your "shortcomings" (if any). No need to see yourself in the mirror. And no, the mirror won't break either, if you do. Lol!

There are 2 kinds of people in the world. One type do not intend to stir-up emotions everywhere they go but they do it out of ignorance. The less awareing people.
The other type do (your so-called trolls). And, you guys think I belong to this group. But you all are very wrong and I will prove it one day when I have the time.
Actually, there is another type too. The 3rd type, which I encounter everyday and nearly go to blows with them now and then here and there. They are so dumb or ignorant or arrogant (or a mixture of these) that they don't know when they offend anyone. It simply does not "register" in their heads that, what they are doing is making people angry around them. I have problems with this kind offline every single day now.
Now, don't tell me I belong to this last group because I will prove you all very very wrong one day that you will get embarrassed. ;)

Btw, don't forget to DownVote my post. It's obvious you have been DownVote them whenever I make a post.

As I understand it, his response to the troll label is "it's a silly sounding word so it doesn't apply to me." A Trump-worthy counter-argument if I ever heard one.

But you all are very wrong and I will prove it one day when I have the time.

So you have time to write blob, but no time to prove something. Contradictio in terminis as I see that.
Ignoramus eum!

EDIT: I don't even find it worth to neg rep you

I read the Self-Driving Car thread and a few of Happy Geek's threads and decided it was time to try this place out again. It has some good content. I still think it has some potential, but Dani is going to have to pivot in one direction or another. The direction she chooses is up to her, obviously, but you can't cater to everyone. My personal opinion is that Google cannot tank a good forum no matter how hard it tries because when you look for a forum in order to be a long-standing regular member and share thoughts with other people, you LOOK for a forum that you are comfortable with. Yes, you look using Google, but I'm in one of two modes when forum browsing. I either have a one-time technical question and have no intention of sticking around past a single thread or I'm looking for a place to hang out. For the first situation, Google's algorithm will have a significant effect, but really, odds are that I won't even post because most strictly technical questions have been asked and answered already. For the second one, it won't. I'll be a "newbie" for a while and if I like the forum, I'll stick around and become an "oldbie".

As far as oldbies "earning", it's hard to imagine that Daniweb or any other forum could possibly pay me a competitive market rate or even minimum wage for my time when I give quality answers on a technical programming topic that I am competent in. Apparently Daniweb paid people for answers for a while. I never got any money and I didn't try to get any money, but I'll go out on a limb and say that no competent programmer on Daniweb has ever had money as a motive when answering questions. They might possibly create a portfolio and upload a resume on Daniweb for the purposes of creating a good reputation and getting a job via networking and get money that way, but directly getting money via their answers, no way.

Thus a question for you, UI, one that will require some thought and require you to look at things from a perspective other than your own. We'll see if you choose to answer this question seriously. I hope you will. Let's see if you are actually interested in a real exchange of ideas. For the sake of this post, I will come at it from the point of view that you are NOT a troll. The question(s) are as follows...

1) Given that competent programmers like James Cherrill, Diafol, Reverend Jim, Happy Geek, myself, and others are not answering technical questions from newbies with financial gain as our motive/reason, why do you think we take the time to answer these questions when we could get paid for our time elsewhere? Please note that I see no evidence that YOU have answered anyone else's technical questions, so you'll need to think about this one and look at it from a different perspective. This isn't about your "right" to post on as many forums as you choose or about you at all.

2) Depending on your answer to question 1, do you still think your suggestions in this thread are good suggestions?

3) Depending on your answer to question 1, how do you think it feels to spend a half hour answering a technical question on Daniweb and then find out that the exact same question was asked and answered on ten other forums without your knowledge?

4) If the answer to number 3 is "It feels like the poster is wasting my time", does this make you, the question asker, happy?

If the answer to number 4 is "Yes", then you should be banned IMO, regardless of whether you technically broke any rules (and the rules should be updated to make trolling and cross-posting WITHOUT disclosing it against the rules -- I don't have as big of an issue with cross-posting as long as it is disclosed). I don't know whether folks who enjoy wasting other peoples' time are trolls or if there is some other definition and I don't care. Frankly trolling is like pornography to me. I can't define it, but I know it when I see it.

This post was longer than I intended, but I think worthwhile. Here is an opportunity for you, UI, if you genuinely feel you've been falsely labeled as a troll and it bothers you, to give your point of view. Please note the lack of personal accusations in my post and respond in kind. If you take the time to answer my questions maturely, I will read them and re-evaluate my opinion of you. I have two requests. Please stay on topic and please try to honestly put yourself in the shoes of someone taking time out of their busy days to answer your technical questions and answer from that perspective. Thanks.

