Feedback on Site

I'm a member of several forums that had been declared 'dead' since Fakebook propped up - and they still exist. Forums are the only way to be part of a community that doesn't suck up your data and sell it to the highest bidder. That's why I keep away from FB and its ilk.

And that this has been pointed out as a problem after 6 weeks only shows that we, as a community, are willing to accept changes to see how they work - instead of screaming for "Set it baaaack!" after a day or two.

Elfquest lost me long ago when they signed up BB - I'm here for the friends I met at the old Scroll.

I did not say that FB and the like to it better than a forum.  What I said is that is where people tend to gravitate first.  At least with younger members of fandoms who are new to it. The concern brought up was on locking the forums would scare off new members.  It had nothing to do with the current ones.  I stated what I did due to that concern.  

Facebook is a dumpster fire.  Tumblr is an ongoing internet backdraft in an epileptic forest that's burning like Centralia.  Twitter is a bridge a hundred times the size of the Golden Gate for how many trolls it has under it.  I personally only use FB as a chat because I have a RP account that somehow has not been deleted by the FB powers that be when they went on a non-real-people sweep.  If anything I probably screw up their data.

I would argue that forums are NOT the only way to be part of a community that doesn't data mine. There's other places to be social aside just the single format.  Especially if there is no longer a need to feel the need to discuss the actual subject of said fandom.   I personally love the interaction I find on Discord in my various chat rooms. But then it's just IRC with more graphical options. I personally have nothing left to discuss EQ-wise at this stage, either, unless I want to potentially hit a berserk button, and what with my fanwork threads totally trashed by Photobucket's douchecanoe move, I don't even have the damn to rebuild it again or continue to post to. And if you think this site isn't mining your data, then please make your your cookies are turned off and you are always browsing in InPrivate mode, because the ad services certainly are.  At one point I had the ads start showing me banners relating to my place of work.  It was pulling my cookies and pinging my logins to our remote website for work.  But as ads annoy me, I installed ad blocker soon after, so who knows whatall it would be showing me now.  It's not to the analytics special level of FB, but it's there. It's the internet.  Where there is advertising, there is mining and storing.

And again, the concern was about new people.  That we need new people.  Fewer and fewer new people are going to come around to a fandom that is basically devoid of content being released unless they trip over the Pinis at a con and get interested, or the rare book still at the public library.  That was my argument about locked vs locked and a forum vs facebook.  People are going to hop over to official sites first, especially those that want to see insight from the creators.  THEN they might gravitate over here if they don't settle at one of the other formats first.  If they're not happy wherever they are at.  If they are, they tend to stay put wherever they find themselves. Like many of us did back at the old Scroll because it WAS where we first started and were content there, until things spiraled down over the event horizon.  But again, I am coming at this from the FANDOM perspective, NOT the social perspective.  I, at least, go to a fandom forum to talk fandom first and discuss among like minds.  If I meet friends I can be social with on a more personal level, bonus points. And if you've got a creator on board and they're cool enough to interact and let us pick their brains without a thermonuclear explosion, bonus bonus.  That's where new fans are going to usually hover.  In places they can do that.  

TL;DR, having a locked or unlocked forum isn't going to affect attracting a lot of new people to this forum because they are likely going to gravitate to other places first.  It's about new people, not who's already here having to change and go somewhere else.

Just to add to the data mining thing, this forum and most other forums on any other platform I am aware of log each and every IP address you post from as standard. I've looked at mine and since I mostly post from my phone these days, my IP list is MAHOOOSIVE. I still get targeted ads from places I visited and posted here, like restaurants in cities I travelled through, etc.

I kind of hope you can unlock things soon, part of why i joined was because I was able to see what kind of community this was and I honestly believe that if someone isn't interested in this type of community then they won't stick around long.

If their is some malicious stuff going on or that could occur I'm all for the added protection, just don't want it permanent.

Forums are great places and this one is special, hopefully it won't die for quite a long time whether the pinis create more or not.

Evil Evie wrote:

I kind of hope you can unlock things soon,

I just want to clarify that we only changed one thing, and that was to be logged on in order to see the site, which I changed back to public/guest viewing Friday evening.  No other things were changed or “locked” that I am aware of.

So if you’re having other technical problems with something in the site, please let me know and I'll do my best to fix it. Thank you

And just to add, if you see anything out of the norm, let one of us know...

Kindredsoul wrote:

... which I changed back to public/guest viewing Friday evening. ...

In this case something went wrong, Kin. As a "guest" I get this [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] or that [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] for each image and every link.
Before there was no problem with pictures and "normal" links. Just the member-name-links did not work - which is a very good thing!

Wiseshaman wrote:

And just to add, if you see anything out of the norm, let one of us know...

I will, Shaman.
... as far as I'm able to notice ...

Fixed

Thank you!

I didn't notice anything different, I appreciate the concern and I'm glad your here to fix things!! Keep it up!!

Well, I do not know about the background of the (not so) recent changes.
I know that (spam)bots are nasty. I hate them. But I also hate captchas and the likes.
And yes, I am also slightly afraid it might scare away the few possible new users.


We do have a lot of inactive, just nominal members. I see this every time on the "Happy Birthday"-threads. If you check the user's list and find that these people visited last someday in 2015, and have just 0 to 5 posts... well, that's it.
A LOT was destroyed when the SoC went down. I think this caused a huge fragmentation of the users, before in one place, now littered over little holts, or vanished from the EQ "scene" for good. I can understand that some people were fed up, or just slowly let go, cause there was no central place to meet and greet.

FB and the likes (IG, G+, Twitter, Whatsapp,...) are the pestilence of the century. It is horrible in every possible aspect.
It's a highly privacy invading, manipulative system. And people warned about that ages ago, not just after the recent discoveries.

Besides, a forum is in my eyes a better user group, easier to read and navigate.
Of course, also forum software and servers the forum is hosted on may have privacy statements that one better reads carefully. Also, not all forums feature image upload and storage and thus people sometimes have to use external hosters - and one or two years later all the images are gone because the hoster changed policy, links broke or just bitrot.
But the same can happen to all those FBs, IGs, G+ and so on.

I do not have a great recipe how to obtain members / activity. I guess potential number of new member might even decrease as Elfquest itself becomes more passive. (Something like a movie usually reaches a lot more people and brings a rush of interested people, at least for a time.)

TOPIC SPLIT

If you encounter a forum glitch, please post it in the appropriate place. This was intended for feedback on a forum change, which is not what it ended up being. Since that change is no longer in place for reasons, I'm locking this.
Thanks for understanding