Been thinking about coming back. Now I'm not so sure. I was even going to put up with the absolutely shitty ads.* Why TF would you get rid of GD? Sure it may be slow now but it always picks up. And maybe if you didn't piss off all your members by having such obnoxious ads things would be busier around here....
*Don't tell me to use FF or pith helmet because I don't mind ads as long as they aren't annoying.
OK. Change is good, but I'm really surprised you made the changes you did without asking any of the people who actually hang about here. Really surprising.
Apart from anything we would have told pretty unanimously that 'the Lounge' is not a good name, not at all. It's unimaginative, derivative, and worst of all it's so generic. It saps the identity of the place. I think it's a mistake.
'AppleOutsider' was a great name. It was witty and it gave the board at large a lot of the character it had. I trust that there's still a chance to change these names?
To echo crazychester: I don't want to dredge up olde times, but there was this split thing that happened and it was a bad mistake not to allow people to talk about it. At the time I was pissed off because the community took a blow and none of the complaints they had either affected me or even interested me very much. If you weren't in the club you didn't even know there was anything to get pissed off about. The ads suck, and still suck, actually they SUCK, but I don't live on the internet and I got on OK ignoring them.
Thing is, just for good manners' sake alone, you should have made us aware you were planning this and asked us what we thought, because the changes you've made are extensive and... well, I have issues with them, at least. It's frustrating. It doesn't make me feel that this place belongs to the people that come here.
Consolidating General Discussion and AppleOutsider is a really bad idea. It's inelegant and confusing. There is a place on a tech discussion board for tech, and there is a place for hotdogs and Pepsi. And the name (did I say?) is shit.
Retail Discussion is... well, no. You've consolidated two of the forums that keep the community really ticking over and replaced them with a new forum in which NO-ONE IS GOING TO POST. If you're so keen on nesting sub-forums, just nest that one inside General Discussion, for goodness' sake! If people want to read about cracks in Apple Store tables or the proposed new Canadian store or the fate of Ministores, let them navigate to the subforum in General Discussion. The forum might pick up some traffic from, um, all of those people keen to discuss Apple marketing strategy and the glass stairs in the NY shop.
Creative Corner is a good idea, but the name is very bad. Why don't we have a 'New Names for Forums!' thread, and then a poll?
I really don't understand why the split is coming up now. Brad wanted to run his own thing so that's what he's doing, that's all it was about. It's not like their site is some kind of free-for-all or democracy; right from the beginning they chose their name when the posters actually voted for something else and a lot of them were calling the chosen name stupid (which it is). He framed it like it was some kind of pro-democracy revolution, but that's not what it was, don't believe the hype.
I don't get what that has to do with what's going on now. And I sure as hell don't understand why it's held up as some kind of ideal. It's just another forum.
Quote:
OK. Change is good, but I'm really surprised you made the changes you did without asking any of the people who actually hang about here. Really surprising.
Honestly, we didn't think people would be so outraged. Naive, obviously, but hey, we're human.
Quote:
Consolidating General Discussion and AppleOutsider is a really bad idea. It's inelegant and confusing. There is a place on a tech discussion board for tech, and there is a place for hotdogs and Pepsi. And the name (did I say?) is shit.
AO/PO was/is killing the forum. If you don't see it you're not paying attention.
The forums are slow, tense and lacking in creativity and fun and people have been leaving in droves. There's nothing interesting in AO/PO, you have people with thousands of posts and that's it.
Perhaps a better idea would have been to kill PO until the community was built back up to where it wasn't just the same 10 people with 8,000 posts bitching about the exact same crap they always bitch about with each other.
Quote:
You've consolidated two of the forums that keep the community really ticking over and replaced them with a new forum in which NO-ONE IS GOING TO POST.
14 active threads at the time of the merge, 17 now. That's a gain of 3 (not even counting this one)!
Quote:
Creative Corner is a good idea, but the name is very bad. Why don't we have a 'New Names for Forums!' thread, and then a poll?
Because you people are too bitchy?
I kid because I love.
Tell you what, go to Feedback, I'll have some stuff in there for you.
When we make changes to the forums we appreciate comments from you all. This is why there is always discussion in the Moderators forum about how the changes are being received. None of the recent changes are set in stone. Experimentation, I have learned, is good. If the merger or AO and GD doesn't work out we will change it back.
You'll also notice Creative Corner has made an appearance - we'd love to hear your view on this smaller focused type of discussion forum.
