UnevenEdge Update: Forum Restructuring & Future Plans

[matrixman124]

This thread sure is a basket of sunshine. Haven't seen such despair since the old boards were turned into Reddit.

[André Toulon]

14 minutes ago, Insipid said:

Mean girls club and dorks who still watch late night dubbed anime. A truly riveting legacy of the ASMB. 😂

Ok, I'm done entertaining that.

Cool....just gtfo then.

 

[stilgar]

10 minutes ago, matrixman124 said:

This thread sure is a basket of sunshine. Haven't seen such despair since the old boards were turned into Reddit.

What about the changes have upset you so much?

[matrixman124]

No I'm fine with it.

 I'm just seeing a lot of negative reactions about killing the boards and I think they're overreacting haha

Perhaps sarcasm was not the best way to combat the negativity.

Edited July 20, 2022 by matrixman124

[stilgar]

It isn't healthy to deny your feelings.

[matrixman124]

I think the boards should stick around thank you very much 

[Insipid]

6 minutes ago, matrixman124 said:

No I'm fine with it.

 I'm just seeing a lot of negative reactions about killing the boards and I think they're overreacting haha

Perhaps sarcasm was not the best way to combat the negativity.

How is this overreacting? Traffic has gone down year by year; it never goes up unless certain incidents happen. Last year, IBers were complaining, new rules were implemented, traffic temporarily increased, and . . . nothing. This year, these changes take place after a survey, traffic may temporarily increase, and . . . probably nothing again. Last year, Pat was questioning why he keeps the boards around. This time, right in the OP, he explicitly mentions it may be a good time to pull the plug soon. I'm just saying it may be better to focus that energy on making a compendium of the ASMB of the last 20 years instead of dragging this place out on life support.

So whether or not you disagree with my sentiments, just realize the idea to close the boards is in moderation's heads and has been there for a while now.

[Seight]

1 hour ago, Insipid said:

Mean girls club and dorks who still watch late night dubbed anime. A truly riveting legacy of the ASMB. 😂

Ok, I'm done entertaining that.

no you're not

[matrixman124]

1 hour ago, Insipid said:

How is this overreacting? Traffic has gone down year by year; it never goes up unless certain incidents happen. Last year, IBers were complaining, new rules were implemented, traffic temporarily increased, and . . . nothing. This year, these changes take place after a survey, traffic may temporarily increase, and . . . probably nothing again. Last year, Pat was questioning why he keeps the boards around. This time, right in the OP, he explicitly mentions it may be a good time to pull the plug soon. I'm just saying it may be better to focus that energy on making a compendium of the ASMB of the last 20 years instead of dragging this place out on life support.

So whether or not you disagree with my sentiments, just realize the idea to close the boards is in moderation's heads and has been there for a while now.

Pat is considering it, but he wouldn't move forward on the restructure unless he took the consensus to preserve the forums seriously. We'll see what happens of course.

[MasqueradeOverture]

I assume Insipid's a Count alt?

[André Toulon]

39 minutes ago, MasqueradeOverture said:

I assume Insipid's a Count alt?

That's bnmjy, and if he can't have fun, no one should.

[Raptorpat]

1 hour ago, matrixman124 said:

Pat is considering it, but he wouldn't move forward on the restructure unless he took the consensus to preserve the forums seriously. We'll see what happens of course.

Right. So traffic and activity have declined significantly over the past few years. Routine visitors have declined by between one half and one third, however actual content has fallen off significantly more than that. Below is a basic chart for context:

Set aside "new blood" for the sake of discussion, because I included it just to make the point that it's not even a target at this point. The "active user" category is self evident - people who both log in and engage in content. The "other ASMB" category are people who never made the jump, or popped in once or twice but never engaged. The "lapsed user" category is made up of people who were formerly active, and have either left the site completely or lurk for one reason or another, and their absence represents about four times the amount of content that is posted in the current normal. This is obviously unrefined (it doesn't distinguish between the types of content being posted for example), but it paints the picture.

So we conducted a survey to seek out opinions from active users, lapsed users from all corners, and maybe even some of the other ASMB folks who never joined. What do people like about the site or wish the site did better, what don't they like or why did they leave? The goal was to try to construct a path that might give everyone a little of what they want and see if we can increase numbers from the orange and yellow categories without alienating the red category. It may be that we can't, due to one too many mistakes in the past or just that it's the natural life cycle of a near-20 year old internet community. But it's the people that say things like "I don't come around often, but I really value that we still have a home" or "the ASMB was really important to me in a vulnerable time and I appreciate that you're still out there" that make it worth the effort to try. The 20th anniversary date isn't a guaranteed kill-switch date if nothing changes, but at a minimum I think we've agreed that it would be a pivot point in one way or another.

