Is DP being moderated to death?

It used to be back in the day, you could post links in the Template forum for affiliate templates (templates you didn't directly own but were authorized to sell.). I actually was able to make money that way back then while generating honest activity for DP. It used to be free to post too but I didn't mind when DP switched to a paid advertising model.

Apparently now you have to upload a copy of the template for sale because you have to be the owner of the template to sell on DP. I'm not surprised the links in the first 7 threads in the template sub forum are all dead. All the affiliate posters are gone and this place just feels dead.

For all that is holy, what is wrong with selling affiliate templates? Most people on the internet make their money through affiliate commissions. Why would DP de-legitimize an entire market?

Anyone know of any other forums that aren't killing off activity with excessive rule-making?

 

Maybe dp got a copyright suit from some guy selling a template that he wasnt supposed to

 

Good point.

 

But I miss the old days.

DP used to be jumping back in the day. Especially, General Chat. I posted this thread five days ago and it's still at the top of General Chat.

That tells me there's been a huge drop in traffic. Back in the day this thread would be on page two in a day.

 

Social media is to blame for the drop in forum popularity, the good old days are well and truly over.

 

We all do. Unfortunately, @malky66 is right. I think Reddit is also a bit responsible for that, since it offers a massive collection of forums, and you don't need to visit multiple smaller ones. I will always miss the good old forum days.

 

Speak for yourself, as for me the "good old days" were not so good. This place was full of spammers and scammers. The mods would hit them with a light and they would scurry into the walls like cockroaches only to resurface again. And the mods being overworked were hammer crazy back then. I used to receive infractions (warnings) with monotonous regularity, in fact I may even have been banned once. *or even twice

 

I’m talking about good old Internet days, and forums in general. I’ve only been on DP for 8-9 months. Don’t really know how it was years ago, therefore I’m not discussing it.

 

The thread topic and thread title is "Is DP being moderated to death?".

 

They mentioned that social media is to blame, which is the reason why forum popularity has dropped in general, not just DP.

Excuse me for joining the discussion, and sharing an opinion. Will return to design contests.

 

You are being over sensitive. Your opinions are always welcome, and I know you to be a very good designer.

 

For a lot of things like trying to find the solutions to problems, people have moved over to "Question & Answer2 sites like Stackoverflow. You've also got groups on sites like Facebook

 

Obviously kidding. All good!

 

LOL, I miss the REAL old days of Email List groups. I belonged to one called Market-L and used to get 15-20 emails per day of discussion (you could opt for a daily digest, but I liked the real time emails) by marketers around the world. Did not even have to click through to a forum site, the discussion came right into my inbox.

 

Yeah but did you make money on the Internet then?

 

I was scammed for about $100+ by someone I found on DP maybe 10 years ago when it was more active. Built me a site that didn't actually function. You live and learn. I never even thought to blame DP or thought about suing them. I blamed myself. How can anyone not know the difference between DP and a user on DP?

Plus there has to be some way to confirm someone is allowed to sell the templates they're selling rather than just ban selling affiliate templates.

 

I'm wondering if when people first spot DP the initial impression is that it's a low-rated, junky forum. I had that impression when I first joined it 8 years ago. The design had something to do with it. I am not saying quality boards don't get spammed, but the amount of spam vs the amount of visitors here suggests that a large % of new users think they can spam it because the forum looks dated, unmoderated waiting to be spammed. I could be totally wrong though.

 

Personally I never got that impression. DP always looked like just a popular forum and came highly recommended at the time.

I think it was just a target back then because it was just so popular and had lots if traffic.

 

No, it was mostly in the 1990's and the Internet was not very commercial. Everything offered was free and nobody could figure out how to make money, except for when Amazon started selling books online. However, we got a lot of value from the listserv groups. It was groundbreaking, in fact, because for the first time ever, I could run marketing or sales ideas by a bunch of experts around the world and generally get great feedback and advice. Sure, there were always trollers, spammers, and flame wars, but the groups were very valuable nonetheless.

In the early 2000's there was a listserv created by Rob Frankel (author of branding book "Revenge of Brand X" back in the day) and I believe that it was called FrankelBiz and its sole purpose was to do business (kind of like BST on this forum.) Not sure how successful it was.

This discussion has gotten me thinking about another oldie: Usenet. First online forum I ever participated on.

 

Now you're going back to the 80's. That's the "War Games" Internet era. That's before my time. I only arrived online in the late 90's.

I think Google Groups was the remnants of Usenet...They used to link to posts made in the 80's there and I got to see some.