Site is a graveyard - How can boards save itself? [Threadbanned users in 1st post]

It got nuked. Apparently all future discussion of Israel, must take place in the “Hamas attacks Israel” thread.

I'm not reading all 44 pages on this graveyard of a thread!

Seriously, moderation can be inconsistent and be a good thing. A post on one thread could cause chaos and need action, a similar post on another thread with different, more mature/experienced users, it just gets ignored naturally. No need to mod it.

Ridiculous that there was no Donaldson thread. Can't see the rationale for that at all.

If it's an echo chamber, and I don't agree it is, posts like that, which are grandstanding on topics or issues other than that of the thread, are a perfect example of some of the cause.

Some people seem to think having right, or far-right, opinions gets them “sanctioned”.

When, in reality, they just couldn’t “express” their, odious, opinions in a civil manner or they couldn’t follow some of the other site rules.

It really isn’t hard to avoid sanctions or discuss any topic in a civil “manner”.

They can report all they want, as long as it’s not in breach of the rules nothing will happen.

Everybody thinks their opinions are reasonable: otherwise they wouldn't hold them.

Yet you have had how many accounts here?

One thing that baffles me, all the doomsayers who re reg time and time again while saying how crap it is here.

Well now, “low level” sure does seem like the word of the day for some. Can’t say I’ve heard of it before, do we have a definition of what it constitutes?

So far, I’ve only seen it used when, that most protected and sensitive of “species”, angry, gammon faced, middle aged men have a mirror held up to them. Which, from what I can see, does not contravene any site rules.

Sounds like a, desperate, attempt, by a certain “cohort”, to get good people they don’t like, off the site. To me, anyway.

Can anyone tell me, is it “low level” trolling for a guy to rereg on the site, posing as a “silly girl” parody or overweight/mature woman? You know the type, they rack up a few hundred posts very quickly, in a variety of threads/forums, all the while pretending they’re new to the site, but all the while showing a keen familiarity with it.

Then, when they get up to 4 or 500 hundred posts they quickly move onto expressing hardcore anti trans and anti immigrant opinions, in AH in particular. To be fair, the mods tend to act fast and you’ll see them get the prison bars or in “Dispute Resolution” complaining that they have been hard done by or attacked by a mod.

I don’t see anything in the rules that can be reported in the first part but once they step out of line they get “stung” by the mods, or are open to be reported for clear rule breaches. From what I can see, you can’t just report someone for expressing an opinion you don’t like, not unless the rules get changed to allow that.

Your prejudices are very obvious. That's fine, each to their own, but don't pretend to be some great liberal.

What's there to get over? There are several disadvantages to increasing years as no doubt you're aware of yourself. But some of the advantages are both wisdom acquired and a willingness to share it without really caring what people think :)

I understand where you are coming from, but if 'raw' Vanilla is the version we had immediately after the migration… I found that unusable and a frustrating experience. It was only when some of the old Boards shortcuts etc were restored the site became usable again for me, and I don't think I was alone in that reaction.

I posted this in a different thread on here but just for reference, this is what "raw" Vanilla would look like without any customisations.

I can't use the "raw" vanilla version, I use the Boards Enhancement Suite which is in the sticky at the top there, easy to install and makes the experience way, way, way, way, way better

I couldn't negotiate the "raw" Vanilla at all. I only went back to using it when some of the familiar Boards features were reintroduced albeit named differently and more difficult to navigate.

Grand and hope you find some solutions and guidelines to help stabilise the site, keep current posters and attract more.

To follow up on an earlier thought of yours as I recall - all moderators at various levels should be reviewing how they both interact with threads themselves, if at all and how they interact with posters. And of course, how they manage threads in an unbiased and fair manner.

As has been noted by several people, the age profile of most boards users is likely 25+. It's not a school playground, lecturing and warning posters as if they are bold kids is entirely counter productive. It's an attitude that is more likely to drive away users.

The site has many practical forums that are useful and largely uncontroversial, these tend to have lower participation but serve a purpose. Sporting threads also generate a lot of mostly non controversial activity. Soccer is completely invisible to most. Threads on AfterHours/ Current Affairs/ IMHO/ Politics/ Media matters all attract more usage and controversy and are needed to drive site use.

The site has to balance reasonable interaction between posters with threads that are of interest and attract debate. Shutting down or censoring what might or might not be controversial threads is counter productive. We're all aware that other social media platforms like to court and even encourage heated debate in order to drive up stats and generate more advertising. It's a reasonable marketing approach. Just a matter of how it's managed. IMHO it's not managed well on the whole at the moment, too much personal bias and over caution.

It's not often possible. Take this new user, wading in with great gusto:

There's a high degree of probability that their previous moniker(s) will be found on Page 1. But which one?

And of course, they could be a completely genuine new user of the site.

Regardless, why not just let them at it.

If there's to be a slimming down. My beloved Rugby League doesn't really need it's own forum now (much as I loved modding it for a pretty long time, it probably never had enough interest to justify it's own forum and I think the Admins were extremely kind to me in keeping it open).

It could happily sit in a Thread in Rugby and that'd be one less forum on the list (preferably stickied to make it easier to find but the lads in "Rugby" might prefer it not to be clogging up the front page).

Having a hide thread or hide forum function, as mentioned earlier, would be useful.

There's no problem with the mods imo that can't be sorted out with a quick PM. I'm so popular with them that i'm soon being appointed my own moderator.