Done

Anyone is free at anytime to post about any topic they feel like (and that includes all you lurkers out there). The subject matter may not appeal to everyone, but I still tend to find it interesting, as do enough people out there who keep coming back. If I hit a topic I'm not overly interested in, I just click next.

It would be handy though if Bruno could remember where the new topic button is instead of burying similar, but not quite related posts to the point where he forgets where they are :-P

*edit* The possibility of subdividing Off Topic into a few categories has come up in the past and was generally not wanted by the active users of the time. With the shrinking base of posters, maybe it's worth revisiting to see if anyones thoughts have changed. If someone is interested, feel free to make a new topic with your ideas about it.

... Oh, that's why it is called "Market Research".
I love this place.

I generally don't like starting new threads for the same reason Bitt mentioned changing the name of the forum section. I don't want the whole thing to be taken up by a ton of really similar threads.

Too funny Tom

But it is.

Agreed. The board has lost a substantial amount of the variety that made it interesting. Of late, it's been feeling more like "Bruno's Tech Soapbox." I'm not saying that as a criticism of Bruno, or the thread participants. I understand that everyone is free to post about what they find interesting, but it seems he's one of few doing so with any abundance, with little variety in subject.

Part of the ebb-and-flow, I suppose. I recall when the threads were largely about politics and religion (which, honestly, I found much more interesting), to the point of driving some members away.

Just using this as an anchor post to pull some discussion out of the Samsung Tab thread. I'll post thoughts about this later. (and due to the way the BBS works, this anchor is showing up later due to date sorting)

I post here more often when I'm trying to avoid/postpone doing something else. So as of late, I've been avoiding doing lots of other stuff. Everyone else needs to make a more concentrated effort to post more often.

The market research is something I'm doing, in part, to complement what I do day to day and in prep for a few things in the planning stages. The forum is used as a sort of sounding board to help distill my ideas and to get feedback from others.

Whatever happens, please don't split "off topic" (or whatever it's called tomorrow) into sub-forums. It may have been years since I had a running empeg, but I still value this community and want to keep it around, and off-topic is the perfect place where I can complain about my borked router or whatever else and get the sort of signal-to-noise ratio that only happens here.

I pondered this a bit more over lunch, and did some random checks on the past Off Topic discussions. I've talked with several people over the course of the past year, and it's helped me examine the situation from a few viewpoints.

Overall, I think the situation in Off Topic is simply a result of a shrinking user base. I don't think the proportion of topics has changed drastically, though there is a noticeable reduction in political or religious topics. Off Topic has always had a pretty tech oriented slant, purely due to our shared interest in the music players at the foundation of this community. Browsing back, I see threads about ReplayTV and Tivo, BluRay and HD-DVD, various gaming threads, and a healthy mix of tech support posts. Beyond that, I also see posts about people's favorite beer, or some new science discovery. Posts about TV and movies of the day, favorite music, and so on.

Tech is a topic that changes rapidly, and there is a lot of fresh things to discuss. People's favorite beer? Thats not likely to change so much that it sparks a new discussion. So some topics get discussed, and aren't revisited as they have nothing new to talk about. The Off Topic section here is approaching 10 years old, and thats a lot of time to discuss a wide range of things. Now that I've looked back, I'm not sure creating sub forums would help, as it's nearly the same mixture of types of topics it has been. Post count may be another matter though. Looking at all posts over the history of the section, the top 30 topics have 12 that are pure tech like recent posts. A few more could be counted there like the Wii thread, and tech support one. Others range from the old avatar posting thread, to several political posts. And others are from major news events.

The other thought that I have here is that some of the normal social discussions have moved on to other mediums. I know a certain group of people here who hang out in IRC and socialize there instead of here. Some of those participants really don't post much here at all anymore. I'm not pointing this out to say it's a negative in any way, but instead to point to a trend that has likely spread beyond just that one group. Over the years social networks have become a standard on the internet, instead of being reserved for the tech types. It's possible the more social and less tech topics have also shifted more to those mediums. I discuss politics far more often on Facebook for example then I do here, but that change only occurred in the past year or two. I personally also share less of my social experiences here, because that's also occurring elsewhere.

