Who killed AH?

Earthhorse

Wibbs wrote: »

I dunno AH seems way better with far more diverse subjects than it ever had. Go back in the history 5 years say and look at how many two, three word thread titles there are and how many of them would only be of interest to 12 year olds. Grand if your ma and blast it with piss jokes give you the trouser tent. That's not to say AH wasn't a good forum back in the day, but it's better now *nerdspeak* by all metrics.

If anything AH has become Boards, or a large chunk of it. Humanities is near death as a forum as the subjects tend to go to AH now and with the largest audience by far on the site, more and more people dive in. It's taken traffic from other forums too. Plenty of political stuff, gender stuff, current affairs, sex, funny stuff, even personal issues type stuff near 24 hours a day. It's a pretty damn good catchall. If I could only browse one forum on Boards it would be AH by a long margin and if Boards ever goes downhill in numbers and dies off, then I'll bet the farm AH will be the last forum standing.

Well I disagree that it has improved by all metrics and maybe even by any. The signal to noise ratio has gotten worse. Most threads on the first page of AH are at least 5 pages and I can guarantee that a lot of the posts in them aren't adding anything to the discussion; there's a lot of "me too" posts and it's not that the class of poster has fallen it's just that there's more of us (I'm guilty of making posts of that nature too).

There was a time when posting on AH to attract a larger audience was specifically and actively frowned upon. Maybe Humanities being revived wouldn't be a bad thing, as I'm sure you'll still get a better discussion on it over there, for a particular definition of better. There was also a time when AH was explicitly not the "current affairs" forum which is less the case now. Discussions on today's news take up far more space than they have in the past. To me, that makes the forum less appealing detracting from it's unique ability to carry threads that don't fit anywhere else: often frivolous and funny but sometimes deeply personal and moving.

AH used to go through a more frequent recycling of it's first page too whereas threads take far longer to play out now.

Whether this is a good or a bad thing of course depends on what you seek from the forum but to my mind it would benefit from a more Reddit-like (by which I simply mean good content gets promoted) interface. The linear layout of vBulletin means a long thread takes a lot of investment if you arrive late and it's the good and bad posts get equal attention. As a result, I find AH less valuable than I have in the past.

TeddyTedson

I think the marriage referendum would be a lot more suited in AH to be honest. It's something that the country will be voting on so it's a more representative view of the country. A thread in the LGBT forum will naturally be a more one sided affair.
I think the same goes for various religious threads too. If it is a topic which is not solely dependant on said religious members views on the matter, it's probably better off in AH.
The same goes for Politics I think has it is something which can impact on everyone, current affairs for example. It's hard to know where a line should be drawn though I guess.

One thing I think however could be improved in AH though in regards to modding is to stop referring to posters as "dicks". This is the internet and that's great but
I don't see the point in mods inciting anger even though these comments are generally aimed at trolls and immature posters. It's a word I notice popping up time and time again. It's not the most vulgar of words, but I just don't see the necessity in using it and think it just encourages the users to continue being a nuisance whether intentional or not.
Apart from that there are charter rules that are continually broken without punishment. Grammar nazis never seem to receive infractions. With more and more people posting from mobile devices there's bound to be more mistakes and people really don't need to be pointing out spelling mistakes that many people won't even have spotted.

They're just points if I was being critical. Besides that boards and AH is very well modded generally.

P. Breathnach

TeddyTedson wrote: »

I think the marriage referendum would be a lot more suited in AH to be honest. It's something that the country will be voting on so it's a more representative view of the country. A thread in the LGBT forum will naturally be a more one sided affair.
I think the same goes for various religious threads too. If it is a topic which is not solely dependant on said religious members views on the matter, it's probably better off in AH.
The same goes for Politics I think has it is something which can impact on everyone, current affairs for example. It's hard to know where a line should be drawn though I guess.
...

If one follows such lines of thinking, all other forums are redundant and AH is everything.

