20
12
2007
100 Reasons Digital Point Sucks
Posted by: James Lewitzke in Online Communities, Rants, Satire, SpamFor those that aren’t familiar with DP, I’ve composed a list of one hundred reasons to avoid that place (in no particular order):
- It’s Spammer infested
- They think Google’s Toolbar PageRank is important (which it’s not)
- They think submitting to Web Directories is important
- They think Reciprocal Link Building is important
- They think Article Submissions are important
- They think Press Releases are important
- They think submitting via Social Bookmarks is important
- They actually applaud participation in Link Programs
- No creative Forum Icons
- They think “Google is Evil”
- They promote splogs
- They promote Espionage
- They promote Link Scheming
- They promote Blackhat SEO techniques
- They promote Stumble Exchanges
- They promote Digg Exchanges
- They promote Clickbank Posts
- It sits on a sub-domain
- It’s too big
- Members have tried to sell their accounts
- Trying to filter all the good posts from the bad posts is like finding a needle in a haystack
- They actually have an “Interesting Junk” dropdown menu in their forum toolbar (Under “Fun Stuff”)
- Reputation is disabled in the “Members List”
- For DP: Quantity > Quality
- Their “Greenish” Color Scheme reminds me of Vomit
- Their Link Exchange / Sales Forums have over 460,000 posts
- They banned Alexander the Great
- They have an entire forum devoted to Keyword Tracking
- The Administrators don’t care about the quality of the forums
- The Moderators don’t care about the quality of the forums
- They hire paid forum posters
- Just look at some of Nintendo’s Pictures
- They ban members for silly reasons (like thread bumping)
- They got banned from Stumble Upon
- There’s a”Politics and Religion” sub-forum, it’s suppose to be a webmaster forum
- Everything is about links, links, and more links to them
- Insults seem to be tolerated (like here)
- Just looking at the site hurts my eyes
- Threads often go off-topic
- Don’t Piss off Crazy_Rob, he’ll ban you
- They actually have a “Personal Attacks” Sticky, as if insults weren’t obviously bad.
- Copy and Pasted Articles flourish
- Too many self-promo threads
- Too many link-drop threads
- Some members are arrogant, and believe competing communities are jealous.
- They condescend towards Doug Heil as if his IHY community is second-rate
- Lots of cell phone spam
- They overvalue “Article Marketing”
- Many new webmasters get sucked into their logic
- Profanity filter is turned off
- Their logo’s odd
- You can’t even make out what’s underneath their logo (it looks something like a barcode)
- All their “Google” Stickies relate to PR
- People who generally try to help others out go relatively unnoticed
- Their membergroups are insulting (Peon, Grunt, etc.)
- They have over 500 self-proclaimed “SEO Experts“
- The forums look nothing like the main site
- Their forum design is uninspiring
- They don’t care who they ban, even high-ranking contributing members
- HTML isn’t a sub-forum of programming, like the rest of the web languages
- There is no moderation accountability
- There is barely any reputation accountability
- They actually have a marketplace for website traffic, as if having something to unique to offer your visitors isn’t enough
- Sorting through the filth gives me a headache
- Members get super freaked out when DP goes offline
- The guy who wrote the Reputation FAQ is banned
- “Who’s Online” options are severely limited
- The forum’s “Get-rich-quick” logic undermines the purpose of the web and internet
- Some actually try to sell blackhat methods to newbies
- It gives off a “Creepy, Slyish” vibe
- Definitely not enough moderation for a board their size
- They don’t welcome new members well (usually you get a welcome PM from an admin, but not from DP)
- They are arrogant enough to have their own “DPified” Google FAQ
- Allowing users to switch between vBulletin styles makes the site look unprofessional
- Many threads aren’t even posted in the right forums
- They have no Design & Development stickies. Wouldn’t some coding resources be useful for creating a “good” website?
- They have a “Legal Issues” forum, anyone else detect the oxymoron?
- The site’s owner (Shawn) isn’t even active much on the forum, (I doubt he even has that much influence anymore)
- Popular ≠ Valuable
- Absolutely no forum for “Site News and Updates” can be found
- There’s no specific DP copyright info for the forums (it should be at the bottom, near the vB copyright info)
- It’s server is often slow
- Limited selection of “Digital Point Solutions Tools”
- “Forum Jump”, for the most part, is *pointless*
- Everything’s about money over there (with entire forums dedicated to affiliate programs and PPC advertising, not to mention the 2,000,000+ posts in the DP marketplace)
- They have two seperate sub-forums for Google Adwords
- Whitehat SEO is virtually nonexistent
- Web hosting is also virtually nonexistent
- Read this post
- Or read this post
- Many members’ signature links are filled with pointless links with anchor text such as “PR4 Link Exchange” or “Hot Thai Girls”, etc.