With a shrinking user base, the users that remain have a bigger impact and claim a higher percentage of the contributions to a discussion. People's posting activities have shifted over time as well. As much as it seems Bruno posts these days, he's still only at 6.3k posts, a far cry from Bitt's 16.1k posts. Going through the list of the top 25 posters here, I'd say only 6 are posting at a level that I think matches their past posting activity. 5 are posting less frequently, 5 are still around but barley post, and 9 are pretty much gone.

I really don't know what to do to try and spur more activity, nor do I (now) believe I must do something. I'll continue to host and run this site for as long as I can. If it's still active and something comes up to cause me to stop being able to host it, I'll hand it off, as has been done once before. I will also remain open to suggestions, but in the end, the community here is what the community makes of it. People choose to leave, and other people choose to keep posting. And while I haven't run web stats in a while, I do notice a pretty consistent amount of lurkers too, who continue to choose to browse here and must be finding something they like to read.

After digging back, I'm much more against this idea then where I stood when I initially posted that suggestion. Separating tech from non tech would likely just lead to one very used subforum, and one mostly idle one. Even applied historically, this would be mostly true.

Since this doesn't impact the board like it did a few months ago, anyone here is free to poke at the archives to see if they come to the same tech vs non tech conclusions I did. I did so by using this link:

http://empegbbs.com/ubbthreads.php/ubb/postlist/Board/14/page/1

then I'd change that last number to something random, between 1 and 332. The higher the number, the farther back in time you go.

For the lazy, here is a few random ones:

http://empegbbs.com/ubbthreads.php/ubb/postlist/Board/14/page/155

http://empegbbs.com/ubbthreads.php/ubb/postlist/Board/14/page/32

http://empegbbs.com/ubbthreads.php/ubb/postlist/Board/14/page/301

http://empegbbs.com/ubbthreads.php/ubb/postlist/Board/14/page/254

http://empegbbs.com/ubbthreads.php/ubb/postlist/Board/14/page/217

http://empegbbs.com/ubbthreads.php/ubb/postlist/Board/14/page/74

Ditto.

Also, I personally think it is generally bad to split when you have a shrinking user base. If you want to favor trafic on the boards, then a split would make it harder form many to know that a topic exist, unless they browse all sections. These days, when I come to the empeg bbs I only look at off topic. I find out about topics elsewhere once a week, or once a month, when I go there. If others have my same usage pattern, a split would reduce overal boards interaction.

Oh, certainly. That's part of what I meant when I suggested it's just part of the ebb-and-flow. Bruno just happens to be the current most-frequent poster. It's been others before, it'll be others again at some point in the future, and the topic concentration during those times will trend in the direction of whoever the most prolific poster is. I don't think there's anything that needs to be "fixed".

On a similar note, I've decided that the variety of music contained within the SXSW torrents has markedly decreased, as well. The most recent collection has been bland indie-rock, whereas the earlier collections, though still containing a significant amount of same, had a greater range of styles present, and were more enjoyable.

I agree that splitting Off Topic would be a bad idea. There are so few discussions occurring that putting them in different shoeboxes would just be annoying and possibly choke discussion further.

Also, the discussions in any given thread tend not to stick with the title of the thread and can range and roam quite dramatically. For example:

This could lead us off on a nice discussion about SXSW or other festivals and venues or free eclectic compilations. Who knows?

I've missed out on several interesting discussions because I haven't been interested in the original topic. Samsung pad? meh. Obviously something was going on in that thread, though, to have such a deep effect on the BBS.

Perhaps we should attempt to branch 'off-thread' posts out into new threads to encourage more interaction with each actual topic.

I was just being snide. I didn't intend for it to be a thing.

