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If the demand has increased, would you not agree that, allowing multiple providers to post vs letting one provider hoard most of the ad space would be a better look for the community?
Totally get it, and I agree.
I've been making lots of changes to the way content is categorized on Low End Box recently (see long list of changes).
In April we will be doing:
There will be more variety on Low End Box starting in April than ever before.
Really appreciate your time and suggestions. I've learned so much from the last 60 days here in the community and I am excited to put that feedback to work with everything we are working on.
Yes. More variety is better for every reason.
There's a wait list right now for the banners but I can't see who's on the waitlist via BSA.
Sweet thing man! Keep it up.
While ofcourse, not everything you do would be perfect, nor would make everyone happy. But as long as you can bring the old glory back, the time before @Chief, it would be an interesting thing to see and enjoy.
LEA did something right and while things changed a lot over last 10 years period, it would be nice to see some or the old styles back.
Those are big shoes to fill, and it's a great goal.
Right now I am focused on improving our community and websites in at least one way every single day. Most days we do more than one improvement.
We'll keep the momentum going.
Hope you'll consider doing an interview in the future.
While being quarantined at home, I have ample time for that. Just a pm away sir.
A PM is coming your way @seriesn
So it's just a coincidence that the guy who has 50% of the ad spots on LEB is featured monthly?
Please cut the shit already!
I was as mistrusting as most here at the beginning - but @jbiloh does move forward. From what I see he did earn some respect and trust after making so many steps, some of them just small but it adds up.
Plus he has been respectful and listened to everyone with a modicum of constructive attitude.
Probably he made some errors or not so great decisions along the way, but hell, who of us is perfect? I see a man who really and honestly wants to right the ship. And I see a man who pays in time, work, and his money.
So I suggest we stop painting him as the devil and presuming bad intentions in everything he does.
Also kindly note that you have been shown to be wrong in your assessment. He did move, he was fair and reasonable and treated us with respect.
No. Not until we know what exactly happened. Or just get me banned. Thats the easy way. and you can stay here with the visual changes.
There is not one advertiser that has half the ad spots.
Any host can submit as often as they like. If you are on top of things with compelling offers and good community/customer responses and follow through and the community has an appetite for the offers, you are likely to get posted as often as the rules allow.
Thank you so much for saying that! I am working hard to make this place a better community.
Grouch!
Feel free to constructively criticize anything you feel deserving criticism. My point was not "let's all snow-flake, love each other and hail @jbiloh". My point also wasn't "let's trust jbiloh blindly".
My point was (a) is it really necessary to dig into events from a long time ago?, and (b) we should't hunt down a man who actually tries to work for the community and to repair it.
I do understand that he behaved quite ignorantly while being at CC/Deluxe. But now LET/LEB is his site. That's a significant difference and we have reason to believe that now he will act differently and more in the interest of our community. Hell, we do not even need to believe that; he has clearly demonstrated it and amply so.
Here and now the priority should be to repair LET/LEB and not to punish for quite old sins.
^^ You're not getting a moderator role.
In case you mean me: I haven't applied for a mod role.
While I agree with you that there's significantly more change happening than when chris promised it a year (!) ago, I've seen some recent reasons to mis-trust some of the stuff, which needs calling out specifically in order to prevent it from escalating into another 25-hosts-one-company deadpool fest.
LEB has lost significant value and significant traffic over the past 5 years, when CC abused the hell out of it for their own gain (especially the last 2 years). When biloh took over LEB/LET, he presented it in a way that would make it appear as if LEB/LET are now independent. However, since he himself is still working (albeit in an advisory role) for CC/deluxe, scrutiny is still advised. Especially given that recently it has come out that chris niedojadlo has joined the ranks of colocrossing (look him up on vpsboard) and was promising guaranteed LEB spots to whoever joined the hosting party over at CC's house. The last information on this (email promising the spots) happened 2 days prior to john acquiring LEB, so I'm VERY sceptical for good reason.
It is hard to gain trust, but very easy to totally and utterly destroy it.
John has set himself up as a very sales-y salesperson in the beginning here, promising a lot of stuff, then taking way too long for community standards to deliver. Lately he seems to announce the changes after they've been implemented, which is a good change in my opinion.
tl;dr im still on the fence over all of this.
So? The question is what weight chris niedojadlo's promise carries (if it is true at all). So I'll do the step that looks reasonable to me:
@jbiloh
Yep that's terribly true and one major reason why I didn't trust jbiloh at all when he took over. One the other hand I also see (a) that he really moved a lot, and (b) that now it's his operation, which of course changes quite some parameters.
Another point is the question why he left his employment by Deluxe/CC. Maybe one or even one significant reason was that he didn't like what he saw. I don't know but his leaving suggests anyway that he would changes some things within his realm incl. LET/LEB.
Yes, I noted (and disliked) that (sales-y attitude) too. But as you correctly describe yourself, he has changed/is changing.
Being at that, it's sad but normal that changing takes time. Hence my attitude was "I hear your words, jbiloh but I'll wait and see whether there will be actual and relevant changes".
