Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie

Politics Café.

Options
135678

Comments

  • Options
    #62
    Permabear
    Closed Accounts Posts: 39,022 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


    This post has been deleted.


  • Options
    #63
    Awkward Badger
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,414 ✭✭✭Awkward Badger


    What's the reason behind moving the threads in the first place ? If the Politics Cafe gets changed into a sub forum of AH because AH posters don't post in Politics then perhaps the threads were simply best left in AH ?


  • Options
    #64
    Black Swan
    Moderators, Category Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 47,223 CMod ✭✭✭✭Black Swan


    Permabear wrote: »
    This post had been deleted.
    Awkward Badger wrote: »
    What's the reason behind moving the threads in the first place ? If the Politics Cafe gets changed into a sub forum of AH because AH posters don't post in Politics then perhaps the threads were simply best left in AH ?

    Creating another "Politics After Hours" subforum that belongs to AH only increases AH, and doesn't solve the increasingly serious AH site concentration problem. Alternatively, a link in AH to the existing Politics Café under Politics in a different category (Rec to Soc) may be a quick fix and not THE silver bullet, but an experiment we may learn from today. Experimenting with this link is not all about Politics Café in isolation, rather it's a trial-and-error opportunity to see if something can be learned from it for ALL those many, many forums and subforums that are losing posts to AH.

    Perhaps such a link may draw and encourage a significant number of AH posters to not only post in the Café, but also in the other 7 Politics forums? Who knows for sure? We can try it, and see what happens. Successful inventor Thomas Edison when asked about the many failures he had when experimenting over the years replied: “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.”

    Community Manager Dav has the REAL numbers to crunch, site responsibility, and knows a lot more about the site than most of us, where the rest of us can only guess using incomplete data, anecdotal, and sometimes conflicting observations. Per Dav earlier:
    Dav wrote: »
    AH is 14-15% of the site and is actively hurting the rest of Boards. I'm not being dramatic or over exaggerating, the more posts AH draws into it's black hole, the more the rest of the site suffers. If topics that we have dedicated forums for were simply moved to those forums, this wouldn't be an issue, but when you move topics, the people don't move with them, so we're in a real catch22 here with AH.

    The decision to take all political content out of AH and move it to where it belongs is just a start. Boards is bigger than AH, the problem is, AH has absolutely no idea that the rest of the site exists.

    ...Post count numbers across the site are down yet on the increase in AH.


  • Options
    #65
    0byme75341jo28
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,571 ✭✭✭0byme75341jo28


    Are ye (as in the master Boardsies :p) thinking of making AH a website of it's own or something? That's what it sounds like to me...


  • Options
    #66
    Cookie_Monster
    Registered Users Posts: 24,470 ✭✭✭✭Cookie_Monster


    but what exactly is the problem with AH concentration?

    All that says to me is that many other fora are taking themselves too seriously so people default back to AH to post.


  • Advertisement
  • Options
    #67
    Awkward Badger
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,414 ✭✭✭Awkward Badger


    Black Swan wrote: »
    Creating another "Politics After Hours" subforum that belongs to AH only increases AH, and doesn't solve the increasingly serious AH site concentration problem. Alternatively, a link in AH to the existing Politics Café under Politics in a different category (Rec to Soc) may be a quick fix and not THE silver bullet, but an experiment we may learn from today. Experimenting with this link is not all about Politics Café in isolation, rather it's a trial-and-error opportunity to see if something can be learned from it for ALL those many, many forums and subforums that are losing posts to AH.

    Perhaps such a link may draw and encourage a significant number of AH posters to not only post in the Café, but also in the other 7 Politics forums? Who knows for sure? We can try it, and see what happens. Successful inventor Thomas Edison when asked about the many failures he had when experimenting over the years replied: “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.”

    Community Manager Dav has the REAL numbers to crunch, site responsibility, and knows a lot more about the site than most of us, where the rest of us can only guess using incomplete data, anecdotal, and sometimes conflicting observations. Per Dav earlier:

    I'm not sure a link to another forum would have much of an effect tbh. I think people are just happy sticking to the AH forum and discussing whatever happens to grab their attention on the first page. Then again only one way to find out.

