neowin Why are you less active than you used to on the Neowin forums?

[NinjaGinger]

Untreatable, incurable brain disease is my excuse and Im sticking to it.

[+Nik Louch Subscriber²]

For example: a what would you change about Windows 8. If you say metro you

Are treated like someone who clings onto WinXP like a safety blanket. Metro is VERY much an opinion-related issue, and yet people are pushing their opinions like facts.

[what]

Are treated like someone who clings onto WinXP like a safety blanket. Metro is VERY much an opinion-related issue, and yet people are pushing their opinions like facts.

This is exactly what I'm talking about.

If you state your opinion without saying "imo", someone points out that you aren't speaking for everyone

[+Nik Louch Subscriber²]

I was agreeing, not arguing or pulling anyone up :)

[ArKeYa]

Neowin has changed.

[sanctified Veteran]

Fanboys, and the fact that lately Neowin's editorials encourage fanboy wars.

[Jason S. Global Moderator]

when i joined neowin, it was way more technical and nerdy than it is today. i joined so i could nerd out about hardware and overclocking. today, neowin seems to be about throwing around your political and religious opinions. there will be 100pgs on Mitt Romney and some abortion issue, but there will be 2 replies on someone's PC problem.

by far the biggest problem though are those who get off topic. it happens in every thread, and probably this one too. someone will post about a computer build, but 2pgs in, the thread turns into a childish "intel is better than amd" thread.

i havent read page 3 of this thread, but im sure it somehow turned into "why Mitt Romney is the best candidate"

[+Majesticmerc MVC]

I actually think that I post more now than I used to.

My main area of concern for the forums in the condescending and/or dismissive "tone" (so to speak) of some members. Particularly in:

• RWI (conflicting ideologies results in the inevitable flame war and personal insults)
  
• Domestic Politics (which is mainly full high quality posts such as "Obama ate a dog" and such),
  
• Windows 8 beta (most topics on which seem to rapidly descend into a chaos of people that dislike metro versus "learn to metro" fanboys)
  

... but also in other sections, an example being this thread in Programming, which in fairness to Greywolf did eventually get cleaned.

Incidentally, the RWI, DP and W8B sections are the parts of the forum that seem to get the most time on the spy/minispy, which could possibly make the forums appear quite hostile to less active members.

I personally think that promoting the more technical forums would be a good way to boost interest in the forums. Have a "hot topics" page or something that highlights the technical topics the mods/admins/MVCs find most interesting. Free stuff is great, but at the end of the day, you just end up with a forum full of lurkers that only post in the giveaway topics.

Perhaps a Neowin-wide "technical project" would be a good way to raise interest too (not that I'm volunteering), we used to have our own Linux distro, and the patcher (what was it called again?) that would give Neowin a big selling point, but now we don't have any of them (through no fault of our own). Perhaps coming up with some kind of community project would increase interest and/or participation?

[Detection]

I go through phases, I can get really into forums for a while, then I`ll find something else I'm spending 99% of my waking hours doing, then get bored with that and come back to forums and so on and so on

I've found over the past few years my motivation and attention span has decreased in a wide variety of things, always looking for new things to keep my adhd brain stimulated

[Steven P. Administrators]

stuff

We could ban OT threads from the minispy (but not the full spy).

[Hawk999]

My problem is that people jump down your throat the minute you don't agree with something. I understand it is a discussion board and that we are free to voice our opinions, but when something is posted that contradicts the general feel of a topic you are instantly wrong.

For example: a what would you change about Windows 8. If you say metro you are told that metro is here to stay, you can't do anything, it's far better than everything else, etc, etc. It is very hard to find someone who can accept your opinion and provide solid information besides "because I think so" to back it up. I admit I do that sometimes however I try and back up what I am saying with things that don't just apply to how I feel.

I also find many times that people who are not staff, and have no real pull, trying to run the forums. Telling you what you can and cannot post, telling you how to act and behave on the forums. These people then get mad when you don't listen to them. I feel like half of them are just trying to suck up to the Admins and Moderators and are actually worse than Admins and Moderators in the control aspect.

THIS!

And the fact that the OS customization community completely disappeared into oblivion. I miss those times.

Since linux can be customized more than windows I moved to Linux. Only to find that the Linux forums here on Neowin are almost free for all troll fest, where you can not have a free wheeling discussion about the subject at hand without getting trolled.

This while trolling is strictly moderated in the Windows and Browser forums, as it should be.

Again; yes I know this is Neowin but I do feel sometimes that alternatives to Windows are being pushed to the very margins of this website.

[Arceles]

Too many extreme product supporters, see Dot Matrix and Cia. I'm proud to say that in my entire internet life (17 years) the only person who has blocked me has been dot matrix :D

Edit: and the last was because I used his own words against him.... or rather, I quoted him.

