Development Forums

at 22:23 on 02 December 2006, Steven Teskey wrote:

Maybe I stand alone on this one, but do you not find this to be a blatant advertisement. I mean, I've browsed through Minty Pages before, after seeing one of the many "Public News" posts that have been written. I understand posting it once, but to do it repeatedly seems like an abuse of the honor system.

Sorry for the mini rant.

at 22:51 on 02 December 2006, Steven Dixon wrote:

And perhaps I'm alone in this as well, but the notion of having to "apply" to a design community is tremendously off-putting to me -- especially when there are no obvious benefits to joining. If I need inspiration, I have sites like screenspire and stylegala. If I need professional or career advice, I'm going to turn to colleagues in the field who I already know and trust. If I want to share my wisdom and experience, I'm going to do so on one of the dozens of public forums which don't treat portfolios and "experience levels" as a measure of someone's worth.

At any rate, your website does a poor job of communicating with the user. Why would designers want to join your little digital country club? Your copy text takes the condescending tone of a Web 2.0 "Beta" app that everyone is dying to be invited to, but you don't have the cred or hype to posture that way. If I were the type to join "exclusive" design communities, I'd probably choose one which had a more thoughtful

at 12:38 on 03 December 2006, Luke L wrote:

I've been a member of mint pages for a while now, and while I do think this is pretty blatant piece of spamming ad, it is a good community. I think the signup is mainly to keep the crap out (spam bots etc).

at 03:26 on 04 December 2006, Andrew wrote:

@Steven T - Yes, It is pretty much an advertisement for the community.

@Steven D - The purpose of MP having an application form is to keep out beginners asking for answers to simple questions. Sure, there are hundreds of other design communities out there, but a good part of the conversation at those communities comes from beginning asking things like "what's a stylesheet?"

MP keeps this very limited by only accepting those who have proven their strengths in design or development fields. It's community for those who don't want the fluff that comes with wide open community forums.

at 12:52 on 04 December 2006, Prashant wrote:

@Steven D: It's good to know you have several people available to help you out when you require assistance but that isn't the case with everyone. If someone is stuck in the situation where they need assistance and they don't have the contacts you do where are they going to head for help?

You also mentioned public forums; something I've never liked about public forums are the beginners that post very obvious questions. Being with Mint Pages since it was first launched has proven to me that our members are truely talented and since the registrations are private/limited we are able to maintain a high/advanced level of discussion.

Being a member at MP has several benefits. Since registrations are private we can control which users are members and which aren't, this helps keeps all the bots away and beginners. If you're a member and you take a look at our memberlist you'll see that most of our members have been showcased on CSS Gallery websites which demonstrates our "exclusiv

at 14:52 on 04 December 2006, Patrick Robin wrote:

I said it before in one of the earlier 'news' articles that seem to pop-up once or twice a month but the Mint Pages site doesn't really sell itself very well. For a closed community there's nothing visible on the site to convince me that I actually want to join other than the small bit of blurb that they've posted as news. The memberlist may be chock full of talented designers but how am I supposed to know or verify that when I can't even see the member list? Personally I don't see why the forums are not visible to all but with moderated user registration then people can decide whether to sign up for themselves rather than, I presume, the site owner spamming the public news with his advertisements.

at 15:05 on 04 December 2006, Luke L wrote:

That is actually a good idea Patrick, would definitely increase the exposure of the site.

at 19:53 on 05 December 2006, Rex wrote:

The word "elitist" comes to mind.

Even beginners can teach us experienced designers a thing or two.

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