EDIT: I had some problems with the formatting of an ordered list. It wasn't parsing correctly, so I hard-coded it. It's a little harder to read, but now at least the numbers match the number of bullets.

When I refused to apologise arguing that I have not broken your TOS and if it was a big crime here to ask the same questions that have been asked elsewhere or if it was a big crime to ask the same questions elsewhere which have already been asked here then that should have been made clear in your TOS.

Our TOS does say "Do not post the same question multiple times" ... However, you're right in that the rule is more so aimed at the same person asking the same question on DaniWeb more than once. It's not really a rule to not ask the same question across multiple forums because each forum is comprised of different people and discussions and conversations can go in very different ways and approached from different angles. It's sort of asking two different groups of friends for advice and engaging in two entirely different discussions about it. As AssertNull pointed out, the big problem with doing this is that your question might have been answered to your satisfaction in one place, and you didn't let the folks in the other place know. My suggestion is that, when cross-posting across different sites, you link to the other threads so that everyone can see what help you got there already and maybe approach the problem from a different angle. This is just my humble opinion. Others here may disagree with me about this strategy.

And then you can do a search on your own forum for the same titled threads and see how well or bad your staff (volunteer or paid) have answered my questions.

They are not my paid staff and I don't rule how they think or what they choose to say. We have some basic rules that we ask everyone to follow, but members here are not DaniWeb staff, and their posts are their own, and not necessarily reflective of myself or DaniWeb LLC. Also, diafol is neither a mod nor an admin.

All that being said, I'd prefer to move on from the troll debate. It's not a constructive use of my bandwidth ;)

My personal opinion is that Google cannot tank a good forum no matter how hard it tries because when you look for a forum in order to be a long-standing regular member and share thoughts with other people, you LOOK for a forum that you are comfortable with.

Google can tank any website that relies on Google for traffic. ALL Q&A tech support sites rely on Google for 90%+ of their traffic.

As Dani states I am neither mod nor admin. I am therefore more at ease calling things as they are and therefore not representing Daniweb. I helped you over and over again spending precious hours of my time. You were dismissive and demanding. OK you do not have to take my advice but when other seasoned programmers, much more advanced than me tell you the same and you come back with the same stuff, it suggests that something is wrong somewhere. Remember that we are volunteers and there is no compunction on your part to interact with Daniweb. Often we find noobs with limited skills, huge ego and boundless enthusiasm turn from annoyances to useful members. This is usually preceded by a coin drop or Eureka moment by the individual. Unfortunately this does not seem the case here. I am truly sorry that I have been unable to help you. I pride myself on being fair handed and will go the extra mile to help those who genuinely want to learn. See my stats and you'll see all the threads I've helped solve and up votes. These are meaningless in themselves but check some of them out. I am not the monster you portray. If dd had an issue with me he'd come right out an say so. We have a long history on DW and have a lot of mutual respect.

Diafol,

I am therefore more at ease calling things as they are and therefore not representing Daniweb. - Diafol. <<

That does not mean you should get too cosy with other members to step on their toes and then not say: Sorry.

Anyway, I must give you some credit for your last post. Atleast, you did not use bad tone or be sarcastic as usual. Rude as usual.

I helped you over and over again spending precious hours of my time. You were dismissive and demanding. <<

That part nearly made me laugh out of my skin!
Just what exactly did you spend your hrs upon hrs on giving me advice.

OK you do not have to take my advice but when other seasoned programmers, much more advanced than me tell you the same and you come back with the same stuff, it suggests that something is wrong somewhere.<<

As for me not listening to senior members' advices. I'd like you to point-out just what exactly I did not listen to.
Because this is not the only forum I roam around to. And other forums don't have a problem with me claiming "I don't listen to their advices". Infact, 3 new forums 2 nghts ago gave me 3 different tests to run and send them back the results which I did. gave me more and I returned what they asked for. And, you're telling me, I don't listen to the experienced !
I know very well, the lame excuses some guilty so-called "seniors" make when questioned about their own behaviour towards the new-comers. When cornered they cry: "Oh the new guy never listens to us" (and so we now got the license to give him crap). Easy trick in the book. That, does not work with me.

Anyway, since you have wised-up a little and managed to apologise in your own strange and peculiar way (yes, your last post was sort of an apology) then I might aswell get you out of my head and move-on with my life. Got better things to do in life than quarrel with somebody, who's probably just a nother teen. I should know better. Just don't resort to low life behavior DownVoting Posts without giving any reasons why you do it.

Take care!