Brainstorm On How To Improve Knowledgesutra

[Harlot 2]

Today, I really noticed something I never noticed before for some strange reason. What I noticed is that Xisto has a lot of potential, and I mean a whole lot of it. I realized how much potential Xisto has when I was brainstorming about how I first discovered this forum, and it was way back during the Xisto days. I remember looking for a free host, and not finding any reliable ones outside of Xisto. At the time, Xisto offers a very limited amount of disk space and bandwidth, but unlike other free host, it was reliable, stayed online, and was ad free. I remember leaving Xisto when I stopped hosting my website, and then when I decided to reopen my website, there were hundreds of free host that seemed to have popped up overnight. Those new free host required much less posting, and they provided way more diskspace and bandwidth. Nevertheless, those free host were still unreliable and many of them were fly-by-night. They were there one day, and gone the next. There were some who stuck around for a year or so, but even those were not reliable in regards to up-time. There was no consistency in up-time. Although I know a handful of decent free host still today, none of them are reliable as Xisto. When I found out that the plans here had increased in disk space and bandwidth, I had every reason to come back. In addition, I didn't want to worry about my website going down, and I knew that with Xisto it would always be up. Although the free host I was at before was decent, they were unpredictable, just as all free host (except for Xisto). There was no sense of security, and I always felt the host would close down at the flip of a hat. I was backing up my website every day just in case. When I came back to Xisto, I rarely backed up my website - foolishly so - because I knew it would be there or at least felt that way.

 

The problem though is that if I were to start my first website today, I would not know about Xisto. I know about Xisto (Xisto) only because I found it when there was no one who could touch Xisto in the free hosting business. I went looking for free hosting on Google, and there was consensus that Xisto was the best based on reviews and a single google search for free hosting would find Xisto. That is not the case anymore. When I decided I wanted to come back to check on Xisto, I had forgotten that it was called "Xisto" and I had a hard time finding it by searching "free hosting" on Google. Back in the day, Xisto did not have to do much promotion because they were the only one. Now, there are hundreds of free host. And, even though I am sure many people run across Xisto on Google, I doubt many know that it offers free hosting. By just looking at the forum, how could you tell? So there are many differences between Xisto and Xisto, and a lot of it has to do with a lack of marketing.

 

1) Admin should encourage promotion

One thing that I noticed is that admin does not encourage users to promote the website, and it doesn't appear as if they do any promotion themselves. I notice that every other free host that I know, actively post their website on free hosting forums in order to inform people of the services that they are offering. The majority of quality free host that I have found, I have found on web-hosting forums. I have never seen Xisto on a web-hosting forum or discussed on any site. Most people who look for a host check webhosting forums, and the decent free host I knew have drawn hundreds of active members from them. This is despite the fact that Xisto is by far better (unbiasedly speaking) then any other free web-hosting service that I have used or seen. In addition, Xisto has much more potential when it comes to promotion also because it has a monetary system. Most other free host are posting based. When you have a monetary system, you can give trust members an incentive for actively promoting the website - and if you have a chain reactive of trust members being recruited to promote for MyCento, the growth is unlimited.

 

2) Foremost, Promote Knowledesutra as a FreeHost

One of the primary difference between Xisto and Xisto, is that Xisto was promoted as a free host. When you came on Xisto, you knew it was a hosting forum and you can primarily for hosting. Of course, people developed close ties to the website and began to see it as a community, but the community is not what attracted people to join site - its what helped kept people there. People don't know how the atmosphere of the community is when they join a forum, they only learn after joining. Therefore, the marketing focus should be on the incentive for joining and the community marketing should be used in order to keep users, not encourage them to join. Most people join Xisto for free hosting, and the power of the community was evident because many stayed even after they no longer needed hosting.