[Top Gun]

Just for some context, I'm part of one or two 20+-year-old specialty forum communities that probably have a fraction of the userbase and content generation that this site does, and yet the people who host them wouldn't so much as think of shutting them down due to lack of traffic, because the people who are still there have been for many years and genuinely enjoy posting, and every once in a while another oldbie wanders back in to have some fun for a bit. I'm not trying to tell you what you should or shouldn't do in the future, but I think there's a lot more to a site's worth than raw engagement numbers.

[matrixman124]

Case in point, me being here, betch

[matrixman124]

51 minutes ago, Raptorpat said:

Right. So traffic and activity have declined significantly over the past few years. Routine visitors have declined by between one half and one third, however actual content has fallen off significantly more than that. Below is a basic chart for context:

Set aside "new blood" for the sake of discussion, because I included it just to make the point that it's not even a target at this point. The "active user" category is self evident - people who both log in and engage in content. The "other ASMB" category are people who never made the jump, or popped in once or twice but never engaged. The "lapsed user" category is made up of people who were formerly active, and have either left the site completely or lurk for one reason or another, and their absence represents about four times the amount of content that is posted in the current normal. This is obviously unrefined (it doesn't distinguish between the types of content being posted for example), but it paints the picture.

So we conducted a survey to seek out opinions from active users, lapsed users from all corners, and maybe even some of the other ASMB folks who never joined. What do people like about the site or wish the site did better, what don't they like or why did they leave? The goal was to try to construct a path that might give everyone a little of what they want and see if we can increase numbers from the orange and yellow categories without alienating the red category. It may be that we can't, due to one too many mistakes in the past or just that it's the natural life cycle of a near-20 year old internet community. But it's the people that say things like "I don't come around often, but I really value that we still have a home" or "the ASMB was really important to me in a vulnerable time and I appreciate that you're still out there" that make it worth the effort to try. The 20th anniversary date isn't a guaranteed kill-switch date if nothing changes, but at a minimum I think we've agreed that it would be a pivot point in one way or another.

Thanks so much for replying on that. Really respect you guys pivoting to keep the forums alive. I had about a 5 year hiatus from the ASMBs cuz of post-college life and when I came back the forums were dead and I found unevenedge and it's just nice to see something serving that function still existing. Seeing people still participate. Warms this OG's heart.

[scoobdog]

5 hours ago, Insipid said:

How is this overreacting? Traffic has gone down year by year; it never goes up unless certain incidents happen. Last year, IBers were complaining, new rules were implemented, traffic temporarily increased, and . . . nothing. This year, these changes take place after a survey, traffic may temporarily increase, and . . . probably nothing again. Last year, Pat was questioning why he keeps the boards around. This time, right in the OP, he explicitly mentions it may be a good time to pull the plug soon. I'm just saying it may be better to focus that energy on making a compendium of the ASMB of the last 20 years instead of dragging this place out on life support.

So whether or not you disagree with my sentiments, just realize the idea to close the boards is in moderation's heads and has been there for a while now.

A compendium of what?  All the threads where you threatened to or actually did post a picture of Fuggs’ vagina?  For a dude who hasn’t done much to contribute, you sure seem befuddled by why board traffic is down.

[Sawdy]

7 hours ago, Raptorpat said:

 

 

What was the spike in 2018?

[Insipid]

5 hours ago, scoobdog said:

A compendium of what?  All the threads where you threatened to or actually did post a picture of Fuggs’ vagina?  For a dude who hasn’t done much to contribute, you sure seem befuddled by why board traffic is down.

lol, I know my contributions to the community have been shit. By compendium, I meant something like a scrapbook, a community effort to bring up lore of the ASMB through posts and images.

[André Toulon]

3 minutes ago, Insipid said:

lol, I know my contributions to the community have been shit. By compendium, I meant something like a scrapbook, a community effort to bring up lore of the ASMB through posts and images.

Why can't it just exist and you stay away so you can "no longer entertain it" 

Just because we're here doesn't mean you have to be

[André Toulon]

10 hours ago, Seight said:

no you're not

Never is

[Doom Metal Alchemist]

1 hour ago, Sawdy said:

What was the spike in 2018?

I'm going to assume that was when luuv died.

Wait, no, that's stupid. 

Edited July 20, 2022 by Doom Metal Alchemist

[Master-Debater131]

So uh, you archived the NHL thread.  I need mah hockey thread!  Stuff is happening that needs to be posted about so the 4 of us who follow the NHL can talk about it.

[André Toulon]

Archived actually is a nicer word than locked

[Insipid]

2 hours ago, André Toulon said:

Why can't it just exist and you stay away so you can "no longer entertain it" 

Just because we're here doesn't mean you have to be

I meant specifically entertaining your crap, and before you call me out on it, yes I am eating my words now.

