Don't "close" comments on the News section

[fastcopywriter]

When you don’t allow people to comment on Fiverr news, you’re insulting them. You’re basically telling them, "we don’t value your opinion, we’re not interested in your questions, we’re afraid of your disagreement."



This is really bad PR, and a horrible web practice, it’s also bad for web traffic since comments improve SEO.

[sincere18]

Not true. News is just that, it’s more of an annoucement, I have seen where Fiverr does post things because they want a discussion about something. But an announcement of something is just that.

I believe they read the Suggestion Box forum so if there is something that compelling about a piece of news they have announced you can start a discussion about it there too.

[fonthaunt]

I’ve seen them open discussions in Conversations on topics covered in News, but not all of them. I think it would be good to have a redirect to an open area for discussion somewhere when a topic is closed, unless the topic is no longer applicable or based on a really old discussion.

I admit as a moderator I have a slight bias on this, but only because of one thing. When they used to leave News posts open regularly there would often be posts months afterward that had no relevance anymore or were just spam. I was so busy figuring out which posts were real that I didn’t recall the news if someone asked about it elsewhere. I wouldn’t care if they wrote a news post and closed it without comment as long as they directed people elsewhere to discuss. Users could add to the Suggestion Box if they hated the “news” which we often do. I just want somewhere to catch up on actual news and be prepared for the onslaught when new bugs features are released.

[fastcopywriter]

Reply to @sincere18: They’re publishing news stories and they’re not letting us opine on them. Ever been on YouTube? Some YouTube videos disable comments because they’re too chicken s-word to deal with criticism. I hate that. I’m an opinionated person, and if I have something to say, I don’t want to create a different thread to say it.

[fastcopywriter]

Reply to @fonthaunt: Thanks for your insights. I had no idea. How can Fiverr keep track of news stories that are no longer relevant? An excel sheet? Or maybe they could set them to expire at a certain point?

[sincere18]

Reply to @fastcopywriter: It’s not jsut about being too Chicken-s, it’s partly about business. Sometimes when people start mouthing off the actual information gets diluated that they need to focus on. If you don’t like Fiverr there are many other platforms to do freelance work, maybe some have better forums that you like. Also, if the forum stays active then it’s no longer news and then sometimes it isn’t even how Fiverr works anymore, so sometimes you really do have to close it out and be done with it at a certain point.

[fastcopywriter]

Reply to @sincere18: The irony is that Fiverr is really good with PR on Facebook. IF someone complains on Facebook about Fiverr, they write them a nice little note with the customer service link fro example.

Subway is also good, I had a bad experience at a Subway, I wrote to them, and they sent me $10 in coupons for free subwyays.

And I disagree, there are not many platforms for freelance work, all the other platforms suck balls compared to Fiverr. Forums? I wouldn’t know about them, nor are they relevant since they aren’t about Fiverr.

The fact is that we the sellers are the ones making Fiverr a lot of money, and I don’t mind, I’m not a socialist, I’m happy that Fiverr makes money when I make money, but I don’t appreciate being silenced like a prisoner in the gulag. It is web unfriendly, and it will hurt Fiverr on the long term.

[sincere18]

Reply to @fastcopywriter: fair enough. But Fiverr is continually growing. and if you think about the small percentage of people that even come to the forums as opposed to the overall number of buyers and sellers, clearly they seem to not have an issue with it. I wonder what the real percentage is of people that visit the forums vs. the number of total members.

[fonthaunt]

Reply to @fastcopywriter: Expiring is a good idea. I don’t know if it can be done on Vanilla and or another potential forum software but you’d think so. If I have a chance, I’ll bring it up. Most of the Suggestion Box aren’t things I could get to Fiverr at all, but since this one is forum related I have a tiny window. Like a hamster window. 😉

I doubt they have anyone with time for spreadsheet type tracking although another idea might be to find a way for mods to help with that part. I like the automation possibilities of the other idea.

[fonthaunt]

Reply to @kjblynx: There is a rule about copy paste or near duplicates, but not same-topic threads. I know that I and at least one other person just try to keep same-topic threads closed and redirected for following ease.

If they aren’t duplicates we don’t remove the multiples, though, especially since the ones picked as the open thread aren’t always the chronological first or sometimes even the best one. It’s time consuming to watch for those when a topic is fresh. So, we just pick one as active and close the others with a link to active. Some mods don’t do it at all, but some are busier or just less OCD. 🙂

[mgjohn78]

Reply to @fonthaunt:
There used to be an auto close plugin for vanilla forums (not sure if there is one for this version). A simple way would be to use a simple script and a cron job to close topics after defined parameters.

[fastcopywriter]

Reply to @sincere18: I only started participated in the forums when I became TRS. Before that, I was too shy. I wish I hadn’t been, sometimes the forum leads to sales.

I can’t answer those questions you wonder, only Fiverr knows that. I think I read somewhere that Fiverr has 3 million users. So even if only 1% of them participate in the forum, that’s a lot of people.

[fastcopywriter]

Reply to @kjblynx: Well, one user might have 10 to 20 gigs, so if you divide 3 million by10, that’s 300,000 users. Of course,at this point there might be 600,000 users. Who knows? This of course doesn’t include people with no gigs.