Hi Ben - more good changes.  I especially like #3 limiting the number of groups a post can be posted to.  I will say that I think limiting it to just 3 might be a little tight, perhaps a limit of 5 groups might be a better number.  But I most definitely agree to having some kind of limit on the number of groups one can post any given post to.  Far too many people just put every one of their posts in every group they belong to and that's just abusing the way this network was set up to work.  And HOORAY for work on trying limit spam!!

Many thanks,
Ann

I think I like the limit on groups you can post to ... three might be kind of low though ...

Yesterday I started trying to clean out a group and LOTS of the posts were to mulitple groups.  If a post is truly a Localism Brainstorming idea, it's not likely to fit into 10 other groups.  If we have to pick just three groups, that will help us to choose the groups our posts best fit.  Sounds pretty good to me. 

Thanks for the update......Things just keep getting better here.

WOW! 6:25am I've been on here a long time... :-P

 Anywaz I was going to suggest raising the blogger groups limit to at least 5.  Or possibly allowing a progressive increase for example 1k points would allow 3 groups, 5k points would allow 5 groups, 10k would allow 7.

Only suggesting this because sometimes it makes more sense to post certain posts in maybe 1 or 2 groups and then others like SEO, Active Rain How-To's, and others.  Into many groups due to the fact that the network is starting to grow large enough that people are getting into their own little groups or hudling into local Realtor groups.  So if there are 5 major SEO/Search Engine Marketing groups (Which there are now over 10 large or growing groups of the sort), a new blogger will need to make a couple posts to get their questions answered by a relavant amount of people.

Ok rambling done :-P

Jordan M. Mackey

http://www.jordanmackey.com/

Your Overland Park and Leawood area real estate specialist...

(Edited 05/03/2007 - 6:49am)  I found a really good example of posting to many groups and it making good sense.  http://activerain.com/blogsview/89005/1-Steps-to-a  Hope this helps :-D

AR Folks,

Firstly, Kudos to all of you and thanks for all that you do! Great movement forward as usual. #3 really has me thinking. I can see this as a problem, how big...I'm not certain.   Some limitation may be warranted.  There are so many groups that are similar in nature and a post subject matter can be linked to several. Why is 3 the thought? Why not 5 or any other number?  Everyone is looking for some degree of exposure and recognition. It is becoming more difficult day by day to see all the posts and even get featured. I believe that most members understand this given the quantum leaps and growth that AR is experiencing. Keep this in mind in deciding what this final number is........many members have posts that are deserving of a feature.....but it ain't going to happen!  Can you blame them for finding exposure and recognition by posting to multiple groups.

Ron I'm thinking the Spam is following suit to the "Total Members" number.  Sometimes its there sometimes its not ;-)

Thanks for staying in tune with the needs of the community.  I have only been around for a couple of weeks, and already I am learning to narrow my focus and not drop posts out for all creation.  That being said, I am in agreement that 3 groups may be a bit restrictive.  Certain things I may post may only apply to 1 or 2 groups that I am part of.  But others may be viable for 5 or 6.  Just a thought.

Post to group limit has been upped to 5.

I forgot to mention the "spam" link that you'll see on comments (if you have rights to the blog post).  It'll do the same thing as delete right now.  If the Akismet spam system works out then, in the future, it would report the comment as spam to Akismet - which helps improve it's spam fighting algorithm.

I clicked on spam at the end in my comment about spam. It deleted it...to me this is the purpose of the delete feature. So is this duplication or is the intended purpose being served?

I absolutely agree on limiting the number of groups to which a post can be added .... but ....  Jordan does have a point, though, about some topics having a large number of groups ....... tough call!

I had to look to see what you were talking about regarding Blog Description ... I see ... now there are two boxes -- the original "Blog Description" box and another box titled "Blog Decription Text".  Okay, I get it...  The text only version shows in the Public Blog List area ......I didn't even know there was a separate "public blog list" area. 

And  ... custom blog templates .... that sounds interesting!

Ron .... I see the word spam at the end of my comment, not at the end of yours, or anyone else's.  Maybe it only appears if you are the comment author?   I'm not sure that is going to help. :-)  If I was commenting-spamming, I probably wouldn't identify my own comment as spam.....

