Shane
February 8th, 2008, 11:39 AM
Now I never been a big fan of the SciFi forums before they upgraded to at least a decent piece of forum software, but the software is not what makes a forum good. It's three things that make a forum enjoyable. http://blog.battlestarwiki.org/wp-includes/js/tinymce/themes/advanced/images/spacer.gif
Atmosphere
You should be able to join any forum and have that feeling that the forum (or subforum) is there for discussion.
Quality of Control
You should be able to join any forum and see that things are not out of hand. I am not talking about restrictions of posts/threads, but the quality in which they destinate a forum for.
Administration/Moderations and Poster/User Relations
You should be able to join any forum and able to identify who you need to contact in-case of issue that arise, but able to always get in contact with that person. From what I have seen over the past 3 seasons of Battlestar Galacitica forum is not this, not even a bit. The overall forum has a little over 83,500 members with roughly 80 logged in members at any point and time. About only 3/4 of those users are guests trolling the boards. (We do include search engines crawling the site as guests.) And wouldn't you guess it that about 1/2 of these users are plugged into the SciFi Battlestar forum, which by the way has over 1 million posts? Granted that's not a lot compared to other forums that have existed for other TV shows it goes to show you the scale in which I am talking about. Now lets look into the 3 facts I stated above.
The SciFi Battlestar Forum atmosphere is one of disgust. I click on the forum and the first whole page is sticky threads. I myself on a 1900x1200 resolution have to scroll down just to see the start of the real forum topics. Why are all these stickied? There are mostly legetimite threads about the show or from Mr. Ron D. Moore or his wife (Mrs. Ron). Others are from the admin and admin1 (is there a difference?) and the currently or last aired episode thread at the top. This is all said and good, but when you want to talk about the show itself, you find yourself in a maze of hurt. There are so many random "Appreciation" threads they take up the first page of the listings, and these threads are not on their "first" time around. These are the parts III and IV. It takes me at least the 3rd or 4th page to get to some legitimate threads dealing with the show itself and then half of the time people go off-topic. This shows me that the forum is a free for all and has no origination skills from the people who run the forums. Hence... lets move on.
The quality of control. Even big gaming forums where there are sub-topics of different series of the same game have sub-forums based of the parent forum so everything is based neatly. And they are viewed and posted by a lot more people than the Battlestar Forum. There is not one sub-forum in the SciFi Battlestar Forum other than the SciFi Classic Battlestar Forum being totally separate area on the forum home page. Granted that our forum doesn't have this, but if we got as busy as the SciFi forum, I create those sub-forums so fast you couldn't even say "Mother Frakker". And then....
The admins of the forums/moderators of the forum are very few and far in-between. admin and admin1 must be the same person who work for SciFi. They monitor every board on the SciFi.com site. There are two additional members who are moderators the forum "SciFi Battlestar Forum". So we have a totally of 3 people for a forum that holds over 1 million posts. It takes 1 post or thread to bring a forum to it's knees. Without the additional man power that the SciFi.com forums, I doubt 3 people could take care of everything. Heck. It takes 13 people to moderate 3,000+ articles on the Battlestar Wiki and then the roughly 20 users to edit.
This is by far the worst community forums I have ever seen. The "SciFi Doctor Who" forum right below it at least as some intelligent people who try to keep the spam away and post threads that relate to the show. This is not to promote our forum (www.battlestarforum.com (http://www.battlestarforum.com)) but to point out why the SciFi forums are not a legetimite place to talk about the show anymore.
These are the views of Shane and not the Battlestar Wiki or the Battlestar Forum.
Atmosphere
You should be able to join any forum and have that feeling that the forum (or subforum) is there for discussion.
Quality of Control
You should be able to join any forum and see that things are not out of hand. I am not talking about restrictions of posts/threads, but the quality in which they destinate a forum for.
Administration/Moderations and Poster/User Relations
You should be able to join any forum and able to identify who you need to contact in-case of issue that arise, but able to always get in contact with that person. From what I have seen over the past 3 seasons of Battlestar Galacitica forum is not this, not even a bit. The overall forum has a little over 83,500 members with roughly 80 logged in members at any point and time. About only 3/4 of those users are guests trolling the boards. (We do include search engines crawling the site as guests.) And wouldn't you guess it that about 1/2 of these users are plugged into the SciFi Battlestar forum, which by the way has over 1 million posts? Granted that's not a lot compared to other forums that have existed for other TV shows it goes to show you the scale in which I am talking about. Now lets look into the 3 facts I stated above.
The SciFi Battlestar Forum atmosphere is one of disgust. I click on the forum and the first whole page is sticky threads. I myself on a 1900x1200 resolution have to scroll down just to see the start of the real forum topics. Why are all these stickied? There are mostly legetimite threads about the show or from Mr. Ron D. Moore or his wife (Mrs. Ron). Others are from the admin and admin1 (is there a difference?) and the currently or last aired episode thread at the top. This is all said and good, but when you want to talk about the show itself, you find yourself in a maze of hurt. There are so many random "Appreciation" threads they take up the first page of the listings, and these threads are not on their "first" time around. These are the parts III and IV. It takes me at least the 3rd or 4th page to get to some legitimate threads dealing with the show itself and then half of the time people go off-topic. This shows me that the forum is a free for all and has no origination skills from the people who run the forums. Hence... lets move on.
The quality of control. Even big gaming forums where there are sub-topics of different series of the same game have sub-forums based of the parent forum so everything is based neatly. And they are viewed and posted by a lot more people than the Battlestar Forum. There is not one sub-forum in the SciFi Battlestar Forum other than the SciFi Classic Battlestar Forum being totally separate area on the forum home page. Granted that our forum doesn't have this, but if we got as busy as the SciFi forum, I create those sub-forums so fast you couldn't even say "Mother Frakker". And then....
The admins of the forums/moderators of the forum are very few and far in-between. admin and admin1 must be the same person who work for SciFi. They monitor every board on the SciFi.com site. There are two additional members who are moderators the forum "SciFi Battlestar Forum". So we have a totally of 3 people for a forum that holds over 1 million posts. It takes 1 post or thread to bring a forum to it's knees. Without the additional man power that the SciFi.com forums, I doubt 3 people could take care of everything. Heck. It takes 13 people to moderate 3,000+ articles on the Battlestar Wiki and then the roughly 20 users to edit.
This is by far the worst community forums I have ever seen. The "SciFi Doctor Who" forum right below it at least as some intelligent people who try to keep the spam away and post threads that relate to the show. This is not to promote our forum (www.battlestarforum.com (http://www.battlestarforum.com)) but to point out why the SciFi forums are not a legetimite place to talk about the show anymore.
These are the views of Shane and not the Battlestar Wiki or the Battlestar Forum.