    The posts earlier in the thread about posters being able to make custom forums was interesting. I proposed a forum a while back similar to AH but with a higher standard of posting required that would enable threads to be moved easier but people seemed to think one AH was enough. But if the linking to threads in other forums was possible then you could have a forum, with trending threads taken from across the site. Such a forum could become the hub of the site as it would be a forum in its own right with each new thread posted also being posted in the relevant forum and be great to divert traffic across the site. Perhaps even similar top level forums for each category. Might sound like going backwards but if the threads in those forums also existed in their specific forum (thread in Sports Hub, also in Soccer) then its not affecting the other forums. Just making a hub or focal point for whatever's currently being talked about. Which is why AH seems to be thriving. Its busy and it covers quite a bit and people are keen to be where the conversation is.

    As hard as Reddit is on the eye it makes everything very accessible and highlights where the crowds have gathered and where the current discussion is. I think boards should be trying to emulate that within its own style. As above forums that can have threads from multiple other forums, concentrating the activity but without taking it away from individual forums.

    I hope that makes sense. I've just woken up.


  • Options
    #68
    Permabear
    Closed Accounts Posts: 39,022 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


    This post has been deleted.


  • Options
    #69
    Shakespeare's Sister
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,412 ✭✭✭Shakespeare's Sister


    I think the way politics threads end up on on AH does Boards a disservice. It's of a higher standard overall than Facebook type discussions so it's a pity that politics threads on AH end up resembling just that.


  • Options
    #70
    nesf
    Registered Users Posts: 27,645 ✭✭✭✭nesf


    Cookie_Monster wrote: »
    but what exactly is the problem with AH concentration?

    You get a very low signal to noise ratio with big fast moving threads. It's nothing particular to AH but more what happens with high volume general interest forums generally. It can be really hard to follow a particular line of the debate if you're having to skip 10-20 posts between replies to replies or whatever in a very fast moving thread, killing much chance of continued debate between users. Whether this is a problem varies between thread topic to thread topic. You also get the issue of threads that aren't very popular won't stay on the front page for very long and threads that drop off the first few pages are unlikely to be read by the average browser, people don't go many pages back on forums usually. This creates a large problem for smaller interest topics being discussed unless people actively search for them. Moving from linear threading to threading as a series of replies (think Reddit, though this method far predates that site and this one) gets rid of the first problem or at least reduces it but still doesn't help much with the second one with "general interest forums."


    Primarily the problem isn't really AH but forums as a way of presenting information. Politics used to have these kinds of problems too during Election seasons.


  • Options
    #71
    Permabear
    Closed Accounts Posts: 39,022 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


    This post has been deleted.


  • Advertisement
  • Options
    #72
    nesf
    Registered Users Posts: 27,645 ✭✭✭✭nesf


    Permabear wrote: »
    This post had been deleted.

    I'm not arguing that that shouldn't happen but that the way posts are displayed on a traditional forum is ill suited to this. Something closer to Reddit's (it's actually much older than Reddit) threading of posts as replies to replies makes faster moving conversation much easier to follow. Or tagging and the ability to "click through" to the conversation thread a la what Twitter does also works.

    What definitely doesn't work is a simple linear presentation of posts that Facebook had until very recently that made it impossible to follow a series of comments on a controversial article.


  • Options
    #73
    Permabear
    Closed Accounts Posts: 39,022 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


    This post has been deleted.


  • Options
    #74
    K-9
    Registered Users Posts: 43,311 ✭✭✭✭K-9


    My main worry is that we lose users and content permanently during the "experiment".

    Mad Men's Don Draper : What you call love was invented by guys like me, to sell nylons.



  • Options
    #75
    Scofflaw
    Registered Users Posts: 23,283 ✭✭✭✭Scofflaw


    K-9 wrote: »
    This post had been deleted.

    Content, possibly, but I don't really see how one loses users?
    Permabear wrote:
    This post has been deleted.

    Yes and no. Clearly there is a market for trading lengthy posts, and while it may be a shrinking proportion of the overall online audience, that doesn't necessarily make it a shrinking market in absolute terms.

