PsiWorld

[jedikaren]

I personally don't believe in god and also have found that religious topics quickly fall into flame wars.

As for the system of being approved, thats a way for me to know who's come, what their age is, and so I can add their msn to mine if I want. In short, it gives me an idea of how many people are coming a day.

Btw, I'll remember not to advertise on an elite site again.

[wolfdancer]

That actually does make a lot of sense.

The approval system is a good idea if you are interested in tracking each person that comes through. I know one of my frustrations is the inability to sort by joined date here so that I can see more than just the last person to register. It hasn't really been necessary though.

Just because you are getting some harsh reviews and very straight forward opinions, does not mean that it is not a good place to advertisse. People are still seeing that the site exists, no matter what their opinion is and not everyone that follows this thread is going to necessarily comment. Just be careful of your expectations. At least you are getting feedback. It is up to you what you do with it. People here have stated how the site appears to them and what their first impressions are.... I'm sure in many cases it is just to allow you to see a different perspective. We all have different tastes and different backgrounds. You can use that to your advantage.


~Wolfd@ncer

[The Devil's Advocate]

I'm with Wolf on this. You ASKED how you could improve it and what the impressions were. If you didn't WANT to hear what needed improvement why did you ask for suggestions?

I categorically do not have time for another psionics site at this juncture, especially not one that would require me to devil's Advocate as much as this one did originally. A great many of the experienced members have similar constraints on their time. Your site has not given me a reason to rush in and go 'Oh PLEASE let me help with your site!!!!!' When I don’t have enough hours in the day to do everything I need to get done now, what does your site have to offer to pull me in? Think about that as you look at your webpage.

It's a cycle... quality content and presentation brings quality people. Quality people usually make quality content, which in turn brings more quality writers and posters. Sloppy content and presentation brings less experienced people who don't care as much about quality, who in turn put out more sloppy content... There are exceptions on both sides, but as a general rule that holds true.

You can of course, do what it seems like you're doing and go 'bah can't please everything I'll do it my way'. But please consider these questions before dismissing constructive criticism out of hand.

1) Who is your target audience. Are you aiming for just the newbies or do you want to reach a wider range of people?

2) If the people telling you things need to be changed were members of your site would you listen to them? If so you might want to take a good hard look at the commentary and actually take it into consideration.

3) What are the actual over all goals of your site? Is it social or informative?

4) In what direction do you want the site to go?

5) What do you need to do to get there?

6) Can you get there with your current set up, including your own personal attitudes and work ethic? (I don't know you enough to comment on those but they are things YOU must consider as well as the appraisals of your site.)

7) How serious are you about this site or is it just something shiny for you to do in your spare time?

There are a great many simple things that would improve how the cite reads:

1) Don't use the main page as a general 'this is so cool' message board. The main page needs to introduce your site. Important announcements can be kept there, but less time sensitive ones should be put somewhere else so they do not distract from the critical points. If people look at your main page and decide you're a kid that doesn't know what she's talking about, then they're not going to look deep enough into it to see what the rest of the place is like, even if you have the best content in the world. They have to look at it. Your main page's job is to make them want to see what the rest of your site is about.

2) Spelling and grammar DO count. It doesn't take long to run a spell check. Especially if you are trying to portray yourself as competent and professional, you need to spell properly and use proper grammar.

3) Members loving your content is good, but you need to look at it objectively. You say many members say it helped them. How many are saying it's useless? Are you listening to the ones that tell you why? Negative commentary can frequently be more useful and informative than positive.

4) Look at your website as if it were someone else’s. If it weren’t yours would you bother with it? If you were swamped and could only devote your time to one site, would you really pick PsiWorld if you hadn’t founded it? Be brutally honest with yourself.

You’re competing with all the other sites out there. Experienced members tend to be older (again there are exceptions.) this means they usually have constraints on their time highschool students do not. That means you have to work harder to get them to budget you time.

~The Devil’s Advocate

[Leek]

You guys are SOOOOOOOOOO mean to her. WOW.

[wolfdancer]

We were not trying to be mean. We were trying to be helpful. Her reaction did not seem in line with the majority of the comments that were given.

