http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?joel.3.297306.72

Quality of the discussion is better than ours too.

Believe it or not, the quality of discussion in ?off was once quite high.

Green-checkies get special priviledges.

It relates to joel because it is more propaganda about their workplace. Though that, and the Aardvark video seem to indicate they all each lunch together every day. That's just creepy.

Especially when they work for FogCreek...

I think they also have after-lunch orgies involving Canola oil and a can opener, but I didn't really investigate.

"canola oil..."

And there goes the ?off neighborhood.

I thought it was an odd topic to NOT be in ?off -- but what the hey, it was posted by a Joel-ite, they can do whatever they want with their stuff. And the debate did stay civil (unlike ?off) so whatever works.

"This guy" is the president or CEO or something (I forget his exact title) of the company.

... So you'd think he'd know which forum is for what.

Well the rules don't apply to him because he wears silk underwear.

... and wouldn't want to mix with the hoi-polloi of ?off, but in JoelOnSoftware he has better moderation and more likelihood of a civil conversation.

Can't say I blame him.

Why don't you go moderate the thread into non-existence?

Show him no one is above the law.

Ah, so harsher moderation makes civil discussion more likely?

I suppose that's true, but it also makes one-sided discussion more likely, which is an unacceptable consequence if you ask me.

I think Michael et al forget this forum even exists. I doubt they even realize this little portion of the board witnessed an online suicide while they debated pointers.

New moderation for 2006? I throw in a vote for Mark Warner.

Kasey's a new entity or a new moniker?

Either way, Warner for mod? Are you on crack?

"but in JoelOnSoftware he has better moderation"

ROFL. If by "better moderation" you mean

269 posts are held for approval. Review them
25 posts were automatically deleted. Review them

Then, yeah, they have better moderation.

Come to think of it, that thread is the first one I've seen in a *long* time over there that didn't have any posts stuck in limbo.

Oh, MarkTAW, I certainly did not intend to insult your moderation approach. And I agree that a more open forum is a desirable thing. And I agree that draconian moderation can result in only one (or a few) points of view getting out.

So I probably shouldn't have used the term "better moderation" in describing the other thread. "different", "less poo", "less profanity", even "less entertaining" perhaps. But not "better".

Those things are lessened for two reasons:

Draconian moderation
An implied social contract in ?joel that does not exist in ?off

The lack of both of the above is a GOOD thing for ?off.

Perhaps even "moderation under his control" would have been appropriate...

I don't know that it's draconian, so much as just on autopilot.

Though there were one or two decisions that I just didn't get.

Mark -

The filter itself can most assuredly be described as "draconian" :)

Yeah, well it's also a cold, heartless bastard of a thing that lets potentially helpful posts linger just beyond the awareness of anyone asking for help. It doesn't differentiate between good & bad posts, it just kills about a third of everything semi-randomly.

There's something a person from any era would have a hard time getting used to. The arbitrary reality of bayesian filtering.

That's still draconian. :)

My point here is that I'm right and you're wrong.

Wrong wrong wrong.

Sit there in your wrongness and be wrong.

For someone who gives a lot of business advice, he seems to have a very missed opportunity here. If he improved the forum slightly, added some advertising and/or a premium account type thing, there would easily be enough money generated to make it worth while for someone to manually moderate or turn a profit on.

Is this bayesian filtering or bayesian filtering done wrong? What's the story with all the Bayes hype? Is it the real deal?

How much money would this place generate Phil?

Phil -

I can't imagine anybody buying a premium subscription to ?joel or ?off. Why the fuck for? What would the benefits be?

There are plenty of free forums to go bullshit on. If anyone wants a membership on mine just drop me an email. ;-)

I think you'd be surprised Mark, there are a lot of bored programmers on here with money. And the quality of these forums are very high compared to most. The business section is even more useful then the rest of this. I bet Sathy would pay for an orange check, probably a handful of others. Heck if it were only like $20 a year I might.

What would an orange check get you? Past the filter?

I just don't see it. This forum's quality ain't that great. The folks here could as easily be elsewhere.

You guys are cool and all, but you don't have nice enough boobs for me to want to pay to talk to you.

The bayesian filter would be great if it was just used for spam, but it's used for content moderation as well, and since nothing ever gets approved, all it's got to go on is the stuff Joel decides is off color.

It would get you past the filter, and a guarantee no one is forging your name, plus just a cool "badge" (like the idiots on slashdot who pay for the *). The people on off probably COULD go somewhere else...but where? The BoS forum though, i have yet to find something else as good. smallbizgeeks is good, but not for programming talk. Most of the money in this scheme would be from advertising, not orange check subscriptions. They sold all 3000 copies of Aardvark in the first month, Joel has an extremely high page rank, etc..

There are boobs?