    Taken to its logical conclusion, you'd be suggesting that boards.ie get out of being a discussion forum and...not sure exactly...go toe to toe with Twitter?

    Every overall marketplace has segments with different preferences, or even with different preferences at different times. That one segment is growing faster than others doesn't mean you have to orient everything around that segment's preferences as if it were an unavoidable choice - perhaps particularly when there's little of value to soundbite discussions of politics.

    And of course there has always been a market segment that wants to discuss politics in an AH-style - politics.ie has been catering to it for years. If you were looking for well-thought-out threads trading lengthy posts full of meaningful content on politics.ie, you'd have to go back the best part of a decade, or search with a very large sieve.

    Finally, I guess I'd have to say that the aim of the Café isn't to flood Politics with AH posters and threads, but to provide a halfway house out of which some posters will perhaps (from our perspective) graduate.

    cordially,
    Scofflaw


  • Options
    #76
    Permabear
    Closed Accounts Posts: 39,022 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


    This post has been deleted.


  • Options
    #77
    knucklehead6
    Registered Users Posts: 6,738 ✭✭✭knucklehead6


    Dav wrote: »
    Not even close.

    AH is 14-15% of the site and is actively hurting the rest of Boards. I'm not being dramatic or over exaggerating, the more posts AH draws into it's black hole, the more the rest of the site suffers. If topics that we have dedicated forums for were simply moved to those forums, this wouldn't be an issue, but when you move topics, the people don't move with them, so we're in a real catch22 here with AH.

    The decision to take all political content out of AH and move it to where it belongs is just a start. Boards is bigger than AH, the problem is, AH has absolutely no idea that the rest of the site exists.

    This isn't criticism or negativity by the way, it's the way the thing has grown over the last 10 years from when AH was initially the place to "keep all the loons together" to now being where all discussion happens.

    Just something to bear in mind with moving posts, not all users will have access (or knowledge of) forums that the thread might be more suited to.

    There are threads in AH that are far more suited to Ranting and Raving, but that haven't been moved, and it's possible that the R&R mods don't WANT those threads in R&R.


  • Options
    #78
    K-9
    Registered Users Posts: 43,311 ✭✭✭✭K-9


    Scofflaw wrote: »
    Content, possibly, but I don't really see how one loses users?

    Users who who post mostly in political type threads in AH. Some will stay regardless because they like AH anyway, others just wont take to our politics board and go to p.ie or whoever.

    I'm just looking at this from an overall boards user viewpoint (I quite like the mix of fun and serious discussion in AH), rather than just AH or just politics. Personally it doesn't matter too much if the thread is in the cafe, the main board or AH, but it seems some do!

    Mad Men's Don Draper : What you call love was invented by guys like me, to sell nylons.



  • Options
    #79
    K-9
    Registered Users Posts: 43,311 ✭✭✭✭K-9


    An example of what I'm getting at is the Northern Ireland subforum, a topic that was busy (though we might question the quality) but is pretty much dead since it got its own place. The interest is still there, but for some odd reason where the actual discussion takes place seems to matter.

    Mad Men's Don Draper : What you call love was invented by guys like me, to sell nylons.



  • Options
    #80
    Scofflaw
    Registered Users Posts: 23,283 ✭✭✭✭Scofflaw


    K-9 wrote: »
    An example of what I'm getting at is the Northern Ireland subforum, a topic that was busy (though we might question the quality) but is pretty much dead since it got its own place. The interest is still there, but for some odd reason where the actual discussion takes place seems to matter.

    I take your point, and sometimes wonder if we should actually collapse the Politics sub-forums back into the main forum entirely. The European Union sub-forum and the Political Theory sub-forums have always been kind of dead, and, as you say, the NI sub-forum is a lot less lively than the liveliness of NI threads prior to the sub-forum should have warranted.

    We've tried splitting, and I can't say the results have been great - maybe we should try lumping for a while. That may be part of the attraction of AH in the first place - it's just one big forum where everything happens. And certainly the rule for running a good party is "make it crowded - people may complain, but they'll have a good time anyway".

    cordially,
    Scofflaw


  • Options
    #81
    Scofflaw
    Registered Users Posts: 23,283 ✭✭✭✭Scofflaw


    Permabear wrote: »
    This post had been deleted.