 

3) Expand into Domaining and Create Economy

Xisto has two huge advantages over every other free host out there. It is important that Xisto capitalize on those advantages before it is too late. The first advantage is that unlike the vast majority of other host, Xisto is based on a credit system. The second is that Xisto allows for the purchase of domains. Now, my first suggestion is to make Xisto into a forum that is monetary based. What I mean by that is allow for MyCento to be traded. Xisto would probably have to stop MyCentos from automatically being transferred to Xisto's billing system and replace it with a transfer button that transfer the MyCento to the billing system. As long as you can buy domains and hosting with Mycento, they will be valuable. So why not allow people to trade them for things other than hosting and domains. For example, if I wanted my website bookmarked on 100 different social websites, I could pay other members in MyCentos for doing it. Another example, if I had a website and needed someone to write a few articles for me, many people would accept MyCento. It would also be a good idea to create some sort of auction or feedback system. I won't go into detail with that because it may be a little over the top and I am trying to present reasonable ideas - not put too much work on admins or take away too much from the intended atmosphere.

 

Anyway, another idea on building an economy, and also promoting is to start a referral program. Make it so that the person receives like 5% of the MyCento earnings (from posting/threads only) of those who you refer (probably not directly from the person referred). That would really be a good incentive for inviting friends and family to join Xisto. Most people won't invite friends unless they have an incentive to do so, and the best part is that they can't get MyCento because their friend simply signed up, the friend has to be an active member and earn MyCento in order for them to benefit from it.

 

4) Bring the RPG System Back

Bring the RPG System back, and don't put it on a separate website. In fact, make MyCento the currency for the RPG System. If not, introduce a second currency that is also earned by posting contents.

 

5) Get to Firing & Get to Hiring

90% of the mods here at Xisto should be fired. I think that is evident. If I didn't have minimum respect for Xisto and other people contents, I could just steal articles posted on blogs and paste them, and I am 100% sure that I wouldn't be banned. In fact, I could probably get away with copy and pasting news article also. Back in the day, there is no doubt in my mind that I would not have been able to do such a thing and get away with it. That is because moderators were active, and they were serious about their job. We need new moderators, and we need moderators that are dedicated to the forum. I would recommend quite a few people here as moderators. We have a selection of tolerant people on this forum, who I don't believe would abuse their moderation powers.

 

In addition to hiring new moderators, create new positions. I already recommended the position of promoter, which would obviously need to be accommodated with guidelines on how to go about promoting the and minimum standard of what is considered as fulfilling that duty. I am sure there are other people here who can come up with suggestion.

 

6) Give Out Rewards & Recognition

Host contest, and have people vote for "Member of the Month" or even "Member of the Year". Those recognitions could be even accommodated with MyCento or some kind of forum badge. You could even have "Topic of the Month". Find out which topic was the best performing, and got the most views and comments for that particular month. There could also be contest, although I can't think of any good contest at the moment, and I sure that other members here could think of them.

 

I think that is it at the moment. I would love to hear everyone else ideas, and it would be great if all the members on Xisto could brainstorm on what admin could do to improve Xisto. This is not a thread for complaining about problems, like inactive admin, but rather presenting ideas and maybe we can organize our ideas into a single list and present them to admin collectively. I did not write this thread so that others can comment on the ideas or the thing that I think will improve Xisto, but feel free to comment on them. My purpose is to post my ideas in hopes that others will brainstorm and post their ideas also.

Edited December 31, 2010 by Harlot (see edit history)

[rvalkass 5]

I remember looking for a free host, and not finding any reliable ones outside of Xisto. At the time, Xisto offers a very limited amount of disk space and bandwidth, but unlike other free host, it was reliable, stayed online, and was ad free. I remember leaving Xisto when I stopped hosting my website, and then when I decided to reopen my website, there were hundreds of free host that seemed to have popped up overnight. Those new free host required much less posting, and they provided way more diskspace and bandwidth. Nevertheless, those free host were still unreliable and many of them were fly-by-night. They were there one day, and gone the next. There were some who stuck around for a year or so, but even those were not reliable in regards to up-time. There was no consistency in up-time. Although I know a handful of decent free host still today, none of them are reliable as Xisto. When I found out that the plans here had increased in disk space and bandwidth, I had every reason to come back. In addition, I didn't want to worry about my website going down, and I knew that with Xisto it would always be up. Although the free host I was at before was decent, they were unpredictable, just as all free host (except for Xisto). There was no sense of security, and I always felt the host would close down at the flip of a hat. I was backing up my website every day just in case. When I came back to Xisto, I rarely backed up my website - foolishly so - because I knew it would be there or at least felt that way.