Oh and lets say with a check you get advanced features, like emails if people reply to you, notification of new posts, etc... I'm tellin you there is a gold mine wasted here.

Forums are notoriously bad ad-revenue generators. Everyone's a regular, so what ad would possibly interest them?

Plus it would throw off the image that Joel is desparate for money. Just look at techinterview.org. I look at that site and thing "He must not be paying Michael nearly enough money."

Phil -

I think you overestimate the revenue potential of an online forum.

SomethingAwful is the only site I know of that pulls it off, and that's mostly because the regulars there are idiots.

Ditto Fark, I guess.

The promotion of Fogcreek, Fogbugz et al is what the Fora are about, that and other levers such as Aardvark.

Slashdot, motley fool, indiebride, a handful of others... i'm not saying its something to retire on, but certainly $100k or so a year is more then the $0 k he's sitting on now.

Yeah, the only reason ?off exists is because it shows off the multiple forum feature of Fogbugz.

Phil -

I've got a forum with Bayesian moderation (recently added), anonymous posting, flood/spam protection above and beyond bayesian (session tracking, post pattern tracking), user-configurable visual presentation, the ability to register members, a full fledged security implementation (very finely grained controls for allowing editing of posts, moderation of forums, of topics, of specific threads...) All kinds of stuff.

If I could suddenly get everybody on ?off to start posting over there, do you think I could make a single red cent off of it?

Why or why not? I'm just curious why ?off/?joel is a goldmine in your view.

$100K a year ? For these forums ?

Show me the math.

"I'm just curious why ?off/?joel is a goldmine in your view."

Traffic Rank for joelonsoftware.com: 6,557

Traffic Rank for whispersinthedark.com: 3,893,694

Just the sheer number of regular visitors. If you had joel's number of visitors, you could make money too. Not simply the ?off people, because I think there are less people here then on the main forums.

Those are numbers, but that's not math.

Sorry that was in response to Mark, not the math requester. I figure $80-90k in ad dollars and $10k in subscriptions. These would not be AdWords dollar, but instead fixed rate advertising similar to the kind Slashdot, Penny-Arcade, etc get. I get fixed rate advertising revenue of around $12k a year on my site which has a pagerank of around 300,000. The money is there folks.

What's your site that makes you 12K a year, Phil?

Phil, I think the point others are trying to make is that the number of visitors, and the amount of advertising, might be related.

Thus if Joel decided to put advertising on ?off, he may lose the traffic that it currently has. And the traffic it has advertises the products he wants to advertise already, anyway.

Thus "goldmine" might not be the right analogy. "The goose that lays the golden eggs" might be better. And for that, you need to keep in mind what keeps the goose alive.

Well I don't know about you folks, but when I see even Google ads on a page it turns me off slightly. I can't say why, it just does. They're almost always unsightly and not subtle enough for my taste, even though they're just text ads.

I like content to be prominent and unencumbered by distracting ads in the margins. I realize that this is a silly expectation (free content all the time) but the fact that ads are distracting and unappealing remains.

"Phil, I think the point others are trying to make is that the number of visitors, and the amount of advertising, might be related."

Actually no one has said that yet, and it is a premise I would agree with. If joel tried to monitize the site he would have to be careful about how he did it. There is tons of white space on these pages though. Tasteful, non annoying ads in the side bar, and maybe a text ad at the bottom of threads wouldn't change the aestetic much.

And Mark, if you really want to know my site email me...it's basically a classifieds type site, I don't really want the site spammed based on my crazy right wing ideologies ;)

We're not gonna spam your classified site. Chill.

We don't spam madebymonkeys or marktaw totally anonymous forum do we?

You CAN'T spam madebymonkeys. :)

Try. :)

Who are all those people posting there?

And how did the forum get so crappy? You spend all day here with clean clear easy to read ?off and build that black background frame reloading p.o.s.?

That forum was built long before I even knew about ?joel, and long before ?off existed.

It's the way it is because it's the clone of another forum software that most of the current occupants migrated from. It's how they like it, and I like it too. :)

In other words, it's his backup ?off.

The colors are that way because it's part of his negaverse. They're the anti-us, but if we ever go away, he'll just reverse the polarity and continue as if nothing had happened without skipping a beat.

ha.

We've been through the "I prefer dark background with light text" argument before.

We've been through the "I prefer to be able to see the thread list and the thread detail simultaneously" argument before.

I don't need to justify the UI for my forum. I didn't even INVENT the UI for my forum, it was prescribed. :)

It's been proven that dark background with light text is easier to read on computer screens then black on white. Also with outdoor signage yellow on black is more visible and readable then black on white.

Oh, well, if it's been PROVEN, I guess we must just accept it.

Still, I quite like the ?off standard of black letters on off-white background.

Though for street signeage, reflective white letters on green background seems pretty popular in Maryland.