I don't really think it matters how the forums are organized, but I think the argument being made in this thread is wrong on two counts: (1) Some of us actually come here primarily to see what producers are plugging, and it's ridiculous to treat them like tradesmen who should be shown to the back door; and (2) If there's a dearth of "discussion" here (and I don't think there's a whole lot less than there's ever been, and I've been around since the ASFWM days), the cause is commercialism. It's not -- it's because (a) there's a finite number of things to discuss, and once one has weighed in once or twice on what movie scene turned you on to wam or how do I get my girlfriend to smear peanut butter on my dick, one tends to skip ahead and leave it for the noobs, and (b) there are a lot of people who whine and bitch all the time about everything, and do it in a way that's neither entertaining or funny or useful. Like you, Blue Sushi -- I mean, every other time I notice a post from you, you're taking a cheap shot at Messy Jessie over a trivial issue in which you did not get your way and now refuse to let go of, like a spoiled eight year-old. Why would I want to join in on "discussions" like that?

Yes, the "Hide" or "Friend/Foe" feature exists on other forums I frequent (I think I've proposed it here before, actually) and I agree that it could help.

Couple of points... I doubt I would be the only producer that considers themselves a profession. It IS my profession, I take a lot of time and care to make the best material I can.

I really don't wanted to be lumped in the same catagory as someone with a HandyCam shooting his GF in the bathtub.

Having a hand, a camera and a cute lady doesn't make anyone a professional... I can swing a bat at the weekend, it's awesome fun and quite a kick but I would not try out for the Yankees.


On the flip side, if I was an amateur I wouldn't want to be lumped in with the professionals... it takes balls for a couple of amateurs to make a video and it's going to be appreciated for different qualities something a pro producer makes. Making a good amateur video takes some skill... and courage for the subject, I am not knocking that. It's how I started... but they are two different things for sure.

Two completely different things, equally valid.

However, having a hand and a camera doesn't make anyone a professional...

I kind of like the idea of prefixing, but I can see the problems of complication picking catagories and trusting people to remember to tick the box. It would be a UI nightmare for MM I would have thought... although he may have an answer.

 

Boom!




Enforcing it would be a problem, and wouldn't solve bumping.

I actually suspect one post a day would speed up the drop rate of the forum.

 

I would tend to agree with some of the points about bumping posts and the spamming nature of producers at times. I don't think a separate forum would really solve it though.

Maybe we could do a gmail type thing (this could be difficult to implement), where we have a priority inbox as such or a filter, where we have a smaller version of the same forum at the top of the page with either discussions or producers posts all grouped together, depending on how a user wants it to be displayed and below that is the rest of the forum, continuing as normal, only without the filtered posts you have flagged to appear in the top section. A bit like a sticky post section but user specific.

Wow. I just don't see this as a problem at all.

I visit UMD primarily to see images and investigate what is available to purchase that might tickle my fancy.

Of course, WAM alerts and interesting finds are useful and appreciated, but (honestly) I really don't care about discussions, bad puns, whining or staggeringly long-winded, self-satisfied diatribes masquerading as replies to simple inquiries.

And I especially cannot be bothered to read endless complaints that some "professional wrestler" or a cable TV hostess didn't get messy enough.

There are many intelligent, kind and interesting people at UMD, but all the discussions contained here are just the opinions of anonymous strangers. If I need the perspective of someone fussy, aggressive and misinformed, I'll talk to my wife.

Since this thread is not directly about jessie, i dont think its fair to pull her into this discussion as you have done. So Jessie, you can thank regislib for bringing you into this.

Your rebuttal style is fascinating. You start looking at my previous posts to try and form a profile of me and then use that against me instead of addressing what was the root cause that pushed me over the edge. Whether i have an issue with jessie or not, does not invalidate my original post. Go back and look at my op here; people piled on some guy because he didn't use the search function. I investigated the premise and voila, I started finding evidence to the fact that producers post here at an alarming rate, pushing non-wam material off the 1st page.

Some comments to other replies here;

- I like the merchant and discussion forum ideas. That could possibly work but people will always find work arounds.

