Listen Up The follow-up to "Quiet Here, Isn't it!

[jeallen01]

Some of you already have contributed to the above thread (which, BTW, was originally meant to be a slightly humourous/off-beat one!) with "serious" comments about why the forum is quiet at the moment, and has been for a few weeks - that's normal in August, but things should be picking up by now. Therefore Lazarus suggested that I start this thread to try to help the Staff work out what might be "wrong" and how to fix that.

So, here we go with the comments made so far that appear to be relevant:

Analoguesat
"Its certainly a lot different from when the Portuguese pay service was open. The staff couldnt keep up with the demands for the keys (or flowers as they were styled by the Porto lads). And of course most of the posts were in Portuguese which made life interesting in the extreme.

The sat tv hobby forums are much quieter since the pay services got their act together and cut off the freebies, and the younger generation doesnt seem to have latched onto forums. The site facebook page has many many folk joining it - mainly from Africa & Asia (despite a very large warning notice that most of the info is only relevant to north western Europe)"

William1
" Make access easier to the Feeds Section currently we have to go through several links:-

SatsUK
Members Lounge
The Football and Sport Section
Sport Satellite Feeds Section
Football feeds

Well I did suggest this a while back & thought it did get a favourable response "

Channel Hopper
"The general trend is for people to accept small dishes work for most of the content they need, planning limitations don't help much in this respect.

Additionally the almost exclusive acceptance of Ku band kit in this part of the world means branching out to the other frequencies requires a second dish and front end that often requires modification.

There are sections of the forum that are frequented more often of course, SDR has been a welcome departure from the norm, and the cost of carryng this out is well within the budget of most, along with the availability.
S band detection also appears to be slowly making a reappearance, thanks to a couple of recent launches. "

4wd
"Some thoughts, with the time spent on internet and advent of fibre for tv etc, interest for dishes goes way down. Exceptions are 'off the grid' locations (but they get only the simple oneoff dish for national tv, while waiting for fibre) and expatriates wanting their home country tv, f.ex. in Norway lots of workers from Poland etc, one can always spot which house they live in by looking at the dish\lnb setup.

As for hobby\enthusiasts, it will continue but compared to before lots less imo, as young people have no interest\no idea about it so no recruits lining up. Have tried to introduce sat to friends who got excellent location for dishes + money to buy anything needed, showing them freesat etc, they find it interesting and impressive, would be nice to have etc etc, bu zero interest to actually do something.

& an example, a Norwegian sat forum that was very active in it's heydays, look at the posting dates now... Satellitt

About the forum, am sometimes (quite often actually) finding it irritating to navigate, the overkill amount of boards in a quite muddy structural layout (imo). Often am not posting due to having to dig too much \ way too many clicks time trying to find the intended\best place\board. Apart from this, have been, and still is, and excellent and immensely helpful place for knowledge, fun & news. "

Myself
"@4wd
Somewhat share your observations/feelings about people not being interested in sat tech - in this area with a large population of those of Asian & Eastern European origin, they seem to be the only people with dishes other than just Zone 1 Sly ones pointed at 28E. Probably doesn't "help" that we generally have pretty fast broadband, although rarely fibre to premises.

As for the forum format issues, that's true of quite a few forums apart from this one, and I'm not sure what could be done about that (apart from simply dumping/archiving areas that are rarely if ever frequented - a possibility???)

Might help a bit if the What's new section wasn't quite so short unless you deliberately extend it."

 

[jeallen01]

Now, my current thoughts:
- The general picture appears to be a trend away from using/searching with sat gear etc., except in specialist areas - especially amongst the "younger generation" which has so many more "areas of interest" than we "older generation" did (do??)
- As several people already said, the site structure is very (probably far too) complex and multilayered - EVEN this Suggestions and Feedback sub-forum is several layers down and it took me a few seconds to find it (and I knew exactly what I was looking for!)

The latter issue clearly causes problems even for experienced forum members AND Staff - and so it would be no wonder if visitors and potential Newbies might just take a quick look and then, "overwhelmed" go somewhere else, never to be seen here again.

Over to you guys.

 

[4wd]

the site structure is very (probably far too) complex and multilayered

YES !!!! :O)

Makes me sometimes think of an old forgotten garden... Put a good gardener in charge and all will be well. Call Chauncey Gardiner :O)

 

[jeallen01]

YES !!!! :O)

Makes me sometimes think of an old forgotten garden...
View attachment 119765

As I suggested in the other thread, it could also help if there was a prominently-flagged top-level site map with, literally, the folder & subfolder structure clearly visible as interconnected "bubbles" so that you can look through that and directly select the sub-folder that you want to look in - after, that is, the whole structure is "cleaned up" with all the never/rarely-visited folders archived or simply deleted. As is often the case, "less is more".

 

[4wd]

On my quite successful motorcycle forum, after evaluation of the + & - of guest viewing of pictures, firmly opted to allow it, thinking this is a postive way for visitors to get the better impression of a forum's quality and content, imo gathers many good members over time.

