What does the NLSC need?

by **benji** on Mon Oct 30, 2006 4:02 am

Not that anyone cares what I have to say, but a major problem that afflicts this forum and all others, and always has afflicted forums, is that a large number of people think of it as a "message board" instead of a "discussion forum."

Not only that, but there's an adverse reaction to real discussion as "message boarders" lament long posts and "arguments" all too often. When someone makes a detailed, if flawed analysis of the team they have a mancrush on, it's guaranteed someone will exclaim "wow, long post" when it's hardly a page long printed.

Of course, I'm more than likely as guilty at not fostering discussion as anyone. If not more so. Nevertheless, it does not stop me from posting in this thread to everyone's dismay.

One last note, "NLSC is dying" talk is obviously inaccurate and an overreaction. If one wanted to they could speak of "the end of an era" which in this case could be considered the end of the Third Era (or "Third Golden Age" if you enjoy such things) in NLSC Forum history.

by **Axel** on Mon Oct 30, 2006 6:13 am

Great post Tales, and I agree wholeheartedly. When I first came to these forums, I felt very intimiated despite having posted on numerous other forums for several years. People here aren't very welcoming to newcomers - that is actually one of the reasons I took nearly a months hiatus after my first two or three weeks here.

Many of the people you are referring to are gone from here now. I won't question their contributions to this place - many of them I don't have the right to comment on. Regardless, I think your assessment of their personalities is correct. You just have to work your way into being accepted here, and it can be hard, especially for someone who has never posted on the internet before.

I think this is a good time to change the way we treat newer people.

by **Jackie Kong** on Mon Oct 30, 2006 6:17 am

hmm, i don't know if it is possible but maybe we could add a limit of posts you need until you can start your own thread. It is annoying to see newbies posting dumb threads all the time.

by **Colin** on Mon Oct 30, 2006 7:15 am

Canada, eh? Where in this glorious country are you Tales?

by **Blasphemy** on Mon Oct 30, 2006 12:34 pm

Yea i think that some sort of contests could get more posting here and more fun. But I remember in the start of the summer there wasnt like anyone posting lol. (N)

Bluesky · by **Andrew** on Mon Oct 30, 2006 1:53 pm

benji wrote:Not that anyone cares what I have to say, but a major problem that afflicts this forum and all others, and always has afflicted forums, is that a large number of people think of it as a "message board" instead of a "discussion forum."

Not only that, but there's an adverse reaction to real discussion as "message boarders" lament long posts and "arguments" all too often. When someone makes a detailed, if flawed analysis of the team they have a mancrush on, it's guaranteed someone will exclaim "wow, long post" when it's hardly a page long printed.

Agreed, particularly on the message board/discussion forum comparison. All too often people seem to balk at anything over three or four sentences and "I can't be bothered reading all that" posts are more commonplace these days.

I suppose there's not much we can do about that since at the end of the day it's up to each individual poster to be interested enough to read long posts and feel motivated to discuss something rather than just post a comment. The best solution as I see it is for the people who are interested in discussions to persevere and debate each other. The presence of such threads should attract likeminded people and eventually other posters might become more interested in the idea of a discussion forum rather than a message board.

In regards to the new members issue, I can see how it's a problem but in all fairness it's not something that's exclusive to this forum. Many forums do have their own cliques and certain members are more prominent than others thus it may take a while for a new member to establish a presence; you can't expect to join a forum and immediately be accepted, liked and respected by everyone. I think it's also a case of patience wearing thin over time.

The approach of being a little more firm with new posters isn't one that's intended to be cruel; it's intended to help prevent them developing bad habits. Much of it depends on how a new member is behaving. If they're behaving poorly then it's only appropriate they're told that what they're doing won't be tolerated. On some issues we have had to adopt zero tolerance policies through situations getting out of hand.

That's not to say there isn't room for improvement and we certainly should be welcoming of new posters. But at the same time I feel we need to be firm but fair.

by **Laxation** on Mon Oct 30, 2006 5:01 pm

Andrew wrote:
benji wrote:Not that anyone cares what I have to say, but a major problem that afflicts this forum and all others, and always has afflicted forums, is that a large number of people think of it as a "message board" instead of a "discussion forum."

Not only that, but there's an adverse reaction to real discussion as "message boarders" lament long posts and "arguments" all too often. When someone makes a detailed, if flawed analysis of the team they have a mancrush on, it's guaranteed someone will exclaim "wow, long post" when it's hardly a page long printed.

Agreed, particularly on the message board/discussion forum comparison. All too often people seem to balk at anything over three or four sentences and "I can't be bothered reading all that" posts are more commonplace these days.

