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Remember when the General Chit Chat section was always busy?


Happenstance

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I was talking with @Goafer about this yesterday. Its such a shame that the general section of the forum has gone quieter over the last few years. I used to be able to log on and see a page worth of new threads to read through but now I'm lucky to get 2 or 3 new posts.

 

Do we think we just all got older and had less to post about? Members left who created a lot of conversation? The conversation has moved elsewhere to places like Facebook?

 

Basically I want this section to get busier again!

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Was it that much busier? you can go back years and there are numerous threads saying "What happened to this place?" "Where did everybody go?" "This site used to be so much busier."

 

I think a few things have died down (mafia games being a big one that comes to mind). But generally we're all just misremembering it. I don't think the forum has been that busy since we were all teenagers.

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It was way busier 10 years ago, but it's been on the decline for a while now. I think just due to lack of time that people have.

 

Generally, I use the New Posts feature on Tapatalk to browse the forums, so I am never actually aware which board I'm posting in. Where am I now? In chit chat? Neat.

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I've said a lot behind the scenes that I think it's the general age of users that's caused an issue. When I started gen chit chat was full of a lot of childish but fun threads like "rate the last person's signature" or "hot people thread", as well as games etc..

 

Now I think we've gotten older as a population, we're out at jobs, we're less interested in silly threads. And the young people, they're more attracted to twitch chat and snapchat and youtube etc. Things that they can log into using an app and post instantly to without selecting a topic first.

 

Actual question I was thinking of asking anyway, and has basically been given the nod by staff:

What would people think if we merged creative, tech and forum games all back in here? I think they're all pretty quiet and the big threads would stay afloat.

Edited by Shorty
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It's certainly quieter, however i've noticed more chat has gone towards the gaming boards themselves these days. It's a lot of things, Mafia games were always active. As soon as one died, another began a few days later. Xpert Eleven was always an active topic in the forum games as well. And there was a regular forum telephone game about.

 

It's down to a lot of things, one is we're older and don't have a lot of time for posting these days due to different responsibilities. Members have left for various reasons as well, for whatever reason they are is down to them.

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Yeah definitely. I see people post things on Fb and it makes me sad that they didn't post it in the related thread on here, that's been happening for years. Nicer mobile friendly forum software with a social login might be able to help with that.

It's down to a lot of things, one is we're older and don't have a lot of time for posting these days due to different responsibilities. Members have left for various reasons as well, for whatever reason they are is down to them.

People leave forums all the time and always have, the problem is the lack of balance - there's no newbies. I think this board is probably a bit intimidating to young newbs.

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There seems to be this weird belief that we like giant threads which eat up conversation and we don't... I've tried to create a variety of threads this year and maybe we need to all try and do this.

 

Or I don't know, live more interesting lives?

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I created a fantastic thread a while back which consisted of all my great musings for people to discuss, and it was locked, the reason given being that I could just post them in other threads.

 

Well I didn't, and look what's happened to the forums. Coincidence? No.

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Actual question I was thinking of asking anyway, and has basically been given the nod by staff:

What would people think if we merged creative, tech and forum games all back in here? I think they're all pretty quiet and the big threads would stay afloat.

No more feedback on this?

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No more feedback on this?

 

Personally i'd rather keep the gen chat separate and merge those other ones together separately. I like this board because I know i'll see nothing that really pertains to games or tech. Not so much bothered about creative being merged, maybe a good idea for people's work to be seen more?

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Just one thing to consider to counter your point (because I am very much for the merge), they would merge in date order, there'd only be about 3 tech threads on the front page of gen right now (which I think is actually very unusual and only because one person bumped all three a few days ago) and literally one game.

 

The whole point of having a topic specific board like "tech" is because you have so many threads on a subject they need their own place. When you're talking about 2 or 3 threads... there are other topics more popular than that, such as TV shows or movies. At this point what makes a tech thread any more intrusive than any other?

Edited by Shorty
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I would agree in merging the subforums, as they are not busy enough to have much of an impact on general chit chat anyway.

 

I have to say that I rarely go in the subforums and therefore might miss out on threads I'd actually be interested in. Plus I've also been less inclined to post in them as I kind of assume my post wouldn't really get read by many people anyway, whereas in general chit chat it might get a bit more exposure.

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