I just finished writing up my analysis of the Mystery domain auction that’s been commented upon by just about everyone in the domain space. I didn’t feel like blogging about it, so I just decided to voice my opinion on the domain forum, NamePros. I don’t post there often but visit on occasion and have never had any issues or problems at all.

I wrote out several questions about the mystery auction and then posted some of my own commentary on why I believe it’s going to fail and cause problems for the person who is running this. After returning from walking the dog, I saw that my post was edited by someone named Mark, who removed most of my commentary. Instead of taking out my entire post, he decided to selectively remove my comments.

I am disturbed because I don’t think someone should censor my opinions just because they seem to go against the majority (unless all negative posts were censored and/or removed). In all my time on several domain forums both public and private, I’ve probably had my posts edited once or twice – probably for comments in a sales thread.

I think it’s completely unprofessional to edit someone’s comments on a public forum, especially when it might change the tone or message. I don’t edit what people say here, and I wish the same respect would be held for my comments elsewhere.  If someone posts something on my blog that isn’t appropriate, I delete the comment and send the poster a message.  I don’t simply edit out the things with which I disagree. Completely un”Pro”fessional in my opinion, and a big reason I will stay away from posting there in the future.

Anyway, the gist of what I said is that people have been comparing this to the Million Dollar homepage project, which raised quite a bit of money. That was a very unique project and received worldwide press, and as a result it raised a considerable amount of money. The domain mystery auction is no revolution and will not receive the same type of buzz. This is a take off on a controversial type of auction with a domain twist.

Additionally, I said that the guy holding the auction should probably have some type of insurance coverage, as any glitch in the bidding could end up in litigation by someone who spent hundreds of dollars on bids but didn’t win.

I also doubt the auction’s mystery domain name is really worth $10,000.  Everyone thinks they have a $10,000 domain name, and anyone can post any reserve price for a domain auction, so simply because it had a $10,000 reserve doesn’t mean it’s worth this price.  The point of this statement is that if the auction manager is hoping for added buzz when the domain is revealed, that is highly unlikely to happen.

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The moderator just replied to me saying,
“This is the “For Sale / Advertising” section … It is a sales thread …

Legit Questions are always welcome in Sales and Advertising threads. Comments and Conjecture are not.”

Apparently he doesn’t understand the definition of the term “comment” since there are many other comments (positive of course) that were not edited out – including his own.

“Originally Posted by -REECE-
That’s a very neat and creative site you made there John. Has a nice design to go along with it – well done and best of luck!

Originally Posted by drjawed
Fantastic idea and well-designed site. The mechanism is a bit ambiguous (mysterious ) though. It will take some long time to win the confidence of bidders. Wish you good luck.

Originally Posted by Brujah
John is a hardworking clever guy. I think the idea’s great and hope it makes a million.

Originally Posted by Mark
Pretty Innovative “

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Now it appears that NamePros has closed my account due to my questioning their censoring.  No, I am not going to appeal to RJ or whoever else owns the forum.  It should just be a lesson for others who post opinions in public domain forums.

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Final update… it seems they have re-activated my account (without a request from me).  I will continue to not post there often – unless the thread has some personal involvement.

One of the downsides of using a “static” website for Lowell.com and Burbank.com was that they don’t automatically come with RSS feeds built in to them like platforms such as WordPress.  The options I had were to create one by hand or to purchase a program/script that automatically creates a feed and updates it.  As you can see by these two sites, I like to manage things by hand, so I wanted to create a RSS feed for each site.

These days, everyone uses RSS feeds in some way, and it can drive a considerable amount of traffic to your website. Not only do people (you probably) have RSS feed readers, but Google and Yahoo also use RSS feeds to get news for delivery via their alert system.  I use Google for alerts on just about everything related to Burbank and Lowell, and in order to have your articles automatically pinged to potential visitors, you need a feed.

Anyway, I have very little technical knowledge – or as I like to say, “I am technically stupid,” so I posted a note asking for info on a couple of domain boards.  Don Williams (aka biggiedon ) a moderator on DN Forum sent me a link to a great site that taught me how to build my own feed by hand.  It walked me through all the details, and then led me to a Feed Validator, which said the feeds are working (albeit with a couple minor issues).

While I do know much more can be added to RSS feeds than just the title, description, and link, I am hopeful that this will be another method to growing my traffic.  I’ve heard that Google loves RSS feeds because it leads them to new content. As I write articles for my sites (and eventually source this writing), I hope it will lead to Google visiting more often, driving more visitors to my sites.

Check out the finished feeds:

http://www.burbank.com/feed.xml

http://www.lowell.com/feed.xml