I Talked to the Forum Management: The State of the Forum - Is there Hope?

[smashradio]

Hey all!

In the past few weeks, we've all been a bit "on edge" about the forum.

Several regulars who've been contributing to the forum for years on their own time - I count myself among them - have been fed up with the amount of spam and nonsensical posts lately. 

I know multiple "old-timers" spends less time in the forums because of it, and the ones that are still active have complained about the issue repeatedly. 

A few months ago, I was asked to become a "community leader". That's mostly about events and stuff, but I thought, "heck, the forum is an integral part of this community, so why not" and sent off an e-mail to my contact at Fiverr. 

I don't want to say too much about the response since it's not my place to announce forum related stuff. 

I can say that I brought my own and your grievances about the state of the forum to the community management and got a very sensible response. 

Chances are we'll see some exciting improvements. Will it solve everything? Probably not. 

But the Fiverr forum has always been a place for new and inexperienced members to express themselves. 

The pandemic caused an influx of new sellers to the platform, so it's only expected that we'll see more of the same old questions. 

However, the response I got gave me hope that things will improve. When? I don't know. 

But there's still hope for us who love this community and want to help buyers out with guides, ideas and answers to questions. 

@newsmike @uk_webcreations @lloydsolutions @theratypist 

Until next time, pray for me, dear sir monsieur bro-sis , and may the impressions be with you. 

[newsmike]

9 minutes ago, smashradio said:

Until next time, pray for me, dear sir monsieur bro-sis , and may the impressions be with you. 

May the totem of Congo smile upon you and your tribe. Holla. 

[vickiespencer]

29 minutes ago, smashradio said:

But there's still hope for us who love this community and want to help buyers out with guides, ideas and answers to questions and who

 have been fed up with the amount of spam and nonsensical posts lately.  

I am one of those ⬆️ and I could name many more, most of whom have been here for 5 plus years.   

Some have quit coming to the FF all together. . I gave up about 2 or so weeks ago and stop by here a heck of a lot less. Mostly, I come by to check on my FF friends, even @newsmikewho is still in my good graces! 🤣

I look forward the changes for they are needed. I only hope the changes are not more of the same old, same old. Plus, I hope rules are enforced and behavior unbecoming to the FF is stifled. 

 

 

 

 

[smashradio]

1 minute ago, vickiespencer said:

I am one of those ⬆️ and I could name many more, most of whom have been here for 5 plus years.   

Some have quit coming to the FF all together. . I gave up about 2 or so weeks ago and stop by here a heck of a lot less. Mostly, I come by to check on my FF friends, even @newsmikewho is still in my good graces! 🤣

I look forward the changes for they are needed. I only hope the changes are not more of the same old, same old. Plus, I hope rules are enforced and behavior unbecoming to the FF is stifled. 

 

 

 

 

We've had some interesting discussions before. I've been on the forum on and off for 4 years or so. But I've noticed you're on here less. We miss your posts!

I did point out to them that several old-timers have left or are spending less time here because of this. 

Sorry I didn't tag you in the post, I just went by memory - and as anyone who knows me will point out - I don't have one of those. 

 

[vickiespencer]

1 minute ago, smashradio said:

I don't have one of those. 

It is a sign of your age. 👴🏻 😉

 

[mariashtelle1]

50 minutes ago, smashradio said:

and got a very sensible response. 

Yep, it’s all about sensible repossess. 
the same as “management” saying that they are open for discussion and then even ignoring the simple question to clarify what “tips for sellers” category is for in their new vision as it seems to be m oderated differently. I’m not even talking about zero transparency and again ignoring questions about forum objectives and priorities so we can all work towards one goal. 
 

A lot of us are tired of waiting and all that seems as a bait to keep people calm for a bit longer and then a little bit more longer etc. 
 

But hey, it’s great that changes are coming. They’ve been coming for the past two years but of course we will patiently wait for another years to come. 
My rant is over 🙈 

Anyway, thanks for sharing it @smashradio

[vickiespencer]

1 minute ago, mariashtelle1 said:

But hey, it’s great that changes are coming.rad They’ve been coming for the past two years but of course we will patiently wait for another years to come. 
My rant is over 🙈 

This ⬆️ is my fear. 🙄

[smashradio]

10 minutes ago, vickiespencer said:

It is a sign of your age. 👴🏻 😉

 

Come on! I'm only... I think it's 32. Or 31. I have to ask the wife tomorrow. 

