OT Brainstorming: How do we get this place jumping again?

I've been wanting to do this thread for a long time.

Long time OTers remember when this place used to be buzzing! Nowadays, there's always threads on my first page with replies from a couple days ago. Most of the time, the active threads are just political.

I know a lot of it has to do with the current condition of the main site and its turnover rate. A lot of people just went elsewhere. Do we have enough regulars still here that just became lurkers? If so, how do we get them active again?

There was a period where I tried to make a new thread every day, but it if it wasn't political in nature, it fell off pretty quickly. Would thread creators who always post about politics be willing to post about other things as well?

Seriously guys, I'd love to see this place (not just this board, but all of GS boards in general. GGD is so dead) active again. I spent so much time here.

Blame reddit and social media.

Hey, I felt the same way when online forums (and P2P sharing) killed usenet. As they say, "there ain't no turning back the march of progress" or whatever.

True. It's become a lot easier it seems to discuss stuff elsewhere. Still, I go all the way back to at least 97-98, so I would just hate seeing forms become a thing of the past.

The way to get things going again is having a more elevated level of discussion. When the board is full of bad arguments with faulty logic, it's no wonder people don't post here any longer. But, that's not surprising.

I'm not sure about the layout, because all I post from is my iPhone these days.

I have been thinking about the same recently... maybe even a week ago...
"Why there is so much less of people posting here... ?????"

I remember the times.. yes.. I had to check GameSpot OT Forums like every few minutes... it was really active here. |
So many people would reply anytime... all the time.
Hm, Maybe I will try to post a new Topic, at least once a few days If I have a good idea. And will see how it will go.

It's good for the people.. and it's good for the website.

I wish for the same really... I feel comfortable in here :P Gamespot was the shiiiiz back in the day.

Not so much Reddit.

But agree , most people get their frustrations out or talk with like minded on facebook or twitter

Also the redesign of Gamespot did cause a lot of people to flee to NeoGaf.

I'm about ready to give up on Gamespot altogether now. I rarely come around anymore and when I do, it's the same threads I've been seeing for the past 4 years.

I guess that makes the staff here happy, they just wanted more comment abuse... I mean traffic, and couldn't give two shits about the community they had right here begging for a working forum.

I remember when even the individual game boards saw a lot of traffic. It became harder to navigate. Haven't checked a game's forum in years.

This is a wake up call to make new threads.

I would say stop making the idiotic political topics, but that might actually kill whatever life--however despicable and worthless it might be--OT has left.

Idunno tbh...I think if I knew of a site that was like the old Gamespot I'd probably be there tbh. I still like Games Discussion when it's not spam, PC forum is dead but still has good topics once a month (sad), and I feel I've been forced to System Wars just to be able to post.

Anyone have any site recommendations? This is literally the only forum I post on.

*man a lot of "old timers" in here. @JustPlainLucas you were here in the late 90's? Crazy @foxhound_fox yeah I hardly ever see you around :(

The site redesign killed OT. Honestly, I would post topics, but since there's hardly anyone here anymore I don't see the point in doing it.

I don't even know why I come here anymore, force of habit I guess.

The otcar awards will bring us into a new age for the forum

It's frustrating when the site makes changes that the users want. I wish everyone could have just stayed and stuck through the reformatting, because I think it's the people that drive the community, not the features. Although, I think the biggest blow GS did to the community was getting rid of the UCBs. And, you're one of the oldest around, so I'd hate to see you go.

Yeah, I think that would be cutting off the nose to spite the face. If we could just encourage people to make different kinds of threads, it would help to dilute the political ones. Yup, I was around back when the site let you change your name at will, so I was always changing my name trying to settle on the perfect one. I didn't settle on this name until earlly in the 2000s.

Yeah, that was the biggest nail in the coffin. Now, it's up to us to have the will and put the effort in to change what's left. You post good topics, and I'll try to post in them! :)

I miss the OTcars. I haven't been that active lately, so I don't even remember the last time I was nominated for anything. I remember I always used to win Best Journal for some reason, though. Haha.

We need some nachos. That'll bring em.

We could try to toss the servers onto a trampoline and have them bounce that way.

