Christian Little

One of my goals for this version of my blog is to cover a new section titled “Webmaster Etiquette”, and it will serve as a series of lessons to newbie webmasters on society, the online culture, and talking to people online. Unfortunately, there isn’t really a course in such things (just as most colleges/universities don’t offer any good person-to-person communications courses…even though they require you to take a few communications courses which offer nothing of real value…I know from first hand experience).

So this first posting is to cover the most basic of basics – how to ruin you Digital Point (DP) reputation. It’s actually quite simple, and many newbie webmasters will make these mistakes without realizing it. If you really want to impress people at DP, then live by the following “best practices”:

1. There is a Search Function, Use It. It’s funny that most people would rather post a question and wait hours (days even) to get an answer, rather than take 10 seconds to search the forum to see if it’s been asked before. It’s even funnier when somebody posts a question in a forum and if you look down the thread listing the same question has been asked two or three times on the same day already.
2. 10 Minutes is Not Enough Time to Complain. If somebody does not reply to your thread, bumping it and making claims that people are ignoring you is a great way to destroy your reputation. Afterall, there’s thousands of people on that forum so they should all just flock to your new thread and answer right away! Wrong! If you don’t get an answer within 2-3 days, then maybe rephrase the question or bump your thread, but not sooner!
3. Inflating Your Post Count. People come to DP because there is the Buy, Sell, Trade (BST) forum. But the forum policy requires you to have 25 posts in other forums and be a member for 2 weeks. So what we’ve seen lately is a lot of new accounts are made and left inactive. After two weeks those new users suddenly spring to life and post 1-liner responses to 25 threads. It’s really obvious when you do it, so just stop it. When I see people doing this, it just raises a red flag against them and I ignore them.
4. 1-Liners. This is really really annoying…posting a 1 line response (1-liner) is just stupid and pointless. Even more so when it’s only 1 or 2 words like “k thx”. If you are going to both to reply to a thread, make your post something worth reading. If you flood the forum with useless 1-liner posts, people will start ignoring you.
5. Read the Fucking Thread (RFTF!). Reading the first post in a thread and replying is not appropriate or acceptable. Read all the responses before you jump on the bandwagon and make an ass out of yourself. Especially if a thread has several pages of posts, chances are the initial posting isn’t really being discussed anymore and you will just make yourself look like an ass.

I can just imagine a few newbie webmasters reading this right now saying, ‘Yeah whatever’. And you are more than welcome to, the only person you will hurt is yourself, and I will explain why…

vBulletin (the forum software powering DP’s forum) has several ways for people to identify you as a dumbass, and here they are:

• Reputation. This is the most common one, in every post you have a reputation meter (usually a few green boxes). The more green boxes you have, the more people like what you post and give you praise for. If you find yourself with a red box (or several), that means people don’t like what you’ve posted in the past and your reputation is worthless. A red reputation will usually lead you to the Dark Side….err…being banned. Anybody can leave reputation on any of your posts, they just click on the little scale picture in the top-right corner of your posts. It’s very easy, and the more rep somebody has, the greater the impact they have on your reputation.
• iTrader. This only applies to people who buy/sell things. You can leave a comment and a rating for anybody that you have done business with. Originally this was a great idea, but over time people have learned how to cheat the system and work at inflating their itrader rating with fake sales. But you will see a lot of people requiring at least a positive iTrader rating (sometimes they have a minimum as well).
• Reporting. Anybody can report any of your posts to a Moderator simply by clicking on the “Thread Tools” link.  It’s a really quick and easy way to get you banned, as Moderators have little patience for stupidity and will simply ban your account.  That looks really great for your reputation…
• Infractions.  This is something that only you and Moderators can see, it’s a way of them scoring penalty points against you without the other members seeing it.  I’m not a fan of this system, but it does work and you can get banned for receiving 10 infraction points (although some people get a kick out of trying to get 9 points and then waiting for them to expire after a few weeks).
• Ignore Function.  This is my favorite way of dealing with stupid people.  vBulletin has a very cool ignore feature.  You simply enter somebody’s username and you will never see anything they post every again (unless you remove them from your ignore list).  And the best part?  It’s so easy to do and nobody can stop you from ignoring people.  It’s beautiful.  My ignore list currently has about 200 people on it, and it’s nice to see it working – as when somebody you have chosen to ignore posts anything you simply see “You have chosen to ignore this person” as their post content.  It’s great!

So there you have it.  Five ways you can easily fuck your reputation on DP (though these guidelines apply to pretty much any forum), and five ways you can take the heat from being stupid.

Good luck!