Changes!

I'm definitely just a worker bee.

 

On reflection, Chip, as long as you're using new art work, my focus group suggests you'd get more traffic to this site if you were to use this:

 

Oh. My. God.

I think we'll opt for modesty, thanks. But the existing banner is a POS that I crapped out so there'd be *something* instead of the vbulletin logo. Something real, by someone with some actual talent, will be coming soon

 

Dang! I was the man, till this part.

 

Hey all,

I really appreciate the comments, and we take them very seriously.

The widget is simply an interim solution, definitely not our technology, but simply to help provide some info mostly to new degreeinfo visitors. DegreeInfo gets a tremendous number of new visitors every day (95% of whom don't register or post) and so this is sort of a stopgap solution for providing information and at the same time bringing in a bit of income to help pay for some of the changes we're working on.

We're very aware that it is grossly inadequate in terms of the search resources, variables, options and results it offers. It definitely doesn't live up to what we eventually plan to provide.

For those of you who remember the comprehensive searchable schools database we had in previous years, that will be coming back, but with a completely overhauled user interface and data structure, and all of the data reviewed and updated. (right now, the data is more than 5 years out of date, which is why it's offline.)

I hope, too, that some of the projects we have up our sleeve will substantially enhance the usability and value to our members/readers. DegreeInfo has been rather "dormant" for quite a while, and that's going to be changing, hopefully fairly quickly.

As always, it is the community of users that makes DegreeInfo what it is, and so it is you, the community members, that we look to for input and suggestions. Over the coming weeks we will be going through some of the older threads where various ideas were discussed, and looking to begin implementing some of them. It's our hope that within the next year, DegreeInfo will grow from a simple message board to a comprehensive resource for online and distance education (and perhaps eventually, bricks-and-mortar as well).

I'd also like to offer thanks to Randall and Kizmet, our incredible volunteer moderators, who keep degreeinfo spam-free, relatively flame free, and even marginally on-topic. (Bruce is still a moderator, but due to real-life responsibilities, is rarely on any more. His dedicated and, at times, single-handed devotion to our community is very much recognized and appreciated, and we hope that when circumstances dictate, he will be able to return on a more regular basis.)

This board would be completely impossible to run with any sort of quality without the generous assistance of our moderators, and too often they contribute without recognition or thanks.

I welcome, and encourage all comments, suggestions, criticisms, either here in this thread or via PM.

 

It would be nice if you could link to a page with useful articles for people new to DL. I recall the old-DI had such a page; for example
http://web.archive.org/web/20040812164640/degreeinfo.com/articles.html

 

Hi Chip,

I'm not sure how familiar you are with Google's AdWords program, but I put it up on my website just for kicks. Mine is just a personal website, and I get next to no traffic, but it's fun to log in and see how many ads have been displayed and such. They can be implemented into forums like these without looking obnoxious, and could provide a good source of income. Just a thought.

-Matt

 

Completely unfair my school should be listed I'm a member here and my school is completely legal to operate if well taking a truck and driving it through the Florida loopholes.

The Simple Faith In Jesus Ministry and Free Christian Degree Program​

I mean come on laugh all you want at least I'm having fun with my program and have some theological position even if 99.99% of Christians find Christian Anarchism an abomination.

So I insist you include my program.

 

It actually still exists at http://articles.degreeinfo.com. We don't widely publicize it because the articles (and that portion of the site) are mostly rather out of date. But we are reworking all of that as we speak.

 

I'll be straight up honest. That "Quick Degree Finder" is terrible. You've built up a great reputation for this site as a place to go to get good suggestions for degree programs and there is a good chance the "Finder" will throw it all away. If many of the people that stumble across this site hit that "Finder" for advice, they are going to think this site worthless. I'd remove it and put it back when your own database is in place and functional. Why the rush to slap up something that isn't ready and isn't that useful? The "Finder" is also misleading because it doesn't list many of the programs we here at degreeinfo.com would recommend to those searching.

 

As I said above... it's a temporary solution, and it is apparently useful to at least some people because we've already seen that people are using it. We know it is not even remotely ideal. We're working on the alternatives as we speak, but it will take us some time. Please cut us a little bit of slack

 

OK, we will cut you a little slack, but if you don't fix it soon we will stop sending in our payments to you for using this site.

I joke to bring up the point that this is all free to us. We are grateful for all that you do that does not cost us a thing. Thanks so much Chip!

 

You are right, Maniac. Hey, I noticed that you posted your reply in the wee hours of the morning. Do you work a night job? If you don't mind my being nosey.

 

I hope these changes don't include deleting posts at will. For example, a post I originated did not appear to violate any TOS yet it was deleted. As administrators, it is understood that you all can delete any posts necessary. No harm no foul. Just remember that members take time from their daily lives to post. I wish degreeinfo and it's administrators the best and a successful website!

 

Degreeinfo has always had a pretty consistent policy about post deletion. The community won't thrive if there's censorship, so our policy from day one has been that the only posts deleted are ones that violate our terms of service (are inflammatory, defamatory, that sort of thing) or, occasionally, if they are stongly personally attacking another poster.

Also, we do delete posts from SEO spammers that contain little or no meaningful content, and posts blatantly spamming other sites and offering no real contribution to the conversation. We do have automated processes that run in the background and flag "spammy" posts for moderator review, so occasionally something gets flagged inappropriately (and I still haven't figured out what's triggering the errant flagging), but those get posted after moderator review.

So unless your post fell into one of those categories, it should not have been deleted. If you ever feel a post has been removed inappropriately, please contact me or one of the other mod team and we'll be happy to look into it.

 

Ah, I understand, sorry to be nosey. Riding trains and buses a lot can be a boring bummer!

 

New Symbols

So what are the symbols (links) in the lower left of each message box and how do we use them?

 

The four buttons at the bottom are, in order, for Digg, Delicious, Technorati, and Furl.

Digg is a "crowdsourced" news site that displays articles based on the community's collectively voting those articles up or down.

Delicious is an online web bookmarking site, idea being you can access your bookmarks on any computer if you bookmark them through Delicious (plugins available for all major browsers), and additiionally, bookmarks you make public are shared with others, under the theory that if you like something, maybe your friends will also.

Technorati and Furl i'm less familar with; perhaps someone else more up-to-date dcan speak to those.

On the upper right you have the "report post" button. This should be used any time you see a post taht you think is problematic; either violates our TOS, flames another poster, is wildly off-topic, is spam, that sort of thing.

Hope that helps... I'm still learning how some of this stuff functions, even though we've had this version of vbulletin for a while.