What happened to this forum?

[MissyS]

Hello Kitty -

If I had the budget I would for sure. I'm trying to encourage our forum staff to do so. We'll see what I can do. ^^

Songz -

That's totally doable stuff. I thought I remembered threads like that before, but then we did all these subforums, then we switched them around (five rotating subforums based on game popularity? idk), etc.

Alas the data loss sucks really bad but I guess everything was done that could be on the database side.

[Ronin]

- Clean up and clean out the forums. Possibly a bit of reorganizing. I know everyone loves their history but the forums -look- dead, especially when the most common topics are a year+ old and we're getting necros on threads from 2011. I don't mind archiving, but our active forums should have some sign of life in them.
- Get people being active in creating daily topics & discussions. There's plenty to talk about, it's just not being talked about here. I see people replying to new threads, but there's just not many new threads happening.

Those are as I see it the core points in what you talked about. The first one is easily actionable, but harder to get right. It probably should get down asap, if there is a compelling idea on how to do it floating around. It also is imo of all the points the riskiest. That's why I would be weary to call it a priority, but it's overdue.
Things that I would do, even though they are my opinion and people might disagree:
I duno if anyone has an attachment to "the lounge" as a name for the OT space here. I can would rename it. It's name is itching me for since it exists, tbh. and others might see it as a good name, but I think it's bad. It's passive, it doesn't give a clear idea of what to do, it's way to general and that doesn't lead people towards posting anything engaging.
Another thing are adds. Many people have turned them off (nowadays, personal security and software security are really important arguments to block). Imo the page needs to look fresh out of the box, no matter what. I think the layout, the color-template and all that are not screaming "let's spend time here".
So finally, there is the actual board. It's also not screaming "let's spend time here". It's not screaming let's read, it's not screaming let's refresh, it's not screaming let's return. I have a simple suggestion about that: We have that fake internet points on here. They should be used for something practical. Basically as I see it the idea is to make people more engaged. It might be a bit inflationary, but IMO, as it is now, people should get rep for making threads. Now how does that not lead to spaming?
That leads to the next of my loose lists of ideas: Moderation is very important. You need a forum police, that is on top of things. That also means that, if a section is meant to be spammed by the rules and the general idea of the section, than it should be. It's not part of the execution of moderation to dabble in that. As i see it, Moderation is key. On here I had to deal with many good mods. I don't have any gripes with anyone that i currently know, they are all good. Mods just need to be active, rational, fast, fair and pragmatic. Of course something like a "no ******* <- "rude word for baddie" rule" makes sense. People who can keep a difficult situation from escalating and who put out fires quickly and systematically. I mean the mods are fine from who I know on here and give no reason to complain. There is just one thing right now: I don't see them to be very engaged in the forum, just as users aren't.
However the way the OT area is structured, where I hang out/used to hang most and the only one I really posted in, also by it's makup removes need for a tight moderation. Derailing, endless parroting of memes, etc. are pretty much encouraged. I see it this way: There is no point in having all too strict rules of staying on topic and so on. Making jokes and even going of on tangents doesn't have to be uninteresting. That just works much better when there is an actual audience. Without it, I would say it's kind of a distraction bombardment. It's always hard to see, from one pov of a single person, what makes an interesting, engaging read. As it could be anything, the rules should be as liberal on that as could be. Still, as it is right now, the forums are geared towards what should be the grease that keeps the conversation flowing; That, I think, should be used in adequate moderation, as to not distract from stuff that is meaningful (and a person who posts something took the time to do so and if it only gets memed to death made fun of an derailed, that won't make that person say "I want to post again, so that I can relive my input getting shit on".) As it is now, I have to say, I think rather strict regulating is in order. All of that is why I think the lounge needs a reform. As I see it, inside jokes only work when there are insiders. Memes to work, need enough people. Otherwise they are just odd blurbs. Even with a large audience, riffing on something only works, if the actual focus is talking about stuff. Stuff that later can be riffed on. Where the riffing does not take up anything but a minority role. Imagine having a circle of friends who only every mock-parrot anything you say and never even listen to the content. You'll skip town and find new friends pretty darn soon.

As a note: This is my personal point of view, which is quite obvious, but I am still repeating it to show you all guys, that I respect anyone who disagrees with all of the above. I frankly don't know how to run a community, so that's that. See this as the "add your own comment box" in some survey MissyS.

[MissyS]

Ronin - I sincerely appreciate your honest thoughts & feedback. Gives me plenty more to think about.

[.c64]

For me it was just an inability to even get on the site due to the captcha system and other buttons being broken, not sure how many others that effected.

I think other reasons are just the lack of change here, things have been half broken for years, there's no updates on what's going on here from the staff, I think most people just assume it's been left here to gather dust and collect ad revenue.

I wouldn't use reddit as a good reason this place is dying off, forums can still definitely compete with the reddit format, just look at mmo-champion.

Another reason is probably because a big chunk of active topic posters and general shitlords got banned all at once because jizzy dizzy. (I'm clicking dizzy's emoji face and nothing is happening, just imagine it's there.)

But a few of us (shadowsworn, z0mbie, hamstermascot, phanein, skald, candyholic, avarance, jaydude, (we're just under different names now)) are hanging out on discord now ( https://discord.gg/xKjMRBT ), feel free to pop in and say hello. (not for the easily offended.)

[TreyTrey12]

Man, I practically grew up on this forum. Sad to see it dead.

[babaj]

There is no niche here at onrpg. The whole MMORPG it is too generally topic. And it is dying these days. There is nothing new upcoming.

[richard22012]

Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) are a combination of role-playing video games and massively multiplayer online games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual world.

[WalterBradford]

Yep, forum seems completely dead

[Xenonight2]

I think it's because I banned too many people.