Improvement to quality of content?

[Dani]

I've been on a mission lately to improve the quality of content, especially within the dev forums. This means more native English speakers, more professionals, fewer homework cheaters, etc. Is anyone starting to see any improvements?

[Nick Evan]

I haven't seen an airplane-reservation thread in a few weeks, so something might be working :) I also have less code-tag-adding to do in the last 2 (?) weeks or so.

[jonsca]

Purely based on the C/C++/C# forums, nothing drastic yet, honestly.

[Narue]

Dare I ask what you've been doing to improve quality?

[Dani]

A lot of changes to my SEO and SEM strategies to heavily focus on US/UK/CAN developers in the 25-40 age bracket. Especially in the Web Dev section.

[WaltP]

How about Aussies and Kiwi's? They speak English (sorta)... :icon_smile:

[Dani]

No, because it's nearly impossible to monetize Australian traffic. All the major ad agencies want to target either North America or the UK. Therefore, from a business perspective, it doesn't make sense to put money and time and resources into those damn Aussies.

[diafol]

> damn Aussies

Egad! Steady on.

Well, there goes a few thousand members. :(

Can't say I've noticed much on the php forum. Still high %age of first timers (or seems to be).

[Dani]

> Egad! Steady on.
You realize I was joking, right?

[jonsca]

> Egad! Steady on.
You realize I was joking, right?

I was offended and I'm not even Australian (at least I hope not) ;)

[~s.o.s~]

> You realize I was joking, right?

You realize that given your position/designation on this site, you can be easily quoted out of context, right? :-)

Anyways, on the topic of improved content, I do see a reduction in the "plz gimme codez and projectz", more first timers using code tags and a lot of new faces to keep the forum alive in case the old-timers decide to ditch it i.e. looking good from a beginner forum view point. What I feel is actually lacking is "good" non-student questions and members who can answer those. It still feels as though 99% of the site members consists of students/aspiring programmers and only 1% who actually earn their bread/butter by programming, but then again I'm sure you are aware of this. Not saying that there isn't anyone who can answer those, just that such niche questions normally drop off the radar of members for reasons unknown.

I'd be more interested in hearing the views of non-moderating staff contributing members since they are the ones who spend the most time in the respective forums.

[diafol]

> You realize I was joking, right?

I'm not daft, my response was as tongue-in-cheek as I hope your initial post was. :)

I have to say, from my point of view, the draw for DW is the fact that it's very catholic (small 'c'), where beginners, hobbyists and hard-core real programmers all get together. This can't be said for some of the other 'go away if you haven't been programming for 100 years' forums. Those sites are 2-a-penny. I reckon DW has a clear advantage here. However, enticing more mature 'proper' programmers wouldn't be a bad thing.

[chrishea]

On the PHP forum there still seems to be a high % of first time and newbie posters asking the same tired questions that have been answered a million times before. I don't see too much that is really interesting for a more mature and experienced developer. The forums do provide a learning opportunity but you have to wade through a lot of basic stuff to find the odd gem. If you want to attract experienced / professional developers, I don't think that the current level of questions will do it. I think that experienced developers are also more self-sufficient so they probably don't use the Forums to ask questions nearly as much as newbies. There would probably be some benefit in having featured articles on more advanced topics.

Humor doesn't always come across well, especially when it is the tongue-in-cheek variety. Can't have the Aussies and Kiwis getting upset.

[jon.kiparsky]

Speaking of "humor doesn't always come across well" -
there are mature and experienced php developers? Who knew? :)

[Dani]

I agree that the more experienced programmers tend to rely less on forums than the newbies do. I also agree with doing other types of articles and tutorials geared towards the more experienced dev, which is why we have content such as this recent product review: http://www.daniweb.com/reviews/review349689.html

[jon.kiparsky]

You might also look at places where developers are already hanging out. thedailywtf.com, for example, seems to get a lot of working developers - at least, the comments there show a lot more experience with the technology, if not a lot more maturity. :)