Very cool...thanks for the updates.  I like the idea of limiting the groups you can post to and I'm glad you fixed the html problem in the descriptions!

For clarification I changed the "Spam" link to "Report as Spam" and added a "are you sure?" catch.  

Thanks for the update - I love that you guys take the time to keep us informed, even on the minor stuff.  The spam feature should be great. 

Ben --- The thing is, for me at least, the "Report as Spam" link only shows up on my own comments.  Now seriously, am I going to report my own comment as spam?  :-)

Here's screen shot:

Isn't it technically spam to put your own links in the comments section of the Official Active Rain Blog? 

www.iGotHugeBrassOnes.com :)

To help everyone out with the spam topic...  Check your own blogs.

Click -> "My Home" -> (Look on left side of window) "My Blog" -> (Then click on one of your article titles and you'll see "Report as Spam" added to all comments on your blog posts) ;-)

 Hope this helps. :-D

Jordan M. Mackey

http://www.jordanmackey.com/

Your Overland Park and Leawood area real estate specialist...

Five is a good limit for the number of groups a post can go to. I've seen a few posts where the list of groups is way longer than the post itself! Thanks for the changes, looking forward to the templates.

Even with raising the group limit to 5, I think that is a bit "draconian" as you put it.

I just posted an item that I wanted to include in several because of relevancy:  Realtors, Pennsylvania Professionals, Chester County PA, Delaware County PA, Weichert Realtors, Weichert Family of Companies and two or three others, because of the nature of the content.  When content is relevant to multiple groups, there should be no limit on where it can get posted.

I think perhaps a more subtle approach is needed.  I will post a blog about it in the Active Rain Suggestion Box group.

EDIT:  I just posted Possible solution to group spamming

Oh. My. The Anarchist has been busy :)

For all of you who do not know...This is Ben aka Flat Ben :)

Ben...I'll make you famous if it's the last thing I do. LOL.

TLW...ROAR!

Hi Ben - thanks for increasing the groups one may post to to 5.  I think that's a great change, and clearly we need some kind of limit.  Good change.  I also like the change you made to the "report spam" function. 

Many thanks for these updates!
Ann

Excellent job trying to make AR much better.  I just posted and it allowed five groups, and I think that is plenty.  As a group founder, I hate wasting time removing mis-posts..

Allows, Kudos for attacking spammers.

Keep up the excellent work.

@TLW:   You've been tubed!

Good idea to limit the groups.  We need to be realistic about how many groups a statement would truely apply to.  I didn't know I could use more than one.  I don't belong to LOTS of groups, because it is difficult to keep up with the ones I have.

I use two popular email services.  One of them has a cute spam meter that checks the message I am preparing to send out.  If the meter is very high, your message is likely to

• at best, get dumped in the junk or bulk mail
• get you complained about (at the email services, this could get your account dropped)

Thanks for the new tools

Love the 3 posts to "Blogger group", now we won`t have to read how someone received 25K in pts by posting to every group, that was defeating the whole purpose of joining A/R...

Great! I use Akismet on my outside blog and have had great luck with it so far. Question, in the past I have been told to leave the spam comments on my blog article and that AR would delete them once they were finished reviewing. Does that still hold or shall we delete them?

Anarchist...

I saw that. Liked your tag...'STRANGE'...LOL.

Was I your tubing test? LOL.  

TLW...ROAR!

Thanks for the updates - Akismet seems to be working well for me on my wordpress blog. It has captured over 4000 spam comments since I started and I have not found any that were NOT actually spam.

I think limiting the number of groups makes sense - no way can a post fit into 20 groups as you often see. 3 may be a little TOO ambitious. But it will, however, require people to be more thoughtul about what groups they use as most relevant.

Jeff

Good work. A few thoughts though.

SPAM - my concern is that on the user level someone could label something as SPAM just because they didn't feel it belonged in their group or post. I've had a hard enough time with people on the Internet mis-labeling my communications as SPAM just because I'm in the mortgage business. I don't mind a AR Moderator reviewing my info, but I really don't want to be sent to some algorithm and have my life ruined... The company I just left cannot send emails to comcast, yahoo, MSN or AOL. And we've never send tons of email solicitations.