There also seems to be a general consensus that Genius Bar is a waste of time - let me know what you think either by posting here, PM or by emailing jambo@[name of this site].com
Perhaps a better idea would have been to kill PO until the community was built back up to where it wasn't just the same 10 people with 8,000 posts bitching about the exact same crap they always bitch about with each other.
Terrible idea.
The average number of unique posters in the 4 newest threads with at least one page is 20. The total number of unique posters in those threads is 60. That's 60 different people who find things interesting enough to not only read but also to post on. And that's just the first 4 threads! Clearly there's interest.
no, no, groverat, I agree with you about all that split stuff- everyone knows how I feel about all that nonsense. I really like the Other Place and the community there now is great and very friendly (although I still object to private discussion that belongs to everyone. I drop in there from time to time to read someone slagging off 'the n00bs'. Just start your own Apple forum called 'The Relief Clinic' and don't let anyone join. OK? Easy.)
It's just that when decisions are made that affect the board generally I still feel that the board sort of belongs to all of us and we should all be able to discuss its future. How is it that people are 'leaving here in droves'? I think blaming that on AO/PO as if the decisions of the staff are less important than the behaviour of the posters in setting the tone of the place isn't... describing the picture exactly. Crazychester put this better than I could.
I agree also that Political Outside must die. I agree that Something Must Be Done, too. I still don't think that consolidating AO and GD was a good idea?in fact I think it's going to be counterproductive, frankly, and the name does nothing for setting up the idea that this a unique place on the internet to talk about hotdogs and speakers at all?and I still don't 'get' the need for a forum devoted for Retail... but until I come up with better ideas I shouldn't be too quick to criticimasise.
I repeat that calling a forum 'a lounge' has taken some of the character of this place. We now have this absurd situation where applenova (there, I wrote it) has a forum called AppleOutsider, for no good reason, and AppleInsider has... 'a lounge.'
If you're going to rethink anything, rethink this!
Ok... What happened to the not-subcatagorizing everything -- creative corner????
You make a valid point here, but again, the point isn't just consolidation for consolidation's sake. There is a method to the madness. Give it a few weeks and see what you think.
Creative Corner exists because there previously wasn't a forum for people to put out their artwork. Lots of creative people here (Mac users, duh) but AO wasn't really a place to say "Hey, look at this cool thing I drew."
CC will hopefully be a place where people can express their creativity and be joined by others in a friendly environment.
There's something very personal about making your art available, so having it in its own forum makes perfect sense. Discussing hot dogs or the latest gadget isn't personal in the same way at all.
Could you describe the method to all of the changes?
One thing that bothers me is that putting AO and GD together, like the MacNN Lounge, makes it that much harder to put PO back with AO. My understanding was that PO was going to be temporary through the US election season, now long over.
One thing that bothers me is that putting AO and GD together, like the MacNN Lounge, makes it that much harder to put PO back with AO.
The great irony in this statement is that we discussed the MacNN Lounge as something to emulate with regards to tone.
The main goal behind the GD/AO merger is to drive the crazies out and make the community more close-knit. It's strategerie.
And I really think it will work if you guys give it a chance. You'll see that these things don't really need to be separate. Open your minds, man, I'll provide the hallucinogens.
The main goal behind the GD/AO merger is to drive the crazies out and make the community more close-knit. It's strategerie.
Some folks are unhappy because it seems clear from the new forum titles ("iTunes + iPod", "Applications", "Retail Discussion") that the goal was to integrate more closely with front page news, not to improve the community. Pigeonholing all non-Apple talk into one giant super-forum (with sub-forums) fits into this plan, in that it enhances the impression that non-Apple talk is ancillary to the community, and (at some level) undesired. The community, which exists to provide ad-views, should center on the news, not itself. Folks have brought up the old split because (whatever the personality conflicts involved) it seems like the same story - does the community exist for itself, or for the news site?
Many folks, including myself, frequent here because it's one of the few places on the web you can have non-inane discussions about interesting topics, inside and outside the world of tech. Lots of thing only tangentially related, or completely unrelated, to the world of Apple. If you/we/they try to discourage that, you risk the place becoming just another boring fan-boy site. But maybe that would be better for ad-views. What do I know?
Edit: I made the same argument when PO was created, and I think it's been proven true. The political threads have become more inbred in PO, AO is a shadow of its former self, and I think the overall vibrancy of the non-rumor parts of the forums has taken a hit. The trade-off is that new users need not be scared off by the titles of thread topics, unless they venture into that particular attic. That is surely a valid concern. But it's unique to the political/religious nature of PO. I don't see a similar positive trade-off for putting all non-Apple threads into an attic, while I suspect the effect on vibrancy will be the same.