- I thinks it's incredibly easy to see who's a 'professional producer' and who is not. The example of PGK was a good one. Is she a pro, heavens no, but she posts some of the most appealing stuff here, (despite the fact that she uses only a hand held and incandescent lights). Id be willing to bet her ROI is higher than most professionals here. So she is in that gray area of being an amateur or a pro. However, she IS NOT a spammer! It's pretty obvious who they are and they are all producers, or better worded as the following variation of an Aristotelian logic statement:

"Not all producers of wam material are forum spammers, but all forum spammers are producers of wam material."

- MM is amazed that people are complaining about basically free wam material provided by the so-called spammers. I have issues about the content of packaged wam being pushed here (which I'll save for another post), but I'm not complaining about free wam. So maybe you hit at something here MM. Maybe my observation is motivated by not seeing the kind of wam content I personally would like to see and seeing an explosion of producers who are producing material I could care less about. I'll have to think about that one.

- People are not too lazy to go to page 2, it's just a reality that most see what's on the first page and that's it...and the producers know that too.

- Do I expect separate forums, hell no, but people are pushing for a review forum so they can provide fair, impartial reviews, so why NOT a separate discussion or merchant forum. BTW, I can't wait for the review idea to explode when the 'fair and honest' reviews start flying around.

Not sure if this will go anywhere but I thought someone had to speak up for the minority of people here. I'll keep rapidly paging thru the forum looking for my material using my cool really easy to use iPad UI

That one's for you soundguy!

The ice cream man will never understand why people complain about his truck and its jingle.

Yeah, right, I'm the one who's doing it. Your last comment on that subject was made only hours before you started this thread, so I didn't need to do any research to be reminded of your habit of flogging that particular dead horse.


If I've been away from the UMD for a while, I'll keep scrolling back until I hit content I've seen. Don't presume to pare down the amount of content here on my behalf. I'd rather err on the side of not missing something.

In particular:





I think I should probably point a few things out.

First off, the UMD gets a phenomenal amount of traffic. I believe at this point it is the largest focussed fetish site on the 'net, it has become a hub.

For all that traffic there is a $$$ cost - for the forums alone. Then take into account the amount of pictures stored then browsed. Add to that the cost of the video storage and bandwith used to play or download it.

I don't know the actual cost of simply having the UMD working, but I will bet it's in the thousands of dollars in total. Then add the fact MM has to make a living and his time has a $$$ value. He is also a business man so he has to make a healthy profit.

Strip away the advertising and the cut he takes from the download store and goodbye UMD. He may never put it like that, but producers producing and producers selling is what pays for it's existence and gives MM a practical reason to maintain and improve it.

Love doesn't pay the bills.


I remember an music interview series on TV once. Sitting at the table was the interviewer and a couple of artists. One was in some of the moment pop thing, another was in a long touring well loved by a few band.

The guy in the long touring band sent off on one about the shitty music clogging up the charts, the interviewer asked if the member of the pop sensation was the sort of thing he meant.

He said yes, but he also understood that a huge amount of people bought the music so it must have value... also that pop band was signed to the same label as his band, and the crazy success of that band was what allowed his band to go on long tours and play to the fans that loved them. If bands he considered pop crap didn't make phenomenal money his record company would not be able to have fringe bands wandering about making them much smaller returns.




Your example of...



... probably wouldn't have somewhere to turn up occasionally and make a ROI if it wasn't for all the other producers having a focus point to sell their material on.

My stuff sells here, I advertise here... all that supports the forum. You add all the other mid level and pro's together here mixed with MM's savvy and skills and you have one hell of a focal point for the wet and messy fetish.


Same for me, if the XXX stuff that couldn't give a shit about this forum but advertise on the front page didn't cough up $$$'s to MM I wouldn't have such an awesome place to advertise.



Of course, if a forum where producers didn't advertise existed and became a mecca then my words could be shoved down my throat, but it doesn't and it won't - simply because it needs turnover to exist, and a box of random Google ads just stuck in a corner simply won't turn enough.


That's how I see it. I wish for a utopia where business wasn't a necessity but... I don't want to trade chickens for grain.

