Rantings of a mad man.....

I read someplace that he is an aviation buff.

 

Don't think so. The standard rate for advertising might be in the $0.0001 to $0.001 range for an 'impression'/ad shown, also known as page views. Put a few ads on a page and the could make a penny every time the page is refreshed.

They boast some high page views - 204.2 Million Monthly Page Views

I seriously doubt they care about the vb customers compared to the ad revenue.

Even this site Link that is riddled with spam has K & N air filters and Harley Davidson advertising. I doubt whoever is placing the ads even knows their $ is being wasted.

 

That forum is being spammed to death: preteen masturbate candid preteens pic preteen swim suite model girl html - Biker Forums - Motorcycle Enthusiast Forum

How can the site owner miss that? I spotted it posted there in one minute. Also, this is what worries me about vBulletin 3. The spam protection just isn't good enough in it compared to IPB3 which lets you use both reCaptcha and Questions and Answers together (not one or the other). Plus you can activate the IPS Spam service with a free KEY in your account with them to instantly ban members that join listed in their own spam database, it even detects registrations spotted as spam based on how long a person is registering for. You know, when you see a person registering for 10 minutes in "whos online". Which is a sure sign it might be a spam bot. The IPS Spam system detects things like this if you use it. I had 3 members get past reCaptcha (before I also activated Q&A with it). But the IPS Spam system detected and banned them all as spammers. And sure enough on checking the emails used, all 3 were using .ru (Russian spammers).

IPB3 by far is much better at combating spam if you use all 3. And lets face it, if your forum can't deal with spammer well, there's going to come a point were you'll have to just offer private membership accounts on a closed forum. Like many forums already do right now!

 

Go ask Bob Brisco, he owns it. The IB motor page where that site is listed is in IxAnders sig line (think that is the person) on vb.com as well.

And there is a K & N air filter ad there, and I doubt the person that placed that ad from K & N knows it is on there, but is paying for the ad. I ran the numbers and they could be making a reasonable amount of $ on the forum because it is getting page views / impressions.

 

Page views means nothing really if the ads are not being clicked to earn money because of poor placement and blending in style wise to get fooled clicks, or items being bought through banner sales.

I was earning miles more money from my old website per day than I was getting from another site with 10 times the daily traffic going to it. Simply because the ads were spot-on and blended in beautifully, getting me loads of mistaken google adsense clicks each day. Which I achieved using CSS Styling and some extra images used for frames around the ads

I wish I'd never made the decision to take that 450 page website about Aquarium Fish down now.

Honestly, page view counts for little at the end of the day if your ads are obvious.

 

Another way of saying that you mislead people? (food for thought)

wait? what? you took the site down...one that was making hand over fist? hurmpf kinda conflicting story


Bob Brisco...is just like any CEO out there...charged with staying high in the black, no matter the ruins.

 

Oh look, someone cleaned up that site and removed the link to it from the main company site!

I started posting that site both here and on vb.com, and all of that spam, months ago, took long enough.

 

Pity the site is still flogging a dead horse. Internet Brands basically just killed any community in it.

 

I'm not sure what you are referring to. Are you saying I should not have posted new information?

Is 'the site' AA?

At some point the advertisers spending $ on IB 'family of sites' will wake up and realize they are wasting their $.

 

No, it's the IB owned forum you mentioned. Internet Brands have a tendency of killing good forums and taking away anything people like about them.

 

100,000,000% agree.

But the ad revenue keeps coming in so they just don't care.

1. Buy a forum gaining momentum.
2. Put up ads, but do nothing else to try to attract members or add to the community
3. Some members will leave, or not. It will have traffic for a while at least
4. Repeat.

 

Problem is though... half their sites probably have lost most of the ad revenue due to driving away the memberbase. Take the example site... no one really even visits it any more, and any new members just leave straight away...

 

Which is precisely why they did not care if spammers were posting viagra ads and handbags. As long as there was traffic, any traffic, they sold 'ad impressions'. The larger companies simply don't check to see where their ads are displayed.


Nice gig they have, as long as it lasts. And as long as they keep growing the number of sites they own, they can always show the investors the newer ones with good members and content.

But in the end it is a shell game.

