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Complain to the Administrator.

SomaliNet Forum (Archive): General Discusions: Archive1 (Before Feb 2000): Complain to the Administrator.
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AnonymousBig (Public user)

Unrecorded Date
Salaamu ‘Aleykum Sir,

It has become extremely difficult to browse the Somalinet Forum this past few weeks. Normally, I would hit the "back" button to go back for a previous story. Now, THAT has become almost impossible! It is becoming a little cumbersome to surf your site. And time consuming! With uttermost respect, would you kindly look into this issue and ensure we have an agile and quick-loading FORUM! Otherwise, keep up the good work and God bless you.

Salaamu ‘Aleykum.

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Admin

Unrecorded Date
Salama Alekum dear AnonymousBig:

Thank you very much for sharing your concerns with us. Our technical people will post a follow-up soon in which they will answer your questions and concerns.

Again, thanks in advance.
adminSomalinet Member

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AnonBig

Unrecorded Date
Admin:

Thanks to you too. Already there is some improvement on the quality of this site. Keep it up, Sir. We appreciate very much any effort geared towords improving Somalinet Forum. Frankly, it is my watering hole, so to speak! Again thanks a million.

Nabadeey.

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Management

Unrecorded Date
Bismilahi Rahmani Rahiim -
Asalamu alekum.

Brother Anonymous Big and all concerns members:

Thank you very much for sharing your concerns with us. Please bear with me, as this follow-up article may get long.

Brief History: The main goal behind the creation of the forums was to establish a bulletin board for Somali people and their friends, where they can share ideas and interact with one another. Many people who lost their loved ones in Somalia’s civil war compelled us to open this place. Before the forums was established, we used to get e-mail messages from these people who were telling us sad story after another. Now, thanks to Allah, everyone can post his/her articles with their own words for the world to see. That’s pretty much how the forums started.

Forum & Now: You are right that the forums is getting slower because its content is getting larger and larger by the hour. It holds more than 13300 messages with daily posts of 60 – 70. The bulletin board we currently use is one of the most robust and fastest bulletin boards around, and we are very confident that it can hold more than one 1000,000 messages if it is used properly. The layout of messages and threads also contribute to the slowness of the site.

Action Plan:
1- We modified the search feature so that people can search for specific keywords without searching the whole 13,000+ messages.

2- We are recruiting a new manager who will take care of day to day operations of the forums. The manager’s duty will include adding new categories and deleting in-active ones as needed; Making sure that member’s concerns and questions are addressed regularly; Training and helping moderators; Having the last decision of what can be discussed on SomaliNet forumss.

3- Many long threads will be closed with a link to a new thread with similar name and reference link to the original thread. This will make pages load faster.

4- We are going to add more categories and subcategories so that any given page will have less threads or messages. For instance, as it stands now, the general category is very large and it takes time to download it. As soon as we finish our clean-up job, most categories will have ONLY subcategories under them. Some of those subcategories will hold baby subcategories while others will have threads.

5- By the time the total messages reach 25,000, messages in some categories, such as personals and missing persons will have expiration dates imposed on them

6- In the future, threads will be categorized as important to all, important to some, important to one, and not important. Important to all messages such as researches, educational articles and short stories will never expire while not important messages will disappear after few weeks of inactivity.

7- We added restricted words: Profanity words will be blocked before they reach the general public.

8- Unacceptable articles: Somalia’s current clan based politics; insulting individuals, religion, social or ethnic groups; sexually explicit.

9- SomaliNet and moderators who are acting on its behalf reserve the right to delete any article deemed as unacceptable.

About the back-click: You are right, that browser button seems not to be working sometimes. The forums uses frames and the top one is dedicated for rotating advertisements. That’s what makes the button act that way. We had two options when we designed the forums: Either include a banner ad in every thread or dedicate one frame for the ads. We adopted the latter option, as it is more convenient for readers. Can you imagine having a banner ad in every thread? Even the ones with one message and one or two line. This option resulted that the back-click button of the browser re-loads some banner ads instead of taking you to the previous page. There are a couple of walk-around ways: you can either use the navigation button on top of every forums page to take you back or click the browser button few times until it takes you back the previous page.

Future of the Forum:
The forums is going to evolve from a simple social gathering place to an educational and resource center for Somalis and others around the world. With Allah’s help, you will see many public and private categories as soon as we start implementing SomaliNet Open Project2000, which is part of SomaliNet’s second phase. (details will be posted within the coming few weeks)

The forums can be used as forums/mailing list for many groups but we never exercised that option before. For instance, if a Somali doctor wants to help people, he/she can open a public or private group under his/her name. Anyone who subscribes to that particular group will get all new posts by e-mail. Also, the doctor will be able to send out his/her new findings to all subscribers by posting an article on his/her forums.

We will post more information about how Somali people and their friends will benefit from the forums and what SomaliNet will have for you in the near future. Please subscribe to SomaliNet’s mailing list to receive periodicals about how the second phase of SomaliNet is shaping up. You can subscribe to SomaliNet’s mailing list by visiting the main page: www.somalinet.com/ scroll down and you’ll see a three-step subscription form. You can also visit the feedback area of the forums.

Thank you very much everybody, your feedback, suggestions and constructive criticism is what keeps SomaliNet going.

SomaliNet Member

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AnonymousBig

Unrecorded Date
Salaamu 'Aleykum,

To Admin -

From the "baby forums" that was conceived to enable Somalis to socialise, to a gigantic educational and resource centre! I have only one word - IMPRESSIVE! Sir, yours is a most daunting task! I wish you all the best.

To All -

The only assistance we can advance the Administrator to achieve the AIMS stated above, is by scrupulously following the guidelines.

In due course, I must submit, this place will be a "well of knowledge".

Thanks

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Anonymous

Unrecorded Date
it's not that i have a complain but i want to know how i can start a topic cuz i really have a interesting topic on my mind for the last week. so please tell me in detail the steps to starting my own topic here in the forums.

thanx in advance.

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