If I were the admin/mod of CE...

[ Updated ]

If I would have been given rights equal to Admin/Mods

1. First thing I would do is regular update of CE -Home page rather than forgetting it aside after making its look and feel very good once.

e.g Current home page still shows "KYCEan CB" while in actual currently "KYCEan ES" is going on 😉

2. 90% of the time to remain online so that I could keep a regular check on spammers and people who are in need and sometimes get very bad feedback from the site because they find no one to reply to their questions.

3. I would have made a help document ready just after finishing the set up or creation of this site rather than jumping over the work of enhancing this site and adding more and more functions day by day.

4. I would have not provided facility of "guest login". Reason is I would have preferred those guests to become as members which will ultimately would give me an oppotunity to ban and eliminate "useless" CEans .So for me quantity as well as quality of CEans would have been maintained.

5. I would have created a group of 2-3 people from my collection of good quality CEans to form "CE-Posts Maintenance" team. Their work would be to edit the posts which are having wrong English sentences and usage of sms texts and untolerable fonts usage ..etc.

6. I would have created a simlar to "CE-posts Maintenance" a "CE-Threads Maintenance" team. This team would be given rights to delete and transfer threads to appropriate sections. This team would be given rights to change the title of threads to an appropriate one, even though the owner of the thread has not made a good one.

7. Then I would have created a "CE- Interviewers" team. This will also comprise of 2-3 normal members plus only 2 mods and me. Their job would be to give timely "Small talks" and "KYCEans" . Their work would be monitored by me only weekly or monthly.

8. The work of all my teams would be checked and monitored by me(as Admin) only weekly or monthly. For motivation of my teams, team(or a particular team member) doing its work in best possible way will be awarded suitably.

9. I would have made "Location" as a mandatory field in registration form. I would have provided it as a "Drop down" option. So as to collect the data of CEans count according to regions for eg. majority is in XYZ city or near to that. This would have given me an opportunity to call CEans for meet and make up a public place (ofcourse not a crowdy one) for "CE-House". The purpose of CE-House would have been to call CEans once in a month and provide them with desired materials/equipments required for making real CE-projects. Motivation for those CEans and my efforts would have to become a mandatory part to make some success.

10. Most important , everyone would be given right to express themselves even though it offends anyone. For dealing with situations of "offense", 1-2 people would be made as a part of "CE-Discipline" team. Their work would be to maintain peace by banning people for a month in case they harm CE-peace.Everyone would be given full right to speak anything here.

11. I would create one more team including me as Admin in it. "CE-Cultural" team. The objective of this team would be to arrange timely competitions or contests and start "Happy Birthday" or "Happy new year" etc such wishes type threads and keep a statistic of who completed how many posts and giving congratulations on joining any silver, golden etc club.

12. I would have given titles to CEans based on their work rather than their posts. Those CEans whose whatever posts/threads will get edited by "CE-Posts Maintenance" or "CE-Thread Maintenance" teams will get appropraite deductions in their posts count. Posts/Threads count against any CEans will show only count of good quality posts/threads.

13. I would have given thread owner all rights to modify anyone's post in his/her thread. Even any thread owner will have full right to edit anyone's post in own thread(except Mods & Admins). Even would have right to close it at any point of time.

14. A rating kind of thing will be there against evry thread based on Answered/Unanswered thing. It will be marked appropriately by the person who has asked any query if it is answered . This will give readers of the thread to get an idea of getting solution of the problem.

...
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[Will keep on adding more and more points....] :sshhh:

PS: I request CE Admin/Mods , to not to take my points personally OK. This is just what I would have done. It is not for pointing out any wrong things in your work. OK. SORRY in advance.

DON'T TAKE MY POINTS SERIOUSLY. 😉

1. Firstly I will filter out the users who are inactive, to asses the actual hold of CE.
2. Take more people in th manage the administrative work of GUI and back end process as well.
3. Have a strict deadline of things which are planned and not loose the heat of the things.

This is what I feel I strongly want to do if I am an Admin. Again point is if i am 😀 May be I am just seeing only one side of coin

Biggie, can't you just make these two ladies Mods already? Then I can retire peacefully and work on my projects.. 😛

@ ash!
ha ha ha ha !!!😁
read the second point..I said to increase the number of admin NOT replace dear! so chill ... 😁

Oh ASH Boy!!!!

