Good morning or afternoon or evening,
I am writing this message this early morning due to the fact I seem to run into an issue lately.
Last time I was able to focus some time on here on gather I decided to go back through my mailings I have received from people via personally or via through groups I am a part of.
I will fully admit I have a lot of mailing in my inbox on here once again. Currently 6688 unread mailings. I honestly like to go through my mailings and go to the clickable linked mailings first, and than the ones I need to copy and paste the links after to go back and view and read the articles, view the images, and view the videos.
More times than not, after a while I leave cookie cutter comments, LIKE EVERYONE OR AT LEAST A LARGE GROUP OF PEOPLE AS WELL ON HERE AKA GATHER, at least recongizing to the author or publisher I was able to stop by and read/view their submission.
4 out of 5 times I will honestly say I am not doing this out of trying to acquire more points, honestly I am doing it trying to get through the massive amounts of emails I have in my inbox that at times have been in there for over 18 months.
I hate going through my inbox and just deleting messages especially when someone has taken the time to announce they have an submission they would like to be viewed. Although honestly, some people who I will leave unnamed can lay off how many groups they send a message out about their recent submission. Now I know in the past I have done it a few times, max 5 or 6 times, but only about things I thought were important. But the people I am referring to are people who every day post at least 4 messages, and/or in a few days I have like 7 reminders about their submissions. Especially when it is done to the same group over and over again.
Now I get called out for spamming on cookie cut comments and these people who spam peoples emails dont. I dont know... I have just seen a lot of things that dont make sense...
But back to my point. So basically I am tired of getting called out for spamming, which is not what I am trying to do at all. But I want to be able to leave a note to the author of the piece of submission I am stopping by, just letting them know I viewed their piece. As well thank you for taking the time to submit it.
In your opinion what should I do... Just view their page or piece and not saying anything at all just pretend to be a ghost. Say hi, or what? Or is there something imparticular you would like me to do when I come across yours, or not do???
Any and all ideas or thoughts would be fabulous.
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Comments: 26
Ut-Oh! Felicia, the Gather editorial staff had an article about the cookie cutter comment and encouraged everyone to delete them or kindly bring it to the attention of the ones who are doing it. They want to encourage real discussion, not the same message all over the place because it devalues the website.
So that's probably why you are getting called out on it. You may as well just view the article and don't bother leaving a comment, especially on older articles because the chances the author will see it is slim to none. Not many people on here keep their email alerts when they get a comment anymore - it gets to be too much to handle.
:)
It was about a month ago, the last time I came back for a week. That is when MaryAnne wrote to me. I stopped and I dont have a problem stopping using the cookie cutter comments. I didnt know about the article, so that is cool. See what I miss when I am gone focusing on school... haha
They have also asked us to report those who are constantly doing it and not stopping after having it brought to their attention so they can deal with it in private. :)
Okay, NOW I'm done. And welcome back to Gatherland addiction!
Thats cool to see they are asking for peoples help to actually call people out on it, not just one person is getting in trouble and others arent...
And thanks hun, I currently am jobless well we all know I havent worked since 05, but I have the summer off since I graduated with my Associates degree last weekend. Now just need to survive the summer and make it to September when I head off 20 minutes away to UMass Lowell to finish off my Bachelor degree.
That's just because Gather is trying to slow down the point accumulation so they don't have to pay out so much.
Ohhhh they have become cheap have they hahah... They probably didnt realize or estimate they were going to blow up as huge as they did so fast... hehe
its not to slow down point accumulation, its to stop gather from looking like a site full on morons that can not put an orginal though out there. They need to attract advertisers and with all those copy and paste comments they know people are not really looking at content and if they are not going to look at content they sure as heck are not going to look at the ads they are placing on the site. SO why would they place them here. Gather survives on these ads so we have to keep the place looking good to help attract them. we are the ones who will make or break this site. I choose to be one that gives gather all the support they need to survive Id miss the site if it were gone.
