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On the other hand, The Design Cartel forums will NOT feature advertising banners, blinking .gifs, paid-per-click ad words. We will offer sponsorship links (for a minimal charge) for each separate forum, and even then, we maintain ‘right of refusal. The Design Cartel will feature a network of design sites, blogs, podcasts and other forums. The purpose of this site to share links to information and resources, NOT become the sole resource. The Design Cartel forums will be moderated, mods will not permit spammers, posts for ‘cheap design work needed’ or logo design contests (unless part of a recognized design organization where the purpose of the contest is inclusion in promotional material that is beneficial to the designer. And if that's the case, feel free to place the contest deadline, link and information in our Forum Calendar). The Design Cartel is a design site for ALL levels of designers. To that end, we will feature several galleries with different purposes – exhibition only and for professional critique. These galleries will be moderated, so that junior level designers will NOT be flamed, or piled on by more seasoned veterans. If, on the other hand, people want their work to be subjected to no-holds-barred criticism from professionals, a forum will be available for that also. The Design Cartel will be a moderated site. While we are not advocates of censorship, sometimes forum users tend to forget the basic rules of civility, etc. Over the top flames will not be tolerated, and we will have an alert function (should members feel that one particular poster is becoming anti-social). The Design Cartel will feature a ‘PRIVATE’ forum area for certain members who have passed some form of qualification (either post count or by invite). Members in The Cartel Insider will be able to discuss design issues, projects and clients without the risk if these conversations being read by the public, or picked up by search engine spiders like Google. In order to keep design gigs within ‘the family’ The Design Cartel forum will also feature a ‘jobs and gigs’ area – designers can sub out tasks to designers who they know are qualified, reliable and trust-worthy. As this gigs area will be in a PRIVATE area, and all members are pre-screened, we won’t have to deal with the usual ‘drive-by’ job postings (“design my logo for $50”) by forum spammers. As the members of the board will probably want to communicate with each other (especially as if relates to gigs and jobs), the The Design Cartel forums will feature a private messaging system. Many members may opt to allow other members contact them through AIM, so this interactivity will be required as well. Sock-puppetry kept to a minimum... The Design Cartel will attempt to keep sock-puppetry to a minimum. To register for the forum, members will need a real e-mail account (we will not accept registrations from anonymous e-mail services) and we will only permit ONE member per e-mail account. If, at any time a member wishes to change their membership (and user name) they will need to contact the admins. We want honest debate. We also don’t want any revisionist history taking place, especially in the more heated discussions. Accordingly, we will place an ‘edit window’ on posts. Simply put, members will not be able to go back to a nasty post they made months ago and edit it out. Rather, if they’ve had a change of heart, best to state that change of heart (and perhaps explain why). This also serves the function of making sure members think before they post. Better to rephrase something (and make it relatively civil) than post a flame that will stay forever. If you wish to edit a post after the window, you can still request an admin to do it – but they will be instructed not to do so, unless there’s a very strong case why they should. The Design Cartel network will feature all manner of design sites. Unlike many reciprocal linking programs, the TDC will only feature sites that are a) of interest to designers (resources) and b) design sites that promote designers (preferably TDC members). We’re not interested in ‘the more the merrier’ kind of network. We only want qualified, appropriate resources and links. Link relevance is an increasingly important part of web sites, blogs and SEO promotion – we want to help designer sites get better PR – especially those who may not be able to gain rank, or cannot afford pay-for-click. Real World advice... The Design Cartel will feature real ‘in-the-trenches’ advice, features and columns. Real world stuff. Questions and Answers will be restricted to “how do I do ‘A’” and the appropriate advice. As The Design Cartel forum will feature many sources of info, and this info will be spread out across many different forums, threads and messages, we’ll need a fairly sophisticated forum search engine so that members can find this info quickly. The Design Cartel graphic design forum will need at the very least – an advanced search engine feature –to quickly rummage through 1000s of messages and posts. |
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