----------------------------------------------------



ALSO - it's " I could NOT care less about." If you could care less about something, it means you care. I could care less about a bag of gold. I could care less about my wife. I could NOT care less about Justin Bieber. It would not be possible, I can't even be bothered to Google his name to see if I spelled it correctly.

Call me a Grammer Nazi, I understand. It's a pet peeve and I keep hearing it in the U.S to the point it drives me nuts. I don't mean to attack, just point it out in the hope millions of other Americans read this and stop saying it wrong...


-----------------------------------------------------

 

Just checking back and noticed my last epic post received no replies or bumps which means either I have no minions or what minions I do have are ingrates and slackers

My next post will be me looking for new minions. The hours are shit, the benefits are minimal and if you are lucky I may just acknowledge you exist.

For a full copy of How To Be A Top Minion refer here

 

Is the merchant forum going to include ALL producer offerings, including male WAM and Wet Look? ... or are we going to have "female messy discussion", "female messy promotion", "female wet-look discussion", "female wet-look promotion", "male wam discussion", and "male wam promotion" ?
If not, can the "discussion" forum be used for all types of discussion? Why not merge the off-topic discussion forum into it, since neither one of those forums would have that much traffic?

 

Wow!

Just one more thought, that might be helpful to those of you who are having a legitimate issues with finding what you are seeking in the forums. You may sort the forum by the time it was originally posted, which negates any "bumping" and will help you review everything that has been added since you last visited. Also, sorting by the # of replies is a great way to find lively discussions, since most promotions don't get many replies. (click in the header at the top of the list to change sort)

In my opinion MM has done a great job with these forums, and they are quite usable.

 

Sorting by when the thread was born, I can go back 6 days on page 1 of the messy forum.

While we are bumping and grinding, why are so many people aspect ratio challenged? If you have no idea what I'm talking about, then I'm talking about you.

 

Noise,

In reply to your earlier reply to me, I did state that my definition of professional was not based on the "artisitic or technical quality of their goods or services" and was just to whether the producer of such material is looking for a financial return from customers for their work. I mean, The Ivy and your local greasy spoon cafe may cater for different markets and to different cost models but they are both in the restaurant industry. Maybe there is scope to expand that to "semi-professional" for those who do some scenes/content for a financial return and some just out of a charitable or personal desire, whether for distribution or not. But such a point may have already become just about symantics and so might lead us off on another tangent.

While I have no knowledge of this site's business model or costings (earnings from advertising, sponsorship etc), your comments above though seem to come close to suggesting something I have felt - that this place has become less of a forum and more of an advertiser's noticeboard.

That may not come across as a problem or a concern for the vast majority so I mention that as an observation. It may be just a change in the demographic of the membership and audience or, as another poster illuded to above, maybe as a community we have just run out of things to say to each other. As Muddoug pointed out, the hundred links on page 1 here date back to comments posted 6 days ago. 6 days? Does that not strike anyone as being too old? Are the recent posts being made just not worthy of greater comment or discussion? Are the vast majority bored already with the latest 100 posts - maybe already glassy eyed over the repeated topics? It is July though - maybe most members are already off on holiday?

One issue that I have seen affect other fetish forums is that of overposting by a small number of members, regardless of whether for promotional means or not. The strongest forums have a wide range of contributors posting a range of relavant topics, many which encourage discussion and debate (hopefully well-mannered debate). However if it appears that a forum has only a handful of posters generally posting about the same two or three things, it can quickly seem stale; a broken record of repetitive posts and updates. If a forum reaches that stage it stops attracting new members and starts losing old ones, which would of course mean fewer potential customers and less revenue for the advertisers, producers and forum owner. It's a relatively small pond your customers share: you should be wary of overfishing it.

Good pudding!

You're making a point about other people's posting habits and patterns, only fair your's were called into question as well!!

Its a WAM forum, why are you surprised that non-wam gets pushed off the page quickly? If a subject is really interesting it gets to stay at the top of the forum, if not, bye bye!

