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[Terry Crim]

The old boys club is exactly what the warriors is.

Look carefully and you can see HOW it happens.

Look carefully and you can see who gets in after a while.

It IS so obvious even by the way they post!

The Warriors is a force unto itself...   For those that spend all their time trying to get into the inner circle for the most part are only focusing on marketing to the warrior membership itself.  Once they do get into the famed inner circle I can tell you there really aint that much in there and isn't worth it by itself.  The payback comes from using the prestige gained from being either associated with OR considered to be associated with the "Old Boy Club" and using that to attract customers and followers to your funnel.

Though seriously what you consider to be "Old Boys Club"  is for the most part window dressing and mirrors.  Once you get inside there is just a few pieces of foam and some tinsel.  The IM crowd is pretty much independant of one another but the smart ones use association to boost their bank accounts.   This is how I helped quite a few people, well one of the ways, to get them into a larger pond. 

I wouldn't really be envious of "The Old Boys Club" once you get in, there isn't really much to it.
If you do NOT know anything when you get in, you still wont know anything but you can  just fake it better at least to the newbe's.  Guru's...   I always found that to be freaking hilarious.
I started putting a title to my name as the Guru Builder because not only do I know how many of these "Jack Asses" got to be where they are but I helped a few of them on their way.  So if they can be Guru's then by god I will be a damned Guru Builder!   LMAO

Still a lot of it is presentation and association...  That's it pretty much.   Isn't hard to achieve and well...  Just look around in this market, IM...  Then compare it to other niches and markets on and offline and you will see many of the samethings being used.  If you can identify it and understand what is going on, you can duplicate it anywhere.


- Terry

[Robsellen]

Great to see you here too Terry.

Thanks for that very well explained post on the warriors, having not checked it all thorughly I never knew of the mod change, I agree it IS an interesting way to do it, could be good, could be dangerous as you say.

As for the "old boys" thing, it is interesting, though I am not the sort to want to be "in" the old boys club style of things, stonemasonry (my real trade) is similar, freemasonry and stonemasonry interwined.

Shame in a way that, cos it meant one mason who was crap would get a job over someone who was good at it, like myself...and THAT stinks, it reinforces that saying "its not what you know and can do, its who you know".

I don't agree with it in some ways.

Regardless, with the warriors I found just by observing you could see the pattern.

For an example, Someone will join up, post some good post, start good threads, answer alot of people, just BE part of it in the right way, and as soon as the "old boys" could gain in some way from that person, that person would start posting LESS, but post better post.

Then the "old boys" would let others build them up, before you know it, something that person created would be hyped by the "old boys" and promoted, making THEM money as well as that person.

When I say old boys I just mean those who are slightly higher up in there.
You know who I mean

Seen it a few times, I could name them, but I won't

Some will just NEVER be helped that way by them.

I only had a problem with ONE mod really, without naming them, (hint would be, name sounds like an amimal you find in the zoo) hope that aint to naughty! 

Some people will never get on in there now due to some of the heavy handedness of the mods in the past, whether they desreve to be tarnished now or not.

We have all said many a time, if you wanna post great big long post with a wealth of info, instead stick it on your OWN blog, as it will not get "lost" and YOU gain from having great content instead of the forum.
That's advice i would still give for thee warriors due to the fact you NEVER know if it will get deleted.

Here... different story.

Sounds like great post like this would be "evergreen" so why would Tony be so out of his mind as to delete it??

I agree Allen says is some smart cookie but also I feel it was his own fault for letting any mod get heavy handed, it's HIS team, no-one elses.

The warrior forum IS a force into itself, a GREAT one for some reasons, a bad one for others.

I bear no ill will against Allen or a few others there, I know I reacted bad and lost it a bit, I should have known better than to react to that idiot mod I mentioned.

I have to admit though there are only a few warriors I really respect.
Some are just plain backstabbers as I realised after I got N/D.

I digress, who cares!

I think the warriors will go downhill dramaticly, or uphill dramaticly.
There never seems to be a halfway line there.

Thanks again for some great update on that.
Still not going there lol.

Rob

[Joreymay]

A number of us are - or have been - admins for boards of one sort or another. And some have "only" been moderators. And most of that group have either locked threads or deleted messages (or entire threads) as part of those roles. But one thing I have found is that it works out a lot better to either contact the main poster(s) with the reason(s), or post the reason(s) in the thread (or under the same name, if the thread is deleted). Without such explanations, the actions often seem arbitrary and the things that triggered the sanction tend to be (innocently) repeated.

The only exception is "drive by spammers", who are generally already gone and won't see the explanation. It can be useful (to the rest of the board) to say something like "Spam Message Deleted" in that special case.