Angela, your viewpoint is admirable but somewhat misinformed. Advertisers care about the content of this site (or any site), only so far as HOW MANY people are using the site and how often. They could care less if we are reading thought-provoking articles or looking at rehashed email jokes. What they care about is the bandwidth of the marketing channel, e.g. the number of individuals with disposable income who might be enticed to buy their product or service.
If you remember, in 2007 Gather went on a spree of member recruitment, offering double points to new members, triple point promotions, affiliate marketing promotions with other sites and so forth. The purposes was to increase the potential base of users who would be exposed to advertisers messages. After that base load was reached, the number of advertisers and subsequently the number of advertisements increased porportionate to that base. Additionally, the amount Gather could charge to use their channel undoubtedly also increased. Now that a stabilization phase has been reached, Gather must slow down the point accumulation of members or reduce profitibility, i.e. the pyramid that is the sales base is wide, so each individual Gather member must recieve fewer incentives for the desired profitabilty to be maintained. Yet, enough rewards must be given to maintain the base or the contracted advertisers will pay less to use Gather's marketing channels or go elsewhere entirely. It's a difficult balance to maintain; however, Gather seems to know exactly what they are doing. That, in a nutshell, is how ROI of an intesification marketing strategy works and a simple explaination of the expansion/stablization process.
De - comments don't generate points, the page views do. They want the site to be open to discussion, not a bunch of copy and paste comments.
Good to know hehe... I think I just have a guilty conscience about needing to let the person know I stopped bye... Michelle if you see me doing it slap my hand... hehe :o)
hmmm, well, I honestly don't care what you comment on my posts and stuff as long as it is not insulting. I prefer to approve all comments so I know who is commenting and just recently I have started to go to each person's profile that comments for me and if they leave me three comments on three posts, then I am trying to return comments on three of their posts or if commented on photos, then I go to their profile and do the same for them. I have had a problem keeping up with my postings plus returning comments and views,etc. This is new for me just today, but I can see the point of how they want people to have real interesting discussions on here rather than a few words, etc., of which I think everyone has been guilty for at some point in time.
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Connie Love your image... very cute...
And in reference to your idea on returning the favor that is a cool idea. :o)
My dear, Iif you have that much in your in box, I would delete the old ones.
I have that many emails as well, I check to see if anything is pressing or urgent then I go on. I just delete every so often.
I hear STephanie, above!!!
I have actually tested the comment vs page view idea. I reviewed all emails and let the link load and the page until it said done. I didnt comment one night and the next night I did.
Commenting definitely brought me more points.
I would just leave an original comment on whatever piece it is if you feel like it. There are some that I just view and don't leave a comment on simply because I don't know what to say.
I don't really agree with the notification by email, I think everyone can check off on the settings page and that should be sufficient and then to go and have to deal with all the emails, nope, just don't have time.
If I have something to say then I comment if not I just view, rate and go on.
hey, i dont mind generic comments!
neither do I...LOL..at least someone read my post
I hate getting "go look at my post" emails, but Gather has done a good job of reducing the number of those by making it more difficult to send bulk email. I've also dropped out of groups that allow bulk emailing by members.
While I'd rather get a comment that shows the commenter actually read/viewed what I wrote, I certainly don't mind the generic comments. That being said, I think Gather is better as a whole with generic commenting discouraged.
Why can't you actually comment on what you read? Is it really that difficult? It doesn't have to be an entire paragraph, it can just be a sentence, or maybe even two. If you can't write something unique, then ping your generic comment instead of leaving it in the comment section. That way the person will know you stopped by. I personally wouldn't ever join that many groups because I HATE the "I posted something please come view it" emails. I think I currently have 3 or 4 unread Gather messages... so maybe you should drop out of some of your groups if you have over 6000 emails and are feeling the stress of commenting on each of them.
Those are exactly the pms that I disregard. They're obviously not personal, so I don't foresee hard feelings if they get ignored.