Comments
Originally posted by Powerdoc
Can you imagine ten Groverat acting in concert ?
--B
I'm already having enough trouble remembering where i put things
*Don't tell me to use FF or pith helmet because I don't mind ads as long as they aren't annoying.
OK. Change is good, but I'm really surprised you made the changes you did without asking any of the people who actually hang about here. Really surprising.
Apart from anything we would have told pretty unanimously that 'the Lounge' is not a good name, not at all. It's unimaginative, derivative, and worst of all it's so generic. It saps the identity of the place. I think it's a mistake.
'AppleOutsider' was a great name. It was witty and it gave the board at large a lot of the character it had. I trust that there's still a chance to change these names?
To echo crazychester: I don't want to dredge up olde times, but there was this split thing that happened and it was a bad mistake not to allow people to talk about it. At the time I was pissed off because the community took a blow and none of the complaints they had either affected me or even interested me very much. If you weren't in the club you didn't even know there was anything to get pissed off about. The ads suck, and still suck, actually they SUCK, but I don't live on the internet and I got on OK ignoring them.
Thing is, just for good manners' sake alone, you should have made us aware you were planning this and asked us what we thought, because the changes you've made are extensive and... well, I have issues with them, at least. It's frustrating. It doesn't make me feel that this place belongs to the people that come here.
Consolidating General Discussion and AppleOutsider is a really bad idea. It's inelegant and confusing. There is a place on a tech discussion board for tech, and there is a place for hotdogs and Pepsi. And the name (did I say?) is shit.
Retail Discussion is... well, no. You've consolidated two of the forums that keep the community really ticking over and replaced them with a new forum in which NO-ONE IS GOING TO POST. If you're so keen on nesting sub-forums, just nest that one inside General Discussion, for goodness' sake! If people want to read about cracks in Apple Store tables or the proposed new Canadian store or the fate of Ministores, let them navigate to the subforum in General Discussion. The forum might pick up some traffic from, um, all of those people keen to discuss Apple marketing strategy and the glass stairs in the NY shop.
Creative Corner is a good idea, but the name is very bad. Why don't we have a 'New Names for Forums!' thread, and then a poll?
I don't get what that has to do with what's going on now. And I sure as hell don't understand why it's held up as some kind of ideal. It's just another forum.
OK. Change is good, but I'm really surprised you made the changes you did without asking any of the people who actually hang about here. Really surprising.
Honestly, we didn't think people would be so outraged. Naive, obviously, but hey, we're human.
Consolidating General Discussion and AppleOutsider is a really bad idea. It's inelegant and confusing. There is a place on a tech discussion board for tech, and there is a place for hotdogs and Pepsi. And the name (did I say?) is shit.
AO/PO was/is killing the forum. If you don't see it you're not paying attention.
The forums are slow, tense and lacking in creativity and fun and people have been leaving in droves. There's nothing interesting in AO/PO, you have people with thousands of posts and that's it.
Perhaps a better idea would have been to kill PO until the community was built back up to where it wasn't just the same 10 people with 8,000 posts bitching about the exact same crap they always bitch about with each other.
You've consolidated two of the forums that keep the community really ticking over and replaced them with a new forum in which NO-ONE IS GOING TO POST.
14 active threads at the time of the merge, 17 now. That's a gain of 3 (not even counting this one)!
Creative Corner is a good idea, but the name is very bad. Why don't we have a 'New Names for Forums!' thread, and then a poll?
Because you people are too bitchy?
I kid because I love.
Tell you what, go to Feedback, I'll have some stuff in there for you.
When we make changes to the forums we appreciate comments from you all. This is why there is always discussion in the Moderators forum about how the changes are being received. None of the recent changes are set in stone. Experimentation, I have learned, is good. If the merger or AO and GD doesn't work out we will change it back.
You'll also notice Creative Corner has made an appearance - we'd love to hear your view on this smaller focused type of discussion forum.
There also seems to be a general consensus that Genius Bar is a waste of time - let me know what you think either by posting here, PM or by emailing jambo@[name of this site].com
Thanks
Jambo
Originally posted by groverat
Perhaps a better idea would have been to kill PO until the community was built back up to where it wasn't just the same 10 people with 8,000 posts bitching about the exact same crap they always bitch about with each other.
Terrible idea.
The average number of unique posters in the 4 newest threads with at least one page is 20. The total number of unique posters in those threads is 60. That's 60 different people who find things interesting enough to not only read but also to post on. And that's just the first 4 threads! Clearly there's interest.