- Their Directory forum is underneath the “Search Engine” Category, do they even know what a Directory is?
- No web marketing advice for long term site stability
- For allowing usernames like FuckingPirate and Shittywall to exist
- They tend to be hypocritical (they don’t mind manipulating sites like Digg and Stumbleupon, but when it comes to Ethical Legal Issues, there’s nothing pertaining to internet marketing)
- Their spammy ideas and link schemes sometimes spill over into other forums
- Difficult to understand the site name, and how it relates to the web
- The community doesn’t collectively care about long-term website worthiness
- Did I mention it’s a spammer heaven yet?
- A community containing that much filth isn’t worthy of all the backlinks gained from this blog post
I could probably have come up with more, but I’m too tired to think right now.
(UPDATE 4/20/2008 = I’ve opened up a new blog post about this list over here, so all questions and comments should be directed there.)
Only 100 reasons? You were being way too nice.
Yeah, I know.
Maybe I’ll write a “sequel list” in the future (If I feel like it).
they don’t value their members. god bless dp
Wow! Nice list
This is certainly getting a mention on my blog 
Glad you enjoyed the list Dan
The guy who wrote their reputation faq is banned … I’ve never heard anything so absurd! What did he do to get banned, forget to spell check something he was explaining?
I’m not sure *why* he was banned either, the reason might not even be related to the rep FAQ.
Ho ho …….
very funny..and may be correct to some extent..
This whole thing is based upon your ignorance. DP Forum isnt just one person or or one viewpoint. It is made up of many different people with many different opinions and ideas.
101 it is infested with Scammer to a point where members are scammed out of $10,000 a week or more.
Sammie xXx
@MrBob – So it’s based on my “ignorance”, how? Are these points wrong in some way?
@Samantha – I’ll consider stating that point if I ever make a sequel list
, although some points could be mixed in with scamming. (Plus I think you’ll like #59)
LoL – The site makes money thats all the owner cares, he became super famous, he careless what is going on inside the forum lol, but I do agree that they BAN you for no reason but big forums like DP needs quick actions and some mods and admins there suck ass they think they OWN DP, they ban you for real if they get pissed for some odd reason, they gotta get a real life..
YES!!! Finally someone has said it!!! I knew it all the time, but I was stuck over there thinking there wasn’t any worth wild web forums out there.
The thing that annoys me over there is people plugging a service. You ask a genuine question and someone comes in and says, “Well, I can do it, for a price.” Thanks douchebag, you’re a big help.
Thank you. Thank you for saying it.
Glad I could help
Not gonna go through it again but did you mention the fact that a lot of members don’t read beyond the OP before they reply and some even yet only seem to read the thread title? Repetitive answers “for the win”, it’s surprising how many times you’ll see the same answer to the question in a row as if people are completely oblivious to the above/previous post.
There also seems to be quite a few answers given by members which are completely unrelated to the original question.
Lastly, they should only let people who have validated their email address post. (or so i’ve heard the light green usernames are unvalidated)
You have missed dozen of many other reasons like poiinting at the Coward of County (aka Shawn Hogan) running away as soon as banning people began, then presumably returning anonymously so no one can see he is at the forum all the time.
Of course he has a thousand of ass-kissers saying he is doing business, having fun with girls or anything else, but naming Crazy Rob admin is the real funny thing. I have never seen somethin more inept around, except Katy.
Even worst, there is an increasing rumour in other forums stating that Shawn is giving “backstage” lessons on how to be a rude moderator so as soon as someone post something they don’t like threads are immediately closed with two or three hard words as explanation.
All of this and the lack of interest supporting Digital Point paid clients or thanking people still donating to server makes of DP the fastest growing debacle’s candidate of 2008.
I believe most of them are true but i still inlove at DP!
LOL!, some points u mentioned are valid
19. It’s too big – isn’t it EVERY forum owner’s dream to make their forum big?
James,
the points you have mentioned probably applies to almost all the
busiest forums. To single out DP is like a case of sour grapes.