I was exactly the same when I was looking around for hosting many years ago. I tried plenty of other hosts before Xisto but always hit a problem. I often found they didn't support PHP, or MySQL databases, or had very restrictive space and bandwidth, or would be down for an hour a day, or simply disappeared one day. Xisto had glowing reviews from every single person I found online. The draw of free hosting, without adverts, but with all the features and reliability I needed was great and encouraged me to register to the forum and post good quality posts. Other people clearly felt the same way, and expressed this on other forums, blogs and review websites. I was always coming across glowing reviews for Xisto, and there is no better advertising than positive word of mouth. I'm sorry to say that I haven't seen a single review or recommendation for Xisto as a source of free hosting online.

 

The problem though is that if I were to start my first website today, I would not know about Xisto. I know about Xisto (Xisto) only because I found it when there was no one who could touch Xisto in the free hosting business. I went looking for free hosting on Google, and there was consensus that Xisto was the best based on reviews and a single google search for free hosting would find Xisto. That is not the case anymore. When I decided I wanted to come back to check on Xisto, I had forgotten that it was called "Xisto" and I had a hard time finding it by searching "free hosting" on Google. Back in the day, Xisto did not have to do much promotion because they were the only one. Now, there are hundreds of free host. And, even though I am sure many people run across Xisto on Google, I doubt many know that it offers free hosting. By just looking at the forum, how could you tell? So there are many differences between Xisto and Xisto, and a lot of it has to do with a lack of marketing.

I often come across Xisto in Google and Yahoo search results for all sorts of topics. It really is a great source of knowledge, and a lot of people must find the forums for a huge range of disconnected topics. However, while Xisto was a top result for searches relating to free web hosting, Xisto is nowhere to be found. This is the main problem. The topics people are finding KS through are completely unrelated. People come looking for information, find it, and have no reason to hang around. With Xisto, people came looking for free hosting, stuck around and therefore contributed to the diverse range of topics in the forums. The order has reversed for KS - people come looking for information, and then leave, there's no reason for them to register and contribute. It was key with Xisto that people were 'forced' (for want of a better word) to register and contribute. All sorts of people filled the forums, and each person had a wide range of interests. Everyone could find a topic that interested them to post in, with the motivation of hosting credits driving good quality posts. The credit system working daily was also a good draw to bring people in on a regular basis. Now billing is done monthly or even annually, people don't check in as often.

 

1) Admin should encourage promotion

One thing that I noticed is that admin does not encourage users to promote the website, and it doesn't appear as if they do any promotion themselves. I notice that every other free host that I know, actively post their website on free hosting forums in order to inform people of the services that they are offering. The majority of quality free host that I have found, I have found on web-hosting forums. I have never seen Xisto on a web-hosting forum or discussed on any site. Most people who look for a host check webhosting forums, and the decent free host I knew have drawn hundreds of active members from them. This is despite the fact that Xisto is by far better (unbiasedly speaking) then any other free web-hosting service that I have used or seen. In addition, Xisto has much more potential when it comes to promotion also because it has a monetary system. Most other free host are posting based. When you have a monetary system, you can give trust members an incentive for actively promoting the website - and if you have a chain reactive of trust members being recruited to promote for MyCento, the growth is unlimited.