Limiting Posts - I agree that they need to be limited, but also that it could create more problems. Is there a way that we could create clearer categories for groups? i.e. Realtors/State/Counties/Cities; If someone had a post appropriate for Localism marketing, and there were 20 groups relating to this topic, if they were all in the same category it should be ok to post to all, but it wouldn't be appropriate to post to Realtors.

Just some thoughts

Larry:  good point!  Right now we're not notifying Akismet (hasn't been coded yet) so it's literally just like a "delete".  I'll have to talk to the guys about this... probably makes sense not to ever enable this.  We'll look at what was marked spam in a week and see what people are actually doing with this.

I was actually amazed at Akismet... I ran through 10,000 or so comments on our system, just for a test, and, given the real-estate terms (since mortgage stuff is very common spam...) I expected tons of legit comments to be marked spam... it actually did a really good job (1% error rate).

I agree with the limit but 5 seem like a good number.  Looking forward to the custom template.

The limit on the # of posts to groups is a great idea. I've almost given up reading groups because of so many off topic posts. Getting points is great as long as you are contributing to the topic at hand. I love AR & Localism even more.

IMHO I think the limit of group posts should be between 5 and 10.  At least 5, since a photography topic would fit into at least 5 groups on AR.  A marketing topic could fit into more than 10 groups on AR.  There are over 5 groups on home staging.

I agree that posting to more than 10 groups is unnecessary and could be considered spam.

Why don't you set the limit at 10 for now, see what happens, and reduce it if necessary.  A limit of 3 is too restrictive.

The big problem is weeding out the inappropriate blogs in the existing groups.  This is a big responsibility for the group's founder and moderators.

As far as I know, if one is a member of a group, one may post only to that group from the group home page. So really there is no limit if one feels that it is important to post a particular article to a particular group, provided one is member of the group.

And of course group founders, administrators and moderators can, and should, control membership and postings to the group.

My opinion is the cap of 5 seems reasonable.

Ben, first, a big heartfelt thank you for all you do to make ActiveRain the great community it is.  I really appreciate your work.  Next, it seems to me the problem might be that there are too many groups that pertain to the exact same topic.  I wonder if we could pare down to one big newbie group, one big FSBO group, etc.  If that were to happen, the limit on 5 would work for me.

****Ben****

I know that you have already implemented the policy of 5 groups and AR is arbitrarily picking the first 5 in order. I believe most can accept the limitation of 5, however I would suggest that it would be better to have made a public announcement of this policy and advised that it would take place/effect on a specific date and give members the opportunity to select the 5 groups themselves and get their changes done by this effective date. A whole lot of people with a whole lot of posts will have to go through all their blogs to make the changes vs having AR arbitrarily pick them. This notice of heads up on policy change would allow members to plan and schedule their corrections/changes.  Just my 50 cents worth.

I think limiting to 3 is a little low...maybe for a listing is okay?  I agree that 5 is a good number.

I think that all of the work you guys are doing is fantastic.  It can't all be cool toys.

As far as limiting the number of groups you can post to -- kudos on that.  I think 5 is a great number.  It should cut down on all of the moderators work, too.

I think you should think about changing the limit because for example there are more than 5 comedy groups, a limit would be good but 5 is a liitle low.

Thanks guys!

I really like having the blog description html on my blogs in "My Blog" view...But I really didn't like it on the general board...Got too clutterish :)

Scott

Ben-

Thanks for the changes- it's a shame you need to waste time on things as silly as Post-to-Group limits, but it's so sad that people just don't get the point of what the Groups are for!!!

I appreciate all the efforts that you folks go to by providing this website for us to use. Some of the changes are terrific and the idea of limitations is fine but I agree with a few others I feel that 5 groups may still be a bit low.

Ben,

Akismet is great software for comment spam...very low false positives for comment spam.  I use on my outside blog and forum and it's works without fail.  It will filter very long unformatted comments because it's use to seeing spam comments that are long and unformatted.  But it also "learns" as you mark the false positives.

However, I now believe the "non-registered comment spam" is the least of our problems!

The biggest problem we have at AR is the registered user spam blog.

The system breaks down if spam blogs are given the same points as "real" blogs.  AR should value real blogger content over spam blogger content if you want to keep real bloggers contributing to AR. I (and I'm sure others) slave over our posts to make them something of value. 

I have 35% of my posts as featured articles....6 featured out of 17 posts.  On the same 17 posts, I have 456 comments...that's an average of almost 27 comments per post. 

