Lack of new and interesting threads.

[Tom]

Anyone else noticed this??

[Administrator]

yep, although you are more than welcome to start a new and interesting thread yourself.

They're getting too chatty outside the Lounge as well so I'm going to have a clamp down on those shortly.

This thread moved from ED Gossip/issues to About this forum for obvious reasons

[edited once]

[Ladygooner]

I think its because a lot of people are on holiday

[Huguenot]

Lol!

erm.. you're going to tell people to 'be more interesting' and tell them to 'start talking more formally'

Is this because we're intending to close the forum down? If people aren't having fun here they'll do it somewhere else ;-)

Tom if you want to talk about something interesting, say something interesting. Going up to people and telling them they're boring is only going to lose you friends, not make them want to work harder to satisfy you.

[SeanMacGabhann]

I thought this was a spoof post at first. . the forum is what we make it tom so crank up a couple of threads and well see how they go

some people are on holiday but most regulars are round and about

that said i cant believe you dont think the enemies of reason thread is interesting

[Tom]

what i meant was that there was a point when there were a lot of threads about new developments in the area (of any kind), but it seems to have turned into a forum for venting spleen at one another over really trivial things - the house prices, arriviste masses, Shite stuff etc which is becoming a bit dull.

I am holding back from adding threads as I think there are already too many about nothing at all and I don't think the forum needs more opinions, just more information.

Is it also an idea to start closing threads once they decend into a general free-for-all? A 20 page thread on the tip situation of thai restaurants is initially funny then gets really political and ends up as a personal crusade for people who just can't let go.

Anyway - just a thought...

[Mark]

Originally some threads were closed off for being off topic and too "chatty" but people complained to now they're tossed into the Lounge which a compromise. It's also quite hard to draw the line as to when a thread actually becomes a free for all, try and make that decision on a thread yourself then watch how it comes back on topic, then off, then on etc etc.

It's always good to get feedback so thanks, let me know any other ideas or thoughts as we don't know what people think unless they tell us.

[SeanMacGabhann]

Fair points Tom - I think it can be a bit like newspapers in August tho, the silly season and all that -

Once the news stops being "new" and dries up, the space still needs filling!

Living in ED is great but it's not like something happens every day - but we do our best

[mockney piers]

Fair points all. Its hard to find a balance whether from a contributors point of view or more importantly from an administrators.

I think he's doing a pretty good job, but the more feedback the better.

If you've had a look at the SE5 forum it's much more about the community, gets involved in local politics, is more tightly controlled, has much less activity and is really a pretty dull read.

If the lurkers have a thing or two to say that'd be cool, there are a lot of you after all ;)

[Tom]

Agreed.

I think there would also be a benefit to the forum if we could get more people involved.

There is a hardcore of about 10 who I would imagine make up 50% of the posts, and I think this clique can frighten off the occasional poster / lurker.

While business involvement is not necessarily the right thing, I think a section encouraging them to post info about events, offers and ideas, where they are also somewhat protected by the admin team from vindictive posting (see White stuff post) This would have 2 benefits:

1. Bring possible revenue to the site

2. Attract more of the community & neighbouring communites to use the site.

Only ideas, of course its up to you, but I think the site needs to become more community minded in a broader sense and keep the old loons at bay.

[Mark]

I think one of the ways to achieve the above is to be stricter on the East Dulwich gossip / issues thread. A typical dilemma is a thread entitled " Horray for plastic bags" which was moved to the Lounge as it wasn't specifically about East Dulwich. We informed the poster (of the message) it was moved and he wasn't happy as "it is relevant to East Dulwich", but I had to say that it's not specific to East Dulwich. Anyway he's never posted again and that annoys me as it feels like a decision to clear up and make that area less "chatty" has annoyed and subsequently turned off one of the users.

Business have been encouraged to post their events on the forum but hardly any of them do. Some of them do post up their shops/services/offers in the offered section but not many even though it's free and 700 people a day visit the site. Businesses have been offered the opportunity to advertise and a few have (and benefited a surprisingly large amount). We'd love to get more people and their businesses on this site but we don't have the resources to promote it to them, we rely on word of mouth and internet searches.

Please do come along on the 21st September Tom and let me know more about what you think, and anyone else who is reading this, we'd like to hear more ideas from the people who use this forum. We don't want the forum to just be a chat room for the "old loons", it's meant to be a fun and useful place for all the people (including businesses) of East Dulwich.

[SeanMacGabhann]

I'm all for stricter monitoring of the Ed issues/gossip thread

Maybe send a PM to the main culprits (of which I am one!) advising of a culture-change?

[mockney piers]

I still think there's room for a new .err.. room where serious discussion is maintained, but not necessarily east dulwich specific, leaving the lounge (which REALLY shouldn't be seen us punishment) to us 'old loons' to talk about whiskey vs whisky, music etc.

