Apostle for SEO mod/admin.

http://wordforge.net/index.php?posts/2550301/

Do we want to go there? As much as I think the person/persona is an annoying sanctimonious prick, dude seems to know his stuff, and I'm trying to keep as an open a mind as possible.

So let's hear some pros and cons.

He'd be great for that role, but going off all the reports he submits I'd be worrying about him being heavy handed with general mod powers.

We can always demod him if he gets heavy handed

I think we have enough mods for now.

Agree with the Exception, but I do think we should consider him for a tech admin at some point if we are short handed. I'd have reservations about actual modding, though, for the same reasons Bailey cites.

Knows his stuff? Really? I don't know about his second point, that's probably true. But the first one is a stupid platitude you usually hear on Facebook fanboi conventions. G+ is different from FB. However, targetting works better there and messages do not drown in the endless avalanche of juvenile bullshit after a few seconds. It's a more relaxed and disciplined, organized environment.

FTR I don't think putting apostle in any kind of position on this board is a good idea. Except for on the torture rack we have in the basement somewhere.

He has been privately begging for a staff position for years....and that is usually a reason not to hire someone for a reason.

Staff should have a modicum of social ability and so many people dislike Apostle the last time the idea of him being on staff was floated at least 4 people said that would inspire them to leave the board.

I agree with Aurora...and when we agree about something it's something you should think carefully about!

If Apostle wants it so bad could it be used as a carrot to get him to not be such an annoying prick?

That might work for a while, but like most people he'll eventually revert to type.

What Tamar said. He bugged me a lot about "helping" or moving the site to his webhost. Bottom line, he's too freakin' volatile to be given the keys. And at least half of the membership hates him.

Not a good idea in my opinion. We don't want to initiate the concept that being on staff requires behavior modification during normal posting.

He even kept after me about moving WF to his, private, webhost.

When a user has gone so far as to actually look up another member's apartment building and mention the restaurant they live over, repeatedly, I don't think giving them the keys to the database, with all of it's data, is such a hot idea.

In short, he knows just enough to be dangerous and has proven that he does at least basic research on the userbase. People give Tamar a lot of grief, but can you imagine the reaction if she'd posted a capture of the google street view of gul's house? I know he's gone back years looking at my posts to look for contradictions, meaning he is looking.

Yeah, I've got nothing against apostle, in general, but I think this move would be no bueno, and for all of the reasons mentioned.

So unless someone pipes up with a great defense of the guy that issue is settled.

What about SEO in general? Is it worth pursuing and does anyone have any experience with it or know someone who does?

If somebody wants to study up on the subject of SEO, then this site is one of the best out there for information on the subject. The guy who runs it is a respectable journalist, not some crank trying to make a buck by selling you crap he scraped from about.com.

Ultimately, what's going to boost wordforge up in SEO is having more activity on the site, using twitter and facebook to point back to WF, and things like that.

I'm not sure how much good SEO would do us -- or even how you'd go about doing SEO on a board like this.

SEO is incredibly important for a business like Apostle's where you need to stand out from among hundreds of competitors among people looking for your specific service. But we're more likely to get people through serendipitous discovery than through people Googling "discussion boards."

However, I really would love to see referral reports from Google Analytics on WF, because I do think those could be useful. I wouldn't mind setting it up if nobody else wants to -- one of you admin types would just need to drop a line of code in the footer, then I'm pretty sure I can make it accessible to whoever it needs it.

I found WF thanks to SEO, basically. I've got Google Alerts set to email me when certain key words appear on the web. I followed the link and wound up here. A good thread on a message board can wind up really high in search results. On another board, I once posted a thread ranting about a supervisor of mine, wherein I referred to him as "Pete Puma." For months afterwards, if you googled Pete Puma, that thread was the fifth result on Google.

We do very well on search results for "attack otters of the ass" too.

But what you describe is serendipity; what terms would we optimize for?

That's part of the reason why having activity on the boards is important. If someone came up with a shit your pants funny thread about something in current events (say Obamacare), it would kick us up in search results, and potentially bring more members. On a board like this, you can't really optimize for a given term, because of how much crap we cover.

Really, what we need to do, and I don't know how to do it, is damp down on the threads that degenerate into endless name calling, with the same members calling each other the same names they've been flinging at one another for a decade or more. An Obamacare thread (again, just for example) that has some insightful, or otherwise unique components, is more likely to get kicked higher in search results than one which has posts consisting of little more than "Statist!" and "Old whore!" Actively quelching such threads is unlikely to go over well, so more subtle nudging is going to be required, I think.

Oh, and now that I think about it, on one of the other boards I post at (which is a splinter board from another much larger board), they periodically get "coupons" for Google Adwords because they signed up for Google Analytics. Because its a splinter board, which generally only exists to mock the board they broke away from, they use the coupon to post mocking ads about the other board. Not saying that we would do something similar (i.e. mocking another board), but we could use the coupons to buy Adwords for terms that are common subjects of threads here. The other board also holds contests to see who can come up with the best ads. Examples of some previous winners:
More satisfying than yelling random thoughts out your window.
Endorsed by more totalitarian regimes than CNN!
My god. The blood. The screaming.
Come for the content, stay for the mind control.
Because mockery is a group sport.
You were raised on hoe-cakes, weren't you?

Okay, so someone sign us up for Google Analytics.

I can work on that tomorrow.

Release or delete this one?

I vote delete.

That was my feeling as well but wanted to check with the bosses before doing so.

You guys don't think we can clean it by reacting the poster's name?

Based on the information Elwood has posted, I'd say "no." Tamar and Lanz's comments would also be pretty big clues. I don't care if he gets butthurt over anything I said about him, but if he's willing to go to the lengths Elwood's mentioned to become a mod, then he's got some serious issues about this place, and he's liable to do any number of crazy things.

Plus, redacting names is more work for me.

I can go either way. Though in principle I don't much like the idea of disappearing threads, I can acknowledge there are practical limitations. Let's see what the others have to say.

@Tex @evenflow @Ancalagon

As a general rule I prefer not keeping stuff hidden. At the moment I vote release it as is, but I'll wait for others including @Tamar Garish and @Elwood to chime in since it is their posts in question.