That's no accident.  It's clear these posts have value and with Google's duplicate content filters, I don't dare use the same material on my outside blogs.  So I've got to get the value for these quality posts here or use them elsewhere.  

I have a spam blogger in my "territory" competing with me for ranking.  It angers me a spam blogger who spends zero time posting "one-liners" could be within 2,000 points of surpassing me...that's only 10 more "one-liners".  As a matter of fact, if it wasn't for my 4900 "other points" for building up Localism, he'd already have surpassed me long ago!

AR is just like other search engines, are hear for the readers (consumers especially) and you want the quality rising to the top of the rankings.  It wouldn't reflect well on Google or AR to have the front page filled with spammed content.  Real estate information seekers, our future clients,(hopefully) will not be impressed with AR as an "information source" if don't start rewarding "real" content over "spam" content. 

Not to mention the "fairness" of allowing spammers to reach the top with 1-3line blog posts overtaking those who earned their position by sweating over their posts writing valuable content, building up Localism, and staying involved in the community by writing comments on other blogs.

How hard would it be to force a post to be at least 200 words long to receive points?  You could do that right?  Why reward one line spam blogger with the same points a diligent blogger gets?

The long term viability of AR as a consumer resource will depend on how this issue gets addressed.

I eagerly await anyones comments, especially Mr. Flat Ben!

PS: 5 is good on groups and group leaders need to specifiy exactly what's NOT acceptable in their group.  Lastly, whatever text/html editor you go will should have a spell checker that recognizes words like "blog", "ActiveRain", "Localism", and "Google!! LOL 

Ben - Thanks for the update.   In my experience, Akismet does much better than 99% so hopefully it'll be a good solution.  Personally, I don't think I've ever posted to more than 2 groups...so 5 is fine with me. 

Cheryl - Re: your example, now that's funny.

The other Ben. 

Good suggestions, however I think the number of groups for posting should be a little higher. in our area I border three counties and often a post will apply to all those counties but also some other groups as well, such as PA construction and a couple of others. I think a limit between 5-7 would work better.

I joined a few groups that I read, but don't post too.  I find it easier to go to my home page and click on the group, rather than going to groups page and searching for the one I want to read.  Maybe there can be a category like the "subscribe" feature on blogs.  Just a thought.  Sorry for the suggestion that makes more work for you all. 

@Rob:  First, I want to make it really clear that I don't make the rules around here and I think I'm pretty regularly on record as disagreeing with the point system (amongst other things).  So - really - this is a discussion you need to have with Matt, Caleb and Jon.  But, if you're interested, here are my 2 cents...

One of the problems that I think AR faces as compared to other content aggregation sites (like Digg, Slashdot, etc.)  is that the active users of the site are also that active bloggers.  This makes doing a Digg model (where the users alone decide what floats to the top) a little bit tricky since the majority of voters have a non-objective stake in the outcome.  On Digg I think the viewer-to-submitter ratio is very viewer heavy (something like 20 users generate 80% of the content on Digg and they get millions of page views an hour).  That said, if I were in charge we'd be ranking content a lot more like Digg with the algorithm adjusted to account for the traffic we have and mix that with the moderator ideas from Slashdot and Wikipedia.  I'd make flagging completely automated (like it is on CraigsList) and a one click action.  I'd also work the karma ideas from Slashdot in to weight users input (good karma users count more than bad karma ones).   

While SEO is a very important aspect of AR (more so on Localism) I think people take it too seriously.   I think SEO is important for people finding AR - not necessary for people finding a specific user on AR.  The site should help more with that once we get a user in and that should be done more by User/Member content ranking and less by points... IMHO.

Again - I don't make the rules and I don't want to come off as saying the people who do make the rules don't know what they're doing.  28,000 users in 8 months is pretty impressive.  I'd just do things differently. 

Love the idea of limiting the # of groups you can post to, but I agree with everyone else that 5 groups is a better #. 

I noticed this at about 8am and saw it on my comment and not on the others and though the person who posted added some spam detector to me and thought I was being antispamed and after figured it out from reading other posts.