 

10 minutes ago, mariashtelle1 said:

Yep, it’s all about sensible repossess. 
the same as “management” saying that they are open for discussion and then even ignoring the simple question to clarify what “tips for sellers” category is for in their new vision as it seems to be m oderated differently. I’m not even talking about zero transparency and again ignoring questions about forum objectives and priorities so we can all work towards one goal. 
 

A lot of us are tired of waiting and all that seems as a bait to keep people calm for a bit longer and then a little bit more longer etc. 
 

But hey, it’s great that changes are coming. They’ve been coming for the past two years but of course we will patiently wait for another years to come. 
My rant is over 🙈 

Anyway, thanks for sharing it @smashradio

Yeah, the moderation have changed. It's now paid moderators who work on the forum, instead of community members helping on a voluntary basis. I'm not a big fan of that, but it is what it is. 

I hope you're wrong, and that changes will come. The biggest issue I have is that moderators are no longer _us_ but _them_, I don't know who they are. They aren't active on the forum. They probably don't care about the forum like the members do. But I'm sure Fiverr has their reasons for going down that route. 

I was told of some specific improvements coming, but I have no idea if it will be enough. It didn't feel like a bait to keep us calm a bit longer, though. I don't see why they would want that. I think the Fiverr team is putting in a lot of work on the forum, but somehow, the moderation part has been overlooked or something. I'm not sure. 

But I hope you're wrong. I'm trying to be positive. But if the nonsensical posts/spam continues, I don't know for how long. But I thought I'd share it anyway. A little hope can go a long way. 

Thanks for your rant, dear madam! :D 

[newsmike]

On 8/16/2021 at 8:53 PM, vickiespencer said:

@newsmikewho is still in my good graces! 🤣

On 8/16/2021 at 9:17 PM, smashradio said:

Yeah, the moderation have changed. It's now paid moderators who work on the forum, instead of community members helping on a voluntary basis. I'm not a big fan of that, but it is what it is. 

The old m-o-d-s were heavy handed at times, and the new ones are non existent. Maybe the middle is coming. 

[smashradio]

1 minute ago, newsmike said:

The old m-o-d-s were heavy handed at times, and the new ones are non existent. Maybe the middle is coming. 

Yeah, I remember they could be a bit.. military. Hah. But hey, since the moderators are paid for by Fiverr, they could receive instructions on how to do their job. But it has to go top-down. I'm not sure if it's lack of training or if the rules/routines internally have changed. But a middle ground would be nice. Some editorial control over what goes where. The filtering system in the new forum is awesome, but it only works if stuff goes into the right categories. 

[enunciator]

I'll believe any meaningful positive improvements to the dreadful condition of the forum are in the pipeline only once I see them.   😒

There were vague claims tossed around before the implementation of the current iteration of the forum that things would be better, but everyone knows how THAT turned out.

[newsmike]

1 hour ago, enunciator said:

There were vague claims tossed around before the implementation of the current iteration of the forum that things would be better, but everyone knows how THAT turned out.

Perhaps the Reddit model would be good. You have to earn so many karma in order to post, and additional karma to be in certain rooms. As you earn more karma, more rooms open up, get downvoted by too many and lose karma and access to the higher level rooms. 

https://reddit.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/204511829-What-is-karma-

[theratypist]

4 hours ago, newsmike said:

The old m-o-d-s were heavy handed at times

Hahaha Mike, how many years were you banned before????? 🤣 I saw others that reached a hundred years. Glad to have you around now! 😁

[newsmike]

34 minutes ago, theratypist said:

Hahaha Mike, how many years were you banned before?????

I had a 1,000 year ban. How about that?  Thanks for the support. 

[uk1000]

Maybe for moderating the forum, if there's only 3 people doing it now maybe it would help with another person too that was in a different timezone (eg. if possible they could have it so that there's always a mod available). Since currently it seems like there can sometimes be at least 8 hours where no one is available to deal with problem threads.

