The board is boring now

[superrific]

There are like maybe 8-10 threads that get much traffic, and they have 50-90 pages of posts. They have descended largely into pissing matches and there's not much intellectual content.

I've tried and failed to start interesting threads. I will try again, but apparently my threads don't interest people. That's fine. But someone who knows how needs to do it.

If this thread becomes a conversation starter, it will be ironic but damn, at least it will be something different than expressing our frustrations with politics a million different ways

 

[sringwal]

 

[superrific]

It's why people end up engaging with the dumbasses and trolls. We have few intellectual discussions.

 

[finesse]

Don't count on me. I'm more a counterpuncher.

 

[CharmCityTiger]

I used to come here multiple times a day and would post fairly frequently but now I seldom do. I appreciate what you are trying to do superiffic but for a lot of us it's just easier to not give a shit about current events anymore.

 

[Bobfripp]

Just wait a couple weeks, say around Jan 20th, and we'll likely start having lots to discuss, unfortunately.

 

[SnoopRob]

Part of it is where we're at in the political cycle. The period between elections and the installation of the newly-elected officials is generally a down period for political engagement. (Also, some of it may be folks are just depressed by the impending Trump 2.0 administration and aren't as interested in discussing politics.)

You're correct that part of it is a troll problem. When folks are predominantly responding to trolls rather than ignoring them, then the conversations become troll-level discussions.

And, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this kind of thing tends to happen to breakaway boards. The initial excitement about a new board turns to a bit of staleness which leads to reduced posting. It also doesn't help that you don't get new quality posters to help the board continue to be fresh.

 

[Charlotte1204]

I’m not surprised there’s a lull. This board was started during the heat of the election when there was a lot of talk about. My guess is things will pick back up towards the end of this month. Sigh.

I’m also grateful to Hawk and the others for starting it. Even though I am still on IC, I’m enjoying the basketball threads here.

 

[stankeylegjones]

You could help us out by not responding to trolls and getting into pissing contests with them. It would also help lessen the work for nyc of moving them to separate pissing-contest threads.

 

[superrific]

You could help us out by not responding to trolls and getting into pissing contests with them. It would also help lessen the work for nyc of moving them to separate pissing-contest threads.

I am very far from the worst pissing contest offender. I don't know why you are so antagonistic toward me. Most of what I see from you is some sort of personal attack, including your weird freak out about my popovich joke.

 

[stankeylegjones]

I am very far from the worst pissing contest offender. I don't know why you are so antagonistic toward me. Most of what I see from you is some sort of personal attack, including your weird freak out about my popovich joke.

I apologize for giving you the impression that I am attacking you. But I do grow tired of you complaining about actions of others which you are also doing.

 

[superrific]

Part of it is where we're at in the political cycle. The period between elections and the installation of the newly-elected officials is generally a down period for political engagement. (Also, some of it may be folks are just depressed by the impending Trump 2.0 administration and aren't as interested in discussing politics.)

You're correct that part of it is a troll problem. When folks are predominantly responding to trolls rather than ignoring them, then the conversations become troll-level discussions.

And, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this kind of thing tends to happen to breakaway boards. The initial excitement about a new board turns to a bit of staleness which leads to reduced posting. It also doesn't help that you don't get new quality posters to help the board continue to be fresh.

It's a chicken-and-egg problem, though. When people respond to trolls, it creates troll discussions. But the reason that people respond to trolls is that there's nothing else to talk about.

I think your first parenthetical plays a big part, and I don't know if it's going to correct itself. MAGA has become incredibly tiresome. Like, what else is there to say about it? And because it is vaccinated against the truth (the only thing it vaccinates against), there's no hope that speaking truth to power will mean anything. After a while, it's just the same old thing again and again until we blow ourselves up in Cybertrucks. Fortunately they sell poorly so the supply is limited.

So there's nothing interesting to be said about the day-to-day politics of the US right now. But there could be a lot of interesting discussions at a more abstract level.