Though, since you bring it up, I don't feel like this latest spate of activity has much to do with technology. It's 90% criticism of business activity. Maybe we should add a stock ticker.

I somewhat figured, but it did help to poke me to more formally finish my own thoughts on the future of the board, the topic I had somewhat started mid last year.

It's really the only reason I scan those market analysis threads. As a mostly non-gadget person, the conversations are spectacularly dull. But every now and then, there's a good thread-jack.

But that's one of the things I like about off-topic. It has a tendency to meander.

I've gone back and forth on this quite a bit. My personal preference is much like yours, topics should stay mostly on track, and new completely separate things should be in their own topics. It makes it much easier to go back and find something later, and makes it easier for people to know what threads to take a deeper look at. The problem here is enforcement. Due to the nature of the community, moderators have only really existed to deal with spammers, and not the actual content being contributed by the users. So to split topics after they are created would require more manpower. The other issue is how easily this can be done. If people just type in the quick reply box at the bottom without using the quick reply/quote links on a post, their response will fit in chronologically but will not be threaded properly. This can lead to the wrong replies being split off. And then there is the issue of posts that contain on topic and off topic discussion in one reply. That becomes a manual edit and manual post creation to split properly.

It's just the way things have been here since the start. Off Topic was specifically created due to on topic discussions going way off track. So I guess it was natural for the off topic stuff to just evolve the same way. The only way that situation can change realistically is to ensure the posts are created in the right spot by the creator. Adding more moderators to try to straighten things up after the fact is likely to turn messy, and add work.

I would like less forums not more. I would like to see a lot of the sub forums gone and just more posts in off topic. I wouldn't want to post something in ICE because I figure no one would see it.

Having threads get off track doesn't bother me it's been that way as long as I have been coming here so why is it a problem now.

This is why I made such a big stink in that WP7 thread. Some threads seem to veer off topic rapidly in such a way that it screams to be a discussion of its own.

One of my favorite accomplishments on this board remains my 135-post thread about butter.

I feel the need to interject my opinion. When I check the boards, I typically check off-topic only. I wouldn't mind a few of the other non-empeg-specific subs to be rolled into OT, as I'd be much more likely to read them. My new job requires that I actually WORK, something I'm not complaining about, but different from my last job nonetheless. As such, I have less time to hang out here, much as I like to.

All that being said, I'm still just as interested in this BBS (the only one I regularly go to), but I simply don't have the time to read EVERYTHING anymore. Since I know I am less likely to be able to follow up to a post with a reasonable amount of time I'm less likely to do so unless I really need help/advise.

At any rate, this BBS is still one of the most important reasons for the internet to exist, at least as far as I'm concerned.

As to the religious or political topics, there are so many more left wingers than right wingers, I just sort of gave up on trying to argue with the very vocal majority. I have always found it odd how few empeg owners there are from red states.

Better dead than red.

Forgive my indulgence, but I wanted to let you guys know how much I appreciated this board. In the past week I've had experience seeking help from two different communities. I would have come here, but these were very specific cases (Craigslist "violations" and Wii hacking). I went to each of these forums and went in as humble and friendly as I could possibly be.

I was then treated with the most rude, impatient, insulting "help" I can think of. In both cases, a single person responded and basically said "well, if you weren't an idiot who was trying to actively piss me off, you wouldn't have done that stupid thing you did."

These reactions were so bad, in one case I tried politely asking if they could please help me and try not to be so rude. As I fully expected, this resulted in more derision and rudeness. In the other situation I tried the opposite approach and continued being as friendly and humble ("please forgive this Wii hacking newbie" kind of stuff) and while the guy didn't get any better, at least he didn't get any worse.

In both cases, it would have honestly been easier to simply help me out with my problem.

So thank you, everyone. Sometimes I feel like I should never leave the house (the empeg board).

