New changes to MERB - Most sections are now MEMBERS ONLY
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Hello everyone,
Just a little first week update for everyone. Since the board went members only 1 week ago, 1,127 new members have signed up. I started keeping note of some other stats as of Saturday past at 9 PM and in the last 5 days there have been 150 new threads created and 907 new posts. That averages out to 30 new threads and 181 new posts per day. We have upwards of 150 members on line on average. I have seen a low of 93 members on line in the early hours and a high of 275 in the evening. I think these stats look very promising for the future of MERB.
I would like to welcome all new members to MERB and we are all looking forward to reading your contributions!
Mod 8
Just a little first week update for everyone. Since the board went members only 1 week ago, 1,127 new members have signed up. I started keeping note of some other stats as of Saturday past at 9 PM and in the last 5 days there have been 150 new threads created and 907 new posts. That averages out to 30 new threads and 181 new posts per day. We have upwards of 150 members on line on average. I have seen a low of 93 members on line in the early hours and a high of 275 in the evening. I think these stats look very promising for the future of MERB.
I would like to welcome all new members to MERB and we are all looking forward to reading your contributions!
Mod 8
Good job Mod8, using a much more subjective metric, I have also noticed that the number of posts in the Cleo's thread has increased substantially over the past week (i.e. one or two posts every weekend v.s. posts on a daily basis), and I am not the one who is going to complain about this 
. Very probably other sections have noticed such an increase in activity as well and this will certainly increase senior and newer members' loyalty towards MERB.
. Very probably other sections have noticed such an increase in activity as well and this will certainly increase senior and newer members' loyalty towards MERB.Hello to any mods, there is one thing that is a big drawback , Google will not be able to cache the content of MERB, is this any way around this?
1.....I as a member found it really helpful that I can Google a phone number or a website , and find the appropriate Merb thread (no disrespect to the MERB search bar ....but it is nowhere nearly as effective as a Google search). Will search through Google be stopped as a result???
2..... One of the main reasons I do post is because my words and others can be found via Google, I find that teh serious posters contribute, because merb and google together is a tool that keeps providers on their toes to mind their P's and Q's . IE when I found a certain bait and switch (like Taylor) , and she screws you, it is a great morale boost when you when my review shows up as number 1 on Google. The Google factor is something important that drives the serious reviewers, please don't block caching.
3......What is this about copyright ? I sometimes post a review here, and post the same review (my reivew) in places that have similar nature.Will someone sue me?
1.....I as a member found it really helpful that I can Google a phone number or a website , and find the appropriate Merb thread (no disrespect to the MERB search bar ....but it is nowhere nearly as effective as a Google search). Will search through Google be stopped as a result???
2..... One of the main reasons I do post is because my words and others can be found via Google, I find that teh serious posters contribute, because merb and google together is a tool that keeps providers on their toes to mind their P's and Q's . IE when I found a certain bait and switch (like Taylor) , and she screws you, it is a great morale boost when you when my review shows up as number 1 on Google. The Google factor is something important that drives the serious reviewers, please don't block caching.
3......What is this about copyright ? I sometimes post a review here, and post the same review (my reivew) in places that have similar nature.Will someone sue me?
Hello! I got no problem with the new change. But...there is always a but... when you are not login, we can see all the sections except this one "OTHER CITIES REVIEW", so this one is like invisible to lurkers.
I have a big thread there where we talk about Escorts/Masseuses from Chicoutimi, now the thing that I am affraid is that user will come looking as guest, and not see the section and think that it have been deleted and go elsewhere
Do you think we could make it visible otr partially visible, this would profit to not only Chicoutimi, but all the others places and city in Québec.
Thanks!
I have a big thread there where we talk about Escorts/Masseuses from Chicoutimi, now the thing that I am affraid is that user will come looking as guest, and not see the section and think that it have been deleted and go elsewhere
Do you think we could make it visible otr partially visible, this would profit to not only Chicoutimi, but all the others places and city in Québec.
