ZZLP/ZZL & Topics & Financials

[superrific]

*MOD NOTE* I merged superrifics thread with the one I created but forgot it wouldn't keep my post on top so scroll down to post #19 to see the post I intended to be here but am too tired to untangle this or figure out how to move my post to the top because its 3AM.
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I'm OK with there being non-politics stuff on the board. For one thing, I've long thought the attempt to segregate politics and non-politics is an impossible task. Second, it's a board, and we get to make our own rules.

But let's not get carried away, hey? We all came here from the ZZLP, not the ZZL. A bit of ZZL stuff -- i.e. Wordle, Nothing thread, etc -- is fine, but remember that the ZZLP had high quality discussions in part because the front page wasn't full of empty threads about nothing.

We don't have a lot of traffic at the moment. There's no real cost to having a Wordle thread. Let's just keep those threads relatively contained, so as to not crowd the rest of the content that most people are here for.

Obviously it's not my call to make, but that's my two cents.

 

[farce©]

I think a board more like the original ZZL before the split is preferable.

 

[hedge]

I kinda agree with super. Can we have a ZZL/ZZLP (or whatever we care to call them in here) split on the main forums board like they had at IC? Maybe even a hoops and football board split as well. Seems like it would be cleaner that way. Just a thought...

 

[hedge]

I actually liked knowing that when I clicked on the politics board, I'd see threads about politics, and when I clicked on the ZZL board, I'd see threads about whatever general shit anybody wanted to talk about. Ditto the hoops and football boards. It's kinda nice knowing what you're gonna get when you click on a certain board...

 

[grimes70]

I informed @Rock that this software has an "ignore thread" function. So if someone posts a golf thread and you have no interest then you can hit the ignore button and never see it again unless you toggle back in preferences.

I'm sure Rock has many pressing issues though.

 

[HeelInTheOzarks]

I kinda agree with maybe a split of 3 sub-boards
Politics
Sports
Other stuff

I agree that not having everything crowded into one forum makes it easier to follow. But I also think that with as many people as will be posting here much more than anywhere else, many of us will want to discuss non-political things with the same community of posters.

 

[grimes70]

I actually liked knowing that when I clicked on the politics board, I'd see threads about politics, and when I clicked on the ZZL board, I'd see threads about whatever general shit anybody wanted to talk about. Ditto the hoops and football boards. It's kinda nice knowing what you're gonna get when you click on a certain board...

I agree. But more work for @Rock. I am one willing to help with costs however it is done.

 

[hedge]

I'm totally willing (and glad) to chip in as well..

 

[mpaer]

I agree. But more work for @Rock. I am one willing to help with costs however it is done.

Oh yea Me too

 

[Rock]

Acknowledged. Reply incoming...

 

[WaynetheDrain]

I kinda agree with maybe a split of 3 sub-boards
Politics
Sports
Other stuff

I agree that not having everything crowded into one forum makes it easier to follow. But I also think that with as many people as will be posting here much more than anywhere else, many of us will want to discuss non-political things with the same community of posters.

I agree. I like being able to have posting on subjects other than politics. My only ask is that there is some structure to it because it does get confusing sifting through everything.

 

[farce©]

I guess don’t have a problem if we choose to subdivide threads into sub-boards. I just don’t understand why.

My concern, and it was borne out when the ZZL split off politics to a separate board, is having a politics-only board makes things more polarizing. When it’s all politics the divisions run deeper. When it’s all together you sometimes find common ground on a music or travel thread with same people you disagreed with on a political thread. It helps humanize that poster you were arguing with earlier and you might be less pointed the next time you are arguing politics.

Also, a single board erases the line between political and “non political” threads. Say there is a sports thread and the legislature attempting to pass a bill forcing UNC to play App St and ECU is brought up and the thread takes a political turn. Does that thread then have to move to the political board? How is that moderated?

Most of us opposed the ZZL board split. Why do we want to come here and replicate that? The line between politics and other subjects isn’t that clear. Separating them on IC didn’t work out so why try?

 

[wmheel1287]

I disagree. The ZZL before the split was vastly superior in quality of conversation and engagement on both political and nonpolitical topics than the split boards combined.

 

[HeelInTheOzarks]

I guess don’t have a problem if we choose to subdivide threads into sub-boards. I just don’t understand why.

My concern, and it was borne out when the ZZL split off politics to a separate board, is having a politics-only board makes things more polarizing. When it’s all politics the divisions run deeper. When it’s all together you sometimes find common ground on a music or travel thread with same people you disagreed with on a political thread. It helps humanize that poster you were arguing with earlier and you might be less pointed the next time you are arguing politics.