It is easy to take the tack "They know what they did - I don't need to tell them". Hell we (the fairer sex   ) have been using that line (and the related "If you don't know what you did, i'm certainly not going to tell you!) on our husbands, boyfriends, and older children for untold generations. But the truth is that it is always better to be clear about such things in settings like this.

Jorey
.

[Robsellen]

I agree with you there Joreymay

The problem for alot of people is they see it as a decent thread deleted just because of ONE person posting a bad post or whatever, then no explaination.

This creates a situation where people are reluctant to spend 15 mins (or whatever it takes) to write  a good useful post, knowing at anytime some idiot can post crap on the thread and it will vanish.!

WHAT sort of a method is that??
Talk about loading up a bazooka and blowing your toes off! 

Crazy.

[Alan Petersen]

Hey Terry, cool inside look the WF. Thanks!

I'm not too keen of the new "everyone is a mod" and I suspect it might not last long. But who knows. There are folks are who always looking for ways to game the system or find loopholes and to be able to zap your competitors posts might hard to resist for shoddy marketers.

I also agreed that some good posts were zapped when other things could have been done such as removing the offending post or locking it. But WF is so big that some mods say screw it, I'm not cleaning this up and they just zap the whole thing. Maybe some have ulterior methods. I dunno.

Whatever the pros and cons one it appears that being a mod on one of the most popular forums around seems to be a thankless, pain in the butt, no pay job. 

I always wondered how the mods flushed out cons hiding under new identities. I didn't know the WF mods had gone all CSI. Cool.

[Joreymay]

I always wondered how the mods flushed out cons hiding under new identities. I didn't know the WF mods had gone all CSI. Cool.

For starters, they can track the IP addresses of anyone who posts (actually, anyone who visits). No big secret - they log the IPs of posts here as well.

Jorey
.

[Robsellen]

I always wondered how the mods flushed out cons hiding under new identities. I didn't know the WF mods had gone all CSI. Cool.

For starters, they can track the IP addresses of anyone who posts (actually, anyone who visits). No big secret - they log the IPs of posts here as well.

Jorey
.

Yeah thats exactly what they do

[Joreymay]

Of course, there are problems with that approach. Some ISPs - particularly some dial-ups - cycle through a number of different IPs for their subscriber. So the same person can have different IPs over time, and different people can have the same IP at different times. Add to that things like libraries, Internet Cafes, and various retail and residential facilities with "free wi-fi" available, and there are significant possibilities for false positives and for the bad guys slipping through (especially if they know what they're doing).

Still, it makes a good starting point.

Jorey
.

[Alan Petersen]

For starters, they can track the IP addresses of anyone who posts (actually, anyone who visits). No big secret - they log the IPs of posts here as well.

Jorey

.
Any forum from tiny to huge has that so yeah that's nothing new. But with IP proxies et al. it looks like the WF uses more advanced techniques. As Terry wrote:

On Warriors it got really sophisticated as to how to track people including post analysis and writing style in combination with IP and how they used words

That's what I was writing about the post and writing style analysis not just tracking IP addresses not the run of the mill IP tracking.

[Robsellen]

It really does show what footprints we leave online, posting habits style of writing etc.

[R Hagel]

hey all,

Just wanted to comment on flushing out those who're using multiple ID's for nefarious purposes on the WF. . .

As mentioned, IP tracking is just one tool to use -- and looking for "footprints" is another way.   But it's not just the mods doing this.   The regular members keep their eyes out for suspicous activity and report it to the mods.

Suspicous activity includes things like:

Someone suddenly flooding the forum with posts to get their post count up.

Someone dragging old threads up.

Someone who seems to only post to defend someone or someone (or alternatively, someone who only seems to post to rip someone or something apart).

Footprints -- for example, there was one fellow on the WF who ALWAYS misspelled a common word.   So whenever a poster spelled that word wrong, all it took was a little searching to see if this was the scammer coming back under a new name.   You could do that by checking the IP (see if it comes from the same city/region as the former scammer), Googling email addresses and URLs (especially Paypal acct addresses), and a few really good tips I won't share here (because the dumb scammers always forget this one little thing. . .  and if I spill it here, they'll stop leaving this big breadcrumb trail).  :)

Cheers,
Becky

[Robsellen]

Hiya Becky. LONG time no see. 

I hope you are well. 

Thanks for that post of very useful info.

I have to say I would never try to go back ander false pretences like that, I know my "footprint" will show to some mods or senior mods (I see everyone is a mod) and I would hope to think they know I am not so daft or insulting to try and trick them in that way.

There are always going to be those that will ultimately treat it like some game or battle with the mods. etc.
Show up, insult, cause controversy etc.
They know they will NEVER be made welcome as they have repeated it so often, so they just try max damage and exposure, through insults, and stiriing the pot, clicks on sig etc, untl they get thrown out... to only pop in again several months or more later, do it all again.