P_1

Personally I reckon that steering more serious topics to the more serious forums would be a bad idea. I'd imagine that a lot of people could possibly feel somewhat intimidated by the expected style of posting in the more serious forums and any kind of debate on the issue would be somewhat stilted.

AH is a good spot for the 'everyman' kind of debate, yes you get some trolls and arguments but they're usually dealt with fairly swiftly.

Dav

Here's a thought:

Lets take one "big" topic and take it out of AH and move it to the specific forum we have and see what happens. I don't know what topic that might be, I think it's up to the mods and community to decide. However, whatever it is that gets picked, should be strictly enforced for a time of no less than 3 months I'd say to give it a good chance of making an impact.

After Hours is not a place for a serious debate regardless of what people insist - just like the Hunting forum is not the place for discussion about the cruelty of fox hunting. Its community is however more than capable of serious discussion (and has shown this many, many times) so why not bring it to another forum like Humanities or Politics where a well thought out post is the minimum expectation? What do you lose by eliminating the sorts of answers that can frequently derail a proper discussion? What is so wrong about asking you to put a bit of thought into an answer as opposed to a casual remark like you'd make if you're having a chat with your friends? There's room for both, I'm not suggesting we "stop" AH being AH, but I'd really love to try this out and see what comes of it.

Sparks

Dav wrote: »

just like the Hunting forum is not the place for discussion about .

I know some of the posters wouldn't have kept Hemingway up at night worrying about his job security, but we do have punctuation in the Hunting forum y'know, we just don't spend all day talking about it

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

Dav wrote: »

Here's a thought:

Lets take one "big" topic and take it out of AH and move it to the specific forum we have and see what happens. I don't know what topic that might be, I think it's up to the mods and community to decide. However, whatever it is that gets picked, should be strictly enforced for a time of no less than 3 months I'd say to give it a good chance of making an impact.

After Hours is not a place for a serious debate regardless of what people insist - just like the Hunting forum is not the place for discussion about . Its community is however more than capable of serious discussion (and has shown this many, many times) so why not bring it to another forum like Humanities or Politics where a well thought out post is the minimum expectation? What do you lose by eliminating the sorts of answers that can frequently derail a proper discussion? What is so wrong about asking you to put a bit of thought into an answer as opposed to a casual remark like you'd make if you're having a chat with your friends? There's room for both, I'm not suggesting we "stop" AH being AH, but I'd really love to try this out and see what comes of it.

Have to disagree here. One of the characteristics of AH is that you can get genuine debate alongside silly banter and from all sides of the spectrum.

What thread would you move and where?

Death penalty to humanities? Would you get much of a debate there?
Irish langauge to TnaG? Be a bit one-sdied, definnitely.
Daily Mail threads? AH material if ever I've seen it.
Hippies charged with stealing food from a skip? There is no hippie forum.
Iona homophobia thread? Move to LGBT? Humanities? Catholicism and Christianity?

Yeah, you're going to get trolls and assholes, but then this is life, isn;t it?

K-9

Dav wrote: »

Here's a thought:

Lets take one "big" topic and take it out of AH and move it to the specific forum we have and see what happens. I don't know what topic that might be, I think it's up to the mods and community to decide. However, whatever it is that gets picked, should be strictly enforced for a time of no less than 3 months I'd say to give it a good chance of making an impact.

After Hours is not a place for a serious debate regardless of what people insist - just like the Hunting forum is not the place for discussion about . Its community is however more than capable of serious discussion (and has shown this many, many times) so why not bring it to another forum like Humanities or Politics where a well thought out post is the minimum expectation? What do you lose by eliminating the sorts of answers that can frequently derail a proper discussion? What is so wrong about asking you to put a bit of thought into an answer as opposed to a casual remark like you'd make if you're having a chat with your friends? There's room for both, I'm not suggesting we "stop" AH being AH, but I'd really love to try this out and see what comes of it.

