Adapting the boards for a broader audience Options

[jonathan83]

To be honest, if Dogmeat is forced to leave because of this I will probably leave the boards.

i don't want him gone, i just want him to stop talking about sex 24/7. for every totally off-topic sexual inappropriate comment, give a 24 hour temp ban. that's all i'm saying.

If Cathryn is somehow made mod, I will definitely leave. (jonathan suggested it)

i wasnt really being serious, i was just agreeing with what she was saying.

[Mommy]

here is the god to honest truth as to why people wont stay if they join. THIS SITE IS WAY TOO CLICKY, but in a bad way. Sometimes clicks are cool and people want to join...in this case, who would want to join a click where all we do is hate on each other. I say we wipe the boards clean again, and this time topics like Blue and Schwab's mishap with that girl, mine and Will's breakup, Cathryn's animosity towards just about everybody on this board, and other topics are not brought up at all. In fact, mods can delete these things if they brought up.... any sort of non constructive past clicky thing. New drama can be talked about, but only to a certain point. There doesnt need to be 20 threads on why two people broke up. blah blah blah. stuff like that. People come to sites like this looking for friends, not enemies. this site offers enemies right now. Wipe the boards clean. Im totally guilty of all this stuff too. I think we can all work to make this site better. Things like what Dogmeat and Forsaken do dont bother me, but maybe they could be confined to hitting on women in LRAR as a compromise to those who seem to be annoyed by it. I dont know.

[Inferia]

Personally speaking, I think it's nice that you guys have a board to read though. Part of me with that Michigan had one too. That aside, the thing I find particularly annoying is the inability to stay on topic, especially in a serious situation, people tend to pipe in with random stuff that does not belong in the thread. I'm not saying the topics that change slightly after many posts, but the ones that really does not have anything to do with the topic. I think these should be cleaned. Perhaps this is too anal for this board, but I'd like to adopt something a long the lines of the rules for TWoP. They guard their boards like nazis, but I think it makes for better community.

[Hartmann]

I will just interject and remind folks that we did a pretty decent job of attracting people to the boards when it was Me, Lance, Slim, and Austin running RateARaider.

We actually had a pretty thick user base, moderation that kept images out of the signatures, moderated post content that was considered too crude, etc. It worked. People stuck around, chatted, and we had a decent board (IMO).

RateARaider was a conduit to the boards. Basically it was a lure that kept people coming back and yeah it was dumb but people were interested.

The Rating Professors idea was a good idea but needed to be followed through with and moderated.

I have a few ideas for jump starting the site, Lance you can e-mail me if you want to chat.

[cmac]

why not share them?
we can discuss and/or vote.

[TetraGrammaton C...]

hmmm, what if we had some sort of toggle, that was available to the creator of each thread.
the toggle determined whether off topic comments were allowed or not.

then maybe give the thread author a mini-mod ability (or just get other mods to do it, via notify or something) to not display that post, but have a link to it instead. that way, if people wanted to read it, they could.

so, someone go write something like that or find a program that has that.

i know it may be infeasible, but it might be easier to reach consensus on a technical solution, rather than a social solution.




i would say that rate-a-raider attracted people mostly because of its non-forum components.

and i have a problem with cathryn, she touched me inappropriately while i was sleeping.

[Hartmann]

why not share them?
we can discuss and/or vote.

Well, I have tried not to bring this up except when asked. The reason for the fall of RateARaider was because of stupid, childish behavior by multiple people (at times myself included). People abused their moderation power and the boards started falling into disarray. Then more childish behavior and RateARaider disappeared and now we're at Techsans.

I am reluctant to share my ideas simply because I feel I was played during the whole RateARaider thing and had to try and mend things that most people would have fixed themselves.

So, if I am going to share things that help the site I want to have some of my "e-dignity" restored.

[Seeker]

I'm interested in your ideas and have no hard feelings towards you or any of the other original admins.

I have no problem giving you (and cmac) access to work on the site as I just don't have enough free time in my schedule to get anything done.