At this point, I care more about the 20th anniversary than the future prospects of these boards. Fortunately, that's not contingent on it shutting down, even though I still believe that's the best thing to do.

[André Toulon]

They guy who found fun in threatening people with another user's bumpy vagina when he needed laughs is tired of entertaining MY bullshit.

That is hilarious.

I'll give you this though, you're much less of a pussy than many other hypocritical finger pointers. I can at least respect your craft

[DeadwingLazarus]

1 hour ago, Master-Debater131 said:

So uh, you archived the NHL thread.  I need mah hockey thread!  Stuff is happening that needs to be posted about so the 4 of us who follow the NHL can talk about it.

Just make a new one.

[André Toulon]

1 minute ago, DeadwingLazarus said:

Just make a new one.

This is kinda what I was talking about when I asked why y'all were making new threads. 

I guess some of us like the already established, and progressing threads. Maybe you wanna reference something from a few pages back. Now it's unquotable.

Maybe pat see a way to allow multiquotes on archived threads but it honestly would probably never get used if he went through the effort so fuck it

[1pooh4u]

1 hour ago, Master-Debater131 said:

So uh, you archived the NHL thread.  I need mah hockey thread!  Stuff is happening that needs to be posted about so the 4 of us who follow the NHL can talk about it.

It was moved. I was going to help you out but someone beat me to it. 

[DeadwingLazarus]

4 minutes ago, André Toulon said:

This is kinda what I was talking about when I asked why y'all were making new threads. 

I guess some of us like the already established, and progressing threads. Maybe you wanna reference something from a few pages back. Now it's unquotable.

Maybe pat see a way to allow multiquotes on archived threads but it honestly would probably never get used if he went through the effort so fuck it

Fair enough. Also, looks like someone did some housekeeping in you auto warranty thread.

[scoobdog]

4 hours ago, Insipid said:

lol, I know my contributions to the community have been shit. By compendium, I meant something like a scrapbook, a community effort to bring up lore of the ASMB through posts and images.

Obviously I'm being dickish, but I'm not suggesting that you're doing anything wrong or are any different than the rest of us.  The point here is that what we think of content generation is probably wrong.

One of the questions that seemed to bother people on the survey was the one about ranked post content.  I think a lot of people expected this to be about creative content in the traditional sense, as in creating a meme or writing a fanfic, but what I intended when I wrote that question was to track engagement.  Limitation to the survey platform made it so we couldn't make it a top three so the results were somewhat broader than we intended, still we got some valuable input in that it showed some key points of engagement.  In particular, Toonami and Anime got a strong response while traditional creativity like writing or music content were not ranked highly, only above troll posting.  That lines up with what we've seen with the Toonami board tending to be fairly robust (at least by UEMB standards) and they tend to be less inclined to vocalize complaints to the site administration than their Noise counterparts.

All this is to suggest that there really isn't anything to scrapbook.  Content on this site as it was over the entire course of the ASMB's 19 your year history is entirely dependent on engagement.  Neither the topic nor the individual responses to that topic matter, it only matters what gets people interested enough to actually talk and that is something that we actually have in Noise and gets ignored.  We certainly do more harness the power of current events topics to get things going. That also explains how the new replacement boards were generated:  there is a clear delineation between the likes of current event topics like Roe and gun control and the likes of general topics like sports and special events.  You focus groupings around types rather than topics.

[conversegirl]

Yeah, it looks different from the last time I was here.

[770312]

I look forward to the next iteration that I will join and abandon right away, only to pop in every couple years. >.>

[katt_goddess]

On 7/20/2022 at 7:25 AM, Sawdy said:

What was the spike in 2018?

I posted boob.

Also Jon Schnepp died July of that year and there was a lingering spike of people posting about that that stuck around for a bit after. And I think there was something big in Toonami that fall which always brings posting. 

[matrixman124]

Just now, katt_goddess said:

I posted boob. 

What

[Raptorpat]

The aberration was a one-off gimmick thread. 

https://unevenedge.com/topic/31410-remember-that-one-thread-in-ib-that-got-to-10000-posts

 

[DeadwingLazarus]

2 hours ago, Raptorpat said:

The aberration was a one-off gimmick thread. 

https://unevenedge.com/topic/31410-remember-that-one-thread-in-ib-that-got-to-10000-posts

 

I remember another thread that did that. It was the Caption The Avatar Above You thread that was started by @little_girl_lost, if I'm not mistaken.

[Master-Debater131]

So the Covid thread is also archived.  Is that one getting moved or do I have to make a new one for that topic?

[Raptorpat]

That one was 120 pages long and had a bunch of drama in it, I'd rather you make a clean v3 if that's cool

[Sawdy]

So is there a clear definition on how big threads can be before creating new ones? Because I’ve seen this arbitrary bullshit mentioned a couple times and Pat seems to be a knob about it…

just looking for clarity or confirmation of knobbage…. 