You are too young to retire from your services. keep doing your good work for another few years.

If I were the mod/admin I would have done following improvment:
1. Disable the userid of inactive members.
2. Keep an eye on spammers.
3. I noticed in the morning only that home page is not updated (rightly said by Shalini)
4. Work on user titles (There should be norms, that after posting these many important threads only you will be promoted to certain title/honour)
5. Apply to feature to rate/importance a thread/post.

But still I guess our Mods/Admin are doing good. We all know that all mods/admin are either working or student so they have responsibilities on their back and they can not devote all of their time to CE. Also too many Admin/mods will make a choatic situation.
So All I can say is GOOD JOB Mods/Admin. Keep doing your good work.

-CB

Of course no one is going to take this personally. As I said, there are lots of ideas you all may have.

Allow me to express few thoughts on the common points you've raised -

1. Updating the home page:

Agreed; it needs loads of work. The current layout does not suit our needs. Moreover, we need dedicated, passionate CEans who can take up responsiblity of owning various sections. Currently, that is the biggest challenge.

2. Disabling inactive users:

We've discussed this before. We are not going to disable/delete inactive users. Rather, try hard to get them back on CE. If they spent time in filling our registration form; I'm sure they will come back. There are users who posted once and became inactive for many months then came back with full swing. CEan Neha & Aashima; for example were very active few months ago. I'm sure they'll be back. CEan Anuragh27Crony was inactive for many months after he registered.

Think of it. You register on CE and forget about it. Then one find day, you read about CE in newspaper or watch us on TV - you feel great! You come back and be active.

3. Administration:

Our current mod team is excellent & very talented. We couldn't have had a better mod team. We'll add more mods in coming few months as our traffic shoots and things grow beyond the bounds. Over the past 3+ years, we've learned that it's always good to hand over the mod responsibility to CEans who perform & add value over a long period of time. We've learned a lot from the mistakes we did in setting up our editorial team. We do not want to repeat mistakes.

CE's goal for next 12 months (or December '09) is to be profitable and to setup steady revenue streams for our core contributors.

Good to see your ideas & feedback. Keep commenting!

@ Ash: At least be with us until we start a pension scheme for mods who retire? 😛

A pension scheme sounds good.

The_Big_K2. Disabling inactive users:

We've discussed this before. We are not going to disable/delete inactive users. Rather, try hard to get them back on CE. If they spent time in filling our registration form; I'm sure they will come back. There are users who posted once and became inactive for many months then came back with full swing. CEan Neha & Aashima; for example were very active few months ago. I'm sure they'll be back. CEan Anuragh27Crony was inactive for many months after he registered.

Think of it. You register on CE and forget about it. Then one find day, you read about CE in newspaper or watch us on TV - you feel great! You come back and be active.

Sorry to bring this up again. Well, if you remember our old discussion.. the crux of it was on inactive users with ZERO posts and have not logged in since their registration date.

Honestly, if they do find out about CE again, the likely scenario would be that they would have to register again anyway.. since they forgot their password (and probably the email they used to register) 😉

Would they actually be put off if their 2 year old account was gone? I don't think so. Why would they be if they haven't posted anything?

Just as we are vigilant in banning spammers, I don't see why we cant also be vigilant against redundant registrations. Its like getting rid off the weed in the garden 😉

Is it like we are unable to under what Big K is trying to convey or the other way around?
users who did not log in for ages, won't log back in!

We arent asking to deactivate users whose probabilit of posting might increase , we are just asking to remove all those who are really not adding value in any sense. CE family building is all about value addition right?
So what is the whole point in retaining people who are not interested to move forward with us?
Drop them! pick new ones and keep going, we can't carry junk where ever we go right? we carry stuff what we think is necessary..

May be need to understand Biggies point of view with more clarity...
we might run a bit low on NUMBERS , but then it would give us a satisfaction that the numbers what we see are actaully people who are with us!

I just made quick checks and found out that about 20500 registered members have not posted on CE. How can we make them come back and be active here?