I suppose there's not much we can do about that since at the end of the day it's up to each individual poster to be interested enough to read long posts and feel motivated to discuss something rather than just post a comment.

Which brings us back to there being a lack of interesting topics... If the topics were interesting, then people would be more motivated to read them.

I dont see why people just dont start topics that interest them... If youre intersted in something, all you have to do is post about and theres a dam good chance someone else will be as well, thus a discussion is created

by **Zoom** on Mon Oct 30, 2006 7:52 pm

I just got to say that... I am a bit worried that if I reply or try to make a discussion out of something; I may get told that I am perhaps spamming or something. Basically, I think discussion is good as long the manner of it all is civil and calm.

by **cyanide** on Tue Oct 31, 2006 1:56 am

Zoom_24 wrote:I just got to say that... I am a bit worried that if I reply or try to make a discussion out of something; I may get told that I am perhaps spamming or something. Basically, I think discussion is good as long the manner of it all is civil and calm.

I don't think forum members should be passive about creating a new discussion. I know some people would try to kill a thread but for those who are interested in the thread, that's what matters more. If there's no interest, then the thread will just stop and move down and forgotten. No biggie, it happens all the time.

by **Mentally Hilarious** on Tue Oct 31, 2006 5:25 am

I haven't gone through the whole topic, but it is indeed an interesting one. I have worked with and together with forumbased communities for seven or so years now, so I have some ground to stand on when it comes to communities and how they work.

The biggest strength that the NLSC has is that is one of the very, very, very, very few communities (internet or IRL) that breaks the 90-9-1 rule. 90 percent are passive watchers, 9 percent are passive contributors and 1 percent are active contributors. Here, that scale is very "twisted" in a good way. That's a solid foundation to build on.

Some of the weaknesses are the majority of users that seem to hate punctuation and legible typing. The NBA Live-crappiness-debacle and the loss of a some very noticeable members. Neither of these factors are within reach to influence from, say, Andrews side. But you can take measures to try and minimize the "damage" so to speak. There are many mods out the in the phpBB-community that checks for different types of language checks, suck as fourteen exclamation points in a row. You could expand some forums to encompass 2k7 to a bigger degree, or maybe find a niche towards Grey Dog Softwares NBA-sim Total Pro Basketball. The point being that if EA fucks up, you find different ways of keeping the community interested. Maybe a few leagues of different variations even.

Loosing influential members are always hard, especially when they are as noticeable as Jae and Matthew. But no matter how good a poster you loose - others will step up.

What I would do is invest a lot of time and energy into transforming the forums, new graphics, new mods/hacks for phpBB and new sub-forums and the such. A total reconstruction and maybe even thinking over if you only want to focus on NBA Live. Maybe start building the changes now and going for phpBB3? Or change to vBulletin or any other forum software (as long as it is not YaBB...

)

Well, that's my thoughts on the situation. Now I will go away and stop bothering you in this thread. Lurk ahoy!

by **benji** on Tue Oct 31, 2006 6:48 am

Mentally Hilarious wrote:The biggest strength that the NLSC has is that is one of the very, very, very, very few communities (internet or IRL) that breaks the 90-9-1 rule. 90 percent are passive watchers, 9 percent are passive contributors and 1 percent are active contributors. Here, that scale is very "twisted" in a good way. That's a solid foundation to build on.

I think one should look at the facts before making statements.

Five posters have 10% of all posts, 25 posters have 24.5% of all posts, 69 posters have 2000+ posts or 0.37% of all posters, 143 have 1000+ or 0.77%. You have to lower the "active" threshold to 650 posts just to break 1% of all posters.

Andrew would need to provide the real numbers, but alexa seems to indicate that the NLSC gets roughly 225,000-300,000 users a month. Even on the low end of that scale, only 8.3% of users are also forum members. Assuming 1000+ posts for an "active" member, 0.064% of NLSC users are active.

Other Random Statistics
Per Day Post Growth Rate:
Dec 2, 2003-May 16, 2005: 0.38%
May 16, 2005-Oct 2, 2005: 0.24%
Oct 2, 2005-Feb 4, 2006: 0.20%
Feb 4, 2006-Oct 30, 2006: 0.13%

Dec 2, 2003-Oct 2, 2005: 0.45%
Oct 2, 2005-Oct 30, 2006: 0.17%

Per Day Member Growth Rate:
Jan 2, 2005-Oct 2, 2005: 0.16%
Oct 2, 2005-Oct 30, 2006: 0.22%

If the Dec 2003-May 2005 growth rate had persisted there would be 1.365 million posts today. The May-Oct 2005 rate would have resulted in 854,635 posts, while Oct-Feb rate 766,605.