I could think of a few posters that wouldn't post in politics, or very rarely, but would post away on political topics in AH. Tbh I don't see a major problem with political discussion on AH, the same topics and posters on the very same topic can get a bit repetitive if you read both forums, but if they've the interest and stamina to keep going over the same stuff, so be it.

The same topics coming up on AH can get boring but I just don't click on threads I'm tired of reading, works for me! Problematic posters end up getting banned on both forums in the end anyway.

Dav

Sparks wrote: »

I know some of the posters wouldn't have kept Hemingway up at night worrying about his job security, but we do have punctuation in the Hunting forum y'know, we just don't spend all day talking about it

*DERP*

I've fixed it now, my apologies.

My post was a suggestion, not a policy. I already said I have no idea which topic we might pick, nor am I suggesting one - I don't know the lay of the land in AH.

I don't understand why anyone would be opposed to the idea that there might be a better way to have a more in-depth discussion.

My "serious discussion" comment is based on the forum's supposed raison d'etre. It was intended as a place for people to engage in "pub banter" whilst anyone who wanted a more detailed, fact driven, "serious" chat could use the Humanities forum.

Calhoun

K-9 wrote: »

I could think of a few posters that wouldn't post in politics, or very rarely, but would post away on political topics in AH. Tbh I don't see a major problem with political discussion on AH, the same topics and posters on the very same topic can get a bit repetitive if you read both forums, but if they've the interest and stamina to keep going over the same stuff, so be it.

The same topics coming up on AH can get boring but I just don't click on threads I'm tired of reading, works for me! Problematic posters end up getting banned on both forums in the end anyway.

Personally i feel the problem with the political topics on AH is that due to its size its become a mechanism for certain folk to target wider audience's. You can see this from both sides so essentially you have a repeat of certain topics until the debate is bet home.

The debates themselves can be hit and miss and at times from what i have observed there is bias in how they are moderated. Example is lastnight with the Iona institued thread which totally rat holed itself, one user got rightfully banned for ignoring mod instruction but there were many on bothsides of the argument that warranted a warning. Even after the mod posted many still ignored it and derailed the thread but none were pulled up on it, a user actually got a yellow card for pointing this out.

At least if you post in the political forum you have to have evidence to support your argument and it has to be well thought out but what are the rules in a soft politics forum. What is taboo and what is not?

I personally don't agree with the user that got banned by the way, i just don't like that there are rules for some and not for others.

Wibbs

Dav wrote: »

After Hours is not a place for a serious debate regardless of what people insist/Its community is however more than capable of serious discussion (and has shown this many, many times)

Bit of a contradiction there though D? For many years now the mods and community have striven to take AH away from the "this is not AH" highbrow stuff of some other forums and it's changed for the better in so many ways. Secondly, surely the community, users, mods should decide the direction a forum should take organically?

so why not bring it to another forum like Humanities or Politics where a well thought out post is the minimum expectation?

AH has the most traffic of any forum, so you're much more likely to get a much wider spectrum of opinion compared to specialty forums, never mind more "viewers". People who would happily post in AH might not post in a specialty forum. Specialty forums with their "proper discussions" can also fall prey to a back and forth among a couple of posters, just like AH. Specialty forums can also impose a local culture that has already decided the "correct answer", so it can sometimes come across as intellectual one man handball. Nothing new, nothing sideways comes up and even in some rare cases anything from a different angle can get actioned. Some forums just wither and die by evolution/naturual attrition/simple change of demographics. Nature of the beast. Humanities would be an example. Used to have a fair bit of traffic and I certainly used to drop in a lot back in the day, but nowadays it's pretty dead. There is also a long list of specialty forums that have maybe three or four posters tops that generate most of the content. Moving specific threads ain't gonna change that by much if at all. The AH community is much more likely to move onto the next subject.