In the Xisto days, there wasn't really any encouragement to promote the forums as far as I remember, but then it wasn't really necessary. People promoted the service through good reviews, and links on their own site out of goodwill to keep an excellent service alive and give something back for the excellent free hosting. The search engine rankings for Xisto on free web hosting search queries also meant very little further promotion was needed. The Xisto forums also made a bigger point of advertising the fact free web hosting was on offer. KS doesn't have the same rankings for those terms, and there is only one mention of free hosting above the fold on the forum main page. People have no reason to register, so they don't stick around. People don't even know KS offers free web hosting - it just looks like any other "general discussion" forum. The advantages of KS over other forums, and over other free hosting services, need to be advertised or people will never find out about them. If people don't see the advantages instantly, they won't stay on the site long enough to discover them themselves.

 

2) Foremost, Promote Knowledesutra as a FreeHost

One of the primary difference between Xisto and Xisto, is that Xisto was promoted as a free host. When you came on Xisto, you knew it was a hosting forum and you can primarily for hosting. Of course, people developed close ties to the website and began to see it as a community, but the community is not what attracted people to join site - its what helped kept people there. People don't know how the atmosphere of the community is when they join a forum, they only learn after joining. Therefore, the marketing focus should be on the incentive for joining and the community marketing should be used in order to keep users, not encourage them to join. Most people join Xisto for free hosting, and the power of the community was evident because many stayed even after they no longer needed hosting.

Exactly. As I mentioned above, the process has been reversed with KS compared to Xisto. That reversal means the process simply doesn't work any more. With Xisto, people came for free hosting and went through the posting as a requirement to get that hosting. In that process they realised just how good the community was, so stuck around and continued to post. As you say, lots of people stuck around even after they stopped using the free hosting because they loved the community, enjoyed it, and got used to checking in every day or two. That doesn't happen with KS unfortunately.

 

3) Expand into Domaining and Create Economy

Xisto has two huge advantages over every other free host out there. It is important that Xisto capitalize on those advantages before it is too late. The first advantage is that unlike the vast majority of other host, Xisto is based on a credit system. The second is that Xisto allows for the purchase of domains. Now, my first suggestion is to make Xisto into a forum that is monetary based. What I mean by that is allow for MyCento to be traded. Xisto would probably have to stop MyCentos from automatically being transferred to Xisto's billing system and replace it with a transfer button that transfer the MyCento to the billing system. As long as you can buy domains and hosting with Mycento, they will be valuable. So why not allow people to trade them for things other than hosting and domains. For example, if I wanted my website bookmarked on 100 different social websites, I could pay other members in MyCentos for doing it. Another example, if I had a website and needed someone to write a few articles for me, many people would accept MyCento. It would also be a good idea to create some sort of auction or feedback system. I won't go into detail with that because it may be a little over the top and I am trying to present reasonable ideas - not put too much work on admins or take away too much from the intended atmosphere.

 

Xisto credits could be traded. KS MyCENTs can't. That has always seemed a little strange to me, and has annoyed quite a few people. Credits used to be given as prizes or incentives for work and competitions, and that encouraged participation in the forums. As MyCENTs can't be traded between members, there's no way for that to continue. However, offering domains under the Xisto credit system was more difficult from a coding perspective, as far as I know, so that was a trade-off that had to be made.

 

Anyway, another idea on building an economy, and also promoting is to start a referral program. Make it so that the person receives like 5% of the MyCento earnings (from posting/threads only) of those who you refer (probably not directly from the person referred). That would really be a good incentive for inviting friends and family to join Xisto. Most people won't invite friends unless they have an incentive to do so, and the best part is that they can't get MyCento because their friend simply signed up, the friend has to be an active member and earn MyCento in order for them to benefit from it.

A referral system is a popular idea, and has been suggested many times before. It has been implemented in the Xisto - Support billing area, but that obviously only credits you if you go that step further and encourage someone to actually buy hosting or a domain. The problem with this system is that it doesn't encourage forum activity in any way directly (people might pay for hosting then come to the forum for support or to earn a few MyCENTs).

 

4) Bring the RPG System Back

Bring the RPG System back, and don't put it on a separate website. In fact, make MyCento the currency for the RPG System. If not, introduce a second currency that is also earned by posting contents.

Is the Army System still in development and supported? If so, I think quite a few members (myself included) would like to see its return.