That ought to make this place "jumping".

I don't get how Reddit got so popular, you have to wait for some period to make another post but often 90% of my posts get lost in the sea anyway. It's funny if someone forgets to tag their post and it can be something completely innocent anyway without any real reason to tag it but you get lots of posts like "I got fired while looking at this post, tag your shit".

Hi JPL, I know how you feel....it really was a special time. But, Wofle said "You Can't Go Home Again" and the older I get the truer it becomes...too bad !

Reminds me of post parties. We used to post all sorts of food pics. Do people still have post parties?

Puns. I like it!

I tried Reddit a long time ago. Just wasn't my thing.

Maybe we should just make a new home!

So tired of Trump threads now, I'm not coming on here much anymore.

Sex and violence.

The color blue.

More people with "3" in their username, because they run this place.

Merge OT with the Sports forum then spin the politics stuff into their own forum. It should improve the "atmosphere" of this place, at least.

Yes, I contributed a few posts of my own to the politics stuff, but only to provide a different perspective without emotive bias and with historical context. I actually hate politics and politicians; my real passion is History. Would be nice to come here and not see so many politics this and Trump that threads for change.

And yes, in case you haven't noticed, I am actively trying to do my part with that.

Same here.

The site redesign hurt a lot more than OT, but OT was still much bigger and better after the redesign than it currently is so I can't completely blame it. The constant rule changes after the redesign didn't help anything either. There is no 1 or even 2 things that killed OT, it's a combination of a ton of things. Forum redesign, active users being banned, shift towards social media, poor subject matter, etc. We may never really know.

Honestly make politics into one thread and allow more room on talk on religion and philosophy.

When a user makes a thread about Rogue One and it immediately descends into right wing racial rants, it's generally not the best sign in the world.

I disagree. Back when this place was "jumping" the moderations were loose as hell and people went crazy over account suicide threads. I think what you're failing to consider is that people who want intelligent highbrow discussion aren't really coming to Gamespot for that shit. Same way that most gamers aren't really expecting intelligent highbrow stuff from their games. Granted, intelligent highbrow stuff might be a bonus as long as the core remains FUN.

In that same way, it's sort of FUN to have a community where there's enough intelligence to not make everyone feel stupid for visiting, while at the same time allowing enough utter stupidity to let everyone have fun just mocking and ridiculing the dumbasses.

That's not to say that there should be an "anything goes" mentality. But as far as ENTERTAINING threads go, some of my favorites revolved around people being absolutely stupid and lowbrow as shit. Either the original poster said something stupid and I was entertained at watching the smart people wail on him, or the original poster's comments were entertaining as hell despite being stupid.

Granted, that's not to say that that is BETTER than what we have now. But I think it would make the place a lot more "jumping". If Gamespot want to make this the place for "elevated" discussion, then that's fine. I just get the impression that most people who want "elevated" discussion aren't really tuning into a freaking video game forum to get it.

EDIT: Or look at it this way. Let's pretend that "site traffic" is analogous to "movie ticket sales". The snooty highbrow "elevated" movies might be "better", but they aren't pulling in the same dollars as big budget superhero movies. If traffic is what you want, then "elevating" the discussions can easily work against that. Why? Because I don't recall if anyone remembers, but back in the glory days of the Gamespot forums, the majority of discussions were stupid as shit. Same way that your standard superhero movie is stupid as shit. The thing is, it has to be JUST smart enough to allow the smart and "elevated" people to get down in the dumps with the idiots while still feeling like they're getting something out of it. I'm not expecting "elevated" filmmaking when I go watch a Marvel movie, I'm expecting a dumb and FUN movie that's just smart enough to not make me feel like a total idiot for having wasted my time on it. In the same way, my number one expectation for discussion on a freaking videogame forum was never "elevated" discussion. I was expecting "dumb" discussion and "fun" discussion, with just enough smart comments to not make me feel like a total idiot for even bothering to waste my time on the site.

by stopping saying OT in off topic forum. We no its off topic that's why its in off topic forum.