It's just that when decisions are made that affect the board generally I still feel that the board sort of belongs to all of us and we should all be able to discuss its future. How is it that people are 'leaving here in droves'? I think blaming that on AO/PO as if the decisions of the staff are less important than the behaviour of the posters in setting the tone of the place isn't... describing the picture exactly. Crazychester put this better than I could.
I agree also that Political Outside must die. I agree that Something Must Be Done, too. I still don't think that consolidating AO and GD was a good idea?in fact I think it's going to be counterproductive, frankly, and the name does nothing for setting up the idea that this a unique place on the internet to talk about hotdogs and speakers at all?and I still don't 'get' the need for a forum devoted for Retail... but until I come up with better ideas I shouldn't be too quick to criticimasise.
I repeat that calling a forum 'a lounge' has taken some of the character of this place. We now have this absurd situation where applenova (there, I wrote it) has a forum called AppleOutsider, for no good reason, and AppleInsider has... 'a lounge.'
If you're going to rethink anything, rethink this!
We're open to suggestions. So keep making them.
Ok... What happened to the not-subcatagorizing everything -- creative corner????
You have basically taken two broad forums, crammed them together unholily, and created another forums: net gain 0. Goal -1????
If in let's say one month, you still hate this change, we will move backward.
Originally posted by hardeeharhar
Ok... What happened to the not-subcatagorizing everything -- creative corner????
You make a valid point here, but again, the point isn't just consolidation for consolidation's sake. There is a method to the madness. Give it a few weeks and see what you think.
Creative Corner exists because there previously wasn't a forum for people to put out their artwork. Lots of creative people here (Mac users, duh) but AO wasn't really a place to say "Hey, look at this cool thing I drew."
CC will hopefully be a place where people can express their creativity and be joined by others in a friendly environment.
There's something very personal about making your art available, so having it in its own forum makes perfect sense. Discussing hot dogs or the latest gadget isn't personal in the same way at all.
Originally posted by groverat
There is a method to the madness.
Could you describe the method to all of the changes?
One thing that bothers me is that putting AO and GD together, like the MacNN Lounge, makes it that much harder to put PO back with AO. My understanding was that PO was going to be temporary through the US election season, now long over.
Originally posted by BRussell
One thing that bothers me is that putting AO and GD together, like the MacNN Lounge, makes it that much harder to put PO back with AO.
The great irony in this statement is that we discussed the MacNN Lounge as something to emulate with regards to tone.
The main goal behind the GD/AO merger is to drive the crazies out and make the community more close-knit. It's strategerie.
And I really think it will work if you guys give it a chance. You'll see that these things don't really need to be separate. Open your minds, man, I'll provide the hallucinogens.
Originally posted by groverat
The great irony in this statement is that we discussed the MacNN Lounge as something to emulate with regards to tone.
I don't think that's an irony - I bet a lot of people thought the same thing when they saw the GD-AO combination.
Hmm, I replied in your Smiths thread but it's not showing up in the thread listings.
Originally posted by groverat
. Open your minds, man, I'll provide the hallucinogens.
Hmmm Texas mushrooms
Originally posted by groverat
The main goal behind the GD/AO merger is to drive the crazies out and make the community more close-knit. It's strategerie.
Some folks are unhappy because it seems clear from the new forum titles ("iTunes + iPod", "Applications", "Retail Discussion") that the goal was to integrate more closely with front page news, not to improve the community. Pigeonholing all non-Apple talk into one giant super-forum (with sub-forums) fits into this plan, in that it enhances the impression that non-Apple talk is ancillary to the community, and (at some level) undesired. The community, which exists to provide ad-views, should center on the news, not itself. Folks have brought up the old split because (whatever the personality conflicts involved) it seems like the same story - does the community exist for itself, or for the news site?
Many folks, including myself, frequent here because it's one of the few places on the web you can have non-inane discussions about interesting topics, inside and outside the world of tech. Lots of thing only tangentially related, or completely unrelated, to the world of Apple. If you/we/they try to discourage that, you risk the place becoming just another boring fan-boy site. But maybe that would be better for ad-views. What do I know?
Edit: I made the same argument when PO was created, and I think it's been proven true. The political threads have become more inbred in PO, AO is a shadow of its former self, and I think the overall vibrancy of the non-rumor parts of the forums has taken a hit. The trade-off is that new users need not be scared off by the titles of thread topics, unless they venture into that particular attic. That is surely a valid concern. But it's unique to the political/religious nature of PO. I don't see a similar positive trade-off for putting all non-Apple threads into an attic, while I suspect the effect on vibrancy will be the same.