I Told You So

Well, DDO slowly looks like it's coming back. I don't think i will be using this site when it does come back. I already stopped using debate island bc of this site... but, DDO is my main. I've been a loyal little soldier lol. 

You know what... i just might have to stick around and keep you all out of trouble ;p I've noticed you venturing out into the "popular" threads... where everyone knows each other except of course the cursed "religion people." Lol. I actually like it... the outcasts. I've always adored such a position. But... this site really does move slow... i've always been the 'in the fast lane' type of guy.

.. Well the place isn't even finished yet, guys. Don't you think decisive conclusions are at least a little premature? 🤔 The site's only been open a few weeks and is still in beta. Mike hasn't even implemented the moderator system yet. So basically none of us have seen what a fully moderated DART looks like. I think we should try to be patient. He's been trying to get the site ready and play babysitter in the meantime, and surprise, job juggling hasn't produced great results. We haven't exactly been making things easy for him.

I don't know what the finished product of DART will look like, but I do know what the finished product of DDO looks like, and I feel no temptation to take it back as my primary. Members have no voice on DDO to reach the Powers That Be. Juggle is cold and distant and obviously not invested in its own site or community. Here we have an admin who's active and listening. And the biggest factor of all for me? On DDO I know there will be zero hope of moderation or order. Here there is definite hope of moderation. It's on the schedule, in fact. 

I don't think you can speed this site up without some good marketing. By marketing i mean placement on searches. When anyone searches a debate site, or even debate... debate.org is usually the first site to pop up. That is what makes it super busy and always getting new people. I mean, i'm a marketing major and i can figure out how to do it for this site, but i do charge quite a bit to do so. Plus, i don't know if he would give me control of his entire site. But that is what is needed. And, since this is a new site... it takes a lot more marketing power to keep it high up on searches. DDO barely even needs a marketing person at this point. They are so OG that other factors keep them on top. So, the SEO work this site would need is pretty crazy and time consuming, and expensive. Best would be to find a marketing kid that just graduated willing to do it for this site for cheap... or learn it on Youtube. I haven't checked... but everything is on youtube.

Is SEO useful?  In my experience 90% of posts and debate on sites like this involve a less than a dozen people.  In reality such sites have small dedicate cliques with only a slow turn over of active membership.

I'm not sure that the format would even work if there were, say, a hundred or even 50 active posters.  

We are a clique a bit like a family - we may not all like each other, but we look forward to crossing swords with our favourite enemies!   Having lots of strangers around isn't part of the deal, especially if they turn out to be 'one hit wonders' who don't invest in making DA (and DDO)was what it is, whatever that is!

I'm not advocating 'cliqueyness'; I am suggesting a degree of cliqueyness is inevitable and - I think - probably something we secretly like.

I think a relatively simple step would be to disallow startig theads until a certain number of posts or a probabtionary period is over.

This is how it is though, the religion forum never really did interact with any of the other forums. You were your own island and now that you're seeing the rest of us for the first time we're unfamiliar faces. Everyone here however knows each other and knows the religious users. You know other religious users and nobody beyond that. 

Also I'd like to point out a few things. First is that this website has no income unlike DDO (at least in the past), ads barely work anymore because of all kinds of ad blockers and it requires lots of traffic anyway to make any money outta it. I'll probably come up with some donation system but I don't imagine it will cover more than hosting services and a couple cups of coffee for me. Also considering that the website mostly operating in the US area, paying for some Google search positioning services out of my own pocket would simply get me broke, so that ain't an option. And the last thing I'd like to mention is that DDO is 10 years old and at some point of time it had lots of people working on it (or so I think, not sure though), whereas this website is 1 month old and there are 1.5 - 2.5 people working on it and not even full time so it's also limiting ...

But if you have any suggestions, I am always open for those :)

Yeah, exactly, I've had only a few months to come up with this site and therefore it lacks lots of fundamental things which I try to cover first (we didn't have posts editing a couple of weeks ago). After this part is done, which can take some time, we'll move to the more exciting features that we can develop together and which cannot be found on the other websites. It's just a matter of time.

That's also not that easy. First of all, Google takes its time to index the website and since it's only 1 month old, it's naive to expect good positioning. 

You know, this is exactly why in general i will likely stick around. You are really involved which is a good thing. My only thing will be how lenient you'll be in regards to moderation. I personally like the freedom to be offensive when it's called for, so i hope it won't be like Debate-island. That is why i left that one bc even a little bit of getting offensive was met with warning. Debate gets under your skin sometimes and to be able to lash out i feel is warranted. Of course nothing like death threat or direct threats of violence should be allowed, but other than that... that is one thing i really like about DDO, you're free to be a D if you want to. Other than that, i am really liking this site. Not only bc of your involvement, but also to your efforts in making it good. In truth, i am not thinking of leaving here, although i will use DDO when it is back up... i like this site too. Add a thumbs up thumbs down feature on these comments i will likely never leave. I thought the little options you can do on debate Island was really cool... the only thing that almost kept me there was the options to say "persuaded, fallacy, agree, disagree, etc." That was really cool. If you can get that here, i personally would give it two thumbs up.

Yep i'm aware. It takes some time and other sites like DDO are pretty grounded into the coding. There are some things you can do to speed up the process. Its been a little time since i have dealt with Google so the algorithms have probably changed.  One trick would be to put the word "debate" in-between your site's coding wherever you can. Of course, the more users you get here and more posts there are... that will also rank you higher, but that takes time. The trick i shared is a way to get around the waiting a little. But... i image you would have to manipulate the code with a couple thousand keywords since other sites are years old. It most def. is time consuming. 

There will be lots of new interesting features once I am done with the basics (editing and deleting stuff, admin interface and a couple more), I promise that ^_^

Nah, those days have gone I am afraid, keywords are barely important these days :( 

Well, good luck. It's a road that must be traveled but i'm sure you'll get to your destination. The more people use this site should also help from what i remember, so i'll make sure i'm posting =) 

I see no need to hand out labels like "irrelevant" to our fellow members and human beings

as someone who has had long conversations with Ethang on DDO I can attest that this won't offend him, and it's also accurate. 

And I'm confused about how the religion forum users were irrelevant and unheard of, but also "everyone here however knows the religious users". 🤔 ??

It's petty.

No wonder they pine for AirMax so much. He was their BMOC.