    Ah, OK - took you up wrong there. I agree - the growth of AH is something that's just the growth of AH, and we probably neither can nor should try to siphon those people off everywhere.

    Although that does assume that the growth of AH is relative, or, rather, that the non-growth of other forums is relative to AH. I don't think the Politics forum has shrunk relative to its normal levels, although obviously we're currently short on major political referendums, IMF interventions, government collapses and what have you compared to 2008-2012.

    cordially,
    Scofflaw


  • Advertisement
  • Options
    #82
    Permabear
    Closed Accounts Posts: 39,022 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


    This post has been deleted.


  • Options
    #83
    nesf
    Registered Users Posts: 27,645 ✭✭✭✭nesf


    Scofflaw wrote: »
    I take your point, and sometimes wonder if we should actually collapse the Politics sub-forums back into the main forum entirely. The European Union sub-forum and the Political Theory sub-forums have always been kind of dead, and, as you say, the NI sub-forum is a lot less lively than the liveliness of NI threads prior to the sub-forum should have warranted.

    We've tried splitting, and I can't say the results have been great - maybe we should try lumping for a while. That may be part of the attraction of AH in the first place - it's just one big forum where everything happens. And certainly the rule for running a good party is "make it crowded - people may complain, but they'll have a good time anyway".

    cordially,
    Scofflaw

    Would you fold back in Irish Economy? It feels like it should go the other direction and stop being a sub-forum sometimes. Or the elections forum during the next run-up to the Dáil Elections?


  • Options
    #84
    Permabear
    Closed Accounts Posts: 39,022 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


    This post has been deleted.


  • Options
    #85
    nesf
    Registered Users Posts: 27,645 ✭✭✭✭nesf


    Permabear wrote: »
    This post had been deleted.

    Or spun off as a separate forum and encouraged to cover the topic more broadly than it is currently.


  • Options
    #86
    Permabear
    Closed Accounts Posts: 39,022 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


    This post has been deleted.


  • Options
    #87
    nesf
    Registered Users Posts: 27,645 ✭✭✭✭nesf


    Permabear wrote: »
    This post had been deleted.

    It's got the traffic to function on its own and it would gain visibility over where it currently is. Economy and Politics are linked but neither is a subset of the other which is usually why we have sub fora.


  • Options
    #88
    Permabear
    Closed Accounts Posts: 39,022 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


    This post has been deleted.


  • Options
    #89
    KomradeBishop
    Closed Accounts Posts: 4,981 ✭✭✭KomradeBishop


    Economics used to be 'Political Economy', before it was rebranded/simplified as 'Economics' - so there's a good argument in support of the idea, that Politics/Economics have historically been heavily intermixed.
    In the late 19th century, the term economics came to replace political economy, coinciding with the publication of an influential textbook by Alfred Marshall in 1890. Earlier, William Stanley Jevons, a proponent of mathematical methods applied to the subject, advocated economics for brevity and with the hope of the term becoming "the recognised name of a science."


  • Options
    #90
    LuckyLloyd
    Registered Users Posts: 36,131 ✭✭✭✭LuckyLloyd


    While this debate continues, every thread that is moved to politics cafe runs to an almost immediate dead stop.

    I was strongly against the decision to remove politics threads from AH as I used to contribute to and enjoy such content. Now it simply doesn't exist.

    I say reverse the change until you can think of something that works.


  • Advertisement
  • Options
    #91
    Scofflaw
    Registered Users Posts: 23,283 ✭✭✭✭Scofflaw


    LuckyLloyd wrote: »
    While this debate continues, every thread that is moved to politics cafe runs to an almost immediate dead stop.

    I was strongly against the decision to remove politics threads from AH as I used to contribute to and enjoy such content. Now it simply doesn't exist.

    I say reverse the change until you can think of something that works.

    From your perspective, what's the difference between the thread being in AH and being in the Café?

    cordially,
    Scofflaw


Advertisement