Where is this forum heading?

[vortexxx]

<start rant>

I have to say that i'm a little confused by where this forum is heading, and just wanted to share with you some of my thoughts.

Nowadays i'm finding that the forum appears a tad too serious, and slightly lost, with no real focus or direction.

Call me old fashioned, but when I was a lad, one of the great things about forums was that they were (for the most part) open, and unbiased. A melting pot of good, bad and ugly. A lot of the time you didn't agree with what was discussed, which is why you would jump in and actively voice your opinion. It was this thrust and parry of conversational debate that made forums a fun place to frequent. Unfortunately, I now getting feeling that we never get to see any of these bad or ugly threads/comments due to the matriarchal moderation that goes on in this forum. The last time I checked, the definition of a forum was "a public facility to meet for open discussion" - with the emphasis being on "open".

When people go to what they think is an open, agnostic, generic flavoured forum, only to find out that it's actually a forum thats owned, sponsored and moderated by company xyz it tends to remove any of the unbiased, openness associated with a genuine forum.

Now with the utmost respect to MAK for all the great work she's done for the WA sex industry, I can't help but feel that the forum is steering towards becoming 1 x big promotion for her business interests. Please don't get me wrong, i'm not having a go at her, I mean without her this forum wouldn't exist. Which, I think is part of the problem. It's one thing to sponsor a forum, it's another to own and control it.

I'm sure i'm going to be shot-down (or deleted) for voicing my thoughts, but the bottom line is, that I genuinely would like to see this forum succeed and grow. Thus in the spirit of being constructive in my criticism i've got a few suggestions...

• Create a dedicated, one-stop forum rules section which covers all the various dos and donts of the forum. That way there can be no confusion for newbies (and oldies) who contribute to the forum.
• Create a dedicated one-stop admin notification/news section. Where admins can post notifications to users regarding upcoming forum related news/events.
• Don't mix Langtree's related threads/business with general threads. In doing so, you simply dilute the value of both.
• Don't mark certain threads as 'sticky' simply based on who the poster is. Especially when there are dozens of others threads which have a higher view count and yet aren't blessed as 'sticky'. Surely 'stickyness' relates to view count and not who the original poster is?
• Don't bury reviews for non-Langtrees related w/l's or establishments over in the Langtrees forum. From an information architecture and user experience perspective that just doesn't make sense. Thats like a supermarket hiding the milk in the meat section because the butcher also has a dairy farm on the side.
• Ease up on the moderation. Unless people are being genuinely out of line or malicious, let people voice their thoughts and opinions - good, bad or indifferent.
• Associated with this, leave threads open. Often late comers may want to contribute to a topic and if they're closed they can't.
• My ideal forum section break down would be...Forum Rules (read before posting), Forum Announcements/News, General Banter/Chit-Chat, WL Reviews, Strippers World, Health and Wellbeing, Industry Adverts, Employment
• Most importantly - MAKE THE FORUM FUN! Don't go raining on someone's parade (i.e. thread) with a tirade of factual, sensibility. If I want serious, detailed explanations, statistics or facts i'll head over to Wikipedia.

Once again, I want reiterate that this post is definitely not meant as a bitch about MAK (or Langtrees) in any-way-shape-or-form. I just think that business and pleasure should be clearly separated within the confines of a forum. Otherwise it simply becomes nothing more than a diluted, convoluted, stealth form of marketing, and not a 'true' forum.

