Replies to post #28 on Battle of the Boards (fka IH-SI-RB)

[jmhollen]

Your points are well made dpb,

The contest is a bloody joke IMHO, because somebody is obviously looking for instant McDonald's Gratification at the take-out window. They are farcically expecting new FREEBIE sign-ups, of all backgrounds, to immediately begin posting Merrill-Lynch grade analysis and and stock trading insight in Yalie presentational English coupled with Harvard business school terminology. Aka: nottoodam*likely.

Several well-known and very saavy posters from SI have signed on recently at my personal invitation, primarily to snag the time-critical and evaporating FREE membership opportunity. But, it will be some time (..according to them..) before they spend much time over here.

Old habits are hard to break, and new situations are generally approached in "...IBEW (new guy on the jobsite) hide-and-watch..." mode. Aka: lurking. There is also no pressing reason for them to subscribe monthly, annually or at the Lifetime level - other than losing the latter oportunity soon.

I have written a personal "...welcome and thank you..." notes to each person who signed up using my link. Unless things have changed recently (..even though I suggested a "respond if contacted by a regular member" capability..) they couldn't answer the welcome PM (..without tracking us down on a stock board someplace..) since NEWBIES did not have PM capability.

Properly managed, every new member should receive a Hallmark quality "...Howdy.." card from iHUb , an Audio-Video "..howdy.." explaining how they can respond to member-initiated PMs, and a free MickeyD's fries certificate if they post 10 times before 31JAN03.

OBTW: ".....SOOOO-PRISE, sooooooooo-prise.....", iHub's pseudoDynamic Duo have been grumbled at by the RESIDENT SPAM BEEFERS at none other than RavingBullschmidt for FREE MEMBERSHIP iHub links showing up over there. With terminal iHub jailbirds touting their 40 RB aliases, I just can't fathom how that situation ever came about...?!? Oh dearie me, how totally unexpected.....!! Aka: gettafreakin'grip.

Six months from now, we'll probably see quite a few new posters around. And, it will take another six months for many of those to morph from RB and/or Bobz-mode into "...complete sentence posting.." iHubians. But, don't hold your breath.

Having lived in Friendly Florida for a while, I certainly know better than to expect a "...thank you..." for 100+ new sign-ups. But, a "...well, I s'pose that's something..." might have begrudgingly offered - in lieu of the standard 'we really wanted Peter Lynch' fare.

Oh me.......................... First time, shame on me; .......and there certainly isn't going to be a second time.


John

Park your Sub at the iHub - Bub; .....the experience might just "...float your boat..." !!!

[Bob Zumbrunnen]

coupled with other members not being given approval of 2 points per new member upon "authorization" (whatever that means!),

That's not a change in the MDC rules. If I felt I could've changed the MDC rules mid-stream, about 3 participants in it right now wouldn't be.

It's a change in the way the site is administered.

And it doesn't affect "other members" in the MDC. Nobody's being singled out. The new guidelines for approving new accounts apply to ALL new accounts, not just ones that specific people have reffered, despite what they'd like to have everyone think. If anything, the spam-meisters were favored heavily by benefitting from looser approval standards during the majority of the MDC.

Clearly, the Membership Drive Competition, although a good idea, has faltered by the wayside due to unclear rules in the beginning

I agree. It being the first one, it was bound to have problems with it I hadn't anticipated. If there's another one (big IF), the lessons learned from the shortcomings of this one will be applied. For example, posting the link publicly on a site you don't OWN would be grounds for disqualification. I've been relatively low-key about just how much the spamming of the site bothers me. It bothers heck outta me that some people will be getting checks who simply spammed links everywhere. And that one of them has never even POSTED on this site but instead plays dumb and pretends he's unable to through some fault of the site.

It isn't good for a website to start a Community Event, and then to change the rules as the event progresses to it's end.

What rule was changed?

None.

Approved accounts are worth 2 points just like they've always been. Unapproved/New accounts are worth 1 point just like they've always been. What's changed is the administrative process of approving accounts. Matt was having to review well over 100 accounts per day and it was decided that that was a waste of time because the only people who really needed the ability to post more than 3 times per day were people who, well, POST.

Winners were to get one of the TSHIRTS. In the recent Membership Drive Competition, it was announced that the top 50 winners would receive one of those TSHIRTS as a prize, stating that only 576 TSHIRTS would be produced. It remains unclear whether those TSHIRTS have been, or WILL BE produced.

They have not been. We've decided on the quantity of each size to order and the design and they will be produced early February and the first 50 will be shipped to MDC winners (in the size of their choice) and about a dozen more will be shipped to people whose taglines made it to the shirt, then when we know how many of each size remain, they will be for sale on the site.

Let me explain. To my knowledge, none of the other Financial Websites have asked members to be as loyal as IHUB has asked it's members to be. Those other websites just have a URL available out there and they hope to gain new members over time. IHUB has been different from those in that they have asked the members to participate in the growth of the website by being active members of the "community". But the breakdown occurs when the website does not hold up to it's own end of "the community".


Not sure I follow you here. Most websites try to foster a sense of loyalty. We didn't invent that.

If there is to be a TSHIRT created and we see that members have participated in that creation, it behooves the management of IHUB to follow through on it's intent and announce the winners and hold true to their word regarding same.


Ahhhh... Guilty until proven innocent, I see.

Additionally, I recently read whereby an old time member questioned the recent change in the rules of the Membership Drive Competition, and he was cast aside as though his opinion was of little or no importance in the long scheme of things. This is very sad, to me. The member clearly was trying to follow the known rules of the "contest" yet was lead to believe that he was only whining about the sudden change in the rules of the contest.

He was someone's who's been known for years on multiple sites as an incessant spammer, apparently had spammed his way to a high position in the MDC, and was complaining about "the rules changed" when indeed they hadn't.

The homepage is very boring...and very mundane. It needs constantly fresh material to bring members back on a regular basis.

Actually, Matt was making noise recently about doing a revamped homepage. As poor as Matt is at this kind of design, I'm far worse, so the task falls to him.

Financial News, International News, Weather, Sports!????


All of which not only costs a LOT of money (except Weather, probably, but who cares what the weather in Boogerville is like?) and takes us away from the focus of being a *message board*. Let those who are good at news (Knobias, for example) do news and we'll do what we're good at.

What I mean is that IHUB should become a PORTAL! Remember that old Internet Phrase????



Yikes!!! "Portal"? I don't want to be in the Portal business. I'm in the message-board business. Let Yahoo and InfoSpace and Lycos do the portal thing. I can't compete with them on portals. I'll just focus on message boards since it's looking like we can compete a bit there.