Thanks!
Hello ocean,
I cannot answer your questions regarding Google as that is beyond my knowledge. I will pass it on to Fred to see if he or one of his administrators can answer it.
Regarding the copyright issue, we have had problems in the past with members of other sites copying and pasting MERB posts elsewhere for various reasons, often in the goal to attack MERB, our members and advertisers. One time we even had an agency start up a board and copy entire sections of MERB to his own forum. Now that the board is private, they can no longer claim that the posts are public and it will be easier for MERB to request that such posts be stopped and removed and if refused we have much stronger legal grounds to force the issue.
Members are always free to re-post their own reviews or posts elsewhere.
EscortMan,
I checked and you are correct in regards to that section of the board not being visible. I will contact Fred and have that corrected.
Mod 8
I cannot answer your questions regarding Google as that is beyond my knowledge. I will pass it on to Fred to see if he or one of his administrators can answer it.
Regarding the copyright issue, we have had problems in the past with members of other sites copying and pasting MERB posts elsewhere for various reasons, often in the goal to attack MERB, our members and advertisers. One time we even had an agency start up a board and copy entire sections of MERB to his own forum. Now that the board is private, they can no longer claim that the posts are public and it will be easier for MERB to request that such posts be stopped and removed and if refused we have much stronger legal grounds to force the issue.
Members are always free to re-post their own reviews or posts elsewhere.
EscortMan,
I checked and you are correct in regards to that section of the board not being visible. I will contact Fred and have that corrected.
Mod 8
Hello ocean,
Very few people have indicated that they have any problem with the changes. If you look through this thread you will see exactly how few. The number of members on line has almost tripled at all times of the day while the number of guests has remained largely the same as before the change . The number of posts per day has greatly increased, not only by new members but also from existing members who have new topics and posters to reply to. MERB as a community depends on new members and active posters to provide interesting content. Lurkers contribute absolutely nothing to this community. They do not partake in discussions, do not post reviews and do not help out members looking for information. Why should MERB remain open, helpful and useful to those who give nothing back?
MERB is not simply an advertising venue or a one stop shopping destination to check who is available tonight from your favorite agencies. MERB is a review and discussion board and without new reviews and interesting topics to discuss, this community would stagnate and die. There has been new activity on MERB in the last week and I hope that we continue to grow and gain back the spirit the board had years ago before being sidetracked by petty differences. I believe that we have taken a big step in the right direction, a step that was long overdue.
Mod 8
Very few people have indicated that they have any problem with the changes. If you look through this thread you will see exactly how few. The number of members on line has almost tripled at all times of the day while the number of guests has remained largely the same as before the change . The number of posts per day has greatly increased, not only by new members but also from existing members who have new topics and posters to reply to. MERB as a community depends on new members and active posters to provide interesting content. Lurkers contribute absolutely nothing to this community. They do not partake in discussions, do not post reviews and do not help out members looking for information. Why should MERB remain open, helpful and useful to those who give nothing back?
MERB is not simply an advertising venue or a one stop shopping destination to check who is available tonight from your favorite agencies. MERB is a review and discussion board and without new reviews and interesting topics to discuss, this community would stagnate and die. There has been new activity on MERB in the last week and I hope that we continue to grow and gain back the spirit the board had years ago before being sidetracked by petty differences. I believe that we have taken a big step in the right direction, a step that was long overdue.
Mod 8
I have mentioned this as well to Mod8 last week. This is easy to fix by opening a Google webmaster tools account then giving google access to MERB's private sections. I am not sure that Fred Zed is aware of this though.Just for the fun of it, I assumed that in any big city there is or there have been an SP called Cindy. I first googled "montreal cindy escort review", the second link in the SERPS was a MERB thread (internal page i.e.). I then replaced montreal by toronto ang Googled "toronto cindy escort review". The first link in the SERPS pointed to an internal page of some obscure web site myterb.com (hosted in Panama, web piracy heaven. Very probably this is a site that is stealing TERB's private content and making it public). TERB appeared only in 6th position and this was the home page of TERB, not an internal much more targeted page. I am sure this result popped up thanks to keywords toronto, escort and review and not keyword cindy.