Addendum:

I seriously do not like the idea of removing members. Instead, why not come up with better ideas to make them active? What say you?

The_Big_KI just made quick checks and found out that about 20500 registered members have not posted on CE. How can we make them come back and be active here?

that explains quite a lot! i mean we have 15000people who actaully posted! 😁 and might post! thats really not a terrible number
Biggie if they were interested, they would have come back!
we cant give incentives to every one of them right?
drop them! trust me , we will get nice new CEans again who are much more enthusaitic and active..

Hey, we are a democracy! Lets vote.. who is FOR deleting old and very inactive (0 post) members?

*hundred CEans puts their hands up*

who is against?

*biggie puts his hand up*

Ah ha! See! Then we should.... *biggie bans ash*

@Durga:

drop them! trust me , we will get nice new CEans again who are much more enthusaitic and active..

I'm bit adamant. Tell me how?

------------------------------------------

@Ash: 😀 . It's democracy but we can't always go with the public opinion. Some decisions are to be taken against public opinion; it's for the benefit of community. Quoting our registration count gets us lot of attention which we need to attract even more people. Look at the numbers. About 20,000 have posted on CE! The number also gets us attention from the media and the press.

Call it a weasel technique, but it helps - and we need it to keep CE growing. Moreover, the number of inactive users are not obstacle in our progress.

The_Big_K@Durga:



I'm bit adamant. Tell me how?

Sorry??
You are VERY adamant!!
*durga joins Ash is Banned team*

I joined in OCT, yup we have had many registrations ,but then i have seen many people staying back with CE . So I believe even if growth is a bit slow, it will be steady.
My confidence is from what i have been seeing here since I joined. I guess many will agree with me

@ Durga: You haven't yet answered my question. How does deleting the inactive users help us?

The_Big_KCall it a weasel technique, but it helps - and we need it to keep CE growing. Moreover, the number of inactive users are not obstacle in our progress.

I don't know if it obstructs our progress or not, But I some how feel the average activity ratio is diluted because of it.We just keep on saying we have 40K people, but how much output has actaulyl coem from these 40K?
I guess activity was mainly because of very few percentile of users.So instead of living under a shadow of 40K we can as well live with 15K? we have anyways been interacting only with 15K? Are we actually retaining people only for numbers purpose?

Its just doing a health check at very step.

I am yet to understand why we need media attention.
-----
may be as an Founder of CE, you have different views.
Its anyways your decision as some times Big K says" democracy always doesnot work" 😉

It's always there. Almost all content websites follow the 1% rule which says, only 1% of the people visiting a website will add content to the website. I read it in some Web 2.0 presentation; don't remember the reference.

Look at following references:

Historically, this algorithm appears to have favored the site's most active participants. Last year, the top 100 Diggers submitted 44 percent of the site's top stories. In 2006, they were responsible for 56 percent.

Taken from: #-Link-Snipped-#

Also: <a href="https://asc-parc.blogspot.com/2007/05/long-tail-and-power-law-graphs-of-user.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Augmented Social Cognition Research Blog from PARC: Long Tail of user participation in Wikipedia</a>

#-Link-Snipped-#

Must Read: #-Link-Snipped-#

See, this will always be the case. Inactive users don't harm us; instead they help us get more users - 1% of them will be responsible for taking CE to next level.

We do need media attention. It's essential for our growth; getting sponsors and making money. CE does not intend to limit itself to an online website.

In the end; I know you do not like me being (very) adamant about retaining the inactive users. But it's being done on purpose for the benefit of CE. I hope someone appreciates it.

I hope to retain your trust in me & CE.

ok! I guess i have nothing to say here 😀
I have seen the wiki graph and you point , I still say i need to understand better, may be when i see the after-effects of retaining non-participating users.
As far as trust is concerned, 😀 I have trust , was just suggesting as this thread is meant to be.

The_Big_K@Ash: 😀 . It's democracy but we can't always go with the public opinion. Some decisions are to be taken against public opinion; it's for the benefit of community. Quoting our registration count gets us lot of attention which we need to attract even more people. Look at the numbers. About 20,000 have posted on CE! The number also gets us attention from the media and the press.