[DirtyLarry Veteran]

Too many religious/anti-religious republican/democrat zealots on here now!

Bingo. I am still very active in the Gamers Hangout, at least try to be, the place is a ghost town now, but as far as other places in the site, I am not sure what the hell happened, but it has turned into some looney bin. So not my cup of tea.

I also asked several times over the years to be made a Supervisor, as I thought I had earned that right. Thing is I do not mingle with the other staff, never really have, never really will. I also do not do the whole IRC thing. I just would try to do right by the members. I seriously cannot even put a count on how many hours I have spent over MSN, or PM, or Steam, talking to members over the years. Easily 100's of hours. Whether it was trying to get things settled for them from a why they were a problem on the forums, or helping them with a personal matter in their life, I really cannot believe how much time I put into all of that. Thing is none of this is kept track of, and again, I do keep to myself. So this kind of really discouraged me as well to be honest. I realize it was all about politics, and not just about what you have done for the actual community. Especially once I saw the person you disagree with Meph, who I absolutely disagree with as well. How one can conduct themselves the way this person does to other members and then be made a Supervisor is literally and truly beyond me. Even if they have a good side, to have that bad side, yeah, that just does not make any sense at all to me either.

[derkim]

actually there a no really thing which is still not discussed in the past here. I'm not a lot active here because all what I want to know is still available here.

[Angel Blue01]

For me, it's because I have no interest in mobile devices or Apple products, and little interest in Windows 8.

[Luis Mazza]

Some points that I believe have driven the Forums down:

- I think that Google has pretty much all the information you may look for, so it makes General Forums a second choice: there are many focused sites for everything these days.

- There are a lot of "specialist" opinions on the web, which also makes the same ideas standard to a lot of people.

- Moderators are too strict. I have been warned about two or three times (ok, one of them I deserved because I told a religious idiot to toss the bible down his throat :angry: ) :laugh:

- The news take a long time to be published on Neowin... And the Forums could compensate for that, but lots of people, I believe, only get into the Forums using the log of recent activity. If the thread doesn't show up very often, then it dies.

I think there's a solution for the last item which is making the Forum's Recent Activity bigger, thus giving it more room and importance in the website structure.

:)

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

Bingo. I am still very active in the Gamers Hangout, at least try to be, the place is a ghost town now, but as far as other places in the site, I am not sure what the hell happened, but it has turned into some looney bin. So not my cup of tea.

I also asked several times over the years to be made a Supervisor, as I thought I had earned that right. Thing is I do not mingle with the other staff, never really have, never really will. I also do not do the whole IRC thing. I just would try to do right by the members. I seriously cannot even put a count on how many hours I have spent over MSN, or PM, or Steam, talking to members over the years. Easily 100's of hours. Whether it was trying to get things settled for them from a why they were a problem on the forums, or helping them with a personal matter in their life, I really cannot believe how much time I put into all of that. Thing is none of this is kept track of, and again, I do keep to myself. So this kind of really discouraged me as well to be honest. I realize it was all about politics, and not just about what you have done for the actual community. Especially once I saw the person you disagree with Meph, who I absolutely disagree with as well. How one can conduct themselves the way this person does to other members and then be made a Supervisor is literally and truly beyond me. Even if they have a good side, to have that bad side, yeah, that just does not make any sense at all to me either.

Careful with your criticism lest you want to be demoted. ;) I found myself demoted for calling out other staff in a staff area thread... I'm over it now (and know I have little chance to be made staff again), but at the time I thought I was treated rather unfairly.

[sudo]

-- Merge as many sub-forums as possible. This will ease navigation, give visibility to new topics, make it easier to choose where to post instead of spending minutes scratching your head figuring where to start a topic and then just give up.

-- Engage your community in decision processes (Moderators, MVCs, New FP writers), keep the final decision to the staff, but make the community part of it, this way the community feels like it's regulating itself, rather than being 'managed' from behind curtains.

-- Projects. A community has to have a purpose, or a few. Development projects, whatnot...

-- Give the community a slice of the front page cake. A weekly digest of the best tech discussions in the forums (which I believe you've started doing so lately to an extent), reach out to some of the most knowledgeable members of your community and ask them if they could write an extensive piece on a particular subject, have it on the FP and reward them accordingly... etc.

-- speaking of the front page, have your news team be on IRC around the clock. There are news tips being posted 24/7, interesting discussions and points of views the team can take into account while writing their articles, there's also instant feedback to newly published articles which the authors can react to immediately by amending their pieces accordingly. They don't have to be active on IRC, they just need to lurk, as do a few already (scorpus, JCalfs) even though they don't give credit to tipsters >.> .