For me, I probably lean more (american) left then right, but I did always find the insight from yourself and others interesting. I generally try to avoid specifically labeling myself, as both sides have things I believe in. I think what bothers me the most is how polarized things have gotten, to the point where even discussions here just quickly became one side vs the other. I still don't have a good answer to how someone can so cleanly fit into a clear "red" vs "blue" container, but the past discussions here at least offered me more insight into both sides.

True, that. It's entirely possible that you unwittingly broke some rule of their forum culture, which sets some people off. Or perhaps your request didn't reflect the efforts you had made in solving the problem, giving them the impression you were just looking for a drive-by-solution.
Some people are just jerks, in general.

Like the person who used so much air-freshener in the bathroom just now that it's polluting my cube half way across the office.

I know there are quite a few others who come directly here to Off Topic, enough that it helped expose some of the performance issues earlier. The good question here is what areas should be rolled in here, and how to do it in a way that makes them visible. For those that don't know, on the front empegbbs.com page, you can click the little triangles off on the far right of each major section to hide them. This would then present just the "General Discussion" block, with Announcements, For Sale, ICE and Off Topic.

Oh, I did that too. I had a thread going where I was the last person who responded to it, saying that I thanked them for their help and was going to try what they'd given me and report back. Nobody replied to that, and about three hours later when I'd followed those instructions, I posted back saying I'd done everything and had one last question. A few more posts were posted by others and myself, and about four hours later I received a private message from a site admin saying that I was guilty of the infraction of bumping my post up without letting 24 hours pass. Clearly, this wasn't automated because it took so long. So here they were, telling me that I'd been docked 5 points (FIVE POINTS! OH NO!) and that they were likely permanent points! My goodness! Will this go on my permanent record?

I was astonished. Fortunately I need only one last thing from this forum and then I can never go back there again.


I thought about that in advance, trying to explain as much about what was going on as I could without getting too verbose. That didn't seem to matter much, they just seemed to have this knee-jerk reaction to treat someone horribly.

I had actually checked out a couple threads in advance, and saw forum veterans chiding newcomers for not posting in the introductions forum. They were really giving them grief for it! So I made certain to post an extremely friendly, polite, and brief introduction in that forum. That didn't seem to matter. When I posted in the help forum (which was specifically labeled as help for newbies), I got something like "stop being stupid and follow the instructions the other guy left for you in your intro thread."


Indeed.

I remember posting some install pictures to a Smart users forum years ago, which I'd resized to about 400px wide from the original 5MP digi-cam pics, which seemed to be an acceptable size for the 1024×768 display on the 12" iBook I had at the time. After about 2 hours, I got my post replaced with a message from the forum admin saying my pictures were too big so they deleted them and locked the thread. I then got a PM from one of the admins telling me not to do it again. So I replied and called him/her a pedantic arse and said I'd never visit their forums again.

Interestingly enough, despite my infraction and subsequent private name calling, my account is still active as I get an email from them every year wishing me a happy birthday!

I would be happy just having for sale, off topic, and a Rio one that would include all the empeg / Rio stuff.

My first and final attempt to help out in the Mythtv "community", was when I signed up to their forums and posted a follow-up to an existing thread. My follow-up quoted a few lines from an earlier posting by somebody else, which happened to include a useful web link (from the quotation) to some patches or something.

I got "banned" for posting links as a n00b, and my IP address got blacklisted. Lovely people there. The funny thing is, this behaviour turns out to be about 100% typical of their closed development "community" and active hatred of end-users.

End of story.

We should see about storming those forums Matt. I'm in.

Ha! Thanks I think they aren't worth it. After I get what I need from them I'll be leaving that awful board behind me and they can enjoy a community that'll shrink rapidly

I have some really good suspensions/bans from game forums. One was for posting under 'Suggestions' for Warhammer Online that EA/Mythic should implement random drug testing for developers and QA so something like patch 1.2 (which did a LOT to kill the game) would never happen again.

In fairness, I should add that Mark Kendall, one of the primary devs (if not the primary guy) is excellent and approachable, a great chap. But most of the others, well.. they often make the Linux Kernel Mailing List look rather tame by comparison.