What do you lose by eliminating the sorts of answers that can frequently derail a proper discussion? What is so wrong about asking you to put a bit of thought into an answer as opposed to a casual remark like you'd make if you're having a chat with your friends? There's room for both,

(emphasis mine), Exactly and it's gotten that way pretty organically.

I'm not suggesting we "stop" AH being AH, but I'd really love to try this out and see what comes of it.

Again IMH you can't force this kinda thing and you run the risk of diminishing one forum or both by trying.

I don't understand why anyone would be opposed to the idea that there might be a better way to have a more in-depth discussion.

Then let such folks who want that post in the relevant forum as always.

My "serious discussion" comment is based on the forum's supposed raison d'etre. It was intended as a place for people to engage in "pub banter" whilst anyone who wanted a more detailed, fact driven, "serious" chat could use the Humanities forum.

Again if that's what people want, that's what they'll do.

My 2 cents anyway.

K-9

Dav wrote: »

My "serious discussion" comment is based on the forum's supposed raison d'etre. It was intended as a place for people to engage in "pub banter" whilst anyone who wanted a more detailed, fact driven, "serious" chat could use the Humanities forum.

A lot of people enjoy the serious chat and banter part of it though.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

K-9 wrote: »

A lot of people enjoy the serious chat and banter part of it though.

Exactly. It's a big like going down the pub, without somone saying that such and such a topic of conversation was meant more for the city hall than the bar!

K-9

Calhoun wrote: »

Personally i feel the problem with the political topics on AH is that due to its size its become a mechanism for certain folk to target wider audience's. You can see this from both sides so essentially you have a repeat of certain topics until the debate is bet home.

The debates themselves can be hit and miss and at times from what i have observed there is bias in how they are moderated. Example is lastnight with the Iona institued thread which totally rat holed itself, one user got rightfully banned for ignoring mod instruction but there were many on bothsides of the argument that warranted a warning. Even after the mod posted many still ignored it and derailed the thread but none were pulled up on it, a user actually got a yellow card for pointing this out.

At least if you post in the political forum you have to have evidence to support your argument and it has to be well thought out but what are the rules in a soft politics forum. What is taboo and what is not?

I personally don't agree with the user that got banned by the way, i just don't like that there are rules for some and not for others.

Just on the iona thread, there's a thread about that on the front page of feedback, another poster was banned but no note was left to say that, can happen, I'm sure I've forgot a couple of times as well.

Consistency is definitely something the AH mods aim for, can be a bugger to achieve though, bit like refs in footie matches!

Calhoun

K-9 wrote: »

Just on the iona thread, there's a thread about that on the front page of feedback, another poster was banned but no note was left to say that, can happen, I'm sure I've forgot a couple of times as well.

Consistency is definitely something the AH mods aim for, can be a bugger to achieve though, bit like refs in footie matches!

Yah i saw that thread after my post and im glad to see i wasn't the only one that thought it was a bit off . Perhaps if politically sensitive soft politics are to be discussed on AH it would be an idea to set down ground rules on discussion topics and to ensure that there is visible mod presence on the thread to stop continuing deviation from the topic.

P. Breathnach

Calhoun wrote: »

... Perhaps if politically sensitive soft politics are to be discussed on AH it would be an idea to set down ground rules on discussion topics and to ensure that there is visible mod presence on the thread to stop continuing deviation from the topic.

But that's not consistent with the culture of AH, which is more tolerant than other forums of thread drift and efforts at humour (albeit often not very successful).

Dav

Someone here has raised a flag that they feel AH isn't what it used to be (and all joking aside, nothing ever is and on a site like this, change is the only constant). Some of the points made were that the place was just too big and conversations move too quickly. I just threw out the idea that maybe there's a way to alleviate that.

I don't want to take anything away from anyone, if you're happy with AH as it is, then that's good with me too. I'm just trying to help out before it gets to a point where the general consensus is that you're not happy and we're past the point of being able to make changes.

