Closing Off BHW From The World

ptsniper said:

-add an 'entrance exam' to keep out the clueless.

-add a 'post quality' voting scheme where if enough users vote a members posts as low-quality they get booted.

-invite only

-purge inactive members

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I like this idea a lot. Especially with the entrance exam, we could collectively come up with it...

I don't post a lot but visit the forum every days and I really love this community, however here my 2 cents:

1. Create a yearly membership fee ($100 minimum), which is more then OK due to the excellent content in here and to protect the forum's privacy, or.
2. Keep the forum open and create special valued sections for paying members only, and.
3. Make all, new and existing, members to sign up an agreement where they clearly swore, under the penalty of perjury and of having both legs broken, that they are not snooping affiliate managers. (just kidding )

Close it off. Give all existing memebers (before the closure, of course) 4-6 months to become Jr Vip. or Higher.

If, at that time, they have not done so, enact a fee.

After 6 months, this transition will be complete, as every new member once the doors are closed will be required to pay a monthly fee.

free resources will bring more traffic??? i love BHW, and it's a website for me to learn many things in this internet world.

i hope BHW will be open for public.

Hey guys,

I haven't logged in here for a while because of some personal things. My last log in was September 12. Shortly thereafter the forum was hacked and everything was all messed up with posts and accounts being lost, etc. I haven't seen whats gone on around here since then, except for a few days ago I started viewing the threads without logging in to get back into things.

I voted to keep the forum open. Dave, I'm glad to see that you think closing it would be a bad idea. If closed, this forum would slowly start to die off with no new blood. I originally found this place through google. If it had been a pay to join up forum, there's a 98% chance I would not have joined or ever come back. It would have gotten filed away in that lost land of "bookmarks". lol

That said, before I "left", I saw the forum starting to deteriorate and it felt like we where getting some "DP" spill-over. We all know we'd rather commit Seppuku than see this place become DigitalPoint-Less. This place just feels like "home". It feels like it fits with who I am, I like being on the kinda-shady side, and "gaming" the system. I would hate to see it left completely open and fall to the hands of retards, and I'd also hate to see it sewn up shut and slowly die off from lack of fresh oxygen.

That being said, I think taking a good look at what has been suggested and somehow implementing it would be the answer:

People should still be able to find it through Google, but there should only be so much of the forum that is "open" to someone who is a newbie here. Leave enough open to entice them to learn, and contribute and become a part of the community, but not just hand anything out to anyone. There should also be something prominently displayed telling them this, and perhaps show them the other areas of the forum they *could* eventually have access to, but don't allow them to open them or read the threads they contain. (this shows them that there is more to the forum, and it's worth it to join up and be a part or the community.)

I also like the idea of there being some sort of application test. It doesn't have to be mind-boggling, but something that shows they aren't completely retarded and can use Google to search for an answer to a question! What questions? I don't know, I'm sure we can collectively come up with something. Like answer the following simple math question: 43+72, Who was the 7th President of the United States, etc. (yes, I just had to use google to find the president answer out myself!) Not incredibly hard things, but just enough to show you have at least average intelligence. This also adds to the "prestige" of being a part of the community, and (I think) would make you feel privileged to be here, and not be stupid and abuse it. (of course, it won't stop people from doing that..) Make the answers automatically checked so there isn't that much added Admin work. (if passed = good, if failed = review)

Beyond that, to get into the rest of the forum (remember, there must still be enough in the "newbies" section to get them posting/contributing/feeling like a part of the community that they stay and we get a feel for who they are), they have to be "repped" into the rest of the forum. Don't use the standard "rep" plugin, but develop something where for each "newbie", they require a certain number of "rep", or "votes" from the established members. It wouldn't be like the regular rep plugin where you can keep positive repping a person and there rep goes up, but an established member can positive rep someone if they think they would be a good addition to the rest of the forum, but can also go back and negative rep them if they turn out to be an asshat a week later, it still all counts as 1 vote. Make the "newbies" require a certain amount of those points from established members to be given access to rest of the forum. (this way, a group of 5 people can't just pump someone up to get their buddy in, it has to be like 25 or whatever different established members doing it) --- sorry if that sound complicated, but it seems like a semi decent way of getting only the right, quality people into the rest of the forum.

Perhaps also do the same for Jr. Vip. Make it mean something to get in. Post count and length of time shouldn't be the only indicators. There are people that are Jr. Vip's that don't deserve to be, and in my short time back reading threads, I've noticed people that have recently signed up have *tons* of posts mostly full of 3 sentence crap.. they don't deserve to be Jr. Vip, but under the current way they soon will be. (and if you notice, at the time of writing this, I'm not a Jr. Vip. I wouldn't mind it being harder to get into, and perhaps also cleaning up the current lsit of vip's...)