</end rant>

 

[Mrs Langtrees]

This is a great post and just the type of thing I like to see.
Yes we are heading in a different direction, on Sunday the forum becomes Langtrees.com Forum. With this in mind I have been cleaning up the reviews.
Some of the sub forums are moving to other board as with the new artwork we will have sponsered links to each board with the sponser looking after the moderation of that board.
Because of the work involved it does need to become some what commercial, i.e. Langtrees Advertisers that have freely posted reviews will have them made sticky, whereas other advertisers will have to keep there reviews going to get top positions.
Reviews will also be moderated before going live.I will be doing this until i find someone I trust, as reviews can be hurtful at times or posts in the review sectio irrevelant.
It will take me days to answer all your post, but i will read many times and get back to you, and appreciate the time you put into it, lots of ideas from my quick preview.
Overall we have 12 sponser positions with moderatin rights, and hope to be able to get a much broader input from the industry.
Price is $1200 per year all artwork supplied and training. This works out at $23 per week, which is a great return for brothels and industry where they have reception staff with dead hours.
Clients are much more likely to visit, when they feel like they know someone at a house or parlour already.

 

[someguy]

On the subject of stickied threads, for a thread to be stickied it should be based on relevance and/or importance in my opinion. Forum rules would be an example of a topic that would be stickied for example as it is a topic that is important for all members. So who decides what should be stickied? Well admin and moderators of course. So it is important that the people who fill those positions be neutral parties. Neither biased against any member nor biased towards any members otherwise the forum will appear to be cliquey and not welcoming to new members and to existing members who aren't part of the clique.

 

[Mrs Langtrees]

Are we Biased? I have to leave the decision to members.

I now getting feeling that we never get to see any of these bad or ugly threads/comments due to the matriarchal moderation that goes on in this forum. The last time I checked, the definition of a forum was "a public facility to meet for open discussion" - with the emphasis being on "open".
Vortex like I said I will have to answer the points you raised one by one. Others joining in must understand that I will not answer there points until I have worked through Vortex, as the way I read the post he gave all the issues considerable thought.
My Answer
The forum has been rather boring for the last year and half. Serena when she worked for me did a great job keeping the forum balanced, when she started her own business I had no problem that she used the forum for self promotion.
I have been working on rebuilding Langtrees.com for over 4 years .Until I leased out Langtrees of Perth I never had the time to devote to building the effective advertising and time saving tool I wanted for the industry.
This means Brothels, Massage Parlor and Private working girls alike.
Around June I explained to Serena that I was going to house the forum within my website when it was completed.
So that I could be fair to her involvement over the years and for the industry to see that the forum was a good tool, I decided to have a sponsor to each forum. They could have the choice of moderating their own board with a sub board or two.
I would allow the sponsors the right of larger links on their signature and they would have no need to join in the day to day chat on the forum in return for a small advertising fee.
I decided that a fair fee would be $1200 per year which works out to $23 per week. (Remember a Google click for the escort word costs 80cents to $1. (Serena was attracting over 500 clicks through per week)
I put this idea to Serena and she felt she would not get a fair return for her advertising $$$ and that she would rather a more private forum to keep in touch with her advertisers.
Just after this a little disaster struck and bit me in the bum. The domain name “adult forums” were registered in the company Image International which had been liquidated.
The liquidator with no advance notice and after discussion that he would pass it back, disconnected the domain name and the forum went down.
Not having a web administrator at the time I quickly put the forum under www.talkinsex.com, sent out a mail out to notify members, which many said they never received.
Overnight we lost 50% of our logged in members daily and 50% of our traffic from none logged in members.
As I was hoping to have Langtrees on air by October I decided to wait until I rebranded the forum, had the new look and feel and just tried to keep what we had alive.
August I head to Perth for two weeks work on the website and to pack up my home when another upset happened, my father passed away peacefully whilst I was on the plane flying in.
Since then I have been putting out fires on all fronts. I finally got Langtrees repainted as my new offices will be my old offices as I only leased 75% of the building to my tenants. I needed a good front for all the ambush marketing I was planning for the launch. I make no apologies for getting a return for being the “spokesperson for the media” They had sold their news stories; it was time for a little return. Thankfully I can take a bit of the downs to enjoy the ups.There is no such thing as bad publicity when launching a new business that will cover Australia & NZ in the first twelve months, then hopefully move around the world.
I got the moderator team together” the loyal regulars of the forum” and we tried to create some new interest. Until I had my web team in position their focus must stay on the main site. I now have a web Administrator, a Web master two very gifted graphic artists and two agents that understand HTML code.
The regular team will hopefully celebrate with me later this year at some exotic location. (That’s the dream anyway)
As to moderating threads I can tell you until I started cleaning up the review board and separating all the questions and adverts into their correct board, I and the moderators have only deleted spam posts.
About 5 months ago we did delete one rather vicious post from someone that had previously worked for me, found the forum and let rip for all her problems in life, because she felt I never protected her from Centre Link.
Cleaning up the reviews I did delete many of Serena's advert posts that had had no replies. They were over 6 months old and were not relevant to what is happening in the industry today.
I have made the Review board a moderated board, which means it, may take up to 24 hours for posts to appear.
I am doing this job myself until I find someone that is balanced and fair. Firstly the review board will be only for comments from punters that have seen that particular lady.
Secondly reviews must clearly name the lady concerned. Many ladies have the same name. In these cases they must include the suburb the lady works, so therefore before confirmed as genuine before going live.
I have researched a few other forums, and don’t want to see the bitch fights that can go on.
To compensate my time, and as the sponsor of this board, Langtrees advertisers that have a review will be made sticky if the advertiser wants.
Good and Bad reviews will be added. My own advertisers will be notified if time permits when a review goes up and then hopefully we will attract more industry ladies back on to the forum.
My own passion is the sex education part of the forum and hopefully in the New Year I will have more time to devote to this part of the forum.
As to your point Vortex "a public facility to meet for open discussion" I assure you that we do not moderate many threads. No moderators are allowed to make themselves hidden; we just need all members, to find the time to join in with something that interests them on the forum, and let us know they are alive.
Once the new site is online (Sunday Night) I will be contacting all members via email and PM to notify them of the changes. I will be asking them to join in, and let their point be known. Remember we will be a true Australian Forum, we will have a well trained administer to help with all the technical side, we will have two of the best graphic artists to see the sponsors get a good return on their advertising $$$, and most importantly the forum can do its real job, help adventurous adults learn, and find new adventurous friends to experiment with.
Formal education is no good without the practical, whether it be the commercial or the social side of the coin. December 31st is the code word I used in all my battle plans…the objective is to open the forum and see over 100 members online doing whatever interests them.

