Deep Thoughts on...

internet bulletin boards (not my words, but I can't argue with them)

 

Everything changes my friend, everything changes.

Steve

 

Well, there is one sure way to avoid change.



























Never break a dollar.

 

Very interesting read!

I've been a member of a forum where this has happened, to the extreme (I was one of the original members). The downfall was so bad, that the place today is a deserted tomb.

I have wondered though... I've been a member of a large and a few small forums for quite some years now. In the smaller forums (a thousand members or so, active members from 20-30) it seems to be more difficult to keep the petty bickering out. The smaller forum is so vulnerable. The larger forum doesn't have that problem, even though the number of active members is about the same. For the last year or so I've noticed a significant decrease in new and interesting posts. It seems the same amount of people come in and browse the boards every day, (actually even the same members every day) but they don't have anything to say. And it is more rare to get new members that are active. They might pop in to ask a question, and then they leave again.

Is this something more wide-spread? I've had the feeling it isn't so fresh and fantastic any more to be a part of a forum. Is this an outdated form of communication?

One of the causes to this (that I've seen), in both the large board and the smaller boards, is that the older regulars eventually tend to start communicating with each other through instant messaging. And when that happens, then there is no need to post on the forum, you've already told everyone you care about what your opinion is...

Am I wrong? Is it just this narrow area where people aren't interested in participating any more? (the boards I'm talking about are all game forums, the smaller forums just targeting one game)

 

A lot of thats true. It does however, depend upon the mindset to start with. If a forum is started with the mindset to, say, "discuss advanced technical issues concerned with : *place very specific technology here*", then the influx of new members when the very specific technology becomes "trendy" will mostly consist of people who aren't terribly knowlegable and therefore not going to contribute the same way as the original members did.

Chances are the admins who started the forum will be resentful of their traffic, and be really horrible to them, in an effort to try and make them go away. However, older members (unless they share the same sentiments) tend not to like this and will leave. Sooner or later, you're left with 5 members, 4 of them being admins and your board is dead.

However, if you have a mindset like the original intentions of this forum, which arnt "elitist" in any way, you don't have that problem. Which is good.

 

LOL. Gotta love them *post modern* "anarchists"

 

Groan.

Keep 'em coming, GT

Good read BTW.

 

awwwww, this makes me sad. well i have joined and i know that i am not an original member but plan to stay and keep on threading. ifind most forums that i have been to people can be jerks. In here it seems to be differnt. You guys help other people and have a great since of humor. Also i have been recruiting ever scince i first found you guys.

danget......as bob as my witness this forum will never die

 

I totally agree.

XXX Porn just isn't what it used to be.

 

LOL!

 

At some point, there is a period in which the original members realize that what they ended up with isn't anything like what they started, and are faced with a choice: Somehow try to get the atmosphere back to the way it was originally, or adapt to the new atmosphere. Sadly, it is a fact of the Internet that people sign onto forums, agreeing to follow the rules, but they never bother to READ the rules, and thus it comes as a great surprise to them when someone -- eventually -- asks them to PLAY BY THE RULES. "Rules? What rules? I don't need no stinkin' rules," seems to be the usual response when they are caught with their fingers in the cookie jar.

The question is, who should be asked/required to adapt? Those who founded and who joined early on, the people who set the tone and who wrote the rules -- or the newcomers who don't feel the rules should apply to them, that the organization should adapt to THEIR way of thinking, to THEIR way of interacting? Each organization faced with such a decision must find its own answer to the question. What is clear, however (or should be), is that the new arrivals, those who didn't read the rules and who don't want to follow them do not have any right to EXPECT an established organization to adapt to them. They have a right to ask if it wants to change, but if the answer is "NO," they must be willing to accept that if they coose to continue to participate. No one has a right to violate rules they agreed to follow and expect that they will not be held accountable for failing to do as they said they would do

I think that this is the essence of the problem - and to my way of thinking (now ) , the founders had a vision of what they wanted, and a strict enforcement of the rules is necessary to keep that vision. It may not please some people (including me, at one point), but it is the founder's call, and philosophy we need to adapt to. If things change, or evolve at the moderators disgression, so be it. Stay and play ball, or leave. ( as I did for a while, before thinking things through, very carefully)

 

I'm sure glad you're back Slider