More Threads Need to be Made

Discussion in 'Feedback & FAQ' started by Benjamin, Aug 24, 2011.

  1. #1
    Benjamin

    Benjamin LPA team LPA Super VIP

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    This 'A Thousand Horizons' thing has generated a lot more traffic on the forums this past day, and it got me thinking about how to get all of these new members to stick around longer. Then I looked at the LP chat forum and realized just how few threads there are in there. In the month of August there have only been 3 threads created that actually asked legitimate questions regarding LP (thoughts on The Catalyst 1 year later, LP's autograph value and whether Glee could cover a song).

    I know that a lot of us aren't necessarily "fan boys/girls" or what-have-you anymore but I still think that the mass majority of people who log on to the forums every day want to talk about Linkin Park. You know, because this is the Linkin Park Association :lol:. Looking in Newbie camp I see 10+ users in the past month or two that went out of there way to welcome themselves to the boards (to signify that they intend on actually posting). Most of them don't make it past 20 posts. And looking at each of their 20 posts, they almost all come in either news or LP chat.

    If you ask me, the problem is simply that not enough threads, specifically in LP chat, are made. I realize that most of you guys who are reading this (admins, every day posters...) have probably asked and answered every LP question in the book a million times. But I think we should try to make more threads even if we've had similar threads in the past. Doing this gives the "quiet majority" on this site more to do which will hopefully make the site busier. Another thing I've noticed is that some of these members want to talk about LP so badly that they go ahead and look at threads that were made months or years ago and post in them. The top 10 worst LP song thread is a recent example. So perhaps necroposting would be less frequent if more threads were made more often

    I'm probably taking for granted how there is still a good amount of activity despite there being no hype for a new album but in my opinion the LPA can do better. Looking at the LP chat forum right now is, quite frankly, a bit embarrassing. We should all make an effort to make a significant amount of threads that relate to the band which this forum is for. Though for regular posters, the rest of the boards in general could also use some more stuff.

    I'm not sure why I just wrote a fucking essay/rant thing about this but the title of this forum IS "Feedback & FAQ." I guess I'm doing the feedback part, ha.
     
    Last edited: Aug 24, 2011
  2. #2
    Hybrid

    Hybrid Has gone Rogue. LPA Team

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    For the record, I still hate that top 10 worst song thread. Now that's outta the way, good point, Ben.
     
  3. #3
    Derek

    Derek LPAssociation.com Administrator LPA Administrator

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    I'll say what I've always said: the traffic of these forums depends on the people who post on it. If everyone sits around waiting for others to make posts/threads, and doesn't take the initiative to create topics themselves, the forums will suffer...it's like that with any board you go to.

    You guys have the power to make this place rival the official site. You just have to post a lot. If Jeff can do 10 thousand posts in a year, so can others :). We didn't get to over 800,000 posts by just sitting on our hands.
     
  4. #4
    Todd

    Todd FLǕGGȦ∂NKđ€ČHIŒβǾLʃÊN LPA Administrator

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    And it's not just LP related threads either. Serious Chat can go very under-used. It's great for current events. For example, I don't think we have a thread on Libya. Why not make one? Once the thread is started, a discussion will take place. If you see something on the news you'd like to discuss, start a thread in Serious Chat, that will get forum activity going in no time.

    If you start it, they will come ;)
     
  5. #5
    Benjamin

    Benjamin LPA team LPA Super VIP

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    There's also no reason why you can't make the Libya thread yourself. I'm just sayin'.

    And maybe this isn't entirely true but at my time here it seems that threads started by admins get more attention than threads that others make.
     
  6. #6
    Vriska

    Vriska Wiki Staff LPA VIP

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    That is a good point. It's easy to forget about the silent majority.

    This might be something that is a catch-22. Earlier, I discovered I keep finding trinkets of information that weren't necessarily newsworthy but "interesting nonetheless." I didn't make a new thread because that didn't seem to be the cool thing to do here. And I had that impression because new threads were so rare. Secondly I had that impression because during the Great LPU9 Apocalypse, the exiles thought to turn to the LPA for a new land to immigrate into, and immediately upon one of them making an innocent new thread, it was immediately closed for the wrong reasons. It had since been resolved and apologies traded, but first impressions are first impressions and the bulk of the LPUers hightailed it to somewhere else. The lesson I learned from watching it was to not start threads while at LPA. Because there was a "Random Thoughts" thread, it didn't appear like I was supposed to start random new threads in Random chat. It looked like I was supposed to post there instead.

    I have a question: why is necroposting discouraged? Sure, some topics do come out dated, but some like "your worst 10 LP songs" don't really have an expiration date. Back in my mother country, LPU, we passed the time in slow winter days by necroposting and double posting (the latter enables post-whoring). It came quite as a culture shock to me that both these things are discouraged here, regardless of the context in which they are used. ie, it would be bad form to double post if the second post was simply an extension of the first, but if the second post was a completely different thought or realization that came a little later, it would be good form to post again and update the timestamp for the thread. And necroposting was often interesting because it was fun to re-examine some ideas after some time has passed - even nostalgic if years had passed - and for some people, it was the first time they had ever seen that topic and would want to put their two cents into it. Back in mother country, it was heavily discouraged to make duplicate threads where others existed previously, and maybe my culture shock extends to others here.