[Hartmann]

Lance, I have no hard feelings towards you either. I never did. I was pissed at both sides for causing such a ruckus and giving me more stress than a college student should have.

My main problem was the way things went down, that's all.

Anyway, with cmac being a designer I think that it would be great if we could get a decent homepage up (don't make the forums the starting page). I also think another .com domain would help.

With Facebook and MySpace being so dominant now (it wasn't really around when RaR was up) getting people to the boards is going to take some serious work. One thing I had in mind was a Facebook plugin to the forums. Show people the newest topics, their stats, etc.

I think the Rate A Professor specific for Tech is a fantastic idea. You will get people to the site and they'll find the forums and they can ask questions and it progresses from there.

I would bring back the moderation rules. Remember we had a document that described what was allowed and what wasn't? I know people like images in their signature but for one thing it eats up bandwidth and they can be undesirable at times.

I'd rethink the forum categories. They work for how we post now but can be confusing for anyone not in the "group".

I can post more ideas as I remember them.

[impala454]

I have had signatures turned off for just about the whole time I've posted here.

As far as the categories, I think a couple of em could be redone.

-Maybe have a separate "Technical Support" forum from "The Nerdery". Rename "The Nerdery" to something along the lines of "Electronics, Computers, & Science" or "Science & Technology" or something.

-Separate "Adult Related" from "Love & Relationships". This way maybe people coming in who want to discuss relationships and participate in threads like "Dating a girl with children" don't have to sift through threads like "The tits and pussies of women.". Also, having a separate "Adult Related" forum would give the horndogs their free reign to post whatever they want.

-break up the NPR forum into kinda regional news. Maybe have "Texas", "Nation", and "World" forums. Politics would roll into those just fine since most politics would be state, nation, or world related. Then the religion part could get rolled over into another forum called "Life" or something similiar... a place to post up stuff about personal finances, buying cars/houses/etc, religion, discussions about general everyday life issues. I think a lot of the stuff currently in "Off-Topic" would fit into a "Life" forum.

-have a forum for "Quickies" or "Quick links" or something similiar. To let people who just want to post up a funny pic/vid/joke they found. So it's easier to look through them and see old posts rather than having to skim through the 5,000+ posts in the ASDF thread.

-Use the top level categories more than the two that we currently use. (i.e. "General" and "Sports")

So as a general suggestion for a layout:

CODE

Main
+Off-Topic
+Quickies
+Local & Campus Events
+Academics
+Entertainment
+Science & Technology
+Technical Help

Life
+Life
+Health & Diet
+Love & Relationships
+Adult Related

News & Politics
+Local
+Texas
+Nation
+World

Sports
+Leisure
+College Sports
+Pro Sports

Techsans.net
+Announcements & Feedback
+Buy/Sell/Trade

this is just a rough suggestion, but I think keeping the "Off-Topic" forum as empty as possible would help. the mods should all watch it and sort threads out that belong somewhere else.

just my $0.02

[Spectatrix]

I like Impala's re-org suggestion, though I would highly recommend something other than "Quickies" as the title for that particular forum...

[kcroxyoursox]

Separate "Adult Related" from "Love & Relationships". This way maybe people coming in who want to discuss relationships and participate in threads like "Dating a girl with children" don't have to sift through threads like "The tits and pussies of women.". Also, having a separate "Adult Related" forum would give the horndogs their free reign to post whatever they want.

This. I know I would stay out of an adult related forum because I'm not here for a mini collection of porn (seriously with all the images accumulated through the years we could publish an anthology!)

I like Impala's re-org suggestion, though I would highly recommend something other than "Quickies" as the title for that particular forum...

Quick fix? Miscellany? Get in get out?

[impala454]

"Quick Links"?

[Psykopath]

Split random posts into an "Off Topic" thread.

[Seeker]

I want the mods to enforce the rules already on the books. We may have to get rid of the individual mods for each forum and make global mods of people who are on regularly and read every thread.

There are changes going on behind and scenes and dogmeat and forsaken have a little time to violate the rules, but once the new site is rolled out we're going to have to put the smack down on them.