Also, a single board erases the line between political and “non political” threads. Say there is a sports thread and the legislature attempting to pass a bill forcing UNC to play App St and ECU is brought up and the thread takes a political turn. Does that thread then have to move to the political board? How is that moderated?

Most of us opposed the ZZL board split. Why do we want to come here and replicate that? The line between politics and other subjects isn’t that clear. Separating them on IC didn’t work out so why try?

Fair points

I guess it's just personal preference on how people want things organized. But the OP was talking about not wanting to have non-political threads. Just curious what the majority opinion would be on the spectrum between "politics only" or "any topics but organized" or "free for all."

 

[TarSpiel]

I gotta disagree with super on this.

The zzl before the split was great, and nobody seemed all that bothered by the blend of topics. Plus, how hard is it to scroll down? Plus, how hard is it to use the search function? Plus, if you can ignore a thread, then that's just golden [edit: and it is now confirmed that we have an "Ignore Thread" option...damn this site blows 247 out of the water]. Plus, when two people disagree about something on a politics thread but find themselves commiserating over a wordle problem, some kind of healing & community building is going on. Plus, any really pressing political or national or international news is going to have a thread consistently at the top of the page...it's only the more arcane or recondite stuff - and stuff that nobody is that interested in anyway - will fall to page two, or god forbid page 3.

Why should we or anyone separate politics from our daily lives and interests?

 

[Rock]

I informed @Rock that this software has an "ignore thread" function. So if someone posts a golf thread and you have no interest then you can hit the ignore button and never see it again unless you toggle back in preferences.

I'm sure Rock has many pressing issues though.

@grimes70 just letting you know this option is live but it needs a little fine tuning. As of now, in the top right you should see Ignore thread. When you click on it, it for some reason brings up a kind of preview of the thread as though you want to look over the thread one more time before you drop the guillotine. I'm trying to get it so after ignoring a thread, it just kicks you back to the topics page. But yeah for now, click ignore thread, then click the X of the preview, then you just have to get back to the topics list which you could accomplish by clicking the ZZL logo in the header. All of that I want to simplify but yeah, ignore works for now. Oh and to remove things you might have ignored once but want to see again you'll click your name/avatar in the top right:



Which will bring up this where you'll click Threads:



You could click the trash can icon to remove the thread from being ignored or click unignore all to... unignore all the threads you were ignoring.

Thanks for making me aware of this and I will get it added to the guide.

This will play a part in the ZZL/ZZLP discussion which I'll probably write a post about late tonight!

 

[TarSpiel]

@grimes70 just letting you know this option is live but it needs a little fine tuning. As of now, in the top right you should see Ignore thread. When you click on it, it for some reason brings up a kind of preview of the thread as though you want to look over the thread one more time before you drop the guillotine. I'm trying to get it so after ignoring a thread, it just kicks you back to the topics page. But yeah for now, click ignore thread, then click the X of the preview, then you just have to get back to the topics list which you could accomplish by clicking the ZZL logo in the header. All of that I want to simplify but yeah, ignore works for now. Oh and to remove things you might have ignored once but want to see again you'll click your name/avatar in the top right:



Which will bring up this where you'll click Threads:



You could click the trash can icon to remove the thread from being ignored or click unignore all to... unignore all the threads you were ignoring.

Thanks for making me aware of this and I will get it added to the guide.

This will play a part in the ZZL/ZZLP discussion which I'll probably write a post about late tonight!

Man, you are just so badass.

 

[TarSpiel]

I informed @Rock that this software has an "ignore thread" function. So if someone posts a golf thread and you have no interest then you can hit the ignore button and never see it again unless you toggle back in preferences.

I'm sure Rock has many pressing issues though.

I have never in my life put another poster on "ignore." It just runs counter to my sense of curiosity about the world, and my openness to all of it, the good the bad and the ugly. My contentment in life is not threatened or diminished at all by the fact that some people out there are idiots. I'm an idiot most of the time myself, so who am I to blame?

Having said that, I will now ignore the f**** out of any golf threads that may come up around here.

 

[Rock]

Today (Monday the 29th) is our sixth day and I could never have imagined this forum would grow at the rate it has. It's growing so fast that we're going to have to move up a tier regarding our server hosting because we appear poised to go over our monthly allotment of server resources. More on that later.

An important question is are we going to stick to primarily political topics, with maybe a thread here and there for other stuff, or is it going to be a free for all where we can discuss whatever comes to our ever curious minds. @superrific started a thread discussing this yesterday (Sunday) that I'm merging with this one so there is a bit of pre-baked discussion already below.