 

[Channel Hopper]

YES !!!! :O)

Makes me sometimes think of an old forgotten garden... Put a good gardener in charge and all will be well. Call Chauncey Gardiner :O)
View attachment 119765

His proper name was Chance.

 

[Channel Hopper]

Now, my current thoughts:
- The general picture appears to be a trend away from using/searching with sat gear etc., except in specialist areas - especially amongst the "younger generation" which has so many more "areas of interest" than we "older generation" did (do??)
.

Perhaps a weapons section.

 

[Analoguesat]

I certainly think the receiver section needs some serious reorganisation - there are a lot of more or less redundant sub sections in there

 

[jeallen01]

I certainly think the receiver section needs some serious reorganisation - there are a lot of more or less redundant sub sections in there

Probably true of other sections as well - maybe anything where nothing has been posted since 2014-2015 (or even later?) could go as well?? The possible exception to that is the Technology section as some of the old stuff there does interest a number of people here.

Maybe all the "deleted" stuff could be archived, then, with a clearly flagged link to the archive, anyone who wants to search that could dig away to their hearts content.

 

[Analoguesat]

I would imagine its possible to archive them off and close them, just leaving them available in read only mode.

@rolfw @chris any comments about which of these ideas is actually possible - you guys know the inner workings of the forum software better than most

 

[Channel Hopper]

Probably true of other sections as well - maybe anything where nothing has been posted since 2014-2015 (or even later?) could go as well?? The possible exception to that is the Technology section as some of the old stuff there does interest a number of people here.

That is quite a sweeping statement, I often look back through ancient threads (with the search facility or just by smell) for snippets of information that might answer somebody's request.

Perhaps a better way would be via the 'number of viewings' if a counter for individual threads/sections can be brought into play.

 

[rolfw]

Sections can certainly be locked down and demoted down the forum display, so effectively archived, but not sure what moving them into an archived section would do to the search facility, will have a look.

 

[4wd]

Quick count, 150 or so boards, not many really so should not be a big job to give the garden a new and better look.

An example of a gigantic forum (125+ millions posts) that I visit quite often, finding the layout\navigation very easy to the eyes and brain when looking for something, even with that immense number of boards & different content type.
A system often in use within a board is "Unique Topic", works great to avoid creating a million sub boards.

Forum HardWare.fr : Discussions Informatiques & Généralistes
Téléphone Android - Technologies Mobiles - FORUM HardWare.fr

 

[jeallen01]

And then let's have a well-flagged flowchart/"bubble diagram" so that everyone can quickly find the main threads.

 

[chris]

I certainly think the sections need reorganising, old posts need moving to an archive section so they are still can still be accessed via the url but not visible on the forum. Will need some ideas for the renaming of sections ? maybe some ideas from other forums how they are naming the sections

 

[jeallen01]

I certainly think the sections need reorganising, old posts need moving to an archive section so they are still can still be accessed via the url but not visible on the forum. Will need some ideas for the renaming of sections ? maybe some ideas from other forums how they are naming the sections

@chris
Thanks for coming back with support for the general concept of simplification.

As for the process of doing that, the forum is so large and diverse that I doubt that any one person would have the time, knowledge, "inclination" and dedication to try to do that on his (her??) own.

Therefore, maybe, 1 (or 2) of the Staff could each review a single main section of the forum and its supporting subsections, and then come up with some ideas on simplification, archiving and so on as they almost certainly know the detail, historical significance and future "prospects" of each section far better than the rest of us. They could discuss their thoughts between themselves, and then, having reached some sort of concensus, outline that, with the pros & cons, to the general membership for further discussion and comment.

I know that the above sounds like a very long-winded "committee" approach, but I suspect that doing the job in manageable bites is far more likely to achieve something (even if that is not "perfect") than other possible ones (or just "doing nothing").

 

[4wd]

Another example of overkill, Satellite Support Forum .: Home of OpenViX Team:. , don't get me wrong, much excellent content and info to be found (digged out) there, but mygod what a mayhem of boards. imo.

 

[jeallen01]

Another example of overkill, Satellite Support Forum .: Home of OpenViX Team:. , don't get me wrong, much excellent content and info to be found (digged out) there, but mygod what a mayhem of boards. imo.

Having visited that site on occasions, I know - totally confusing to a newbie/relative beginner!

 

[RustySpoons]

Another example of overkill, Satellite Support Forum .: Home of OpenViX Team:. , don't get me wrong, much excellent content and info to be found (digged out) there, but mygod what a mayhem of boards. imo.

My biggest gripe is having to change my password every time I go on there!

 

[Channel Hopper]

A small gripe on here is the search facility, which does not allow short words (or common/peasant ones)

I had hoped to add the following to an earlier TT /Isle of Man thread but could not find it anywhere, now that the mouuntain section is 'safe' for tomorrows racing.

Conor goes top of Sunday qualifying, Birchalls chasing Holden/Cain - iomtt.com: The World's #1 TT Website

www.iomtt.com