Regarding political/religious topics, I never really cared for the former. The latter has probably been some of the best religious discussions I've ever had anywhere; tolerant in the true sense of respecting the person while holding a different opinion. I don't know that I've found that anywhere else, off or on the internet. The thing is, I've felt we pretty much exhausted religious topics and were rehashing quite a bit in the latter threads.

I still brag about this place to my Christian friends, though, and say what a great benefit those discussions have been to me in terms of understanding how other people with different beliefs think.

I agree that with a shrinking base, less forums is better. I also don't mind the topics that get posted. Reading posts here about sliced cheese is infinitely better than the most important topic you can imagine on any other forum.

Crap... did I miss a good thread?

/me goes off to search for "sliced cheese".

Just as a trial, I changed the announcement about the empeg meet to a global announcement. That means it shows up at the top of every forum. I personally don't like this, but it is one of the few ways to make sure it is seen for those who only bookmark and browse Off Topic.

I am open to suggestions though on better ways to handle this. If it's a suggestion that isn't possible with the current code, the 8.0 release is around the corner, and now would be a good time to make suggestions to UBB.

One alternative is a "content" island, basically adding a sidebar to the left or right of the site. I'll have to dig into other possibilities later.

Given the nature of this particular announcement, I personally like it global.

Jeff,

In the shrinking-base department, did you ever take djc up on his offer to fly to Texas on his own dime to have a dialogue about homosexuality?

I sent him a PM on the subject (though I'd never have let him pay for it), but he never responded.

I'll say this on the topic of religious disucssions- I thought most of them died out before the user base started shrinking significantly, but perhaps I am mistaken on that count. I know that I was away from the board for quite a while (due to it being blocked at work and then getting distracted when I was at home and able to access the board).

As mentioned, I've always valued this place for the ability to speak freely about strong beliefs without people getting offended, but perhaps my value didn't exactly accurately reflect everyone's feeligns. If anything I've said has done harm to this BBS, I am truly sorry for that.

Jeff, you gotta be kidding! Your posts on the subject of religion were (IMHO) among the most valuable and treasured responses on the whole bbs. I agreed with very little that you said, but your calm, well-reasoned dialogs (even if your spelling was, ummm... a bit free-form sometimes ) were some of the best made by any member of the board. I always felt a little bad that you seemed to be so outnumbered in your opinions here, but I certainly admired the way you kept at it, undaunted in your convictions.

Maybe I should start a thread with a religious argument in the hopes that you will jump in...

tanstaafl.

I always felt a bit ashamed that I didn't pipe up alongside Jeff more often, but usually he said what I wanted to express well enough that I didn't feel like I had much to add. Well done Jeff.

Ah, I didn't know that you accepted and that he didn't follow through, so I should be less of a snit. At the time I thought it was a very generous and perhaps very brave offer on his part. It seemed like he really had a need to have that discussion, and I was disappointed that it didn't come off. Now *that* would been something to talk about with your friends.

Looking further down the thread, I hope that you don't feel like you offended *me* if that's what you were getting at. Depending on the phases of the moon, what I had for lunch, and the color of my mood ring, my contibutions here are, I'd say, a very, very mixed bag (see sig) from the intelligence, civility and overall value standpoint. I am thankful that I can usually rely on fairer folks like Doug to slap some of my bad karma upside the head and reflect more helpfully on questions such as yours.

Being a public employee (for the indefinite future), I don't get to read the BBS at work As I am getting older, I don't stay up as late and I type more slowly every passing day, so I will likely be a diminishing irritant here, but maybe moreso for bigger reasons, like being "done" with a lot of subjects. Like politics, religion, climate change, gun control, and a host of other things. That being said, I think Off Topic is totally precious and hope that anyone can ask anything forever.

Gee, I can be so much more circumspect when the Percocets start to kick in.*

Jim


*gall bladder getting the heave-ho in 2011