    I have another observation inspired by mother country: whenever LPHQ added a superfluous new subforum, it usually cannibalized traffic in other forums. We didn't need separate forums for Minutes to Midnight and Fort Minor or Live concerts and other projects, because they weren't contributing to "The Band" forum which was where most people went to talk about LP anyway. And since LPUers mainly stayed in The Band, they weren't posting in MTM or FM forums, and very soon they became topic graveyards. Topics about MTM or FM did well in The Band before a moderator moved them to their proper location, and then the thread would die. Making too many subforums had an overall effect of decreasing the amount of posts.

    Perhaps the reason LPA's LP Chat forum is slow is related to the Newsfeed forum doing so well. Although the Newsfeed is absolutely necessary, I imagine merging other subforums with little to no activity would speed them up. And maybe the benchmark for making a new subforum should be when a forum is getting too fast and needs to be split.


    Why did i spend so much time writing this? It's a friggin essay.
     
  7. #7
    Hybrid

    Hybrid Has gone Rogue. LPA Team

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    Kathy, I'm only speaking for myself here when I say that the only real thread I visited in the LPU forum was with my clan. For me, I didn't visit "The Band" forum all that much because I was so sick of seeing "OMG, Mike is like the HOTTEST guy in the world. I would do anything to be with him" and other similarly related posts. I'm glad "Linkie Bopper" talk is not welcome here. Reading that garbage and finding out what "slash" was the hard way discouraged me from being active on the LPU boards.

    As far as Necro posting goes, speaking as a newer member to the site, I find that it sucks to have to read pages of stale backlog to see if someone else brought up the point you want to make in the thread.

    Double posting sucks because if what you wanted to get out was so important, it should have been clumped together in one post. I cannot tell you how many times on both the LPU and LP message boards I was reading 2,3 or 4 posts in a row by the same person. it gets irritating and doesn't lead to a true post count.

    I think that's all I wanted to say for now...
     
    Last edited: Aug 24, 2011
  8. #8
    Gloomy Mushroom

    Gloomy Mushroom Absolute Zero LPA Super VIP

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    Yay I created thread #3 and was considered a quality thread. I'm mostly afraid to use the advice thread nowadays as I think my previous problems just only painted me as a gutless bitch (in my eyes).
     
  9. #9
    Derek

    Derek LPAssociation.com Administrator LPA Administrator

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    I'll be the first to admit that we haven't been perfect. In retrospect there have been a few moments over the past few years where I've regretted certain moderating decisions I've made, and I'm sure that can apply to other moderators on here. When you deal with a forum like LPA that usually gets flooded with traffic during album release periods, and that has been around for close to 10 years, there's going to be times where people either: A. Misunderstand the way we handled a situation or B. We slip up and then later admit our mistake and apologize for it. It's something that's unavoidable and we try our hardest here to avoid it from happening much at all.

    What bothers me though, is how I am just finding out about what happened with this LPU Exodus now. Despite a lot of people being turned away as you say, you are sadly the only person who has found it appropriate to tell us about what happened, and this is a good year after the fact. Had I, or another staff member known about this, I can assure you that we would've done what we could to repair our image because our reputation is something that is very important to us. Sometimes the claims against us are deliberate (aka other sites tarnishing us to make themselves look better), but other times it's simply due to a misunderstanding of how we work here. There's been a few times randomly over the past few years when I've been approached by a member who has gone "wow I was completely wrong about this place." and honestly that shouldn't be how it works. Believe it or not, earlier this year we actually removed about 5 rules from our forums and made the rules incredibly generic and lenient, but you wouldn't know that because bad reputations travel faster than good ones.

    As for necroposting, we usually try to prevent necroposting because around 2004-2005 we switched to vBulletin from IPB and in the process a lot of the posts that were converted to vB format got severly messed up. Quotes got broken (leaving behind a chaotic mess of code and weird ASCII symbols) and links that were once valid, due to age became broken links making the threads useless or full of outdated information. That's pretty much the only reason that the rule even exists in the first place. We're not trying to discourage people from posting or creating new threads, and if that's the impression the rule it gave off than we are definitely sorry for that. We are always trying to find new ways to make these boards more accessible and certainly your suggestions will be given a lot of attention.

    It upsets and even frustrates me that we got the wrong reputation from some people and please tell anyone from LPU who may have been given the wrong impression about us that we'd love another chance to show them we're a good place to be at.
     
  10. #10
    Ree

    Ree a female witch. LPA Administrator

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    Good idea, Ben. Let the posting of new threads begin! :awesome:

    I don't like double posting, it's pretty easy to just edit your original message. I'm happy with the no double posting rule.