Setting this forum up, I do have a few thoughts as it relates to ensuring the success and growth of this forum. First, the genesis of this forum was to discuss politics because well, ZZLP will be shut down a week from today. That does mean that there still is a place to discuss non-political topics on InsideCarolina in the ZZL forum. Here is where it gets a bit tricky. A number of users have already suggested that we open up a ZZL forum (easily achieved) to have non-political discussions. I am unsure how to proceed given we'd kind of become competitors with IC. This would be further enhanced if we opened up sports forums and just became an IC alternative. Now, trust me, I detest 247 more than just about anyone so I understand the appeal of getting away from them but again, I'm not trying to "harm" IC.

With that said, in discussing this with a longtime user over at IC, I don't think it's unreasonable to worry about the future of non-sports discussions altogether on the 247 network. Whoever is calling the shots over there, they don't seem to be under the impression that forums are a worthwhile investment. With that in mind, we are now the owners of ziggazoombalounge.com and zzlounge.com. Both these sites just redirect to zzlpolitics.com but the implication is that one day, they may point towards a split forum or a ZiggaZoomba Lounge forum. My understanding of the ZZL mega forum (and the reason I started that thread regarding the history of it which btw is fabulous) is that it had it all so to speak. Politics and entertainment and food and life. Everything.

Additionally, there are considerations regarding expanding too fast, too soon and spreading posters thin and giving off the appearance of low traffic and all of that. We are off to a great start so perhaps those are considerations that can be ignored (and when the IC ZZLP is officially shut down, traffic will further increase) but it's just another thing to consider.

You all have repeatedly been generous enough to offer to chip in or talked about running ads and things like that to help cover the costs of this forum. When growing a forum, asking people for money is generally not a great way to... grow the forum. Knowing that, I am happy to get us going for now to ensure that we have a place to discuss politics with a presidential election being less than a hundred days away. That said, I'm happy to explain a little of the financials. To get this place up and running has cost around $120.

• $10 for the domain zzlpolitics.com ($10/year)
• $60 for the XenForo software license and server hosting ($60/month)
• $50 for odds and ends related to optimizing the forum including the look/theme

The biggest cost going forward is the monthly hosting fee to keep this place up and running. Other forums either run advertisments, offer subscriptions, offer content, etc. so that's something to figure out down the road. We will have to increase our hosting costs next month to the next tier up which costs $100 a month but gives us 1,000,000 page views a month instead of 400,000 that we get currently. We are currently averaging around 12,000 page views a day (as we had around 61,000 in our first five days) and I expect that to increase with the closing of ZZLP over on IC and the hopeful continued expansion of our user base.



So, I'd like to thank you guys for reading my post that's about the length of Tolstoy's War & Peace and hopefully it makes sense as I'm losing steam by the second here, yearning for bed.

Oh, I left out something important as it related to how the ZZL/ZZLP dicussion might go. Thanks to @grimes70 for bringing it up, we now have the ability to ignore threads. If you click on a thread, you'll see the button "Ignore thread" in the top right. Click it and it'll bring up a window that is actually a glitch, click the X on that window, then click the ZZL log or otherwise get back to the topics list and that thread will be ignored. To unignore threads, click on your username/avatar in the top right and you will see "Ignoring" as an option. Click on that and you'll see four categories of things you can ignore, among them "Threads." There you can see what threads you have ignored and remove any of them from being ignored or remove them all. This is also where you see ignored users btw.

I will make a picture guide and all that in time but yeah, trying to get this bad boy flying high and staying aloft. Ok, I'm losing it. Thanks, love you all.

 

[Ddseddse]

You’re doing the work so you have final say, but maybe at least out of the gate a voluntary Patreon kind of a thing with a one post a month thread with transparent financials? I’d be more than willing sign myself up to a monthly donation, nor would I object to seeing that you are being compensated for your time as part of that financial summary. I have no idea if it would work or if it would cover costs over the long run, but it might be worth trying at least initially.

As far as IC goes, they have specifically doubled down on their Premium Content reporting. So as long as this site doesn’t get into that business then I don’t see it as competitive. IC has had plenty of chances to treat the forums in general and the off-topic forums in specific more seriously. It seems like bad faith to no do so and then complain when someone does fill that void.

As for topics, I prefer a single board with all topics jumbled as in the old ZZL (my proof is how boring the politics free version of the ZZL was and how rich the non- political content was on the old ZZL before the split), but I acknowledge other posters have different legitimate preferences. At the risk of creating more work for you, I’m wondering if a color coding or other tagging system would work? Possibly filtering too, but my worry there is that some folks might set it and forget it and miss out posting on a thread that would really interest them because they never saw it.