Is Indiblogger really validating blogs before registering?

We reject about 30-40 blogs in a day...no idea how that one got through! Will look into it and find out, thanks for the heads-up!

I was going through the review requests recently and found some blog there.. the blogger is not an Indian, and the blog had an article on India, but nothing credible. Mainly links to a website which provided more information on the article. Indian by birth, blogger by choice is the motto I have on the Indi-t-shirt I got.. atleast, the first part should be there right? I know many Indian bloggers out of India, who I've in my network and also become good friends with, but just random blogs getting through moderation process coz of an article about India shouldn't be the case, right?

And no offence meant to the people from other countries, who are actually staying in India and blogging from here. 

Stock market blogs seem to be finding their way in.

I haven't been moderating a lot these days. Just deleting the stock spams. Moderators don't have any power other than to delete threads. No editing power, no power to send PMs to people who are not "friendzoned" to keep them in check. No ability to lock threads. The overhaul thread was overlooked so there's no point in talking about it.

Besides the initial selection process which, I'm sure, is quite stringent, indiblogger can also think about an annual review of its blogs and bloggers. It will keep all the bloggers here actually attempting to blog rather than content at just being a part of the indiblogger-set.

I think there should be some mechanism which ensures that every blogger here...

1. Participates in at least one contest every six months. This will not only keep the bloggers active but will give even contests a new high!

2. Actually goes to the post, reads it, and comments at least once every month. 'Liking' without even knowing what they are liking is the biggest sin that I can ever think of.

3. Writes at least one new post in a month.

The above rules will not only be good for indiblogger, but will be a boon for bloggers who are so prone to lapse into long periods of inactivity.

Note: Those bloggers who are dubbed 'inactive' based on the parameters above, can be put in a 'blog-quarantine' and will need to have seven new posts to come out! :)

Howzzat!! :)

1. I am against it. If people don't want to participate then they simply don't want to participate. Generalizing that the ones who participate in contests are active and not others is unfair.

2. I will agree if there's a way to find out if people actually read it or not. Whenever I post in indiblogger, most of the time the traffic from indivine indicates as less than 10 seconds so there ya go!

3. Agreed.

 I don't agree with first point , participation should be at once will and not compulsive .... I have never written for a contest and will never write one also . That does not means I'm not active .

Even I am against the first point. I feel forcing people to do certain things is never good.. it should be a matter of choice, always.

Also, the third point can prove to be a bit taxing sometimes. There are moments when a person gets busy with other things in life and is forced to take a sabbatical for shorter periods. In this case, of he being dubbed inactive by IB, he might as well get lured to publish anything just so that he and his blog is seen active by IB.

It is not fair to make it compulsary to participate in a contest at least once in 6 mths....my blog is in a certain niche which will not permit me to participate in many of these contests,besides i am interested in blogging about my subject;but not in taking part in contests...to be  honest even reading competitive entries sometimes becomes too tiring,boring & time-consuming.

so far as writing a post every month is concerned i think quality is better than quantity-no?It is all a matter of inspiration & compulsion tends to quell it.

I don't mind and do agree with the second and third points, Arvind ji and the consequent wordings too. but not about the contests. That should be left to the blogger. Some, like me, are part of Indiblogger, and I have, to date, not participated in a contest, because I do not want to. Passion can't be judged for writing on a contest, be it once a month, or once in six months or even entire lifetime I feel...

@ Arvind - Contests will be tough. That can be counter productive forcing bloggers into advertising products if only Qvendo type of contests keep coming for 6 months. 

I am reminded of an incident in Germany. In Germany they have unemployement benefits. But the catch is you have to be registered and if you are registered you need to take up any job the government finds for you. And any registered firm can regsiter with the employment exchange and hire the unemployed people. Now prostitution became a legal profession in Germany. So brothels could become registered firms and so could register and hire from employment exchanges as well. Any guesses where this lead to?

People will work hard so that they won't end up working over THERE??

OMG what a predicament for jobless girls & ladies.