Call it a weasel technique, but it helps - and we need it to keep CE growing. Moreover, the number of inactive users are not obstacle in our progress.

You've been around too many politicians (in addition to the recent one) for your own good, biggie. Its funny that we are somehow following their method of getting peoples attention, eh?

I see you are pulling up percentages of this and that. That was not your argument the last time we debated on this. Are you desperately trying to find reasons to keep our member numbers inflated?

Why can't we be unique, like proper engineers? Aren't we supposed to be people striving for quality, productivity and efficiency? Why compare ourselves to other websites (heck, 2.0?). We don't follow trends. We create them.

You do know the great things behind CE are the active members themselves.. not anything else 😀

@ Ash:
My argument has been the same. We need the numbers to grow. I only pulled the numbers to show that we aren't any different (context is important).

No one has answered my question yet. How does number of inactive members hamper our growth or activities? We aren't giving false numbers to anyone. We only say we have 40,000k registerations (members).

You need the numbers to grow right? I tell you, have you collected any statistics for CEans on the basis of quality. I mean good quality members joined or good quality posts made a day/ count of members joined a day ..like that?

If it is not sounding something stupid, I think this can help in getting answer of your question.

Atlast, I would say quality matters rather than quantity because somewhere only quality is responsible in increasing count of members. I think the reason if today its count is 40,000 is quality of CEans. I have noticed many times, users who get the good answers and quick replies of their problems or questions, try to show interest regularly in the site until or unless someone offends them or they get busy. While those who don't get answers to their problems, show less interest here.

Now question is why few people don't get their problems solved? Reason is "QUALITY" of CEans. Somewhere this affects good regular contributors also. They also get bad feedbacks of the site and gradually start losing the interest and finally this site will be left like a collection of thousands(I wish lacs) of CEans but of no use. I would simply call them "useless".

I would like to give a suggestion for this- take it or ignore it your wish

Try to unregister those CEans who are "useless" to CE rather than unregisteing those who have not made posts from a long time.

Now question is how to know who all are "useless" right? Answer is very difficult to follow, but I think may work , you never know. If you will remain more and more online or make a panel of people to do so for this,then also you can find who all are "useless" and not.

That's it.

i know many of us will disagree very badly with me. but can we introduce membership fees? That shall reduce the time- passing floks registering and substantially increase the quality as only those people who mean serious business will register.
that would also solve the steady income issue.

Again I know many will disagree, but it's just a athought

yeah, I don't think that is a good idea..

although you can have a supporting member level where those who choose to don't say $20 annually get the title of supporting member under their name and a few small other perks.

I doubt people will ever pay; some of them may but they'll be hugely disappointed if they do not receive answers to their queries.

Also, adding membership fee won't really affect the quality of posts. Getting quality content is the responsibility of top 10% of CE's active users.

Why we have to delete the inactive users?

We have 19649 threads , 57215 posts and 39899 members.

out of which 13344 threads are by out CE-Bot and it has around 14000+ posts .

If you say anyone we are a group of 40k+ engineers and we have just posted around 6500 threads that has no value.

IF we talk about stats it mostly degrades our stats.
So this is my opinion on deleting the members with posts =0

If i will be the MOD or Admin of CE i would have deleted the inactive users and keep the forum as good as our people putting here.

but i would have surely deleted the in- active users.

durgai know many of us will disagree very badly with me. but can we introduce membership fees? That shall reduce the time- passing floks registering and substantially increase the quality as only those people who mean serious business will register.
that would also solve the steady income issue.

Again I know many will disagree, but it's just a athought

:Evil: A BIG NO FROM MY SIDE :evil:

durgai know many of us will disagree very badly with me. but can we introduce membership fees? That shall reduce the time- passing floks registering and substantially increase the quality as only those people who mean serious business will register.
that would also solve the steady income issue.

Again I know many will disagree, but it's just a athought

I'd think that would work for if CE consisted mostly of professionals. Some forums do have premium services, and the quality of responses are good.

At CE, a lot of us are still students. I don't mind paying for contribution, but if I came to CE looking for help on my project or assignment, I wont pay a cent.

