Administrators Letter on 3rd Anniversary!

Dear Members

Today, Indusladies.com celebrates its third year anniversary. It was this day, 3 years ago if you typed www.indusladies.com into a web browser, you landed in an Indian ladies forum.

Today, we are the #1 Online Community for Indian Ladies. We are the most heavily trafficked site for Indian Ladies. More than 1 lakh people visit the site every month and we serve more than 1Million pages every month.

On this special day, I want to thank a few groups of people who have helped us get here.

Many members and non-members give me this constant feedback that our community is quite different from the several that exists on the internet. They say that our members are friendly, our discussions are civilized and we have an atmosphere of trust that makes several members comfortable to hangout here. If there is one group I need to give credit for that accomplishment, it is our 7 stellar moderators – Aarushi, Chitvish, Kamla, Laxmi, Shobanag, Vandhana & Vidya24.

These moderators spend several hours a day making sure that SPAM gets eliminated, uncivilized comments get edited out, members violating the Forum Etiquette are politely reminded. Doing this task day after day needs a level of stamina and commitment that can only come from genuine caring and love for this community. They also spend a lot of time providing guidance and input on policy decisions and initiatives that we launch in this site. Without the untiring efforts of these individuals it wouldn’t be possible for Indusladies.com to maintain this pristine quality and reputation. And they do all this without getting paid. If we were to pay for the high quality moderation work and the commitment of these individuals, Indusladies.com would have become economically infeasible long time ago.

As if that is not enough, we hold these individuals to a higher standard in their forum interaction. We have a multi-page “moderator manual” that reads something like “How to be a God”. After telling 100 people not to give email IDs in public, it really needs enormous patience to tell the 101^st member the same thing - with a smile!

All in all, here is what I want to say about these magnificent people. Without them, Indusladies.com wouldn’t be this nice a place. If you happen to meet any of them, please, bow deeply:)

The second group of people I need to thank are our local champions – AbhiSing, AnandChithra, Corallux, Gayathriar, Jananikrithsan, Malspie, Meenloch, Preethi, Ria2006, Ushakrishnan64 & Vmur. In a sense, these ladies are mini-moderators. These ladies spend several hours making sure that the members from their local area feel welcome in the local forums and that the sub-forum is vibrant with pertinent discussions. They also take care of all the moderation activities for the local forum. All of them do a phenomenal job for what they signed up to do and these roles are great stepping stones to becoming moderators. With a new feature that we are going to introduce in the near future, our local champions are going to play an even more pivotal role in the future of Indusladies.com. I thank them for what they have done and wish them for the future.

The third group of people, I need to thank are our net contributors – members who give more to this community than they take away from. It’s hard to mention names here because there are so many of them. For those, on behalf of the several members who benefit from their contribution, a sincere thank you, with a deep sense of gratitude. This is a time to ask yourself – are you giving back as much to this community as you are taking away? If not, 2008 is a great year to strike that balance.

Finally, I need to thank each and every one of our members for making this community what it is today. Without your participation, we just don't have the raw material to operate this site. Thank you for being friendly. Thank you for following the forum etiquette. Thank you for making everyone else feel like being in a family. Thank you for everything.

Looking forward, I have a good sense of optimism about Indusladies.com. During the first 3 years of Indusladies.com, I made several strategic mistakes because I wasn’t clear where Indusladies.com was heading. Today, I feel like I have a better understanding of what makes this community tick and how to differentiate IL from the 6 billion sites on the internet! We have several ideas on the hopper and we will roll-out a good dose of new features in the next year that should make us stronger and bigger.

Having said that, I didn’t have any clue – on March 29^th 2005 - as to how Indusladies.com will shape up. After 3 years, if we are the #1 online community for Indian Ladies, there is something to be said for putting one foot in front of another, every single day:)

Once again, thank you everyone!

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