[Mark]

I've been thinking about that too. So to clarify, do you mean splitting the Lounge into two? A new place where off-topic threads are moved to, a kind of serious older brother room to the Lounge. The Drawing Room? The Study? How about "Outside"? Off-topic threads can be moved "Outside", the Administrator can tell people to "take it Outside".

[mockney piers]

I quite the Drawing Room; yes a place where debate is still moderated, but can be about plastic bags, carbon footprints, inheritance tax etc, without having the stigma of being next to a thread about loony armageddon predictions or misbehaving owls and donkeys.

[Mark]

Would you like to look after it? Please?

[mockney piers]

Sure thing boss.

[macroban]

I must admit I get disappointed when on-topic East Dulwich treads are hi-jacked by the children and are moved to The Lounge.

[Mark]

I know, you are one of the users macroban that I don't like getting annoyed.

Unfortunately it's not possible (at the moment) to split a thread because of the way people reply to a message. They have about 3 options: quote this message, reply to this message, fill in the box at the bottom, and having these 3 makes it easier and encourages people to reply. Imagine if someone replies to the 3rd message (out of 5) in a thread using "reply to this message", then a reply to that subsequent message is also associated to the 3rd message. This means that in the background the threads are branching out and it's not possible to make a clean split. Ideally threads could be split based on time posted but unfortunately that's not possible but we are looking into to.

Oh, and I keep using the royal "we" by the way. It's just me, with some gratefully appreciated help from Mockney Piers.

[citizenED]

I like this new and interesting thread.

Don't think the forum needs any changes. It's like a pub - some regulars chip in on most things, some folks pop in from time to time to make a comment or joke, some serious debate rages in the corner, (the standard of which seems high considering this is, after all, just a pub ), a new development in ED is much discussed. All's well.

The way to alter the Forum is to post stuff. Get your opinion in quick - or get it in slowly and bring a thread back on topic if its veered off-topic. Sometimes you "lose" a thread, ie it goes somewhere you didn't want it to go - but that is just life.

I probably agree that some ED gossip stuff spirals off-topic too quickly but should it be policed? Perhaps Sean's idea of PMing culprits is the best hands-off way of achieving this. The Drawing Room: I can see that attraction but then part of the attraction of the forum is that debates grow in an organic manner, just as conversations do in real life.

citizen

PS - I agree with your observation Tom - I guess it's down to it being August - I'm guessing lots of people post at work, during the day, and during the summer more people are away from their desks. I anticipate a surge of interest in the Autumn

[Tom]

I seem to have got away quite lightly with that one.. I was expecting to be lynched and the post re: 'try being interesting yourself' is just the type of response that isn't needed and can scare away new / timid posters. And - without being smug, I'm glad some people find this type of debate interesting.

I hope the forum continues its excellent work and can start to widen its appeal.

[Huguenot]

Not at all Tom, I do find the debate interesting, but only because it's moved off top from your original question: objecting to a lack of 'new and interesting threads'.

As a matter of interest, what qualifies one to be an 'old loon'? Am I one? The majority of the people who post offensively tend to be newcomers, not old-timers.

Reading between the lines, the question is about editorial control: can it or should it be imposed?

Whatever the good intentions behind it, at the point at which posts get edited to remove subjective opinion then it becomes a newspaper, where those posting become de-facto affiliated with the forum's POV. It become a political organisation.

Tom (and others) are quite right that this will rid itself of the old guard - as it becomes more political it will seem less attractive to the friendly knock-about ne'er do wells, and more attractive to the self-righteous wannabe community leaders.

As the se5 forum shows, there are significantly fewer of the latter than the former. The EDF would be like the braying Portillo type loudly lecturing his enraptured acolyte in the corner of the pub, whilst privately wondering why everyone else is ignoring them and having fun...

There's always an opporunity for businesses to comment without right-to-reply: it's called advertising.

I can't quite get an idea of what the Drawing Room would look like, Tom can you give us an idea of some of the kind of high-brow threads you may be willing to put in here if it was properly policed?

I might add that this question has failed to be resolved by companies with far bigger budgest than us: the Grauniad and the beeb both reading quite like the EDF in some ways, with their own balance of intellectuals and nutters. I believe that this is referred to as the vox-pop?

Can someone show us a site that has done this in the way that you would like?

[Tom]

whatever....

Enjoy the forum.

I'm off.

[MadWorld74]

It's all got a bit too serious and staid for me. Nothing really spontanious happens anymore on the forum. Spiders and smashed up vehicals. I could post something tantalising but I'd probably get told to 'take it outside'

I'm just holding out for another thread about dog poo.

[MadWorld74]

All rather serious isn't it people?