 

wasn't going to get involved in vb pass. disc. threads ('cept the one) but too late ... followed new posts link and already read it ... oh well

Well I must be special cuz Bob approved my post to his blog. I'm Mary303 (and also on vb forum.)

So you see ... we are too all satisfied, Bob said so, y'all can just hush up.
:yes: :p


[in any way is Bob using the answer to backtrack, after the flame-reaction to this post? or is that just too imaginative an interpretation and it's all meaningless?]

I'm trying to give vb/ib (I no longer seem to refer to it as just 'vb') a chance to see the light and straighten up. But since we're here in pass. disc. I'll just go ahead and say this. There are CEO's who are so passionate about the product they would work 24/7 on it for free, and then there are CEO's who are about leverage, stock and money games. I think B.B. has pretty clearly distinguished where on the continuum he is. To me, anyway. Bob reminds me alot of a CEO I used to work for ... :unhunh:

Oh it's been done ... read here. Bob's not unique, he just has a less hazardous product.

yep!

yep!

Agree - business does best by the stakeholders when it is at it's best.

But there will always be people who don't see that and take a different path to raking off $$$. They have no idea what they are missing. They are a pain in the system that no pill can reach.


There is a point at which it is no longer rational to expect a scorpion not to be a scorpion. At that point what the scorpion does is not the point. All that matters is what everyone else decides to do to deal with the scorpion. Some people will go on forever with a scorpion in their lives. Some people expect the scorpion to change, look for little signs that it is becoming more like a lovely butterfly, and are endlessly frustrated and stressed on discovering the scorpion is still a scorpion. (me, and other believers in the redemption of hopeless cases) Some people choose to lead lives that are scorpion-free.

With apologies to scorpions and supporters and admirers of scorpions, in case it is politically incorrect to so stereotype scorpions.

 

Agreed. Question is, are you still going to use vb?

I joined IPB and MyBB forums yesterday to start the slow process of evaluating the options.

Out of morbid curiosity I've followed the vb issues, hoping to find out what may be causing them. It could have been many things including poor leadership. If it was poor leadership then was it Ray, or BB? To me, that blog post made it clear who is causing the issues. So now I know.

 

Yeah, I think I get where you are going with figuring out who is behind the fundamental code problems. Old personnel or new? To better understand what to expect in the future. Mr. B hasn't made any statements that are clear to me about what is the same or changing in the future.

I think it's important to distinguish different kinds of problems. Not sure the problems are so much the wrong features. It's more the use-ability of the features, and basic coding errors. And features not delivered as expected. The features themselves are from legacy staff, I'm thinking, too early to judge. The simple code errors - basic learner stuff - are a bad sign, imo. I don't think that's necessarily a problem with those doing the coding, it's the whole process that's supposed to offer auto-checks and various quality steps. Anyway - those aren't the errors one expects in a release, and as far as I know those errors weren't common previously.

For the time being I am soldiering on with vb. At this moment it would be harder to switch providers than to deal with vb, and that's the basic decision at this time, for me. There are possibilities that vb could improve. I do not see this moment in vb-customer relations as a make-or-break, go or no-go, do or die decision point. The scorpion might be replaced, or morph. I have a vague timeline in mind to continue assessing..it's an ongoing decision process. Which is annoying in itself - it would be nice if that were something I didn't need to continuing thinking about.

 

They are more than coding problems, and I seriously doubt the quality of the people doing the coding are to blame.

It is the entire gamut of issues, licensing changes, ignoring people's most basic questions on the forums, paying vb customers having to test the code and report problems in the bug tracker - instead of receiving working code they paid for - then have those bugs marked as fixed when they are not. Even if they do get fixed many creep back in the next release.

Customers being treated like dog doo is most bothersome. Even the most basic questions are being ignored in the pre-sales forum most of the time.

This 'not knowing & hoping' phase if over for me. I'll take a look at vb,com occasionally because watching a train wreck is fun in it's own way. And I like georges server config information.

But I'm tired of 'hoping'. If they ever do make a version that works later ones may not, especially during the code re-write phase, that apparently has the new name 'refactoring'.

I'll continue with vb3.8 for a while, but if I continue to be impressed with the IPB personal like I have been, it will be a short while.