Warmest Greetings,

:: Tuesday, December 10, 2002 ::

Group Hug

One of the things myself and the moderators wanted for our new forum was a warm, open door feeling, with no censorship of posts (other than the usual code of email ethics.) Some people have abandoned forums because of their personal experiences with censorship or other indications signaling they're no longer welcome to post. I rarely felt I was *really* welcome in most forums and anything I said was likely thought to be construed as me promoting myself. Since I can barely handle my present workload and, in fact, farm out the entire SEO portion of it, these assumptions about me were incorrect, but I wasn't about to get into a hissy fit about it.

One forum was quite popular and is where many top SEO professionals "met" for the first time. Alliances and long lasting friendships were formed. While the forum supported software, it also became a general search engine optimization "helpdesk" where anyone could ask for help regardless of whether they had purchased the product. I can verify this, as I never used it (I tested it when it was first launched, while an employee for a company interested in doing their own SEO). Even though I was a manual website promoter, I was still welcomed by the forum owners. The respect shown me by MarketPositionTalk was the main reason I returned over and over, for years.

Lately the forum seems to be slowing down, with many people abandoning it to come to my forum, or some of the others, like ihelpuservices.com. Recently I happened upon this thread Where Has Everyone Gone? and was shocked and saddened to learn Cre8asiteForums may be contributing to the demise of one I've enjoyed. I dropped a few words about MarketPositionTalk.com to Cre8asiteForum moderators, some of whom are strong supporters of this long-time forum. A little reunion has occurred I'm happy to say, with much deserved cyber-hugs going to moderator, Susan Goodson.

If you haven't seen it yet, the MarketPositionTalk forum is a friendly place to learn about SEO or ask for help. Sure, they can get into debates there too, but sometimes the best education comes from considering many different views. If you use WebPositionGold, this forum is for you as well, especially if you need help understanding their software. And I still look forward to Brent Winters' newsletters, which are free. (Learn more about the Market Position newsletter here.)

Thanks to Brent, Susan and the 1st Place Software folks, for all they've done for so many people over the years with online support and information on search engines (and for holding up under some bad times too.) It's been appreciated!

:: posted by Kim Krause Berg on 12/10/2002 09:27:21 AM

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