Vancouver Condo Info

The stock market, the Canadian dollar, commodities, the Vancouver real estate market and yes, this site.  Everything is crashing.  Sorry folks, I’m aware that this site has been unreliable lately.  The topics covered on this blog seem to be getting wider attention, the number of visitors keeps growing and the hamster that runs this server keeps falling off the wheel.

We appreciate your patience and hope for better uptime, thanks for sticking with us.

For a week or two now you’ve been able to give a thumbs up to comments posted on this site, but the means to express your disapproval with a comment has been missing..  Well, its missing no more.  Thanks to c0der, you now have the option of rating each and every comment on this blog either positive or negative.

The appearance of each comment is determined by it’s score.  Currently each comment rated above a score of ten gets one of these icons in the upper right hand corner:

comments rated above twenty get a background color highlight and an icon like this:

comments rated below negative ten get converted to a slightly faded smaller font, while comments rated below negative twenty get converted to mouse type: tiny little mouse type, like this.

So now even if you’re shy and don’t feel like leaving comments you can join in the meta-conversation by rating up comments you agree with and rating down comments you disagree with.

Please use this power for good instead of evil. I know you’ll end up using this however you want, but I think its reasonable to keep all honest comments that are on topic above -20, even if you don’t agree with their premise.  I think mouse type is best reserved for spam, obvious trolls and nonsense posts.  Better to debate points, rather that simply trying to silence alternative viewpoints.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to solicit your general feedback on this site.  Do you like this new comment rating system and feel like the thresholds are set appropriately?  What are your favorite/least favorite things about this blog and what general improvements would you request?  I can’t promise that I can address all concerns, but I’d love to hear your opinions.

Last but not least a huge thanks to c0der, who fixed up the comment rating system within a few hours.  Great work and greatly appreciated!

..Well, best local blog in Vancouver anyways, according to the Georgia Straight readers choice survey.

Yes, that’s right ladies and gentlemen, http://vancouvercondo.info has been voted as the ‘best local blog‘ in the 2008 Georgia Straight Best of Vancouver Readers Choice awards.  As you can probably tell, I’m pretty hyped about that.  Pardon me for a moment while I shake my arms over my head and make crowd cheering noises. We’re number one! We’re number one!

A hearty congratulations to Paul Boenisch who won for ‘Best Realtor’, and a big thanks to Condohype for pointing out that the Straight was running this survey and who posts brilliant deconstructions of condo advertising at the Condohype blog.

Thank you to everyone who voted for this blog, and all the readers that have contributed ideas, conversation and information - you’re what really makes this site worthwhile.

If you’re new here, welcome!  Take a look around and join in the debate - is Vancouver real estate over valued? Are property prices set to crash like they have in California, Florida or Nevada?  Does the Vancouver leaky condo problem concern you?  Are you touching Vancouver real estate with a ten foot pole?  Buying? Selling? Holding fast? Your thoughts and anecdotes are welcome here.  Cheers!

Looks like we had a case of vandalism earlier today and visitors to this site were greeted with a list of spam links. I believe I’ve got that cleaned up now and I’ll be looking into updating some portions of this site to prevent it from happening again.

If any of you buy things from spammers than we can’t be friends anymore.

I’ve started up a discussion forum at http://vancouvercondo.info/forum

I’ve been testing this for a bit and some of you have already found it. It seems to be working fine, so I figured I might as well go ahead and make a front page anouncement about it.

We get a range of topics going in the blog comments and they don’t always relate to the posting topic. I don’t mind this personally, but sometimes the secondary topics are more interesting and could use some extra focus. The forum will let you start your own topics and add images and video material.

The forum is limited to registered users, but if you’ve registered for the blog your login information should work for the forum. You can also create an account for the forum and not for the blog, whichever you prefer.

I’ve divided the forum up into the four following subheadings, any feedback about these is welcome:

Real Estate & Economics - The main topic of this blog

The City of Vancouver - anything NOT related to real estate

Vancouver Condos - Postings on specific condo developments

Suggestion Box - Complaints or requests for changes to this site.

note: registration is only required on the forums.  previously registered users on the blog should be pre-registered for the forums, but new users will have to register here. Registering for the blog will not give you a forum account at this time, I’ll try to fix that when I have time.

With the site switched over to wordpress I figure its time to update the comment posting tip-sheet. Click below to view these tips.

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