We talked about setting up a CE fund, though as usual, that discussion is dead at the moment. Its where any of you CEans can donate to CE through Paypal. The CE fund can be used not only for website support, but also prizes and projects.

As suggested by Gohm last time, those who donate will have a special tag in their profile.

Maybe $5-$10 per month is quite adequate.

This sounds good ash .

here is one idea to improve activity and to improve interest..
may or may not work..

But how could it be such that we post a thread asking for the topics which people need i mean elaboratively as Shalini's java and durga's English thread ..
If people ask any specific language/tool/database etc etc we can start a thread and we can teach people week wise.

There are many people who spend lot of money in learning QTP (testing tool) , SAP etc etc..
may be our forum becomes a litle bit technical but no harm as people learn and ONE FORUM FOR ALL TRAININGS including topics on all engineering subjects..

what you people say??

I have a small strategy for it .

That is the person/(s) who is taking the responcidility to take some topic should be available with atleast 4 weeks toopics in hand such that even if he is busy some one can post it here.
And the questions can everyone who is aware can ask/answer them.

So if big heads like this initiative i am ready to Contribute a thread on QTP with few frameworks.
i guess CB can also join me in discussing this.

We talked about setting up a CE fund, though as usual, that discussion is dead at the moment. Its where any of you CEans can donate to CE through Paypal. The CE fund can be used not only for website support, but also prizes and projects.

has an account been set up? in first place?
that's what is improtnat here. Biggie , is it OK for you to take in more people and deligate stuff off!
I guess you have more important tasks to attend to.

I know wiki is free, but even wiki opens up donations period where it collect donations from users.
I dont think there is anything objectinable in what Ash is saying.
We need money to run projects, we need money for prizes


P.S: KYC still shows as CB!

English-ScaredI have a small strategy for it .

That is the person/(s) who is taking the responcidility to take some topic should be available with atleast 4 weeks toopics in hand such that even if he is busy some one can post it here.
And the questions can everyone who is aware can ask/answer them.

So if big heads like this initiative i am ready to Contribute a thread on QTP with few frameworks.
i guess CB can also join me in discussing this.

ES!
Good Idea
Start off with QTP! 😀

Its suggested that either Biggie or Mayur can set up a bank account that can withdraw funds from Paypal as well. That way, they can use the funds in India easily. Can someone do a bit of research which bank accounts in India can do this?

... or you can temporarily send your donations to my paypal account first. I'll utilize the funds wisely 😉

ES, great ideas. You are right, we need more of those types of tutorials. GF also started his PIC one. Can someone start the "tutorial request" thread soon?

and can we have a resource section?

we can collect all the information and keep it at one place like those of project works

We can collect the URLs and free study stuff and make a repository , every one can acess them, juts norma URLs

Yea.. I suggested an engineering wiki last time, were any of us can add information and resources. Now that any of us can use a crazyengineers.net email, they can add information to Google Sites.. and as you said, create the repository.

@ ash

I don't think any one is aware of gogole site URL . MAy be we can introduce a new tab where we can link google site to CE site and then redirect users who ever have account

i really dnt know how much this is feasbile though!

P.S: I am updting the things to do list with these two line of actions.

Pardon my ignorance😉
but let me know what is this google link stuff?

and Yes i can start QTP thing , need help from CB.
CB where are you?

we will discuss some strategical approach to teach from beginners and then we extend it further.

Approach in the sense objective and course contents.

Yep, I'm waiting for biggie to do the URL thing. If things go well, the URL should be: #-Link-Snipped-#.. or something like that.

The current address is:
#-Link-Snipped-#

Once you create a site, you can easily do the URL redirect (via admin's control panel). For example, if you create a Google site named "Tutorials", you can access it with "tutorials.crazyengineers.net"

[EDIT]
@ES
Googles Sites is a place where you can create pages, with a limited range of HTML. Our CE Bot page is hosted on crazyengineers.com's google sites:
#-Link-Snipped-#

crazyengineers.net also has its own Google site. Thats where we will host all future sites. If you have a crazyengineers.net email, you can log in and create your own pages.