Granted DP has its own unique faults,but to trash an entire community
is pointless and reveals your ignorance.
There are very good knowledgeable users who can give other forum users
a run for their money.
Lots of people have earned good money from DP and even noobs can
earn money and several have started their online careers on DP which is
more than anyone can say of their own forums.
Better to be in a forum like DP than being stuck in a snob forum where
knowing the right members counts and being a noobie is a curse!
If you dont know what I am referring to be a warrior.
101. SHAWN D. HOGAN
Greetings.
It seems to me that you are most-likely a banned member at Digital Point Forums, thus the reason for the hate blog post. Perhaps you can edit your blog post and tell everyone your user-name and why exactly you were banned from DP?
I actually took the time to read through your entire list of “the cons of Digital Point Forums” and there are only a few that seem accurate. Maybe you decided to list the cons because you didn’t have the time to experience the good aspects of Digital Point Forums before you were banned?
Firstly, I am not necessarily here to defend Digital Point, but I am here to voice out my opinion towards your blog post.
Digital Point Forums, in my opinion, doesn’t have enough moderators and administrators – you’re right about that and I’ll agree with you; however, for having such a limited amount of forum staff members, they do a superb job moderating the forums and maintaining such a large forum in a decent timely manner.
There are a few horrible points which I would like to address to you that you tried to make. For the majority of your list, you repeated yourself or just made horrible points.
Digital Point’s server is slow sometimes because it is so popular. Everyone knows that big forums like Digital Point Forums, powered by vBulletin, is an easy target for hackers and DDoS attacks – on top of that, there is a lot of people constantly visiting the site, straining even their “leet” powerful server.
I don’t see why you complain about people claiming themselves as “SEO Experts” – people who have experienced some good techniques with SEO have the right to share it with others, and that’s what a forum is all about: teaching, learning, and discussing with each other. There’s always something new to learn about SEO, and there’s always some new method or strategy that *can* work for you, so it’s definitely worth reading on what some self-proclaimed “SEO Gurus” there have to say.
The final thing I would like to point out is regarding the content of Digital Point Forums. The forums were originally intended for discussion regarding Digital Point’s webmaster tools and have now evolved into a massive discussion forum for webmasters. Digital Point simply created the categories and forums for discussion within vBulletin’s forum system; under no circumstance do they promote or endorse any content published onto their forum that does not regard an official product/webmaster tool of Digital Point.
Members are accountable for what they post – that includes a tactic for search engine optimization including blackhat techniques and generally offensive/hateful posts. Digital Point does not endorse or recognize member posts as an expressive opinion of the company; members represent themselves through their posts, just like on any other forum. Grant it, because of the low number of forum staff, it may take a while for a reported offensive post to be deleted, but it will still be done. The forum is so large right now that it is difficult for all the forum staff to view every single post made – that’s why vBulletin has the nice “report post” feature.
Digital Point Forums is one of, if not the largest webmaster forums on the Internet. The forums contain a lot of valuable information that is useful for webmasters, and serves its intended purpose well as a webmaster discussion forum.
Even I have got infractions and have been banned before. There’s usually a reason why members get infractions and banned…if not always. Perhaps your blog post was created out of mere jealousy of a live success? You tell me.
Contrary to what the community may think, I’m not a DP member “hater”, Perhaps the DP crowd could take points from my list and use it as examples to improve their community. Will anything be done about it? I doubt it.
Of course some of it was meant to be humorous, it’s makes the list easier to read through and provides some shock value, regardless of whether the point sounds ridiculous or not (and as you can see, it worked pretty well, given some of the responses).
Oh, and lastly I am NOT a banned member, holding some personal grudge or anything.
I’ll be over at WT here, as some of you may have already noticed, if anyone wishes to debate further.
Dude you are so wrong – Alexander the Great IS NOT BANNED!!!!
Well, he was banned when I wrote this. Maybe it was just a temporary ban then.
Hahaha…I had a good laugh reading this and I can attest that all the points here are true. Especially #40, that bastard is doing no service to DP with his pompous ego. I am not going to reveal my DP username here because if I do and if he reads this, he will just ban me out of spite. He did that to Jen before.
Have to appreciate the effort
I have to point out two objections to Justice’s reply that … just don’t make sense to me:
> It seems to me that you are most-likely a banned member at Digital Point Forums, thus the reason for the hate blog post. Perhaps you can edit your blog post and tell everyone your user-name and why exactly you were banned from DP?