If you really want to go and discuss non-wam subjects, or want a discussion to remain on the first page a little longer, use the Off-Topic forum.

http://umd.net/forums/forum/offtopic/

Producers only exsist as a reaction to demand and lets face it, most contributers are now producers due to the UMD store!
At what stage does the interesting person, that has shoved a load of free media on your plate, become a producer/uninteresting? When they start selling it?
So you have your interesting contributers suddenly being exiled to another forum because they dared to try and make something for their efforts? Not to mention "interesting" people not being allowed to post to the producer's forum because they don't charge!!!

 

I know the OP isn't talking about me, because I have only advertised on the messy forum once this year (through Heather Blake), but I'm going to reveal some numbers to offer some insight as to the motivation of the small WAM producer.

In the past 2 years, I've produced 36 mud videos. From the revenues on those videos, 15% went to direct expenses (clothes, materials, etc.), 45% went to models and 10% went to my employees (my time was donated). Out of the remaining 30%, I had to purchase, maintain, and upgrade equipment. There were no actual profits for my company. The models made some money, I paid for some equipment, and I had fun, but at the scale I'm operating, I'm definitely not in it for the money.

On the contrary, I am making movies that I like, of things that I enjoy doing or watching. There is a small group of people out there who encourage me to share those movies, and I'm asking them to help defray the costs of making them. Essentially, my movies are unique and I offer them as a service to like minded people. 99.5% of the people who view my free trailers and still photos never purchase a video. That could be due to lack of interest, or just because they won't pay for content. I'm not complaining, but I would hope that they would not complain when my advertising clutters their view of the forum.

 

Someone mentioned having a 'hide' feature. This would solve many issues.

Since we all have our own tastes, we could 'hide' all posts from certain members, be they a producer or not. A lot of this would be based upon our personal taste in wam. For example, the more porn-based wam producers could be hidden if someone doesn't care for it.

Each user could always go back and 'unhide' anyone they choose. This customizing would even allow for targeted advertising (Sorry to create a nightmare of coding, MM) so that these 'hidden' people would not have their banners pop up. This would actually be a good thing for anyone advertising, as their banners would only appear for those users who are into that specific genre of wam.

See, here is yet another arbitrary way that we could split up the forums based on what one person's preferences are. Emphasis on "arbitrary." So, we isolate the threads that are talking about individual scenes, and put them on a separate forum, and leave the other forum for general discussion, am I right? And leave it up to the moderators to get screamed at when they move a gray area thread that started with an amateur sharing his latest pie vid, but ended with people asking him "how did you get into wam" and "how did you make that great pie." How is this much different than this guy "CC" who wants the forums divided based on professional vs amateur material--he doesn't seem to care about whether threads are based around content, or around general discussion. He doesn't care if threads based on scenes mingle among threads about recipes and such. He just wants the professionally shot promos to be out of his life and cast to a separate forum so he doesn't have to see it. What would you say to him? Why not take his approach instead of yours? How do I choose?

There are probably as many ways to split this forum as there are people who visit it.

And by the way, there is no overlap or subjectivity when it comes to male wam. The policy is: If it only has male wam in it, it goes in the male wam forum. If it only has female wam, then it goes here in the messy (or wetlook) forum. If it has male and female, it defaults to the messy (or wetlook) forum. There is no post which you could argue lies in a gray area. But if we go your route, and split it your way, everything gets fuzzy: What if somebody posts about, say, some interesting goings-on behind the scenes of their latest shoot? Does it go into the "discussion about individual scenes" forum or the "how did you get into wam and make that pie" forum?



The problem, as I understand it, is that jaded wammers who are spoiled by years and years of wam getting thrown at their feet are getting more picky about what is "allowed" to be shown to them. I offered a solution that just may work to allow every single person who comes here to customize their experience by blocking posts from anyone whose posts they don't care to see--whether it's too hardcore, too professional, or whether you just don't like the guy or girl for their own reasons. Everybody has their own criteria and preferences, and this solution, if it works, would let them tweak the site exactly how they like it instead of forcing the entire UMD to settle on some arbitrary fuzzy rules that you'd just love, but everybody else thinks stinks.