Thats cool!
do you mean we can access tutorials from #-Link-Snipped-#
I tried just now!

Thanks Ash.

I will check this from home and will understand better.

durgaThats cool!
do you mean we can access tutorials from #-Link-Snipped-#
I tried just now!

At the moment.. nearly all crazyengineers.net subdomain aliases (except for mail.crazyengineers.net) point to the main website. But yeah, with some changes, we can point it directly to the place we want.. most likely a Google Site.

Are we detrainling form the thread's motive.

@ ES - I am all game for anything related to any automation tool.

-CB

You mean, derailing?

I think we are still on. We are talking about improvements or decisions one would make as a mod/admin to CE. Even though I already am a mod, I'm not an admin.. so 😛

I can already see an assembly of future CE Admins 😀

Way to go people !

PS: K Beware .. !!

Oh Boy !!! This thread is becoming really serious with some good suggestions as well.

I was busy busy at noon when the thread was hot, so replying a bit late. For active users suggestion I suggested, this was just to ban them or disable their id so that whenever they hit/find CE again they can request for either new id or revoke their old ids. I am totally with Biggi that it doesn't make any sense to remove inactive users from CE.

Actually hefty number of users definitely attract users to join CE also it helps CE in getting advertisement and good interviews. so no mean or second thoughts for removing the inactive users from data base.

For QTP initiative - ES I am with you and any help from my side is always welcomed.

-CB

OK CB am very busy next week attending my brothers marriage so we will plan it by this weekend itself.

Can you put your Crazyengineers mail id in your signature such that i can mail you.

Hey all,

You all can find some time to read my points in the very first post of this thread.😛

Thanks !

Very good suggestions, Shalini 😀 .

The_Big_KVery good suggestions, Shalini 😀 .

Thanks Big_K 😛

Guys,after going through your post watever you are mentioning is appreciated but then CE will not be a forum anymore,if we take membership fees then we have to provide quality material for all sections I dont thinks its possible at this stage,deleting in-active members is demoralising i myself been member of many forum were i am inactive no one has deleted me yet,and finally donations are welcome but it should be made compulsory and to encourage in-active users we can give them goodies like quality material,free s/w,useful links provided they meet certain qualifying criterias.

@shalini : nice suggestions but most of them are followed in CE.

sauravgoswami@shalini : nice suggestions but most of them are followed in CE.

Sir, Thanks for good words 😉. I could not trace out more points from my list of given suggestions. Can you tell what all suggestions are already followed except 1, 2 and 8.

Thanks !

Well. I think most of you know what " IF I WERE AND WILL DO".
If in 😕.. Guess!..
A prize to a winner is there.

correction in post no 54 I meant donation should NOT be made compulsory instead of compulsory.
@shalini ; 5,6,7,8,9,10 all this functions are done by Mods and Admins,and they are doing efficiently,making so many teams means role of the Mods have been diluted and by doing so we will also distribute their power,its always tough to manage more poeple!!!

@ sauravgoswami.. I strongly agree with you

The current address is:
#-Link-Snipped-#

What is this guys.

sauravgoswami@shalini ; 5,6,7,8,9,10 all this functions are done by Mods and Admins,and they are doing efficiently,making so many teams means role of the Mods have been diluted and by doing so we will also distribute their power,its always tough to manage more poeple!!!

Sir, Very true said "Tough to manage more people" but my idea was after observing the load on our MODS and looking at few good quality of CEans who have enough good capabilities to be a part of my said teams.Well , coming to "tough to manage" thing I don't care, If I would be admin, i can handle that for sure. 😉

Thats your confidence speaking,good for you. as of now I dont thinks our MODS are overloaded they are enjoying their role and responsibilities,of-course rotation policy is possible but still not needed in CE,still the no. of regular contributors is not that large!!!!

shalini_goel14Sir, Very true said "Tough to manage more people" but my idea was after observing the load on our MODS and looking at few good quality of CEans who have enough good capabilities to be a part of my said teams.Well , coming to "tough to manage" thing I don't care, If I would be admin, i can handle that for sure. 😉

IF i were the mod i would have some how accessed into the spammers machine and will inject Trojan viruses etc etc there .😡😡