I look at a bigger picture. A continually growing After Hours, swallowing up all discussion that could be better placed elsewhere, leaving every other forum getting quieter is not good for Boards as a whole so this is something I've spent more than a little bit of time thinking about. This thread is telling me that people post in AH to reach a wider audience (which I knew anyway) and so this issue just keeps feeding on itself and making itself bigger unless we figure out another way. Maybe a wider audience isn't what people should be looking for?

I don't know, I take the stance that if I want to talk computer games, I go to a place where that's the set topic of discussion. Similarly if I want to talk about Tortoises or PC Hardware or any of the other things that interest me, I go to where other people are talking about that because I'm going to reach the most people who have the most knowledge about these topics, not just "the most people." Quality over quantity I guess - and I don't mean to insinuate that there's no shortage of quality on AH, but it's a lot more focussed on a dedicated forum and there's a lot less trawling through stuff that is of no interest to me.

Trolls and idiots are a percentage game - the busier the forum, the more visible they are because of the weight of numbers. I'd wager that you're still talking about maybe between 0.25 and 0.5% of people being that sort of idiot on any forum and on any discussion, so whilst it might appear to a lot of people that it's a problem on AH, that's just a volume issue rather than a real epidemic. So that doesn't concern me because the AH community is great and reporting these things and the mods are fantastic at dealing with them (and let me once again take a moment to give the AH mods team my unending thanks for how well they deal with the forum). The DRP forum is not awash with AH related issues given the volume of disciplinary action the forum produces.

All of this points to a very healthy and vibrant community and that's fantastic. However, as I said above, I have a bigger picture to look at, so this is something that I give a lot of thought to.

Sparks

Wibbs wrote: »

BPeople who would happily post in AH might not post in a specialty forum. Specialty forums with their "proper discussions" can also fall prey to a back and forth among a couple of posters, just like AH. Specialty forums can also impose a local culture that has already decided the "correct answer", so it can sometimes come across as intellectual one man handball. Nothing new, nothing sideways comes up and even in some rare cases anything from a different angle can get actioned.

And to give an example of the other side of that coin, we have a forum rule in hunting that the question of whether or not "hunting should be allowed" is not up for discussion, because we had five years of it being permitted and not one example of someone coming in with a new and valid viewpoint - it was always people who had no information or experience of what hunting actually was (as opposed to what they thought it was and we had some really wrong opinions expressed about verifiable facts over the years), coming in and accusing posters of being murderers and various other unpleasant things (and no, that's not hyperbole, that was the normal run of these threads).

Sometimes smaller "minority fora" have verboten topics because otherwise, being a poster there would just be subjecting yourself to regular boards.ie facilitated abuse, and nobody in the mod team or in the boards.ie office thought that was even remotely acceptable.

Calhoun

Should people be allowed to use the AH forum as a means to reach out to wider audiences? On one hand we have boards policy where the user base is not to be abused by surveys and other type of things like that.

Should it be a case that AH as a light forum should have a similar standard? and eventually certain topics need to be moved to more serious platforms.

Alternatively is it a case that the nature of AH has changed so much there needs to be a new forum either dedicated to soft political stuff or light hearted banter.

The above are just questions and are possibly completely incorrect but i thought i would ask the question.

Calhoun

Wibbs wrote: »

. Specialty forums can also impose a local culture that has already decided the "correct answer", so it can sometimes come across as intellectual one man handball.

To be fair their also seems to be a local culture in AH, you only have to look at the Iona institute thread and some of the other politically sensitive threads to see at times there are accepted norms even in AH.

Micky Dolenz

I like your idea Dav and think it certainly is with merit and would be interesting to implement.

It would have to be either politics or religion, I would think.

Corkfeen

Maybe make a subforum in after hours specifically for politics? The people who discuss it will continue to do so and it will be much more accessible to the standard after hours people.

