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View Full Version : What to do about "post monkeys"?



Kyle
08-04-2004, 03:26 PM
It seems that forum popularity is good for the owner (profits), and can be bad for the dedicated following. This primarily refers to webmaster forums, as webmasters have signatures with links in them. Because of the links members get from forums, they become "post monkeys". The result is a forum flooded with garbage posts that have NO point.

The best example I can give is when someone asks a question.. I'd say questions are the most common thread starters. You may get 5 people that post replies that have absolutely no intention of truly answering the question.. furthermore may know nothing about the topic at hand... and may not have even read the question properly... so even if they do attempt to answer the question, it may make absolutely no sense. Are there exceptions? Of course there are we are all human. There is a % of these crap posts that are due to human error. Simply, a good member posting a reply that is incorrect because the member truly and accidently misread the question. However, many people can tell which members are obsessed wtih posting for links and which members aren't.

One arguement may be: well these post monkeys are positive for forums. They help grow the forum. They are active, and very helpful to the growth of the community. Yes this CAN be true.. but not here. Websitepublisher.net is truly awesome. The articles are to the point, and not excessive. They are well organized, and the site is not LOADED with advertising as many other top webmaster reference sites. The site is run by a very experienced webmaster who offers objective advice, and isn't vague in the help offered. This site will never fail. If for some reason traffic started to drop significantly, and was in a major slump, not growing, etc. I would definitely send all the pagerank I could, personally recommending websitepublisher on every one of my sites as a source for why my sites are succeeding. I don't think I'm the only one who feels this way about websitepublisher, and its success.

I apologize for this long rant, but someone needs to address it. It may piss people off, but if you get angry at this post... please look at yourself. Maybe you post a little too much for the sake of links. You can get angry at me, but please don't take it too personally. It's a general statement about the community, and ways we can improve to be different than the other massive webmaster forums out there.

chromate
08-04-2004, 04:14 PM
"post monkeys" (nice term BTW!) are deluding themselves if they think it's worth it just for the PR. I have over 1000 posts and that only gets me a PR4 max. Hopefully I contribute some useful stuff anyway, on the whole. :)

Personally I wouldn't mind if we didn't get any PR from here. It's nice to have links in the sigs just to see what everyone's upto.

nohaber
08-05-2004, 12:20 AM
Posting for links is what a newbie may do until he/she figures out that it does not work. The max PR that can be obtained from signatures can be seen by clicking the "website publisher forums" link (it ends with "index.php?") and is placed on every page. So the forum index.php has PR 5 and index.php? has PR 3.
I think that a community needs inexperienced people. Imagine that we all here were some experts or gurus or whatever. The number of posts will be small. Very few people will click on ads etc. I think that as a webmaster learns more he/she tends to post less and work more.
jmo.

Mike
08-05-2004, 02:00 AM
I don't post for links, I don't need to. I took nearly all of my sites out of my sig, because I don't really need the PR from here. It's not on topic, and I doubt it will help.

incka
08-05-2004, 02:45 AM
I just like posting, I don't need the PR from it.

Kyle
08-05-2004, 04:22 AM
I'm glad lots of people are replying. I was curious what people's thoughts were on this area, cause I know its an area rarely talked about.

nohaber I liked what you said.

incka
08-05-2004, 05:35 AM
It's nice to have links in the sigs just to see what everyone's upto.


I agree. Before you had links in your sig I wondered several times what your sites were... Shawn Weeks won't tell us what his sites are and you are all very interested in finding out...

Blue Cat Buxton
08-05-2004, 06:59 AM
There are no doubt many different motives for posting from gaining knowledge and building credability. This forum is so good because people are all so willing to help. Having links in your sig helps particularly I feel in building credability between other webmastes

MarkB
08-05-2004, 12:10 PM
The only thing that putting links in my sig ever achieved was click-throughs from people who had no interest in actually *using* my site ;) I'm getting a better idea of my site's traffic since I removed them.

Chris
08-05-2004, 12:41 PM
One arguement may be: well these post monkeys are positive for forums. They help grow the forum. They are active, and very helpful to the growth of the community. Yes this CAN be true.. but not here. Websitepublisher.net is truly awesome. The articles are to the point, and not excessive. They are well organized, and the site is not LOADED with advertising as many other top webmaster reference sites. The site is run by a very experienced webmaster who offers objective advice, and isn't vague in the help offered. This site will never fail. If for some reason traffic started to drop significantly, and was in a major slump, not growing, etc. I would definitely send all the pagerank I could, personally recommending websitepublisher on every one of my sites as a source for why my sites are succeeding. I don't think I'm the only one who feels this way about websitepublisher, and its success.


Thanks, really.

As for "post monkeys" I think they're mostly deluded. I mean honestly, the PageRank gotten is minimal, its not why I put my sites in my signature. SitePoint wasn't SE friendly for years and I still had all my sites in my signature. Its just a way of showing where you're coming from, what topics you cover (if someone wants a link exchange), and if you have a webmaster related site obviously its some direct promotion.

However, for a long time I kept my sites out of my signature, I did not want to brag and I did not want extra attention. However I got sick of people questioning my experience, but moreso its just convenient. If I'm giving someone help with something I use on one of my sites I can just mention the site and if they want to see it in action they can find it in my sig.


The PageRank gotten from all my 11,000 posts at SitePoint can easily be made up with a couple links from good directories. So really, people posting just for PageRank are really wasting their time, better to spend the time getting links from other places.

chrispian
08-05-2004, 01:14 PM
The answer is blue.

;)

intelliot
08-10-2004, 12:36 AM
I agree. The links in peoples' signatures indicate something about the person. As for what can be done, there are two approaches worth mentioning:

1) No signatures at all, for example webmasterworld
2) Limited signatures (max 2 links), for example webhostingtalk

incka
08-10-2004, 01:20 AM
If we wanted to get google rankings from our sigs wouldn't all our sites be words instead of numbers?

I don't think anyone posts for pagerank here when it is so easy to get elsewhere.

Mike
08-10-2004, 02:08 AM
No sigs at all? That's a bit drastic.

Kyle
08-10-2004, 03:10 AM
After hearing everyone's opinion, I will finish mine.

I am perfectly happy putting targetted links in my signature. For one, it lets other webmasters know what sites I'm doing. Of course if I was worried about competitiors, then I wouldn't do this.

Second, I do get links from websitepublisher.net! It does not encourage me to post, but I might as well take advantage of it. My original thread starter above does not say anything about me thinking it's bad to get links from forums. I was simply stating that people who are excessive about it should chill.

Fun thread, lots of good things learned about the members here. :)

incka
08-10-2004, 04:25 AM
I agree with icebanes last post.