-- Most of all, LISTEN to the community. You might have been doing so, but you've been doing it passively. You're running a business, let's be blunt. You have to take tough decisions instead of trying to please a few 'friends'. For instance, the community has said a certain person is not fit to be a supervisor, demote him to whatever he was, end of.

Edit: Also, I don't post that much, because... #neowin !

[LiGhTfast]

Reddit.

[ANON86364]

A few years ago I was fairly active in the Hardware Hangout but recently there is just less that I need to say that hasn't already been said. I don't really have any qualms with Neowin. I have spent a lot of my time in Domestic and Real World Issues, but that's mainly because there's less for me to say elsewhere. Also, I feel I can tone down the polarizing debates that often are riddled with "factual opinions" with some objectivity.

[Jason S. Global Moderator]

i agree w/ sudo too - merge some of the sub-forums. i love to help people with their overclocking, but these days, it doesnt need to be a sub-forum. there isnt enough traffic.

Also, can we stop the "rumors and speculations" threads? it seems like anyone can post a new thread as long as they use a question mark at the end. "is nvidia going to release a new gpu in 2 years?" "is apple releasing the iphone 14 in 2014?" :rolleyes:

[AJerman]

I voted for:

Flamewars, fanbois, constant personal attacks, The attitude of certain community members, and I have a life away from the internet.

For one, the childishness of a lot of members we have on here turns me away quite a bit. It's not really a Neowin thing as much as an Internet thing as a whole. I'm so sick and tired of everyone constantly having to argue just to argue. No matter what you say, someone has to argue with you or correct you about something. If you want to make a correction to be helpful, learn some tact and do so like an adult instead of trying to make people sound like a moron that shouldn't even be allowed to walk the same earth as you. This seems to be a big problem with the Internet as a whole now, but Neowin seems to have a higher population of younger members which makes it even worse. Don't get me wrong, I've been involved in several great discussions and debates on here, but half the time people want to argue with you then get offended if you defend your point.

But another big reason is the last one. I joined Neowin when I was in high school myself and had a lot of free time. Now days I work a full time job, balance relationships, and recently have been working on my new house. No offense to Neowin, I don't really use my computer at home for ANYTHING except to watch an occasional TV show, and even that's only a couple times a week (hopefully more once I can get moved into the new place and relax). I barely know why I even have a computer at home anymore. I get more than my fair share of time dealing with computers at work, haha.

[Charisma Veteran]

As others have touched on, the main reason I do not post as much as I otherwise would is all the flaming. I cannot even count all the times I started typing a new post or response, only to change my mind and delete it all because it's not worth the trouble. I once posted a pic of myself in a thread where it was relevant (not trying to be 'sexy' or anything like that, wasn't that kind of thread), and got all kinds of negative comments about it. If I bring up an alternate point of view, or try to find a compromise between two sides in an argument, I'm either insulted, dismissed, or most often, completely ignored.

Basically, I feel that the overall attitude here is negative and volatile, and I brace myself when making almost any kind of post--and you all should know I don't even post inflammatory types of things, I try to be level-headed and mature and intelligent in my posts--yet I still feel hesitant at times. I don't really feel like part of the community. I realise I am not exactly the target demographic for this forum (I guess? I'm certainly a minority at any rate), and that's fine, I don't intend to change that, but I do wish people were as open-minded, tolerant, intelligent, well-spoken, and just plain kind as a site of this purpose and reputation should foster. In general, people are such ###### on the internet. I wish this place was a bit different.

I of course do not mean everyone--I have met some great people here as well. I have respect for quite a few folks here and enjoy interacting with them. Unfortunately, though, it is far more common to see the opposite. As with most situations, the good average folks are generally quieter, and the loud extreme minority ruins it for everyone. I don't know, maybe I'm old now and jaded with the younger generation who was entirely raised on the internet and are used to this attitude everywhere, but it'd be great to see this be a fun, helpful, supportive, diverse community.

Edit: forgot my entire second point altogether, which was the quality of news articles, yeah. There seems to be a particular news reporter who goes for quantity over quality, and it really brings things down. There are also one or two veteran reporters who aren't working anymore and I wish they were, they always did a stellar job.

[tsupersonic]

The unprofessional journalism has gotten a lot worse. Many of the articles are high school grade (if not worse) with technical content lacking. The site is going downhill...

[Magoo]

I don't think I'm less active I think I've stayed around the same the whole time I've been here maybe even gotten a bit more active. and the community is so helpful when asked for help with problems that I have with my computers or when I ask opinions on what accessories I should buy for them and I really enjoy the desktop screenshots and workstation posts