Delirium

Corkfeen wrote: »

Maybe make a subforum in after hours specifically for politics? The people who discuss it will continue to do so and it will be much more accessible to the standard after hours people.

Is that not what the Politics Cafè is for?

Karl Stein

I'm guessing there's not much of an audience to be reached after the first 30/40 posts in a thread in AH?

It's not until after the bit of joking, thanks whoring etc fade that those who actually care about an issue begin to make good arguments and counter-arguments when, I presume, the vast majority of the audience has left the auditorium.

Ruu

SW wrote: »

Is that not what the Politics Cafè is for?

Aye, Politics has been broken down enough to suit many areas.

I don't know, I take the stance that if I want to talk computer games, I go to a place where that's the set topic of discussion. Similarly if I want to talk about Tortoises or PC Hardware or any of the other things that interest me, I go to where other people are talking about that because I'm going to reach the most people who have the most knowledge about these topics, not just "the most people." Quality over quantity I guess - and I don't mean to insinuate that there's no shortage of quality on AH, but it's a lot more focussed on a dedicated forum and there's a lot less trawling through stuff that is of no interest to me.

This has always been my stance but have had learned to let a lot of things flow (with the hope of better discussion and less background noise) a little more often. Sometimes reckon I am more of an AH cleaner/sweeper than a mod.

MadsL

Dav wrote: »

After Hours is not a place for a serious debate

Feedback style response

I totally disagree, I have had some fantastic serious discussions in AH, there are daily interesting responses on society, morals and events.

AH style response as caricatured by Dav
You are wrong and you smell.

I think AH is the former not the latter response.

MadsL

Ruubot2 wrote: »

Sometimes reckon I am more of an AH cleaner/sweeper than a mod.

You missed a bit.

Corkfeen

SW wrote: »

Is that not what the Politics Cafè is for?

True that. How about a redirection address(to politics cafe) as a subforum,purely to send more foot traffic in that general direction?

Wibbs

Sparks wrote:

And to give an example of the other side of that coin, we have a forum rule in hunting that the question of whether or not "hunting should be allowed" is not up for discussion, because we had five years of it being permitted and not one example of someone coming in with a new and valid viewpoint

Which is cool and well understandable S(Hell I've had people suggest I was a bloodsportist while fly fishing FFS and I practice catch and release. This always confuses the hippies and they bumble off looking for wheatgrass to make sandals from). I think any of us who've been involved in specialty forums have found the same guff thread subject come up time and time again. For me that's a good example of where discussion would be better in AH or Humanities, even though it's a "Hunting" subject.

Micky Dolenz wrote: »

I like your idea Dav and think it certainly is with merit and would be interesting to implement.

Maybe I've got this wrong, or it's not the usual MO, but I've noticed before threads moved from AH into say PI, but with no moved link in AH. Is that a general thing or just threads I noticed? I'd reckon every time a thread is moved then leaving the moved to link up would spread more people into other forums of the site and maybe increase visits/popularity to those forums? Apologies if I have this more arseways than usual...

It would have to be either politics or religion, I would think.

They'd be the obvious ones alright. On the other hand MD they're already forums with lots of traffic. Coals to Newcastle so to speak. Dav mentioned the bigger picture*, so wouldn't it be better to look at, move and link certain suitable threads to a forum like Humanities which has a lot less traffic and would encompass more topics that might start their way in AH? Spread the love where to needs to go. The Anthropology forum might be another one. Just thinking out loud...









*and a good point too. Looking back on my first post in this thread where I said, TBH more in passing musing and in appreciation for AH, that "if Boards ever goes downhill in numbers and dies off, then I'll bet the farm AH will be the last forum standing". Thinking on that I'd hate to see it be the cause of any decline for no good reason beyond it's own well earned success.

Micky Dolenz

I haven't noticed that about moved threads and it isn't something we decided to start to do. Maybe one of us does it out of habit. Worth looking into.