@uninspiredcup:

Holy crap, I went to check it out just to see if you were telling the truth. F***ing Hell, I hate this decade so much. I swear, even though I can't pinpoint it exactly, I feel like it all started to go to pear-shaped pile of sperm whale s*** right around 2012, and only got worse since. Maybe the Mayans were right; the world did end in 2012 and we're all in Hell, and we're just too stupid to know it.

Er, sorry for the rant.

A small forum is an easy to moderate forum. Some actually prefer to keep a tight ship, limiting discussions to just clean topics. I can site a few examples but one of them is PCpitstop which was/is mainly a computer help forum mostly started out of helping users with malware. The site got hugely popular way back in the early 2000's and was a fun forum but the mods banned most everyone and now they might have a dozen threads per week, usually boring stuff but as the mods said, they prefer it that way as it makes moderation easy and keeps the site on focus to just general computer help. To which I argued that more members = more valuable help since the few there don't know much outside of generic help. "reboot with F8" kind of help. lol

There are quite a few forums I used to enjoy that are now like that. I would like Reddit if it were not so limiting on posts but maybe you have to have so many before you're released?

Already forgotten, have a nice day.

@mrbojangles25:Hey man, when there is little to no motivation to come back, I can't just force myself to keep opening the tab every day. Do I have you on Steam? Add me (Zeviander).

@JustPlainLucas: I don't want to leave. I used to look forward to coming here everyday, to see everyone and talk about everything under the Sun. Now, it's pretty much, I open the forum tab, open a SW, OT, GD page, look at the topics, then close the OT and GD page, respond to 2-3 threads in SW, then go to one of my other sites.

UCB's were why this place was so popular. People had the ability to create focused communities within a larger community and talk about literally everything they could ever want. Then GS decided, they didn't want people talking about anything they wanted, and only wanted to concern themselves with ad revenue generated by page views in comment sections on their "news" articles (which was pretty much site staff sitting in System Wars waiting for posters to give them content to post on the front page).

The funniest thing in the world though, is that before the site revamp, I was getting moderations left, right and centre. I probably had a good 80 moderations over the course of what was essentially 5 years. Tons of suspensions and spent a good portion of four years stuck at Level 63. Now, since the revamp, since the crackdown after the unfortunately short-lived "anything goes" era, I haven't got a single fucking mod. I post exactly the same as I did before, I still cleverly insult stupid people, and yet I haven't been hit with anything.

Blows my mind. I was fully anticipating (before the revamp) that I had at most 6-12 months left on the site before a banning. Yet here I am with a clean moderation history and no desire to come back most days.

We have worked very hard to change the moderation system and how we handle mod worthy posts. I must say if you have no desire to come back most days, this new system we use is quite effective. :P

Is it obvious that I am joking? Because it hard to tell when it is all written text.

Man every so often this thread comes up.......even back in the day. Social media changed a lot of things for forums with the end result being less traffic in forums.

As for the format change.....OT was already slowing. Changes were made at the request of users. And those same users didn't like the outcome. And banned users were reinstated. Which did nothing for the site anyway.

As for moderations.....this site was MUCH busier when moderations were much stricter and with more bannings.

If you post in SW try to encourage other users there to stop in here as well. It's the only busy site here now.

Getting rid of political thread will only slow the forum more. If you don't like them make some new threads. They may catch on.

I've been making some very juicy and inflammatory posts, but it doesnt seem to keep up the excitement.

OT is still the only place were I like to talk about something that isn't video games all the damn time. 2013 Revamp truly hurt not just OT but the whole Gamespot as well. GS lost like thousands of good members and they didn't like the revamp and it was very clear to me Staff didn't give a damn, one way or another. Gamespot is the only gaming site I come to and if for some reasons GS shuts down, I'm totally done with all gaming sites for good. I know post way more so in Google+ cause I love social activity that goes on there but I still love to come here in OT. If anything, the Sports Bar is way deader then any forums I seen around here.

I'm also getting sick and tired of Hillary/Trump/Political threads, I'm NOT into political stuff but I hate to see them go away here cause it'll hurt OT forum even more so and if you hate'em, don't go to them. That's what I usually do.

