It looks as if you need more publicity. And an emphasis on younger members is less important than simply getting more members.
Someone mentioned an upvote/downvote function. Frankly, I’m surprised one was not included when you went to the new software.
I’ll add that AskEconomics is basically the same. There’s another Econ subreddit which has endless silly threads: here’s a link to a lefty blog about why we need to guillotine Bezos and take his money. I’d like GQ to be a bit more like that rather than more cliches and dad jokes.
You’re not the only one, there have been multiple threads (as @mordecaiB ) mentioned how frustrating it is to write out a detailed opinion/answer/etc and be misinterpreted (although mB, IMHO you did get a bit personal in the thread I think you’re referencing). Or my pet peeve, repeat something you posted not an hour, or 10 posts back. Admittedly, the better posters who do it then go and acknowledge they should have read the thread better, but a lot just . . . . don’t. So there are people paying attention, and you’re a better poster than you think. Don’t let them get to you, and don’t do yourself a disfavor by silencing yourself - that’s going to also eat at you if in a different way in my opinion.
I’m kinda halfway on this one H&R. I agree that specialty boards are thriving, but generalist boards in general are not. I used to belong to a generalized Sci-Fi/Fantasy board 3-5 years back, but it kept losing people who went to boards for a specific series, or author, or shared universe. They were narrowing down to what they were interested in, and less concerned with comparing different series, or different themes across several works. Reddit and others can do this effortlessly, but getting anyone to then come back from the narrow focus can be really hard. I’m not saying it’s ‘wrong’, but it does leave generalist sites short on views.
Discourse has a built in ‘like’ system, that was disabled ASAP. It is not. . . . well thought of by the legacy posters. Personally, I am okay with systems that have upvotes w/out downvotes, but there’s the oft-spoken concern people will start commenting for the likes, rather than for content. Which I find unlikely for this boards culture, but not unheard of in other settings.
It used to be that even easy post count padding was banned. Now there is a whole sub-forum for it. And getting that split out of the Game Room (where the threads were drowning out talk of actual games and sports) took weeks of complaining and lots of threads.
I’m completely agreed with you on this. This thread basically asked about people’s experiences with other general interest message boards. There were none that I hadn’t heard of before in 128 posts, and most of them were declining.
There’s a few, no doubt, but since you quoted me I figured I’d clarify: I think AskHistorians is a great model for a new SD column by Cecil Adams. I think it’s useless as a model for the SDMB. While I love reading it, I’ve never posted. I’m simply not welcome to (at least at top-level) - I lack the requisite expertise. I don’t think that is exactly something we should be looking to replicate.
Herp a derp. I wondered why I felt I had talked about some of these issues before. Admittedly, I hadn’t posted on that thread in over 2 months, and stopping tracking it after it became FountainPenFandom. But it is a very helpful thread to reference for this discussion. Thanks!
My main complaint with likes/upvotes here is I don’t want the order of posts moved because people like it. If all upvote/likes did was show up on a tiny icon like on Reddit, I wouldn’t care much. But this board is about conversations, we are often referred to as a community. Make it so it doesn’t alter the conversation order and isn’t really obnoxious and I think you may get a few more takers. Maybe.
The Reddit boards I follow are completely different. One I do is What is this thing? There, I want the upvotes to move the conversation because the correct answer will be at the top and I don’t have to read 4,235,958 posts of people guessing without any clue. Also, on the Reddits I use, none of them are social and I couldn’t tell you a single thing about any poster, including their names. For all I know, the same guy answers every question.
I’ve never looked at AskHistorians but it’s not unusual for people that post on What is this thing? to say that they tried some historian reddit and couldn’t get an answer, so they went to what is this thing? and got an answer and a link to the item with a picture. The problem with historians on things like this is they do not like to commit themselves to things the can only see a photo of, for fear of being off on some arcane bit of knowledge.
Wut? AskHistorians isn’t for short, factual answers identifying an object. I’d imagine the question would get modded if it were asked there, though there are many other history-ish subreddits. However - the issue that many questions to AskHistorians go unanswered is real and it’s the tradeoff of accepting only high-effort answers from experts. I would expect that submitting questions for consideration by Cecil would function similarly…
This is exactly how “likes” function in Discourse. There’s a little icon underneath the post indicating how often it’s been liked. And i think you can hover to see by whom it was liked, or maybe that only works on your own posts.
But it doesn’t change the order.
I like the feature. It’s a really easy way to say, “thank you for answering my question”, or “i agree with this sentiment”.
(It’s also used in the optional summary feature. I don’t think the summary feature works very well for boards like this, but it’s harmless in that unless you click on it you will never see it. And even that doesn’t reorder posts.)