[surajkartha]

Would it mean that they'd add 😐 to the reaction emojis? If yes, I will stick around lol

[mariashtelle1]

59 minutes ago, uk1000 said:

at least 8 hours where no one is available

Or the whole weekend with Friday night. 
I don’t care who does the job: paid m ods  or volunteer m ods as long as they do the job. And it seems that “the firm” is jumping  from one thing to another. Volunteer people invest their time into it and I’m of the opinion that everyone should be paid for their time especially if now there are people m oderating who is being paid for it. 
And in my opinion 3 people are more than enough. Even one person is enough if their full time job is to read the forum and moderate it. 8 hours of ONE person is more than enough to catch up with everything on the forum. So it’s not a problem of manpower, it seems that there is something else 🤷‍♀️

[uk1000]

22 minutes ago, mariashtelle1 said:

8 hours of ONE person is more than enough to catch up with everything on the forum.

Though if it's just 1 person for 8 hours, that could make rule breaking posts and threads visible for 16 hours, unless they could get auto-hidden if they receive enough reports like the last forum did.

[surajkartha]

The weekend gone by was a memorable one for me and others who were active on here.. Let's just say that I learnt a lot of new words thanks to one of the users smashradio has tagged in the thread post. I literally felt like I could smash radio (see what I did there @smashradio?)

[krheate]

9 hours ago, vickiespencer said:

I gave up about 2 or so weeks ago and stop by here a heck of a lot less. Mostly, I come by to check on my FF friends

Me too. I’ve just been so busy lately, so when I do get a chance to stop by the Forum, I just check out some of the fun posts and status updates!

[theratypist]

2 hours ago, krheate said:

Me too. I’ve just been so busy lately,

I totally understand why you're busy. Probably the 25 hours online forum lesson has been working well for you. 🙂

2 hours ago, krheate said:

I just check out some of the fun posts

We try to make do with the state the forum is in......... We throw Conga parties from time to time. 🤣

[vovkaslovesnyy]

It's a bit sad because I remember Frank telling us the same thing, but nothing really changed. And I don't see him on the forum these days. 

It seems that the number of new threads, users and actions is more important than actual activity and useful information. Let's hope it's going to change one day. 🤷‍♂️

[surajkartha]

1 hour ago, vovkaslovesnyy said:

It's a bit sad because I remember Frank telling us the same thing, but nothing really changed.

[drasnia]

In all honesty I don't think there is hope....

 

The way this website and forum are run its clear its about a financial powerplay for fiverr.

 

Whenever the big meetings come up they can say..... Well we have 1 million new users this year and we have 10000 unique posts in our forum EVERY week...

They just wont mention 9500 of the forum posts are spammers.. and 950000 of the new users have hardly any skills between them.

 

Why else would we find ourselves in a position where spam is left up but posts calling out the ridiculous spam are constantly deleted over and over again with no comment..

 

Its the only logical reason for a company to allow a forum to get like this especially with the deleting of all posts that mention it... There is clearly something they are hiding in my opinion

 

I don't even use this place because 90% of the posts are like typing to my 3 year old child but with worse spelling

[smashradio]

15 hours ago, newsmike said:

Perhaps the Reddit model would be good. You have to earn so many karma in order to post, and additional karma to be in certain rooms. As you earn more karma, more rooms open up, get downvoted by too many and lose karma and access to the higher level rooms. 

https://reddit.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/204511829-What-is-karma-

It could work, but what if you have an unpopular opinion? Cancel culture. Oh my... 

But I already suggested to the higher ups that we should have a space on the forum for only higher level sellers. Like a category where others could read, but where you had to be at least level 2 to join in. 

Just to give us a space to have some serious conversations without being bogged down by a ton of spam. But I can see why they wouldn't want that, since they want us engaged in the forum at large, not just hide away in our own category. 

Because I would. Hide. If I could. 

10 hours ago, surajkartha said:

The weekend gone by was a memorable one for me and others who were active on here.. Let's just say that I learnt a lot of new words thanks to one of the users smashradio has tagged in the thread post. I literally felt like I could smash radio (see what I did there @smashradio?)

Hahaha. That sounds.. smashing?