Marketing and Self Promotion http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/site-and-message-board-feedback-and-suggestions/threads/46943 ktbarrow I've spent a lot of time in the "Marketing and Self Promotion" forum and I've noticed a few things. First, there are people who have no project information-- they don't have an option to even have a word count. These are people who are registering on the NaNo forums specifically to sell their goods. My first suggestion/question is "is there a way where people can be blocked from posting in that forum unless they have a project?"... My second suggestion/question is that next year we have a thread dedicated to editors marketing their skills/time and a thread devoted to web designers offering their skills (and possibly a thread for "check out my site/blog"), thus allowing people to quickly find what they're looking for. Sat, 03 Dec 2011 12:23:46 -0600 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/site-and-message-board-feedback-and-suggestions/threads/46943?page=1#forum_thread_comment_928117 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/site-and-message-board-feedback-and-suggestions/threads/46943?page=1#forum_thread_comment_928117 BloodRoseAngel I think the people there who don't have profiles/novels have been given permission by the admins. I'm pretty sure there's a ruling about it in one of the posts at the top. If they just want to advertise something novel-related but aren't really a member, they ask permission first and then OLL tell them if they can or not. I think so, anyway. :) It would be nice to have more organisation in that forum, I agree. I posted about my commission work in my first year but no one looked (after all, they can get free art in Artisans, they don't want to pay for it =P), and threads easily get lost quickly in there. Sun, 04 Dec 2011 09:47:33 -0600 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/site-and-message-board-feedback-and-suggestions/threads/46943?page=1#forum_thread_comment_931678 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/site-and-message-board-feedback-and-suggestions/threads/46943?page=1#forum_thread_comment_931678 cybele The Marketing forum is heavily moderated. The mods check all posts to insure that they are not spam (advertisements left by non-members). Anyone who signs up and makes their first post in marketing is pretty much banned immediately. It would be nice if there was an automated feature that simply held any "first posts' in that forum for moderation. I don't believe that there are any in that forum that are not be legitimate participants, or at least people who have participated in the past. Participants aren't obligated to fill in their profiles. The forum is there are a sort of novelists craigslist. It's not terribly organized, we envisioned it as a place where novelists would hawk their books and the occasional used AlphaSmart. We wanted to keep the rest of the forums free from self-promotion, so everything else goes there. As for the specific suggestions - each participant is granted one thread in that forum to do whatever they wish. We don't want to make people share their thread if they don't want to. So one that just has editing services means that later posters don't get quite the attention that initial ones do. What probably would solve that problem would be either a tagging system that allowed you to filter the posts (like craigslist). So if you wanted to see merchandise (folks who have etsy stores, or sell notebooks or whatever), books, events, or services, you'd select that and only those posts would show. The second way to solve that would be an index that would group like things together. That would require a moderator to compile the information regularly. Most of our excellent mods are very busy with the on-topic forums. However, Dragonchilde is always willing to entertain the idea of new volunteer mods, especially when they want to take on special projects like this. Sun, 04 Dec 2011 10:39:56 -0600 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/site-and-message-board-feedback-and-suggestions/threads/46943?page=1#forum_thread_comment_931781 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/site-and-message-board-feedback-and-suggestions/threads/46943?page=1#forum_thread_comment_931781 ktbarrow How would an index work? I don't have a lot of technical experience, but I'll do what I can to help (and I'm always looking for a way to procrastinate, especially in November). Sun, 04 Dec 2011 18:51:05 -0600 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/site-and-message-board-feedback-and-suggestions/threads/46943?page=1#forum_thread_comment_934006 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/site-and-message-board-feedback-and-suggestions/threads/46943?page=1#forum_thread_comment_934006 cybele An index would be like the one that Dragonchilde does for this forum periodically. <a href="http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/site-and-message-board-feedback-and-suggestions/threads/4970" rel="nofollow">http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/site-and-message-board-feedback-and-suggestions/threads/4970</a> or the one that's kept of the Known Issues in the bugs forum. It's a lot of HTML and it requires looking at each and every post and deciding how to categorize it. I'm hesitant to suggest putting too much of our resources into that forum as it's not part of our core mission to assist folks in writing a novel in a month ... but it was certainly something that folks wanted and use. Sun, 04 Dec 2011 20:01:37 -0600 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/site-and-message-board-feedback-and-suggestions/threads/46943?page=1#forum_thread_comment_934366 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/site-and-message-board-feedback-and-suggestions/threads/46943?page=1#forum_thread_comment_934366 ktbarrow Ah yes. In that case, I definitely volunteer. I'm the sycophant who likes things like that. What a great way to <strike>procrastinate</strike> er um punctuate NaNoWriMo when I'm blocked! Mon, 05 Dec 2011 22:50:29 -0600 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/site-and-message-board-feedback-and-suggestions/threads/46943?page=1#forum_thread_comment_940414 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/site-and-message-board-feedback-and-suggestions/threads/46943?page=1#forum_thread_comment_940414