It wasn't because of strict moderations that this site was busy. It was because Gamespot was the only real place on the internet people could go for large community discussion of video games with features like UCB's and unions. Other places like IGN were shit and other places like NeoGAF were run by mods so up tight, they could make diamonds out of coal in their butt cheeks.

Bannings don't help create prosperous, positive communities. They help root out spam bots, caustic/toxic individuals (who don't really last long after signing up anyways) and just genuinely negative people. There are many users, who I've genuinely enjoyed talking to over the years here, that were banned for incredibly fucking petty reasons and I never saw again.

Strict rules killed this site, slowly and surely, and turning around and going exactly the opposite with the rules was what landed the killing blow. The staff needed to lay up on the petty moderations for shit like "trolling" in System Wars, and focus merely on pushing the human garbage out of the community.

The revamp pushed tons of good users out of the community here and was why pretty much every board except System Wars is now dead and buried.

Those that came before me, why did GS staff got rid of UCB's and unions? Was there a legit reason why they did it?

I didn't say the moderations were the reason the site was busy. I was refuting those that said moderations were the reason it wasn't busy. Big difference.

And having a lot of trolls doesn't create a prosperous positive community either. In fact when the moderations were practically nonexistent is when th site starting losing users. So there is something to be said for not allowing some of the crap here that you see on youtube comments etc.

No the strict rules did NOT kill the site. I was here both before and after the change. And the lessening is when the site started to lose traffic. A lot of people didn't like what the site became.

As for the revamp....eh. Not really a difference unless you were only coming for UCBs but then you didn't post in the forums much either. It's the changing of social media that erodes forums. Not just this one. Not to say some aren't still busy but that is the biggest difference.

The only logical reason was because they wanted to kill the forums.

@MrGeezer: I agree 100%. But the thing is...it's quite obvious to any observer that the site traffic has gone down. The question is...is what can we do about it?? The way to solve the problem is getting to the root of the problem, whatever it may be. We have to ask questions....like why. Why is this happening, and what can we do to make it better.

bring back a ranking / awards system and offer points for good topic creation.

Five years ago there was a ton of these types of threads, and people would just complain about them all the time, same as people do political threads now.

Changing what kinds of threads show up isn't going to help when there's barely anyone here in the first place.

I think they wanted to tunnel traffic back to the main forums

Social media has heavily affected other forums I visit. I'm betting it is mostly that, and rules only playing a smaller part I think.

Bring back OTAH.Merge OTAH with OT (a single sticky).PROFIT with new users and activity ?

I'm not sure how good your memory is, but I remember the site losing users on a constant basis since I started coming here. Most of the good ones through bannings for building up enough moderations for "trolling" or "disruptive posting" for posting things as simple as an emoji as a response.

The rules got significantly stricter before they got lax, and that eliminated a large quantity of people (especially in System Wars).

The strict rules slowly but surely killed the site. It annoyed users who were just posting for fun, and made them not want to come back. All the good users were leaving, leaving only the true trolls and toxic people behind. Now, with most of the toxic people eliminated, it's just the useless trolls drumming up discussion through fishing for reactions.

Since the revamp, I haven't spent more than an hour or two on the site. I used to sit down in the morning some days on the weekend, and post all day long in the constant flow of interesting, constructive threads in multiple boards and unions. You are absolutely deluded if you think the stricter rules and/or the revamp improved the site in any way.

They didn't give a shit about the main forums. All they cared about was the comment section on the main page. Everyone on the forums used AdBlock. People in the comment sections wouldn't, and it generated a lot of ad revenue for the site.

Despite them using volunteer moderators to keep the forums in check, all they cared about was money in the end.

The "response" from GS Staff during the revamp change-over convinced me they did all of this because of money from ad revenue. Even the forums themselves didn't get most of the features they have now for at least 1-2 years after the switch. Their proclaimed reasoning was they wanted to have more "stable" forums, yet, there was a 6 month period after the switch where there was more page failures and coding errors than ever before.

Isn't ad revenue usually linked to unique visitors? A 100 users that frequent the forums won't really generate much revenue to them without ad block anyway.

I have no idea. I was under the impression that a loaded page counted as one ad hit. It's why all those clickbait articles these days make you constantly load a new page for each point on their "top-10" list.