 

5) Get to Firing & Get to Hiring

90% of the mods here at Xisto should be fired. I think that is evident. If I didn't have minimum respect for Xisto and other people contents, I could just steal articles posted on blogs and paste them, and I am 100% sure that I wouldn't be banned. In fact, I could probably get away with copy and pasting news article also. Back in the day, there is no doubt in my mind that I would not have been able to do such a thing and get away with it. That is because moderators were active, and they were serious about their job. We need new moderators, and we need moderators that are dedicated to the forum. I would recommend quite a few people here as moderators. We have a selection of tolerant people on this forum, who I don't believe would abuse their moderation powers.

 

In addition to hiring new moderators, create new positions. I already recommended the position of promoter, which would obviously need to be accommodated with guidelines on how to go about promoting the and minimum standard of what is considered as fulfilling that duty. I am sure there are other people here who can come up with suggestion.

 

I disagree with your 100% assurance of not being banned. Copied content is something I hate on the forums, and I make a point of seeking it out and dealing with it. Many members feel the same way and report copied content. It all gets acted upon and members are warned and banned for it. I am as active as I can be, which is at least twice a day during the week and more often at weekends. I take the position of moderator seriously as I want to keep the forums in a good condition and appealing to new and existing members.

 

Generally moderators are picked by the admins OpaQue and BuffaloHELP. It's their decision as to who gets the offer of a position.

 

6) Give Out Rewards & Recognition

Host contest, and have people vote for "Member of the Month" or even "Member of the Year". Those recognitions could be even accommodated with MyCento or some kind of forum badge. You could even have "Topic of the Month". Find out which topic was the best performing, and got the most views and comments for that particular month. There could also be contest, although I can't think of any good contest at the moment, and I sure that other members here could think of them.

The Trap Awards done each year by Saint Michael did this pretty well. Credits were also given to the winners of each category, and I think some people kept that in the back of their mind as they posted throughout the year. For others it was just a bit of fun with the possible surprise of a few credits. As MyCENTs can't be transferred that pretty much killed the possibility of offering prizes for the various awards.

[Iniyila 2]

hmm nice brain storm for improving here is what i think about your advices :1. i don't think KS with this huge years of activity needs any promotion, i've found it using other peoples on a forum in local language so i can say everyone knows here, i know there are some peoples out there who don't know about KS but what they need is some searching and definitely they will find here. actually i found that every one who is into free hosting knows KS well but they just don't say too much about it maybe because if a service gets crowded it will loose its quality. as i said before KS has a very fast search engine response just post your topic and it will be available in google within a minute so most peoples can find here only using google so maybe promotion is not a good idea.2. i was not a member here when it was Xisto so i can not compare them but now if you look at who is online section you will find there are many guests online, and i don't know if the old Xisto was like here that guests can post their own thread even without being a registered member. everyday you can see some guests posting around forum which means some people are coming here not for hosting only for using other ones knowledge and they ask their questions. but the most problem i have seen is that a guest never posts again in his topic which i don't understand why, it seems like they only come around once and they do not come back again. so maybe Xisto system was better and was able to make people come back to see their topic responses.3. i really hate those referral programs which i have tested in my forum and i can say it will make people to create multiple accounts and will cause many problems, i have seen it in other web hosting and i can say giving advantages to those who refer someone will make scam things going on. i want to say this is very great to see here we do not have referral programs which i even shocked first when i saw that, this means owner of website are really knowing what they are doing and i can say they have done best in this part. but about domains yes this is the first and maybe the last free host with such feature, this is a great opportunity for people to come around and use such a feature. trading mycents for other things is a nice idea but transferring it between members again can cause many problems so owners have not enabled that feature, if they want enable that it need a huge moderation and many moderators to only watch the process.4. RPG system maybe can bring more people around but will make them to post less, and as the content of this website is more valuable then maybe this is why they have removed it.5. mycent script is a little intelligent i think, do that and you will see you will not earn mycents for copy pasting, so they have thought about it. but about moderators i can see some of them are active around and even they are moving threads from incorrect sub categories (i have seen some recently) so all of them are not inactive. some of them are inactive even for more than a year so maybe recruiting some new mods is a nice idea. 6. yes giving rewards is nice and actually i think if some one solved other ones problem then he should be rewarded, and choosing member of the month or week is better to be based on how much his content is valuable not how much he has posted. this a nice idea and probably will get here more crowded.