~Wolfd@ncer~

[Stony1205]

I confess that they are NOT being mean, and this advice is what I wish I had when I started PsiOnline.

Nobody was really around back in the days of CCCC99. That's right. The old tan hex code that was the background for the ENTIRE site. Dont make me pull out old code.

JediKaren: What what everyone is saying and use it to make everything better. It isn't a personal attack. DA put up some questions EVERY webmaster should ask themselves. You'll be glad you did.

~ Stony

[Fearn]

I do enjoy your site, although I also agree it could do with a bit of work. Great beginning site though. I have been watching it for a while and I like the forum a bit.

One recommendation is that you have some sort of guideline about articles, because I have noticed that a considerable amount of them are like one paragraph long. For example, all the articles in the healing section could be joined into one healing manual that was really long, instead of a bunch of really short articles.

Another comment is that the forum just has too many different boards...this is something of a preferences of mine, not to have to sort through a million forums...

And of course I must contradict myself because if I didn't then you'd all think I was replaced by an alien (lol!) I would suggest having an Advanced board because I do believe you have a handful of advanced people on there, so you know it would give them a space where they could talk about things over the newbie level. Yes I know I've copied this from this forum, but it is just a wonderful idea I think.

[rayndragon06]

*mimicks best out of sync kunfu movie voice* When you can move this city with your mind, grasshopper, you are able to call yourself a master. I do not think anyone will ever be able to do that. The whole concept of a master in psi is stupid and pointless. This is far from an elite site and I have no problem with psiworld, I actual like it.

I have noticed that the articles here have alot of inconsistencies. If you want me to demonstrate, I will run them through a blender and dissect them for you. As far as the hex code, what you could have done was have written an image in java script and coded it into the HTML coding of the site. In the Computer Science class I was taking (as an elective considering that was not my major), they were teaching us how to create images using java script.

I have to agree on some of the grammar and spelling mistakes, and does anyone know what it takes to run a forum. I have my own personal forum, I have 3 actually, and it is hard getting traffic and maintaining it. The articles have decent information and the background is interactive to me. It catches my attention. More so, than here. The design is bland and boring.

As far as IRC, what are you guys thinking. Seriously. Do you not know how IRC has so many holes in it is not even funny. All I have to do is run a simple network monitor or packet sniffer and I just got the IP's of everyone there not to mention the who is command. Not to mention that it is text based. There are many other ones. I use UserPlane, which is my favorite. It is very easy. You set it up and place the java script in the coding of the site. It has a less bland interface and is more interactive complete with AV so you can actually talk and demonstrate things on cam and it allows the users to create rooms within the main chat session. Another one is one is InstaChat. That means if a group of people want to create a room for themselves where they want to practice they can. Another I was in the IRC for psionline and a dude tried to hijack me in there. My firewall isolated the problem and I just got rid of it.

Then getting the site indexed and making it robot friendly to spiders and crawl bots is very annoying along with having to add the keywords to the meta tags (webmasters will know what I am talking about).

The PHP script and modules here are very simplistic and annoying. You should be able to create a better php module and install it. If you can not, they have ones that people made on the net. The PHP login script is annoying it keeps logging me out. Either the domain that this forum is on has these on their own or the php modules were custom made, if they were they are crappy.

The site that I have listed on here is more of a personal one of mine. I am not really interested in its construct so it is sloppy as well.

So to recapp the articles have inconsistencies, the chat interface leaves people open to hackers and is just text based, the site is bland and boring, and the php is jacked up on the forum (a side affect of the domain maybe). So, are you in the position to be criticizing Karen's site?

I am confused. This is the source code for the start of the psi online main page.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<!--
____________________________________________________________
| |
| DESIGN + Pat Heard { fullahead.org } |
| DATE + 2006.03.19 |
| COPYRIGHT + Free use if this notice is left in place |
| Edits by + Stony1205 for PsiOnline.org |
|____________________________________________________________|
-->





<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en-AU">

Stony, you used someone else's code and just edited it or did you work on the code with someone else or by yourself and you are saying other people can use it.