Members are currently growing faster than posts, on Oct 2, 2005 there were 40.04 posts per member, now there is 36.22.

If the present rates continue, one can forecast 1.477 million posts and 60,719 members in two years, the rate of posts per user falling to 24.3. With Andrew at 33,973 posts, 2.3% of the total. He would need to increase to 37.28 posts per day to keep his present percentage of total posts.

Bluesky · by **Andrew** on Tue Oct 31, 2006 10:07 am

Great post with some great ideas to work with, MH. I definitely appreciate the suggestions.

by **Mentally Hilarious** on Tue Oct 31, 2006 10:08 am

benji wrote:
Mentally Hilarious wrote:The biggest strength that the NLSC has is that is one of the very, very, very, very few communities (internet or IRL) that breaks the 90-9-1 rule. 90 percent are passive watchers, 9 percent are passive contributors and 1 percent are active contributors. Here, that scale is very "twisted" in a good way. That's a solid foundation to build on.

I think one should look at the facts before making statements.

Five posters have 10% of all posts, 25 posters have 24.5% of all posts, 69 posters have 2000+ posts or 0.37% of all posters, 143 have 1000+ or 0.77%. You have to lower the "active" threshold to 650 posts just to break 1% of all posters.

Andrew would need to provide the real numbers, but alexa seems to indicate that the NLSC gets roughly 225,000-300,000 users a month. Even on the low end of that scale, only 8.3% of users are also forum members. Assuming 1000+ posts for an "active" member, 0.064% of NLSC users are active.

Other Random Statistics
Per Day Post Growth Rate:
Dec 2, 2003-May 16, 2005: 0.38%
May 16, 2005-Oct 2, 2005: 0.24%
Oct 2, 2005-Feb 4, 2006: 0.20%
Feb 4, 2006-Oct 30, 2006: 0.13%

Dec 2, 2003-Oct 2, 2005: 0.45%
Oct 2, 2005-Oct 30, 2006: 0.17%

Per Day Member Growth Rate:
Jan 2, 2005-Oct 2, 2005: 0.16%
Oct 2, 2005-Oct 30, 2006: 0.22%

If the Dec 2003-May 2005 growth rate had persisted there would be 1.365 million posts today. The May-Oct 2005 rate would have resulted in 854,635 posts, while Oct-Feb rate 766,605.

Members are currently growing faster than posts, on Oct 2, 2005 there were 40.04 posts per member, now there is 36.22.

If the present rates continue, one can forecast 1.477 million posts and 60,719 members in two years, the rate of posts per user falling to 24.3. With Andrew at 33,973 posts, 2.3% of the total. He would need to increase to 37.28 posts per day to keep his present percentage of total posts.

I didn't break it down that in-depth, but you never change the 90-part of the 90-9-1 rule. It's usually the 9 and 1 that changes. And I think you're using the wrong definition of contributors and/or passive and active. The active contributors would be the patchers, photoshoppers and dynasty-writers since they actively add to the cumulative pull of the forum. But it could just as well be people with buttloads of posts or maybe even those that post a little, but contribute a lot. Basing this on pure quantitative factors in a community such as this is rather narrow when trying to judge it's strengths and/or weaknesses. These things can (in my opinion that is) never be purely judged on numbers, and should rather be a qualitative and dynamic sense of the profile of any given forum.

by **Nick** on Tue Oct 31, 2006 10:34 am

I think Tales brings up a good point about the veteren "edge" attitude vs moronic people improving over time. I think that's totally true. Think about it like an NBA team. Detroit Pistons is probably the best example. They have some great vet players who can still dance which still makes Detroit a great team, but Sheed is getting past his prime, Ben Wallace has left, Billups isn't getting any younger, they don't play their rookies much at all and don't have enough patience with their youth influx i.e. Darko. The bench is made of mostly vets which leaves no room for the youth to improve.

NLSC is similar. Over the years we never really accepted or sympathized with new/moronic/inexperienced posters, which has most likely contributed to the sort of position we're in now. That's why i think Tales brings up a good point of improving over time, if the more prominant members give them more of a chance, they might actually be a good poster eventually. Something i can't say i'm not guilty of actually.