And to address your actual question, it seems that you want to filter the content on this site based on your preferences, not only for you, but for everyone else, so that other people who don't visit as often can get the experience that you personally want them to see (i.e. no discussions about scenes and content). But did you ever consider that a lot of people actually LIKE to see all this free stuff that producers are posting? It would be pretty narrow-minded of us to prevent them from seeing it just because you don't like it and want to banish it to another forum. Great conversation is great, but ultimately I think people are slightly more keen to scroll through pages and pages of wam pictures and content, than pages of great conversation. Both are necessary and welcome of course, but let's be real: people want messy content.

The imbalance that you are perceiving here is just the market speaking. It's what people want. If they don't like it, the producers and their content will disappear from here. But traffic to this site is stronger than ever, and producers are getting results from it because people like it, so they post more stuff, and then it's a vicious cycle. The numbers don't lie. I can't always please everybody, but allowing every single person to filter the forum to their own tastes is the best I can do.

 

It is clear to you. This is where you would draw the line. But how about other people? So, if somebody posts pictures from a shoot for free and everybody loves it, then that's fine. But as soon as they upload the respective video from the shoot to a download store and charge $4.99 for it, this producer is now considered professional, and they're banished to another forum. All because they wanted to earn back a few bucks to maybe be able to make another great shoot for us to enjoy. Does the existence of separate, for-pay material from a producer really make their free content that much less enjoyable? Maybe to you it does, but it would be selfish to assume the majority of this forum's user base gets more or less enjoyment out of some freebies just because there is more of it out there that must be paid for to see.

When I built UMD's download stores, I did it with the idea in mind that there are a lot of amateurs out there who just have a little digicam or whatever, and they have this collection of low-profile, self-wam that they were hesitant to get out there. Maybe it's just them and their wife, or maybe one day they pied a friend or had fun in the kitchen in a baby pool full of oatmeal. They wanted to share it, but didn't know how to create a whole site or didn't want to go through the expense and setup of hosting on clips4sale. UMD's download store costs nothing if you sell nothing, so more amateurs have been coming out of the woodwork to share their stuff. Oops, I didn't mean to say "amateur." I mean to say "professional" because their material, and the freebies and trailers that go with it, would be banished to the "professional" forum according to your criteria. Choosing a hard line on "for pay = professional" in my opinion is unfair to those who really are amateurs at this but are looking to at least get a few dollars back from it.



I love analogies, but this one falls flat. If you're watching Top Gear, and a commercial for baby diapers comes on, that's one thing. If a commercial for the latest Ford Mustang comes on, that's another thing. But if a commercial comes on featuring content that is exactly like the show itself--a small scene with two hot cars drag racing for instance, then it's almost not like a commercial at all. The point that you miss is how on-topic something is. Everything in this forum is based on wam. These "commercials" are analogous to shortened, on-topic shows that are more or less just like the show itself. In this way, sometimes these "commercials" are the star attraction, and people come here just to see them, like it's the Super Bowl. I mean, if you're watching a TV show with mud wrestling chicks on it, and a commercial comes on featuring jello wrestling chicks, would you be mad?

Another place where your analogy falls flat is that TV force-feeds us content. When a commercial comes on, you're forced to either watch it, change the channel, or take a bathroom break. That's nothing like a forum where you can select and read / watch only the content that you want to see, while leaving others the freedom to look at only what they want to see. Given that some people like the "commercials" why not let them have it, and you click on what you want to see? And if I build this forum filter, you could basically set it up once and just have UMD filter your content for you? What more do you want???



You can already skip through the adverts. It's called "clicking only on stuff that you want to see." Except you want us to go through the extra trouble programming, moderating, etc, to add little labels to help you identify content you don't like, just to save you maybe 5 seconds you would have totally wasted looking at... freebie wam material. Oh, the horrors! You saw some pictures from a set that you'd have to purchase to see the whole thing! The filter system I propose goes a step further in granularity and would work better, because a category system would, trust me, end up in endless debate about whether somebody chose the right category for their post, or forgot to choose one, or somebody thinks there needs to be a different selection of categories, and so on.