Coming Changes on Threads

[imported_pdo]

Just wanted to give everybody a heads-up on a couple things on the Threads site.


1) Growth has been great lately. Just about 50,000 unique people visited the site in the last month. We love that so many people find Threads helpful and engaging and interesting. Thanks goes to you guys for that. The Threads community is just phenomenal.


2) We appreciate all the feedback we've receive on the technical guts behind Threads. We're seriously considering moving the site the vBulletin (the current front-runner) to take advantage of more forum-y features. If you have experience with vBulletin, leave a note below. If you want to suggest an alternative (like one that isn't $200), let us know too. Just keep in mind, a move will be painful. We'll do our best to migrate everything and everyone when the time comes, but things will get lost and take a bit of time to sort out. It's daunting.


3) We'd like to get a few more moderators on board. If you want to be considered, leave a note below. If you can get two other readers to second (and third) your self-nomination (along with the thumbs-up from one of the current moderators), we'll upgrade you to moderator status. The more the merrier.


4) We're going to try out a service on the site that should allow the site to make some more money without cluttering it up with ads. The service is called Skimlinks and it allows us to earn referral money from any links to products already on the site. If it sucks or slows things downs, we'll ditch it.


That's it. Thanks again!

[BB]

If cost is an issue, I'm sure there are enough among the 50,000 readers who would donate a few bucks via paypal to migrate to something much more user-friendly.

[kenneth]

To echo BB, it may be worthwhile to set up some sort of donation link so that regulars could chip in if they're so inclined. I personally would contribute if it meant that we were in a better position to become more like an actual forum.


Even though I've only been here a few months, I'd like to be a mod. I submit my qualifications: my experience is nil, conduct belligerent and often barely comprehensible, and I'm rarely sober.

[kronak]

vBulletin is OK, but there are some free options that I've used before that have been pretty solid:


phpBB: http://www.phpbb.com/

smf: http://www.simplemachines.org/


Both are pretty much just as feature rich as vBulletin, but without the cost. phpBB has some much larger installations (hundreds of thousands of users on single sites), so it's probably the better option, but I like the admin console on SMF much better.

[bremersm]

Paul,

vBulletin is great. VWVortex, one of the largest automive forums on the Internet has been using it for over a year after Zeroforums kept crashing. I really like the feature set that vBulletin has and the level of customization.


I was a Moderator for over 5 years on VWVortex. I gave up due to the fact that I wasn't on the site much when I sold my last VW.


I would love to help out and be a Moderator here as I think my previous experience would be helpful. Please let me know if you need references or want to discuss this further. You can reach me at steven.bremer at me dot com

[bruschetta]

Paul, I nominate users nicholascrawford and BenR for moderators. I would nominate myself, but that would be déclassé. vBulletin is the best choice if you care about security, marketing, and advertising revenue.


kronak, phpBB and smf are riddled with security holes. I was a marketing director in a former life, and we had at least one client every month who had a phpBB or SMF forum hacked.

[guiltybystander]

Hi Paul,


Thanks for the update, which I'm sure will grow Dappered even more.


I'd like to second Bremersm's nomination as Moderator. He's a good fella and would make a fine moderator.


If you're looking for more mods, I wouldn't mind helping out. I was pretty active on the WatchUseek forums and have kind of imported my passion for watches here. I poked around StyleForum before finding Dappered Threads, which I found to be much more welcoming. Qualifications? I'm manic about identifying and targeting forum spammers (as you might have found) and love to contribute to productive discussions. I'm available at ccclaw at gmail dot com.

[greg_s]

Paul,


This all sounds great. I agree about the PayPal donations idea. I think there's a pretty damn committed group of guys here that wouldn't mind helping out.


In that same vein, there are several excellent choices for moderators. If he is interested, I would second nicholascrawford. He has been around for a long time, is always friendly, and is very active. I would also put bruschetta's name out there for many of the same reasons. He has been active here for a long time. Bremersm is another good choice.

[tomservo]

Thanks for the update Paul. I'd also be fine if a donation system got set up for the transition. I'd be happy to kick in 5-10 bucks to makes things better.


I'd support the nomination for Mod of any regular poster on here. All would do a fine job, though I agree with bruschetta (wait, what?)that Mr. Crawford should be on any short list.

[kenneth]

+1 to NC and Bruschetta (if he can keep his smarmy tone in check).

[nicholascrawford]

*feigns surprise*


Who me? On this site a lot?


I agree about bremersm and BenR plus would add frost and trash and zerostyle. I would vote against bruschetta to be cheeky, but he really is a good pick too.


Please don't hesitate to spend $200 on software. Your time saved is valuable too, and I bet vBulletin has the lion's share of compatible plugins, advertising platforms, etc. Having a mobile version and being able to post photos from a mobile device will make it seem as if Threads received a kiss from God.


Looking forward to this! Please keep the communication channels open with us!

[Bulldoggery]

I'd be more than happy to contribute as a moderator, if anybody out there is willing to sign off on such a notion.


I'm online at odd hours (often between 2:00 a.m. and 5:00 a.m. Eastern time), which means I see a lot of this forum's auto-spam posts and could take care of them before people with normal schedules are up. Honestly, this site would be a fairly easy one to moderate, given that there's not a lot of contentiousness (at least none that I've seen); the moderator job would essentially be a "clean-up" job. I can do that.

[glen_delossantos]

I'm excited to see the new changes. It really proves that "content is king". These forums are extremely basic in terms of features but the people and content grew the userbase regardless of aesthetics.


I second all of @nicholascrawford's nominations and second his nomination as well.

[Vicious49]

I third NC's nomination. I work from home so I'm usually on during the day when I've been noticing a lot of these spam posts lately. However, I haven't been around long enough and am nowhere near as helpful as some of the other users on here.

[ChrisW]

If you decide that VB is the way to go, you should certainly put up a donation link, I'm sure plenty around here would like to chip in. Although a move may be a little painful, I think it is pretty clear that Threads is outgrowing the current format.


I definitely support Bruschetta's, NC's and Bremersm's nominations.


Exciting times!