One downfall of its success I guess

Saying that...

I do regret shooting myself in the foot by reacting how I did, which got me lobbed off...but I also know I am honest to myself and thats how I am, and I was right to be honest to myself at the time.
So in that sense I can't regret being honest to myself.

Which is one reason why I can never say, I will never get banned from anywhere again.
I would never aim to please all the people all of the time, because I already know it can't happen

There IS something about that damn place, I have suddenly found myself checking it once or twice a week, just to "poke head in the door" and take a look 

YOU know what I mean... you probably all do. 

Am I saying I want to go back then? Not as direct as that no.
I have already said it and will again, I doubt I'd be welcome there now, although I have seen others get a second chance, or seemingly just gone in there and been accepted after a while.

There is something else, I hardly recognise most of them! 

Sure there are the usual who have been there as long as it's been around, and others who have been members as far back as I was... but so many new people.

I almost feel like a newer lurker with the advantage of knowing the past of it a bit, as well as knowing where to read the gems, to a point, as I mean those who I already know, not the new people.

Regradless.

Warrior forum is what it is.
With or without me.

But how do you feel the "new forum" and "new mod style" has taken?

Good move / bad move? :/

Nice to see you again Becky, hope life treating you great too

Take care,

Rob

[Lisa Preston]

I think it depends on your perspective (the good move/bad move thing)...

Personally, it delights me.

It has become more confusing, it has become ultra-commercial (more "paid" areas) and it isn't easily recognized by those who used to frequent the place "back in the day". I recall with fondness those days when I would ALWAYS have at least one browser open to the WF, refreshing at every opportunity. Now - not so much.

I also love the idea of the inmates running the asylum... I, too, lurk - and watch in fascination as they keep those people down who they wish, and allow others who "conform" to be part of the "in" crowd. I see far less value in the main areas, and I'd say over the past year or so, the value in the WSO section has gone down as well...

In my opinion, the giant nosedive in Alexa (although not accurate in real numbers) is very telling. It does reflect the trend, if not accuracy.

I recall recently having a discussion about this very thing with Allen, who was honest enough to admit that the massive list at the bottom of the main page showing "Users Online" was set for a long period as a marketing tactic. I'm sure it's impressed a lot of those newbies you referred to.

Here, we only keep track of 5 minutes. We aren't so much about impressing the masses, we use the data constructively.

Anyway, that's my thoughts.

Cheers!
Lisa

[Robsellen]

I think it depends on your perspective (the good move/bad move thing)...

Personally, it delights me.

I have to admit I DO think it's has a bit more "personality" by way of more social aspects, blogs etc.

I recall with fondness those days when I would ALWAYS have at least one browser open to the WF, refreshing at every opportunity.

Glad I weren't the only one doing that lol!

Now - not so much.

I CAN honestly see why.

I also love the idea of the inmates running the asylum...

Was it ever anything but an online asylum??

In my opinion, the giant nosedive in Alexa (although not accurate in real numbers) is very telling. It does reflect the trend, if not accuracy.

Never looked...will do next time I am on there, did the change of forum and domain effect it though?

I recall recently having a discussion about this very thing with Allen, who was honest enough to admit that the massive list at the bottom of the main page showing "Users Online" was set for a long period as a marketing tactic. I'm sure it's impressed a lot of those newbies you referred to.

I knew it, I did guess it was a bit of a tactic, one they can't really use now as I understand it shows when you are online and where you are now.

Here, we only keep track of 5 minutes. We aren't so much about impressing the masses, we use the data constructively.

Hhhhm... I do think 5 mins is a bit short... maybe 15 would be a better thing, its easier for us to "know" who has been on there over the hour, and you can easily work out over the hour what kind of visits it gets. They's something I say as a user perspective

Anyway, that's my thoughts.

Cheers!
Lisa

Thanks, glad you shared

There's my thoughts too

Rob

[R Hagel]

Hi Rob!  *waves*

As has been said, we'll see how the new mod style works for the forum.   I too can see the potential for abuse (e. g. , competitors trying to nuke each others' posts, etc).   But I think some of the "reported" posts simply go into a temporary holding place where the mods then permanently nuke them.   Sooo. . .  if anyone is abusing the system, the mods should see it.   I think.   (Don't quote me on this. )

One huge advantage of the new mod system is that it virtually eliminates the "us" vs.  "them. "  I've modded and owned plenty of boards so I know the attitude -- but seems like the WF gets more than its fair share of posters with attitude.   You know what I'm talking about -- the whole "the mod is playing god" thing.  :)

So now at least individuals can't be singled out as "bad guys" on the forum.   That's a plus.

As for returning to the forum -- if you'd like to return, you probably can.   I've seen at least one other long-time poster who got nuked on the old forum return to the new forum.

Cheers,
Becky