[Parubilla 0]

1) Admin should encourage promotion, 2) Foremost, Promote Knowledesutra as a FreeHost

 

I think the forum itself is promoting I don?t think as Xisto but when it was Xisto it appeared as a free host when you searched those words in google, so automaticly you would sign in and opened an account to start posting, but I believe far more important than that is that it used to have a lot of activity that it does not have now so be able to have the MyCents proportion you used to have is more difficult now.

I do think the idea of incentives to members is great not only for promoting the site outside the forum but for being active in the forum as well.

 

3) Expand into Domaining and Create Economy

 

To be able to trade MyCents into a lot of different things it wuld be great but at the same time it would bring lots of trouble to the people in charge of the forum because the have no longer full control over how MyCents are being use, and that will cause trouble in between the members and with the administrators as well. On the other hand it will make the community grow a lot because it would be kind of "real money" so you could actually do the kind of transactions you menctioned as a part time job.

 

5) Get to Firing & Get to Hiring

 

This is really hard also because it is a job, and jobs need to be paid or people would get bored, and is really hard to find a person that is going to be paying attention to the forum 24/7, you could voluuntier for a little while but after that there would be no one doing the job.

 

6) Give Out Rewards & Recognition

 

This is great because it would make the people in the forum post more and try to come up with really interesting topics that would make the forum be active (as it was) again.

[nirvaman 1]

5) Get to Firing & Get to Hiring

Xisto is having a problem keeping the forum active , an by firring the inactive Mods/members You will find your self alone !Hiring is a good way to reactivate the forum again

I do have another suggestion ; it's to give members the right to donate or swap their earned Mycents , means that a member can donate his Mycents to another , or he can use it like a currency to buy stuff , but a Selling/Buying section must be created in the forums , to give creative members a chance to sell their scripts , progs and designs.

[sheepdog 10]

Harlot, what a fine analisis of the current condition of Xisto. I can tell you really put a lot of time and effort and thought into this post. Job well done!It seems from the followups that many would like to see the old system of allowing my cents to be given to other members is quite popular. I would have to agree with that. Also I did enjoy the contest we used to have every year with all the different catagories that memebers could win in and earn credits for their prize. While I never won any, it was fun to try and it did stir up a lot more activity than what we have now for sure. Firing the current moderators I don't think would help. Since they are volunteering their time, it isn't fair to be too critical of them. If there is a problem with spam posts not being dealt with, perhaps we just need more moderators. And moderators don't drive new people to the site, and they don't have control over how many posts are made. So just my humble opinion they are not the problem. I do know from my own experience that promoting a web site is difficult, and can be expensive. I have no idea how the owners of Xisto profit from this site, or even if they do at all. I have given that some thought, and have never been able to figure it out. If you aren't making money with something, it's hard to justify spending money on it. I do want to add, I have been quite pleased with Xisto's web hosting service. I think it is one of the best! So, what can we do to help promote it? I do have a link back to here from my web site, if anybody asks about hosting, I do give the place a good reference. Of course, my web site is not a real high traffic site, and I am not really in a position to refer people here, who the heck ever asks me anything about computers!

[mamer 0]

Some ideas for promoting Xisto:

• 
  
• Reward credits for hosting reviewing the forum in you hosted website and linking to the forum
  
• Members could upload documents with variety of content that is well catalogued and open for search engines to attract more visitors. Of course there need to be a system for that.
  
• Members get credit for placing ads about the forum and the hosting service
  

For support and quality:

• 
  
• Create a mentoring system to delegate the job of support and quality control to senior members and above and all is supervised by moderators. Say a Super Member mentors 10 Newbie for example