These are my opinions.
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Julian is a Bad Admin
Julian is a helpful guy and seems to have good intentions when talking with people especially in respect to the business aspect of freelancing. I don't have a personal vendetta against him. Honestly, the only time I've ever even "talked" to him was in his SEO thread where I commented on how helpful it was. I have nothing against him. However, he lacks communication skills. He makes abrupt, uncalled for decisions without justifying them to the memberbase or even the other staff members. He also quit the board a while ago when things were looking shaky and conveniently returned to assume absolute control a month later. Obviously enjoying his power trip he's now assigning staff as he sees fit and making all the calls, again without discussing it with the memberbase or even justifying it to the memerbase. In addition, it's hard to take him seriously given his resignation and almost immediate coming back into the staff. As I said before, this was in my opinion an attempt to "stroke his epeen."
The Contest Forum is a Joke
Delete the damn contest forum you idiots. Nobody seems to want to take the time to run it. All it does is embarrass the community. Anyone who searches through it can, in no way, take us seriously. Do something about it please.
Can We Get Just 1 Feature?
Site of the week? A contest? Forum-wide collab? An interview with a successful freelancer? Any sort of sign that the staff actually contributes to the site in any way but arbitrary bannings? Please?
Edit: I just realized we had a contest or something?
http://www.talkfreelance.com/thread4850.html
I post on this forum everyday and never saw this. You guys should promote these things better. Perhaps an image or headline on the main page showing the newest features/promotions/changes.
Staff Picks
You knew this was going to be included. Maybe I'm an idealist, but perhaps it'd be a smart move to base staff decisions on a little more than who PM'd who first? I'm not taking shots at anyone in particular with this one, and I even like a couple of the staff picks recently - but they seem so random. A community of this size should pick a moderator because they are absolutely one of the top members of the board. Every other forum I've ever posted at, when a new mod gets picked the typical member response is "hey grats bro!" - not "wow what a ****ty decision." I'm sure some of that is just jealousy, but still it's obvious something is wrong when a huge portion of the forum thinks the staff decisions here have been ridiculous. Another problem is when you have a forum full of mods that the members don't respect - you're really asking for trouble.
It's one thing to point out the problem, but how do we solve it mr. feros???
Step 1. Fire Julian - he makes bad staff decisions
Step 2. Discuss staff decisions with other staff
extensively before deciding
Step 3. Follow through - With all the new staff arbitrarily assigned over the last couple of weeks how can Julian keep an eye on them all? News flash guys, moderators have to be watched **very** carefully after they're assigned. Not everyone uses their power wisely. You especially have to worry when you're making kids mods. They'll be quick to do something dumb, and with 10 new mods to worry about, how can Julian be expected to moderate all the mods?
Make Articles Easier to Find
Right now we have a section entitled "Articles from the Experts." This was, in my opinion, a half-assed way to make articles easier for users to find. The staff needs to take the time to create a real article database (since we have so many good articles lost within the forum) and simply have the database link to the actual discussion threads. This would also keep from the same boring discussion come up again and again.
Forum Promotion
I don't know if you guys have really noticed ... but we don't seem to be getting new quality members. Yea we're getting a lot of Myspace profile designers, but does that really add to the forum? I don't have much suggestion in this case, but it seems to me that there should be some more promotion done to encourage new, serious members to join. Perhaps adding features as mentioned earlier would help this?
iTrader System
http://www.talkfreelance.com/thread24320.html
Marketplace
A number of things should be looked at in the marketplace. Mainly to decrease self-promotion and rule violation. It could be an easy fix like staff dedicated solely to watching that forum to something *better* like actually upgrading that section and investing some of these promised funds into improving it. Especially since it seems to be one of the most visited sections on the board.
"I'm Spammmmming"
Get rid of it. It confuses people and is pointless.
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That's what I think. Take it how you want.
This is a perfectly legitimate and well thought out experession of my concerns for this board.
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