    I don't think necroposts in old threads such as "What's your favourite song?" from 2005 should be allowed because it's not a true indication of members' opinions as there have been two other LP studio albums after that. I agree that certain threads should be able to be bought back after 30 days since the last message was posted in if they are still relevant threads.
     
  11. #11
    Mark

    Mark Canadian Beauty LPA Administrator

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    Re: Necroposting
    - In recent times we've tried to be more lenient with allowing necroposting, but only as long as the post brings new information to the table and isn't continuing a conversation that died many months or even years ago. New members are the major culprits of this, as they likely googled a LP-related question and stumbled upon a thread. Many of the original posters from an old thread moved on long ago, and aren't around to continue the discussion. In many cases it would be a better idea to start a new thread. It helps re-energize the discussion with new players. We used to be much much more strict about this. For example, I can't remember the last time a thread was closed in Other Music for necroposting.

    Re: Double posting
    - I think if you were responding to two different people in two separate posts, we wouldn't crack your skull over it. It's just that people treat posts like tweets these days, shouting out random thoughts as they think of them. There's a time for post editing and there's also time for a post segregation.

    Anyways, neither of the above concerns help us create new threads. The lack of activity in the Linkin Park world can be largely attributed to this. The aging of its fanbase has also lead to more indifference regarding discussing LP-related topics. IMO, the band is also (debatably) less relevant than it was 8 years ago. All of these things lead to a lack of discussion. Twitter has also probably had a slightly negative impact on message board posting as well.

    There's definitely room for improvement in the Serious Chat forum, though. Perhaps people don't post in there often because they don't have enough knowledge of current events to form an opinion.
     
  12. #12
    Todd

    Todd FLǕGGȦ∂NKđ€ČHIŒβǾLʃÊN LPA Administrator

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    We could, but if every thread in there is started by staff, then it might give the wrong impression that only staff should start threads in there.
     
  13. #13
    Derek

    Derek LPAssociation.com Administrator LPA Administrator

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    Exactly. We want to encourage members to create the threads rather then depend on us to do them :).
     
  14. #14
    Super Sonic

    Super Sonic The Hedgehog LPA Super VIP

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    Good thinking Ben. We need some more members to stick around.
     
  15. #15
    Derek

    Derek LPAssociation.com Administrator LPA Administrator

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    Best way to do that is for everyone to contribute to current threads via replies, or by making new threads if they have a topic they find interesting. People should also invite LPUers to post here too :).
     
  16. #16
    Benjamin

    Benjamin LPA team LPA Super VIP

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    Already I see people with 30 or so posts making an appearance to post in the new LP chat threads. Let's keep this up!
     
  17. #17
    Vriska

    Vriska Wiki Staff LPA VIP

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    I did try, but I was the one dissident person. I had already put my chips down on the wiki and didn't want to see it happen. And you by that point had apologized. They had made up their mind and the point didnt look like it was worth pursuing further.

    Of course, it's a different LPU now, and the chat and forums are separate cliques.

    Kathy, I'm only speaking for myself here when I say that the only real thread I visited in the LPU forum was with my clan. For me, I didn't visit "The Band" forum all that much because I was so sick of seeing "OMG, Mike is like the HOTTEST guy in the world. I would do anything to be with him" and other similarly related posts. I'm glad "Linkie Bopper" talk is not welcome here. Reading that garbage and finding out what "slash" was the hard way discouraged me from being active on the LPU boards.

    The linkie bopper posts seem to had died out by LPU 6.0. You have a very very old impression of the forum, and by all means they kept themselves to their own threads.
     
    Last edited: Aug 24, 2011
  18. #18
    Derek

    Derek LPAssociation.com Administrator LPA Administrator

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    In our defense though, there's also been members in the past who were banned for legit and good reason (i.e. continuously calling people retarded, gay, a faggot etc) and then when we do our part to protect our members and ban them after 3 strikes, they go around spreading falsities about us and saying we're like Nazi's here on LPA. It's happened many times over the last 10 years (because some people can't take responsibility for their actions) and there was even a ScrewTheLPA twitter a few months ago made by a banned member who was banned for posting inappropriate content.

    So while we used to be a lot more strict back in the day, and I will accept blame for that scaring some people away before...we also have been the victim of lies intended to slander our website. We're a drastically different forum then we were even 4 years ago (much like LPU10 is nothing like LPU1-5) and I'd hope that some of the remaining LPUers give us a second shot. Especially since we are a forum that cares so much about making sure we're treating our members right.
     
  19. #19
    Hybrid

    Hybrid Has gone Rogue. LPA Team

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    I was done with the LPU forums by the beginning part of LPU 3. Never really looked back. Perhaps the "new" LPU will be more inviting for me. If it is anything like the LPMB, then I'm sticking with the LPA.
     
  20. #20
    dereklp

    dereklp :Not here:

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    If you lasted a couple more years when I was promoted you would have noticed my ninja like killing moves on threads like those.
     

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