 

[Mrs Langtrees]

Don't mix Langtree's related threads/business with general threads. In doing so, you simply dilute the value of both.

Vortexxx The reason I have the Langtrees.com board is to keep Langtrees.com business with in this board.
Each new sponsored advertise must do so.
Do you think I should move this post to the Langtrees board. I do but will be guided by you as the original poster.

 

[NA Seagull]

I must admit I'm having a bit of trouble navigating around at the moment especially when the filter for "latest posts by date" doesnt seem to work properly. I havent have read ALL the posts regarding the transformation but I'm confused over whats Langtrees.com and whats talkinsex.com
I posted a very innocuous post about Lana Evans this morning but can't find it! has it been "held over" for 24 hours? and if so why?
Just very confused. Not right to compare the site to others but must say compared to a site such as Funinaustralia this one is looking very unprofessional.

 

[NA Seagull]

PS I apologise I've just found the Lana Evans post under "state reviews" but I'm no fool, been around ALL aussie and international forums for some years and still find this one a tad confusing at times.

 

[Mrs Langtrees]

Hi Seagull,
We are getting the board ready for four new sponsors to join us and help make the board more interesting and less one sided.
New artwork is going up hopefully over the next few days that will tie in with the layout.
I have separated questions about girls and adverts from actual reviews so that reviews can be for only ones that have meet the actual ladies.
I feel this is fairer plus will be a lot more useful for the clients to access.
We are also adding live help, and whilst this will not be 24 hours, we should be able to have open 18 hours plus per day.
Until recently I have not had a webmaster and haven't much experience myself so it has been difficult keeping up with the problems of the forum.