This is a very serious side effect of making any web site's sections password-protected. If GoogleBot cannot crawl some already-indexed pages anymore, it will kick them out of its index over time and it will never index any new content because it simply cannot access it.
My secretary will send this SEO consulting bill to Fred Zed
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Those little envelopes indicate that there have been posts deleted in the thread. The blank posts that you see are actually the deleted posts. This icon and the blank posts should not be displayed to anyone other than moderators. I will contact Fred and let him know that there is a bug to be fixed.
Thank you for bringing this up.
Mod 8
Thank you for bringing this up.
Mod 8
OK thanks! Is Fred on vacation? It's been a week + and still no changes.
Just hope that he will not forget because this is really annoying to always login just to see if there is new thread. Thanks!
Hello everyone,
In case no one noticed, as was requested I had Fred set up a new Hotel Forum on MERB. You can find it here: https://merb.cc/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?52-Hotel-Info
I already have some plans on how to set things up in there but it will take a bit of time to get done. Any suggestions can be made in that section in the thread I started for that purpose.
I will remind Fred about the other minor bugs that are yet to be corrected.
M8
In case no one noticed, as was requested I had Fred set up a new Hotel Forum on MERB. You can find it here: https://merb.cc/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?52-Hotel-Info
I already have some plans on how to set things up in there but it will take a bit of time to get done. Any suggestions can be made in that section in the thread I started for that purpose.
I will remind Fred about the other minor bugs that are yet to be corrected.
M8
Hello Escortman,
Everything seems to be back to normal now and the two sections that were not visible when not logged in are now. The deleted posts indicator has also been removed.
If you happen to notice anything else that seems out of whack, please let me know and I will do my best to get it corrected quickly.
M8
Everything seems to be back to normal now and the two sections that were not visible when not logged in are now. The deleted posts indicator has also been removed.
If you happen to notice anything else that seems out of whack, please let me know and I will do my best to get it corrected quickly.
M8
Hello aero,
You may view the total number of registered users at the bottom of the index page: https://merb.cc/vbulletin/index.php currently it stands at 33,676.
Here is a quick update for everyone...in the almost two months since the board became members only, we have gained approximately 4,800 new members, roughly 2,000 new threads have been created along with about 10,000 new posts made. The number of members on-line has remained relatively constant since the change with it rarely going under 100 other than in the middle of the night, rising to the 300`s and often 400`s in the evenings and the number of guests viewing the board has dropped very little since the change.
The change to members only is considered to be a huge success and it seems that all members have adapted well as I have received no complaints in a very long time and no complaints have been posted in this thread since the early days of the changeover.
Our thanks go to all members who have continued to support MERB through this change and to all the new members who have joined and added their opinions and reviews to the MERB community!
Mod 8
You may view the total number of registered users at the bottom of the index page: https://merb.cc/vbulletin/index.php currently it stands at 33,676.
Here is a quick update for everyone...in the almost two months since the board became members only, we have gained approximately 4,800 new members, roughly 2,000 new threads have been created along with about 10,000 new posts made. The number of members on-line has remained relatively constant since the change with it rarely going under 100 other than in the middle of the night, rising to the 300`s and often 400`s in the evenings and the number of guests viewing the board has dropped very little since the change.
The change to members only is considered to be a huge success and it seems that all members have adapted well as I have received no complaints in a very long time and no complaints have been posted in this thread since the early days of the changeover.
Our thanks go to all members who have continued to support MERB through this change and to all the new members who have joined and added their opinions and reviews to the MERB community!
Mod 8
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