On the monetary side of things

Some of the things suggested require more admin time. How to compensate for that? The donations are great, but really, you need to make people *want* to donate! Give them more perks, something extra for donating. (I was going to say a bigger pm box, as I've seen that offered for donating on other boards, but just checked mine and it's pretty damn big already) I don't really know what, you'd guys need to come up with it, but people like to get cool stuff or extra bonuses, or extra features for donating. Do that, make people want to donate more, and then you've got cash to add the extra things, or pay someone to administer the extra stuff (checking newbie questionnaire apps or whatever)
(and, to be fully honest, I *was* going to donate and get jr. vip before the board got hacked and I stopped coming and things changed in my life, so that should answer your question of "well why haven't *you* donated yet?". Once I get my ass in gear and put things into action and make some cash to stabilize myself, I *will* be donating to BHW, as this is a great place!)

Well, hope that wasn't *too* big of a Wall-O-Text. It's good to be back!

the reason you grew so fast was it was free, you go with a paid membership, expect your site to die a slow death

I myself had to trim many memberships because so little information is new so why pay for rehashed stuff, and this forum is no different except for the few diamonds you find

any forum that is alive is free and open, there are other ways to monetize a forum other than a monthly fee

the warrior forum has a paid WSO section and a one time fee to a private section, I am sure you can be creative in monetizing here, this is the drift I see here is how to make some money out of all your work

I don't blame you for trying this but your business model will sink you in the long run if you go with a private and monthly fee

my 2cents

I think you should think of a different method than to shut the doors completely.....

leave them open but need at least 10 thankyou's per month (example) to have acess the next month.... That way the content stays rich and people arnt lurking....

Not caching the forum is a good idea too

It is becoming more and more like DP i have noticed but i think paying to be a member here is a bit much and you will loose alot of people who give methods out to others and alot more will be sold here.... would also mean that i think you should remove the fee for listing things for sale.....

However the principle idea is there....

I personally think changing the forum in any way is a really bad idea. And the thought of charging to be on a forum (with closed doors) where you're only access is other members and their files to "share" is a joke.

I've seen I don't know how many posts from newbies that are high quality products (that they probably bought) and they just give them away here.

And let's not forget - the whole idea of "charging" to dl products, ebooks, softwares, that none of us even have the "rights" to sell or giveaway here - is a complete and total joke.

We all "share" products - c'mon. Charge for it? Puhleeze.

This forum is great the way it is. Although because of the growth I can no longer read every single thread, it's fine with me, I read what I can.

Closing it will slow down the new ideas and questions asked. Charging for access will kill off several already contributing members. I know there are a lot of people that can't afford to pay anything and a recurring fee subscription model wouldn't work for them.

You might not consider any sites actual competition, but charging would create clones of this site and you'll find members moving away.

I think a better option would be to plaster this forum with advertisements and cookie stuff everyone that visits.

KEEP for everyone!!!.... i mean for NOW.. lol

Closing Off BHW From The World
DAVE can you provide Invite code? 3 invites per member who have more 50-100 post!!!

close with no fee is my vote. i cant stay if there is a fee

I voted for the forum to be open to public, but if there should be a change I think the new members should be reviewed before accepted.

On the registration form there should be box where everyone have to write something on "Why do you want to join the community?". This will show if they are serious on interacting at the forum or just to spam.

S&W40MPc said:

........great, great thing here. But the greatness isn't necessarily in the information; it's in the sense of community. If you monetize this for your own personal gain, I see someone here who's a smart and successful blackhatter creating an alternate BH forum that would ultimately overtake this one. I'd sure go with them.

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The possibility of that happening also crossed my mind.

Good job in that you actually "voiced" it out aloud in writing

I'm wondering if the decision will be based on the poll results or will Diamond Dave have the final say?

Dave, lets say, close the forum off to non members and the only way to join would be via a referal ticket issued from ranked members, that way you weed out the unwanted, yet get fresh ideas from the selected.
well thats my 2 cents (or pennys here in england lol)

All in all, it seems the right time to evaluate how to approach the furture of BHW, I know Dave will figure the right course of action.

Good Luck

referral ticket is not good enough, if I am the member and able to give away the referral ticket. I may be a greedy, I don't want to share my method to everyone outside this forum. That means, I will never give the referral ticket to everyone.

But that is not me, actually. I am not greedy enough to do that kind of inhuman habit.

yeh i like the idea of invite based aswell as others have mentioned. but dave you have done a bloody good job from day one with this baby.. ill stick by whatever decision you make. im sure it will be the right one whatever you choose.

but i have to agree. this is getting like dp day by day and we dont want that do we. but yeh it looks like the invite based is the more popular. just let us know if we can do anything to help ok

My vote is to leave it open, possibly make a special section for paid members only (like the Jr. VIP section). If there is support or hosting issues with the quick growth, consider limiting the signups to 100 a month or something, like some of the torrent trackers.

I say leave it all open - this website keeps me going throughout the day ;-)

MaestroDelWeb said:

I think a better option would be to plaster this forum with advertisements and cookie stuff everyone that visits.

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Or links to buy from ebay, I would definately click a link to ebay from here when buying. and links to other places. etc.

But I dont think this post is about money, Its about the forum getting out of hand, needing more work. Money is just a way to trim it down to more serious people and get rid of some of the scammers, spammers [The ones that can cause the most problems]