I have no comments about "breakaway boards," except that it's unclear to me how much that's the case. Our recruiting problem isn't that we used to be affiliated with IC -- so many posters here were basically only reading or posting on ZZL -- but rather that we have no advertising. And that's probably for the best.

 

[superrific]

I apologize for giving you the impression that I am attacking you. But I do grow tired of you complaining about actions of others which you are also doing.

The point of my post wasn't to complain about others, so much as to call for new content. Yes, I did mention that as part of the diagnosis but it's not integral to what I was saying.

I do a lot to try to create interesting content. That I also sometimes argue with trolls when nothing else is going on doesn't really change that. Usually my argument is factually based and I try to incorporate more theoretical concerns rather than just doing a Monty Python argument sketch.

 

[SnoopRob]

It's a chicken-and-egg problem, though. When people respond to trolls, it creates troll discussions. But the reason that people respond to trolls is that there's nothing else to talk about.

While it is a bit of a chicken/egg problem, trolls and the responses to them are the driver of the problem.

You're correct that there's little else to talk about, but that's because this board has allowed the trolls to suck up all the oxygen.

I elected to make extensive use of the ignore function on here and on most threads I see a lot of threads with only about half as many posts as there should be and likely 80% of the posts I do see on active threads are replies to "You are ignoring content by this member. Show ignored content".

Yes, there would almost certainly be less posts overall if folks ignored the trolls, but the level of the discussion would be much, much better.

Troll posts are essentially the junk food of the message board world. And posters here have to make a choice, do you want to fill up on soda, Cheetos, and cookies or do you want to eat a healthy, nutritious meal? The problem this board has is that it, on the whole, chooses junk food about 90% of the time.

 

[nycfan]

Happy to turn it over to you guys and be on my way at this point.

 

[Mulberry Heel]

I’m not surprised there’s a lull. This board was started during the heat of the election when there was a lot of talk about. My guess is things will pick back up towards the end of this month. Sigh.

I’m also grateful to Hawk and the others for starting it. Even though I am still on IC, I’m enjoying the basketball threads here.

Agreed. I think when Trump takes office on January 20 and his agenda starts being implemented (say, against immigrants) then traffic here will pick up accordingly. If I remember correctly the IC ZZLP had lulls like this as well, especially around the holidays. Lots of people are traveling and not getting on message boards as much as they usually do. I think Dear Leader will end the lull here rather quickly right after he takes office.

 

[SnoopRob]

Happy to turn it over to you guys and be on my way at this point.

I want to be clear, this isn't a moderation problem. You and rock are doing a great job.

This is a macro-level poster problem.

The problem we have around here is that, on the whole, posters here are choosing the trolls over good discussion. Rock has given us all the tools we need to ignore and marginalize the trolls. And you do a great job of reminding us that we're better off ignoring the trolls and keeping the discussion on a good path.

As I said before, our collective problem is that we too often choose the junk food of trolls over the healthy meals of good discussion.

 

[nycfan]

I want to be clear, this isn't a moderation problem. You and rock are doing a great job.

This is a macro-level poster problem.

The problem we have around here is that, on the whole, posters here are choosing the trolls over good discussion. Rock has given us all the tools we need to ignore and marginalize the trolls. And you do a great job of reminding us that we're better off ignoring the trolls and keeping the discussion on a good path.

As I said before, our collective problem is that we too often choose the junk food of trolls over the healthy meals of good discussion.

I appreciate it but the lead the horse to water but cannot make them drink thing is tiresome.

 

[ZZLPHeels]

The problem with the political aspect of the board is that 90% of the posters are of the same mindset politically, so there isn’t much to discuss. “I agree with you” doesn’t generate a good back and forth. We need some non-troll conservative posters. If there is such a thing.

 

[UNCatTech]

You could help us out by not responding to trolls and getting into pissing contests with them. It would also help lessen the work for nyc of moving them to separate pissing-contest threads.

We could use AI to automatically start a pissing match thread to parallel each new thread.