The less groups the better. Having the same post show up over and over again doesn't really help. Sooner or later, the duplicate content filter will trip and the post will be excluded. 5 groups is more than enough.  Better relevancy. -Charles

Is there any way of making it easier to move pictures around..I still have issues when the photo has a mind of it's own.

Thank you very much you have saved my screen from going wide on quite a few pages

I must be in the 1% error rate for the SPAM filter.  Every comment I've ever made has been labeled SPAM.

EDITED:

INCLUDING THIS ONE.

I use akismet on  my blog. It's great. I was getting emails for comment approvals by so many spammers. I was tired of it.

Thank you for the Group Limit.  Do I really need to see what car you drive in the Investor's Group?  But people see that others do it an build a following so they do the same and then it just gets out of control.

I love love love the group limits and the report spam.  My blog has only been spammed once but it appeared the offender did it more than once! 

It is unfortunate that you guys can barely keep up with so much abuse of the system!  THanks for the changes!!!!!

I am with Sarah ~ three might be kind of low.  How about 5 or 7? 

Jacqulyn -- I don't think posting to mutiple groups creates duplicate content in the way you are thinking of.  All that really happens is that a link to the blog is being put in mulitple groups.  The google spiders might actually see that as a good thing.  It could be seen by them as multiple backlinks and that gives a desired increase in "relevancy" in google terms.  (At least that is how I understand the mystery that is google)

THANK YOU FOR CREATING A GROUP POSTING LIMIT!!!!  I was getting so sick of moderating those posts out of my online marketing group.

It's a quality improvement.

Cheers,

Justin 

Less spam, makes this more enjoyable.  People need to target thier audiences; some people have been using blogs to help thier search engine status.

I think 5 groups is not enough. Can we do more ? Sorry to disagree, but sometimes NOT all the time, I like to get the word out to more than 5. Is there a way to have a generic announcement to all the groups. I know we're growing and sometimes growth pains are hard. Yesterday I blogged about the Inman News Nomination process for nominating for top new inventions. That needed to be said to alot of groups so for the 1st time I clicked all the groups I belong to. Keep up the good work. Yes, I like the points in AR. Sorry.

What bugs me is when people post and put all their links in the post. I understand why, I just get annoyed. :)

"...do things differently."...

Hence the reason for your nickname my friend :)

ROAR!

Caleb, I think the limit needs to be moved up to 8 or 10 groups per post.  There are 4 groups I post to on a regular basis and another 5 or 10 that I sometimes post to, depending on the subject.  Some of us go through great pains to try to do it the right way, so why should we lose the SEO of the group because a bunch of #*)$&#*&'s post like crazy?

Very interesting stuff. I am torn. I post to more that 5 groups on occasion, but I can also see the need to limit it. Hmmm.

This is an unbelievable "vast" array of information for our real estate community, that i truly enjoy.

Thank you.

Thank you Ben, great info.  I vote for 5 groups minimum, for what it's worth!  Either that or some of the groups should be consolidated.  Just a thought!

THANKS for all you do...first of all....I post to 5 or 6 groups on a regular basis...the NEWBIES...REALTORS...ECO-All-Stars...Type E...Fraiche Aire...Marketing...

I think put the limit at 6...

Is there a way to catch "abuse"...like posting to more than 10?

Thanks for limiting the number of groups you can post to.  The only place I have noticed spam, so far, is I'm getting spam emails from AR.

Fran

Thank you for keeping this up todate and tring to stay on top of things.  I always think it great when companies are working to make things better.

Is it possible to have a search function on individual blogs?  So, if I was looking for a blog I knew was posted by a certain person, I could go to their blog and search.  Sometimes a search brings up way too many posts to weed through.  Just wondering...  Thanks for all you do!

I just discovered another unintended ill-effect of the posting cap:

• I was editing a previously posted blog, which had been included in several appropriate groups.  After finishing the edit, the new cap effectively deleted it from groups that it had already been in and commented on.  Now, the people who had been following the discussion in that post from within certain groups will not be able to find it there.  New members of those groups will not even know to look for it, and will miss out on whatever value they might have received from it. 

Here is an example of an actual post that belongs in at least 10 groups:  Absorption Rate: What it is, and Why you Should Know it

If I were to edit it in any way, even just to correct spelling or puctuation, it would be removed from at least half of the groups it is currently (and correctly) in.

I am becoming more and more convinced that this cap idea, th