[katt_goddess]

1 hour ago, Sawdy said:

So is there a clear definition on how big threads can be before creating new ones? Because I’ve seen this arbitrary bullshit mentioned a couple times and Pat seems to be a knob about it…

just looking for clarity or confirmation of knobbage…. 

Honestly, if there's a previous thread that was hopping, that you were the OP of, and you'd rather the old one be continued until it reaches black hole depths of gravity, ask and Arise Chicken Arise. 

But if it was super huge already, consider making a new version. It might bring in others who didn't go near the original thread because of it being so massive. 

[Sawdy]

2 minutes ago, katt_goddess said:

Honestly, if there's a previous thread that was hopping, that you were the OP of, and you'd rather the old one be continued until it reaches black hole depths of gravity, ask and Arise Chicken Arise. 

But if it was super huge already, consider making a new version. It might bring in others who didn't go near the original thread because of it being so massive. 

That’s, not the same message delivered earlier but as always, I appreciate you dumbing it down for all us slow kids.

I get the logic, but nobody ever complained (at least not to my knowledge) that threads were too big besides Scoob stating the other day defending this same action… if we want to create a standard, I suppose that makes more sense but until then it’s arbitrary at best…. But that’s just the rhythm here

[katt_goddess]

11 minutes ago, Sawdy said:

That’s, not the same message delivered earlier but as always, I appreciate you dumbing it down for all us slow kids.

I get the logic, but nobody ever complained (at least not to my knowledge) that threads were too big besides Scoob stating the other day defending this same action… if we want to create a standard, I suppose that makes more sense but until then it’s arbitrary at best…. But that’s just the rhythm here

On the old boards, I think it actually got to the point where a thread was locked at a set post count just to keep from slow loading and being a bog. So locking a big thread for being big isn't anything new, it's just not something that has ever been actively done here because it's not being a bog. But with boards being reset, it's the perfect opportunity to also restart solid topics.

And spamming a new meme thread into the triple digit post column in record time.  

[Sawdy]

…. I wish you’d be real for a minute, because you know damn well what I’m talking about but keep doing that “toe the line” thing.

Edited July 22, 2022 by Sawdy

[Sawdy]

Anyways, my point was made…. Carry on

[André Toulon]

23 minutes ago, Sawdy said:

…. I wish you’d be real for a minute, because you know damn well what I’m talking about but keep doing that “toe the line” thing.

Still looking for honesty, huh.....

I gave up on that the second they blew smoke up our ass the first time....everything else after that point has just been theater.

[katt_goddess]

My cat will poop on the floor if I'm not home by 7p on a Wednesday because that's her schedule and any change to said schedule results in a poop on the carpet. She also pooped on the carpet when I changed the blankets on the bed, when I got her a new cat tree with a ramp for her achy kitty joints, and when the apartment building changed the carpet and paint colors in the hallway.

Stop pooping on the carpet just because something changed. You don't have the tail to get away with it.

[Sawdy]

12 minutes ago, André Toulon said:

Still looking for honesty, huh.....

I gave up on that the second they blew smoke up our ass the first time....everything else after that point has just been theater.

At least we are consistent 

[matrixman124]

1 hour ago, katt_goddess said:

Honestly, if there's a previous thread that was hopping, that you were the OP of, and you'd rather the old one be continued until it reaches black hole depths of gravity, ask and Arise Chicken Arise. 

But if it was super huge already, consider making a new version. It might bring in others who didn't go near the original thread because of it being so massive. 

[scoobdog]

2 hours ago, Sawdy said:

That’s, not the same message delivered earlier but as always, I appreciate you dumbing it down for all us slow kids.

I get the logic, but nobody ever complained (at least not to my knowledge) that threads were too big besides Scoob stating the other day defending this same action… if we want to create a standard, I suppose that makes more sense but until then it’s arbitrary at best…. But that’s just the rhythm here

I'll bite on this one.  Why exactly are you asking about the size limits?  

As far as consistency, I get what you're saying:  the truth is, we were still operating the literal free-for-all that Luuv has originally designed.  There was no consistency because nothing existed to create that consistency - there weren't any written rules, there wasn't any organization or operational structure other than the folders themselves, and there wasn't nearly enough moderation to enforce "local rules" in a reliable way.  We're in the process of putting things into place that make for more uniform action, but we're almost starting from scratch.

[Neko]

Rules?  There were rules?  Lol.  Do what you have to to get more participation.  I can say that I've been with some of you guys almost 20 years so seeing a hammer is a bit weird.  Hoping to see more nudes and ducks.  Cheers you glorious deginerant fuckers!...

 

....and I really mean ducks.