Another problem with likes/dislikes on a community board is that some people will no doubt do a lot of liking/disliking based on their bias for/against the poster, rather than the content of the post. I’m sure there are people here (probably including me) who would be guaranteed to get a collection of dislikes on every post, perhaps even in hope of driving away said people or at least pushing them down to the bottom pf the conversation as a matter of course. And frivolous/malicious dislikes would be very hard to moderate, so it would be an ‘out’ for people who want to attack others but can’t get away with it without being modded.
Then you also get cliques of users who always vote each other up. Up/down votes work as a filter for places where lots of randos come and go, But for a ‘community’ they are likely to become poisonous.
I’m skipping ahead to say that the click bait idea is brilliant. Maybe we could get Eve out of retirement to help.
Yup, that’s why when I mentioned it I indicated I was fine with likes where there were no downvotes (which can be weaponized by various ‘in-groups’ on boards. I think it honestly does more good than lots of empty ‘this’ or ‘+1’ posts, which are not common on this board, but still cause me to eyeroll when I come across one.
Discourse only supports likes, not dislikes.
I haven’t seen it turn toxic, but i also haven’t posted in a mature, general-purpose community that has used discourse for long.
Sorry, I wasn’t clear. In my previous post, the one mordecaiB quoted, I expressed my personal tolerance for sites that used likes (such as Discourse) without dislikes. mB then was worried about how ‘likes’ would affect the ordering of threads, which you responded too. And then I tried to clean up the confusion (failing miserably) and agreeing with you that it felt less cumbersome than mostly empty support posts.
And yes, I have seen it go toxic, especially in places like Disqus which may be shared across dozens of different websites, where a PO’d poster will follow people just to down vote them. Very ugly.
Which, thankfully, does not apply here, both in terms of Discourse tech and board culture. And now I’ve hopefully fixed my botched posting.
Yes, I think what you get out of reddit depends on how you use it. I keep it limited to some niche forums that lean heavily on anecdotal discussion and advice, with an occasional foray into the top posts. So I shouldn’t have overgeneralized. I don’t even know how the average person uses it. I tend to be interested in broader concepts more than minutiae.
Moderation is very different than it was when I was a mod.
I can’t remember when I took a hiatus - 2015? 2016? It was before Kavanaugh because I remember counting my blessings I didn’t have to mod all that.
I came back to a different board. Many long- time posters gone, heavier handed moderation. The rules may be the same but they are applied quite differently.
Now in the interest of total transparency I have been a supporter of some of the changes related to discrimination. It’s refreshing not to deal with so much sexism and I was one of the loudest complainers. And my input was solicited on the trans guidelines while they were in development, and I in turn solicited input from a trans friend. So if anyone is pissed about that change, I’m partly to blame. There has long been a double standard in hate speech against transfolk and that was an issue when I moderated. I also happily banned one of our most virulent misogynists for harassment.
So I’m, you know, progressive.
But the kind of stuff that gets to me is mods really appearing more biased, and I know that complaint has been leveraged against mods since forever, but I was a mod and I can tell you impartiality was a core value of how we moderated. I think we had a wider breadth of moderators ideologically too. And that’s important to maintain balance on the board. It’s kind of like the Supreme Court that way.
I think the mods overall are doing a pretty good job, I just wish people had a little more room to breathe and engage. People aren’t really allowed to angry post any more, even if they are civil. OK, take the hot wives thread. I would have followed that, and I would have found it interesting if it had sparked a discussion - or Og forbid, an argument - about gender politics. Like why are we so afraid of that happening? If everyone remains civil, what does it matter?
But everyone has different things that bother them. The stuff that bothered me was the rape apologism and “women are whores” (thanks, Shagnasty) and freaking incel/redpill stuff. I couldn’t care less if someone wants to talk about their hot wife. Thinking your significant other is hot has to be at least partly conducive to a good marriage, not de-facto objectification.
I am also beginning to see how the Pit can be weaponized against dissenters. It’s tricky because some people are obvious trolls, but no way they are all trolls.
I feel more comfortable here than I did before, but I’m not sure that’s always good.
AKA being a woman on the internet. Or in the board room. Or you know, anywhere. Used to piss me off how threads on the subject of women’s issues inevitably devolved into arguments between men. A lot of women just stopped engaging.
I’m totally onboard.
I’d suggest the following re-naming:
About the Message Board (keep as is)
Factual Questions
Coronavirus Pandemic
Politics and Debates
Sports and Games
Opinions and Advice
Miscellaneous
Cage Fight
An interesting chicken and egg problem you have there. I’m not disputing it occurred and still occurs.
This I don’t remember. Maybe it went down during one of my periods of lower engagement, or maybe the dementia is setting in early…
I had made the suggestion last year that posters ought to be able to start threads with a specification “Please, only women respond (or, only people of color, or, only LGBT, or, only…)” and the mods would help enforce and keep other people out of it, so that women could really discuss things among themselves without a majority of men jumping in to dominate the conversation.
The admins shot the idea down (probably rightfully.) But I can’t think of any other way to make it happen.