I don't know about you guys but i know when i first started posting i was a moron. I remember Ben following me around and pointing our every single moronic thing that i said and had a sarcastic remark for every single one of my posts. :lol:

Which WERE moronic let me tell you. But vet posters such David and Tales were accepting and nice, which got me through my n00b moronic phase and made me realise a lot of things and turned me into a decent poster. There a more examples too. I know Jackal was a bit of a cock sucker when he first joined. :lol:

Can't think of many more off the top of my head. Same probably applied to Riot.

Who knows how many moron posters we've shut down that could've turned into something decent down the road?

MH brings up a point that i agree with aswell,

no matter how good a poster you loose - others will step up.

I think this is true aswell. Obviously Jae's and Matthew's shoes are not going to be exactly filled in a hurry. But I think it applies for us anyway.

(Also i don't see the problem with Tales bringing up Jae and Matthew for his example. I think he had a good point and it's not like he was bagging them, but just justifying his post.)

by **Jackal** on Tue Oct 31, 2006 10:35 am

I was enough of a cocksucker to learn the ropes, then I got nasty...

Most new people don't even bother doing that much these days.

by **cyanide** on Tue Oct 31, 2006 10:58 am

Nick wrote:Who knows how many moron posters we've shut down that could've turned into something decent down the road?

Easy. Those who are still here.

I'm sure there's a bunch of people that went through a n00b stage that has improved. Keepitgangsta1 is one guy that comes to mind. Regardless, a lot of people get warnings and if they build on that warning, then they survive. I mean, CoolMac lasted forever before someone found a reason to ban him.

by **KIG1** on Tue Oct 31, 2006 11:02 am

I remember when I was a young poster, you guys almost banned me, and now I have 2600 posts.

by **JohnnyLi** on Tue Oct 31, 2006 11:13 am

Mentally Hilarious wrote:What I would do is invest a lot of time and energy into transforming the forums, new graphics, new mods/hacks for phpBB and new sub-forums and the such. A total reconstruction and maybe even thinking over if you only want to focus on NBA Live. Maybe start building the changes now and going for phpBB3? Or change to vBulletin or any other forum software (as long as it is not YaBB... )

I could try and help with this stuff (designing, installing) if you guys are going to use new forum software and want me to help. Waiting to go phpBB3 probably isn't the best idea though...vBulletin or Invision Board would be the best choices for the new software IMO. I don't know where we're going to get the money for them though...

by **Zoom** on Tue Oct 31, 2006 11:18 am

I could try and help with this stuff (designing, installing) if you guys are going to use new forum software and want me to help. Waiting to go phpBB3 probably isn't the best idea though...vBulletin or Invision Board would be the best choices for the new software IMO. I don't know where we're going to get the money for them though...

Do you guys think that NLSC would ever start charging for memberships?

by **JohnnyLi** on Tue Oct 31, 2006 11:29 am

No way, that is the day another good NBA Live community would form...

by **BIG GREEN** on Tue Oct 31, 2006 12:02 pm

Zoom_24 wrote:
I could try and help with this stuff (designing, installing) if you guys are going to use new forum software and want me to help. Waiting to go phpBB3 probably isn't the best idea though...vBulletin or Invision Board would be the best choices for the new software IMO. I don't know where we're going to get the money for them though...

Do you guys think that NLSC would ever start charging for memberships?

Whoever said there weren't any silly questions missed your post.

by **Axel** on Tue Oct 31, 2006 12:29 pm

I have a few suggestions along the same lines that MH posted, based on changes that have happened at other boards I post on.

1.) Forum color schemes and fonts
2.) Alternating signature banners (with options for up to 5 different signatures, different each time the page is refreshed).
3.) New emotes added
4.) "Games" form - aka goof off (like we dont do enough of that)
5.) Mod for Xfire to be displayed in signature

Just a few suggestions.

by **Laxation** on Tue Oct 31, 2006 2:04 pm

Nick wrote:Who knows how many moron posters we've shut down that could've turned into something decent down the road?

I wonder if dsmballman and meloboy15 would have ever been decent members... :lol:

...or even that kapono fella

by **Nick** on Tue Oct 31, 2006 6:56 pm

Ok, yeah, some people are just naturally retarded. :lol:

Maybe a forum makeover IS necesary? (I still don't fucking know how to spell that). Something that appeals more to the "market" of people with a non-retarded intellect in an attempt to both scare the retards away and lure in some non-retards.

by **Jackal** on Tue Oct 31, 2006 7:26 pm

I don't know how a cosmetic makeover is going to help bring intelligent posters or bring much of a change besides the obvious cosmetic looks. Besides, what's wrong with the current one? Does it look stupid? Is that why we have stupid posters? Nah, I don't think the looks have anything even remotely close to do with the way the forum is.

What does the NLSC need?

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