That’s a tremendous amount of certainty. Is having been banned REALLY the ONLY reason a person could have an unflattering opinion of DP?
> I actually took the time to read through your entire list of “the cons of Digital Point Forums” and there are only a few that seem accurate. Maybe you decided to list the cons because you didn’t have the time to experience the good aspects of Digital Point Forums before you were banned?
Again with the almost religious certainty.
Only a few that seem accurate … I just checked, and the guy who wrote their reputation faq is still banned. That’s not just accurate; it looks really bad! Stumble – and other DP posters – confirms the ban. And so on. It’s easy to say “it’s not true!!” but it’s also pretty easy to verify.
PS – I just reread #45: Some members are arrogant, and believe competing communities are jealous.
Those are good points, Forrest.
Hey, AnthonyCea, is that you!!!!!!!!
Bah!!! My pictures are kool!!!!!!!!!!!
Yeah, Digitalpoint SUCKS!!!!!!!!
Some of your point are right but also consider that DP is a great forum whatever it takes!
@Nintendo – if you’re asking me, then no, I have no idea who that is.
Digitalpoint forum sucks like monkey balls. Check out this and see how insecure the site is. The person googsmaster who is an inoocent victim of hacking is banned when he is asking for help. There are many members being hacked by a pm link today and the webmaster can’t be bothered to take the responsibility of helping out those victims of hacked accounts but instead ban them to shut them up.
Digital Point Sucks, but surfer which reply is number #36 sucks even more, trying to profit with Digitalpoint stinky staff and behavior and not hidding his whois information
They promote freelance who when ever banned create new account with new name and again fool the members. DP Cannot do any thing. Most of members are from India and all they are poor people and just try to make fraud on DP and earn money. they use virtual IP to login with different account and cheat the people. So every Indian is spamming and earning money with black hat SEO. DP promote and encourage all members to use all technique to spam Google, Digg and other big sites. All kind of black hat services are sold there
It is not a place for corporate as the moderator are free lancer and they ban all corporate or big account. Moderators are also into same business and ban all big good accounts.
So the DP has lost its standard as a big forum they need hits what ever may be cause white or black They cannot become big one this policies.
i love and hate it
love : as i made $$$$ with it
hate : they banned my last 4 accounts:)
Beside the great amount of things I hate about DP, but I must admit that there’s some good in it, is the fact that when someone posts a question, you are the first to give a good answer and few hours later the same post has 3-4 pages with ppl saying exactly the same damn thing you said.
The Buy-Sell portion of DP still has marginal value (be careful!).
The rest is mostly get-rich-quick spam, incoherent ramblings, political bs, or kiddie topics. JMO
After reading this i REALLY wish i could be a admin on there and turn the site arround, it would be so easy to make some simple imporvements.
Any chance if i emailed the owner politely you think it would happen? ..
Dan
P.S i just signed up… im bored want so entertainment.
Be careful over there Dan, no telling what you’ll encounter
Your info is not real accurate, dp is not what thinks those things, its the members who are simply missinformed.
Shannon, have you clicked through the links I provided?
Hello,
Great job. I really enjoyed Reading it. DP SUX FOR SURE!
The admin’s , Mods and Scammers are USELSS things there.
Good job!
Thanks for the feedback, James
(Great name, BTW)
QUESTION: HOW DO DP MODS DETECT MULTIPLE ACCOUNTS??
DO THEY DETECT PROXIES ALSO AND HIDDEN IP ADDRESSES?
vBulletin comes with more “hidden icons” than regular users can see. In the postbit, there is a default “computer” icon that displays what IP the message came from, that only admins and mods can see, I know this because I run my own vB forum.
100 Reasons DP Sucks (Counter Argument)
You bloggers are whack.
a massive article and a long debate about another forum – don’t you want to write about something and discuss things that happen in the real world?
turn off your pc and get a life
@Gameover & Andy: Read (or re-read) comment #26.
Also take note on the DATE of this blog post.
I object! Some of Nintendo’s pics are funny.
You may be right about that, mcfox, but you have to admit, the majority of them are just plain disturbing.
lol. His pics are legendary.
DP needs to reorganise their forums. At least take the best threads and turn them into static pages.
Hahaha you are so wrong people have even made a thread about you : http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=795444
Since people don’t bother to read comments anymore, and I’ve opened up a new discussion here, I’ve closed this blog post’s comments.