And frankly, I'm a bit impressed by what I've seen. Usually people need a lot more time to change. Plus, he actually listens to us and orients his decision to a significant degree on what the community wants and needs.
Finally there is another big plus I see with him: Ob boy did jbiloh got beaten by us - and he took it without much complaining. That's not the way an corporate a__hole from Deluxe/CC would react; that's the way a man who understands how much he sinned takes it. And frankly, that earned him quite a bit of respect from me.
All in all I'd not yet be ready to bet my house on jbiloh having changed and staying on a good track but I see enough of a basis to beginning to trust him. With some reservations but still.
It will be sold as soon as the numbers look good. The gross is currently over 40K a year which is great for a part time gig
Source?
Source as to the $40k, virtually public record, all you need to do is add up and take off the buysell commission.
Thanks, agreed.
I believe pretty everything talked about has been delivered within a week of first mention. Maybe give or take a few extra days in certain cases. I am working every day to make our websites better.
I am the only one who can make promises related to Low End Box. And I promise to make sure the rules are followed. There were zero commitments made to Deluxe upon the sale of LEB/LET to me other than I would disassociate the websites from their brands.
I am putting tons of time into making LEB and LET better. Hours per day to fix all of the built up issues that stacked up over the years. We are making progress.
Thank you very much!
It will not be sold. I bought it because LEB and LET are special to me and I wanted to fix things.
The only revenue the websites collect are through BSA for full transparency. Note that BSA takes a 25% commission, then PayPal takes a cut. On top of that there are lots of costs, including content costs, hosting, cloud flare, domain, administrative (both office and technical to maintain the hosting platform), licenses for modules and plugins, development costs, etc. The websites make very little "profit" today. My goal is to build it up over time so I can eventually pay myself back on what it cost to buy the websites plus put a few bucks in my pocket. It will never be a lot.
Thanks, but I mainly meant the "will be sold" part.
@jsg
this is the email from niedojadlo to potential CC customers I was referring to:
Note the date, and especially the time. This email was sent out last thing on a thursday evening, with biloh taking over LEB during the weekend that followed.
So? You'd have a point if the order of events was backwards, but it wasn't. This is a #Nothingburger.
@teamacc
I guess that's a simple case of niedojadlo not yet used to the new situation re. LET/LEB or maybe he wasn't even informed yet.
Besides @jbiloh needed to be dead stupid (as in "70+% lobotomized") to invest in buying LET/LEB, to take plenty beatings (and very visible mistrust) from us, and to invest yet more money plus lots of work ... while telling lies to us. Plus the whole thing would turn into a costly nightmare the second we found out about it. jbiloh may be sales-y and may have behaved arrogantly and ignorantly while he was a corporate guy - but he is certainly not stupid.
Frankly, I think we should just forget those weird ideas about Deluxe somehow remote controlling LET/LEB and similar conspiracy theories. That's not how corporations tick (certainly not wrt small fries like our community) and based on what I've seen and experienced so far also not how jbiloh ticks.
I can understand that some people need longer to recover or gain trust in jbiloh but afaic he did earn at least some trust with what he has concretely done here and how he is behaving now. I have been working in corporations myself and it's not the first time I see an ex-corporate guy turning into a normal human being, nor is it the first time that someone whose company got bought by a large corp turning mildly insane and behaving like an asshole for some time. Probably that helps me in forming an impression of jbiloh and in interpreting what I see.
Also keep in mind that being on his own feet now, even if financially well settled, demands him acting halfway decently and honestly. We should start to see and to interact with the person jbiloh we experience here rather than the corporate guy he was but isn't any more.
@jbiloh
It might be wise to keep CC and their clients away from LET/LEB for a while to clearly demonstrate what the reality is (as opposed to diverse theories). Something like 3 months maybe. And it wouldn't hurt them I guess as anyway nobody here trusts them farther than he can throw a locomotive.
You are reading way too much into this. The record clearly shows that this sort of favoritism is not happening at LEB/LET from the moment I took ownership.
Agreed!
The only person who has control of LEB is me personally.
It might be wise to keep CC and their clients away from LET/LEB for a while to clearly demonstrate what the reality is (as opposed to diverse theories). Something like 3 months maybe. And it wouldn't hurt them I guess as anyway nobody here trusts them farther than he can throw a locomotive.
Since I took over the variety of hosts (and their underlying providers) has never been more diverse. I am absolutely dedicated to keeping that going.
I appreciate the compliments and support from people. I've certainly taken a bunch of hits the past 2+ months so it's nice that some folks are seeing all of the positive changes and their opinions are evolving with that.
Any other requests or suggestions?
The last few days I've just been working content creation (polls, interviews, op-ed, etc).
I need more ideas and suggestions from the community about things that need to be fixed, or can be improved around here.
I deleted a deactivated plugin today on WP for LEB and it caused all of the images for me to become gray boxes. Seems to not be impacting others best I can tell. Is anyone seeing anything wonky on the LEB images right now?
I assume it's some sort of weird caching issue.
I see the grey box for a split second before the images load in so im assuming its just the placeholder for the images. The images load in on this end though.
Glad they are loading properly for you. Thanks for the reply.
FWIW: for me LET looks just as always.