Site is a graveyard - How can boards save itself? [Threadbanned users in 1st post]

Your prejudices are very obvious. That's fine, each to their own, but don't pretend to be some great liberal.

What's there to get over? There are several disadvantages to increasing years as no doubt you're aware of yourself. But some of the advantages are both wisdom acquired and a willingness to share it without really caring what people think :)

I understand where you are coming from, but if 'raw' Vanilla is the version we had immediately after the migration… I found that unusable and a frustrating experience. It was only when some of the old Boards shortcuts etc were restored the site became usable again for me, and I don't think I was alone in that reaction.

I posted this in a different thread on here but just for reference, this is what "raw" Vanilla would look like without any customisations.

I can't use the "raw" vanilla version, I use the Boards Enhancement Suite which is in the sticky at the top there, easy to install and makes the experience way, way, way, way, way better

I couldn't negotiate the "raw" Vanilla at all. I only went back to using it when some of the familiar Boards features were reintroduced albeit named differently and more difficult to navigate.

Grand and hope you find some solutions and guidelines to help stabilise the site, keep current posters and attract more.

To follow up on an earlier thought of yours as I recall - all moderators at various levels should be reviewing how they both interact with threads themselves, if at all and how they interact with posters. And of course, how they manage threads in an unbiased and fair manner.

As has been noted by several people, the age profile of most boards users is likely 25+. It's not a school playground, lecturing and warning posters as if they are bold kids is entirely counter productive. It's an attitude that is more likely to drive away users.

The site has many practical forums that are useful and largely uncontroversial, these tend to have lower participation but serve a purpose. Sporting threads also generate a lot of mostly non controversial activity. Soccer is completely invisible to most. Threads on AfterHours/ Current Affairs/ IMHO/ Politics/ Media matters all attract more usage and controversy and are needed to drive site use.

The site has to balance reasonable interaction between posters with threads that are of interest and attract debate. Shutting down or censoring what might or might not be controversial threads is counter productive. We're all aware that other social media platforms like to court and even encourage heated debate in order to drive up stats and generate more advertising. It's a reasonable marketing approach. Just a matter of how it's managed. IMHO it's not managed well on the whole at the moment, too much personal bias and over caution.

It's not often possible. Take this new user, wading in with great gusto:

There's a high degree of probability that their previous moniker(s) will be found on Page 1. But which one?

And of course, they could be a completely genuine new user of the site.

Regardless, why not just let them at it.

If there's to be a slimming down. My beloved Rugby League doesn't really need it's own forum now (much as I loved modding it for a pretty long time, it probably never had enough interest to justify it's own forum and I think the Admins were extremely kind to me in keeping it open).

It could happily sit in a Thread in Rugby and that'd be one less forum on the list (preferably stickied to make it easier to find but the lads in "Rugby" might prefer it not to be clogging up the front page).

Having a hide thread or hide forum function, as mentioned earlier, would be useful.

While I don't post here very often I spend way too much time reading Boards and I'd really like to thank all the mods/cmods/administrators for putting so much time and effort into keeping the site running. Like someone above said I think most people are behind the mods and that they do a great job. There are some inconsistencies but you'll always get them. I'd like to see some more communication and explanation into some of their decisions - they may be making the same decisions hundreds of times a week and think its obvious why the decision has been made but the posters/reader in question it may be the first time.

I'd like to see the some charters being updated or stickies put up to let posters know that there is going to be a crackdown on trolling and then the mods enforce it. I think that's the best way of dealing with that.

I also think that there are way to many forums. I don't know if there is a way to see when forums have have been last used, but I'd imagine there is some ghost towns there.

Also I'd like to see the The Cooking Club coming back.

John