I believe misleading blogs should also be flagged, stock tips, ponzi schemes etc should be censored.  Sorcy you are doing a good job by deleting stock tips, because it is risky to get misguided.

i submitted one blog few months back with the wrong title coz i didn't know the difference between a blog and a post.  also i was not aware of the other guidlines.  that blog with only three stupid posts and a wrong title got approved .  it was quite embarrassing for me when i saw that.  quickly deleted before anyone could see it .

p.s. plz dont delete my current blogs

Also, the rules say that we can submit max. 2 posts..but we have people who submit so many in a day..wondering if the rules have changed?

i think they submit from different blogs.

Yes even i was wondering the same ..... but i think its changed .....

The IndiTeam relaxed the two post submission rule a few months back. We can now post as many posts from our blogs, i think, at a given point of time and flood IndiVine to the fullest.

Not sure if is from different blogs.. Some of them have seen multiple posts, all linking back to the same.. The 2 Blogs rule may just not be working..

By the way, I have seen posts from these stock tips blogs on IndiVine and people have voted for them, too

Yeah well as long as they get a voteback they care a damn. They don't read the content dude. Just open the link and close it to give a vote.

Not all do that, but there's a significant amount of people who do that- mostly the usual suspects that we don't talk about. That's why I stopped submitting in Indivine.

I still do that because it helps me getting genuine readers. I don't scratch back, and there are people who still read my posts from Indivine whether or not I vote for them. %age may be less, but it gets me genuine readers.

Captain i do read your posts  why don't you read mine? not interested in my topics? Just as i too don't read tech blogs although i hold those bloggers in high esteem.

I know Indu, thanks a lot

I have not been reading any posts off-late and your sbeing one of those which I am yet to read. I am getting back to action and will surely read your posts and give comments too 

This guy does not seem genuine

http://www.indiblogger.in/blogger/45459/

Indi-team please have a look. He has added 3 blogs none of which seem to belong to him nor have any connection with India.

how about this one

http://www.indiblogger.in/blogger/38043/

this person added me to his/her network.  thumbnail says invalid domain and when i tried to check out the blog, my system crashed.

and why all plagiarized blogs getting approved?  i have found 3 in last one week.  it's becoming a hobby for me to check the contents of blogs

although i don't think it's possible for indi team to check everything

Actually, we do check every blog - but we cannot check every blog post. 

hahaa! cant blame you for this! but this is really sad, i mean, phoney blogs making their way into indiblogger! hmm...

Absolutely Renie but I just hope you find time to check the ones we are reporting :)

I'd like to know how a URL to a post in a blog (one that has to go to Indivine, but has been registered as a blog by a newbie's unawareness) gets approved as a blog? There was a forum thread by the blogger in question asking why the same was taking more than 3 days to get approval, and I replied to that thread stating that adding the URL WILL NOT work. Now I check the profile and to my greatest of suprises, it actually HAS worked. 

Profile: http://www.indiblogger.in/blogger/47426/

Thread: http://www.indiblogger.in/forum/topic.php?id=14225

Hey Leo, I've deleted that blog - don't know how a blog post URL got through. Thanks for pointing it out!

Keep an eye out, buddy :) I don't know if any other such cases are there. I knew of this case only coz I'd personally replied to the thread.

Our lead moderator just got back from the US after the Junoon meet - and she had 1100+ blogs to moderate when she got back. Mistakes had to happen I suppose. Sorry - we'll keep an eye out!

Yowza. No wonder :) That's okay, apology not necessary RR, can only give assistance when I can. This was a little hilarious case though, unlike the stock spam blogs that get through at times.

Why not let forum moderators review blog requests? Whoever has the time can do it. That should reduce some part of the workload and besides, we know a spammer when we see one :P

In other forums mods do get right to ban members and possibly to approve membership request. Guess it would reduce the load for amins to give the necessary power to mods assuming admins have been responsible in choosing right people as mods.

@The Fool: Those other forums use Vbulletin and such forum phpBB or Xenoforo forum software, rather than whatever this forum uses (buddypress??). They allow a lot of customisations and just like self hosted WP for blogs, Vbulletin has lot of prebuilt and easy to install widgets or whatever you call it available.

Participating in a contest is the sweet will of a blogger. If he/she choose  not to participate a contest, it doesn't mean he/she is not active.