Generator is in a meta tag, normally when you use a web design it places generator in there. I am not sure, I just observed that. Anyways, I am just saying that jumping on Karen is like the pot calling the kettle black.

[Stony1205]

If you don't like how things are here, rayndragon, you are absolutely free to leave. That being said I would like to defend my work.

The site layout is a mixture of someone else's work and my own. I contacted the owner of the code about it, and he was fine with it. That's the beauty of open source.

As far as the IRC client, every single OEC I have been to uses IRC. It is simple, fast, free, and more secure than you think it is. Just because you have someone's IP address, doesn't really mean all that much anymore. If you manage to hack someone, that's their fault for not having proper security measures. That is not my fault as an administrator. In fact, I think IRC is more useful than any Java based chat clients. We've used Java before, and to be honest, it plain sucks. I have had no problems reported to me about any "hijacking" in IRC. The internet is not a risk-less place to visit. With you being so "computer savvy", you should know that. If you were "hijacked" or what not, why didn't you report it to a staff member?

You mention article inconsistencies. In what regard? That they're in different styles and approaches? Yes, they are, and that is because they are all written by different authors at different times in their practice. You will easily notice a difference between the articles I wrote when I was 12, and the ones I am writing now. If you mean inconsistent in informational terms, I will agree that some articles need to be revise to fix "Old errors". Things like placing your hands in a position for too long while making a psiball. We know this is a problem, and many of the "old" articles still use that method. Things change, and they'll get updated in the next content update. If you think our articles are lacking, then please, feel free to submit content that you feel is up to par.

You seem to take offense to simple layouts. I'm not quite sure why. The site is relatively easy to read and navigate, and it follows a pattern. Do you have a problem with Google? That's about as simple as a site can get, yet, they seem to be doing quite well for themselves.

There isn't anything I can do about the forums, as they are not under my control, (they are owned by Proboards Inc.) The site has had some rocky server history, so this was the best alternative. You seem to forget that I started this site before I could order server space, so I had to patch things together.

You've also mentioned some pretty superficial things. I've made sure that my site has a set goal, that I have a plan on how to complete that goal, and that I've established a safe neutral environment for people to come in an discuss various things. The site isn't a perfect work of art, but I don't think that matters. You seem to really hate it here, yet still you stay and decide to break rules, post like you know everything about anything, and have a general piss-poor attitude towards the members and staff here. You are not better than anyone else here. I never put anywhere that this is an "elite site". Nobody here is proclaiming they're a master of anything, except perhaps your attitude.

tl;dr version: My site is fine the way it is, IRC is fine, if you don't like it here, get the hell out.

~ Stony

[rayndragon06]

Response at psionlinebb.proboards100.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=dd&thread=1189048261

[cbad]

Personally I like it. Excuse this humble N00b but since when did anyone have to be amazingly good at something to make a website about it? I have seen many, many sites about stuff that the authors were far, far worse at then you are at psi.

[The Devil's Advocate]

That depends. Jedikaren came recruiting and asking for ways of attracting new people then reacted badly when we told her where improvement was needed in specific. If you want to attract better quality people to a discussion forum, you need a better quality site. If you don't care who you attract and just want to get something UP, then quality matters less. If you want to be taken seriously you need a better quality site. Just like if you want to be taken seriously in forum you need to use decent grammar, and back yourself up as much as you can, and be courteous to the people on site.

That being said I would like to make a note on articles in the scientific world: People do not revise them unless there was an actual mistake. (Like leaving the author off the publication.) When new data is discovered a new article is written. The old article is NOT unwritten because it may still contain good data and good analysis that could be used later on.

~The Devil's Advocate

[cbad]

:-[I guess I should have read the whole discussion huh?
Oh and I remember learning that....IN SCHOOL!

[The Devil's Advocate]

Please note "Revise them" referred to AFTER publication. There are many revisions required before most publications will accept an article, even from a very well established scientist, and these usually include the article getting farmed out to 3-5 of the individual's scientific peers and have them go through it with their fine toothed combs. (At least that's the ideal.) (This is just an informational post to clarify an ambiguous statement on my part.)

~The Devil's Advocate