I don't really have a problem with the site as far as usability but I've been around message boards for 25+ years and find them all easy enough to navigate. If I had to guess I'd say the site simply isn't known about by most surveyors. I don't think the censorship helps either; why talk about 70% of the survey stuff I might find interesting because it's politics adjacent when I could go elsewhere and talk about 100% of it?
My practice for navigating the site as formatted today is to click on Activity Feed then look at the little bell symbol indicating notifications. That lists new threads since my last visit and any comments that have been made to a thread I have started. That is a good start. Then I scroll down through the Activity Feed results looking for comments in other threads.
This, of course, seems to be an upside down and backwards approach to searching for comments of interest. But, as I check in twice or more daily, at the current rate of new comments this is not a burden. If I were to only check in once per week or less frequently, this would not be a practical approach. Then I would go to each category of posting to see what is available.
My concern is the sudden disappearance of too many regular contributors who have kept the site lively and entertaining as well as educational in recent years. I truly miss their attendance here.
@bstrand I totally understand where you are coming from. The problem we had in the past (before your time here) was that any political discussions became extremely mean-spirited, rude and even violent. I spent several years trying to make it work -- when you have users threatening violence against your family, you tend to want to find ways to make that stop. I tried to keep those discussions here as long as I could until it became too much of a chore to moderate it. The very personal threats and profanity-laced emails and phone calls didn't help either. I had a young daughter in the house at the time and I was literally concerned for her safety. My wife and I can handle ourselves but that was just too much.
On top of that, the day I decided I'd had enough, I received SO MANY messages of support and thankfulness that I felt like I had done the right thing.
If I could believe that this site wouldn't spiral into another tailspin, I'd consider allowing it again. However, managing this website is definitely not my full-time job and it operates in the red, so I really don't need the extra work or stress. This site is here because my heart is in it, but I can't allow it to pull me away from my regular work that supports my family.
When I relaunched this website as RPLS.com and in this new format, I knew it was a bit of a risk, and I made that clear leading up to it. I've been striving to bring it to a place where it's not running in the red anymore. We did operate at a profit for a couple of years when we had big advertisers, but those advertisers have since disappeared based on problems they were having in the industry. What I'm saying is that it wasn't because of anything that happened here.
I have since resigned myself to realize that it will never be profitable -- there are many reasons for that, but I know that part of it is because I don't have enough time to work on it to get it there. If it was my full-time job, perhaps it could be profitable. But my heart is in it, and I don't want to let it go. It sure helps though to have the monetary support that I do have because it pays for some of the hard operating costs.
All of the above is the long way of saying that I agree with the sentiments that it was better before. This new format was a shot at taking it to the next level and seeing if it could become profitable. It's been almost a full year now and I see that we probably need to step back and consider that its best format has always been a simple forum.
Don't get me wrong -- the traffic here is higher than it's ever been, and it has been growing quickly. This month, we reached 20 million pageviews in a 30-day period for the very first time. Our biggest source of traffic is Google search results. Could participation be better? Sure! But perhaps returning to a simple forum format would allow that to happen.
Don’t get me wrong — the traffic here is higher than it’s ever been, and it has been growing quickly. This month, we reached 20 million pageviews in a 30-day period for the very first time. Our biggest source of traffic is Google search results. Could participation be better? Sure! But perhaps returning to a simple forum format would allow that to happen.
That is outstanding to hear, the traffic.
The revenues are just hard. You need such a huge volume of traffic to make money. I hear you saying that there are ways to make money off the brand but they all would require a full time job making that money. So while it isn't worth zero, it isn't the MOST profitable use of time. We are grateful that to be your hobby! Please take no offense to any criticisms of the site. No offense is intended, only honest feedback.
And...no politics is good. There are lots of places to discuss politics. For those that want that, consider that the places that allow that pretty much create silos and echo chambers for people in a certain way of thinking. When talking about surveying, I want the opinion of a Harris or a Trump voter...I want them both.
@dmyhill Thank you for your feedback. I'm open to any and all feedback and criticisms. And yes, I would like to keep it open to everyone, regardless of political opinion, race, religion, gender, etc.
I've given up on RPLS.com being a profit center, partially due to my own lack of time to work on it, but also because I don't think we've found that sweet spot yet. We had it in the early days, but that software just couldn't handle the traffic, and I can't even begin to imagine how much it would struggle now. But I do think a simple forum is where we need to go at this point.
It took me a while to realise that while there is no "jump to latest post" in a thread that if I click on the date under the last persons name it jumps to the end, was a great find rather than having to scroll though to find where the latest content is.
since the format change I rarely visit the site ... back in the day I used to monitor it weekly 😔
Wow! I didn't know that either! Must've missed it somehow. Great find to help with navigation.
There are some suggestions to bring back P&R. The one good thing when it was on the board was that I could block the entire section. I would say the only way I wouldn't mind seeing it return is if I could block it. I also imagine that Wendell wants nothing to do with it and I can't blame him.
SWMBO is on Facechat and it's a toxic environment. She is trying to navigate using it for family and friends, but even that will lead her down into awful chats. The last was when she defended a challenged student she taught, who apparently said something politically unapproved by the borg. Imagine attacking a young woman who is trying to make it through life with disadvantages. That's were online is today.
My sentiments, exactly. Plenty of other forums exist for people to "politely discuss" their heartfelt beliefs in the various prophets, deities and politicians.
Would this type of forum style be a welcome change? (see screenshots below)
I know there's been a lot of changes over the years, but it seems this current format was a mistake. However, it was my last great attempt at making this a profitable venture and I still feel like it was a good shot at it. However, I have given up on that premise (see previous reply above). We've been running this format for about a year and the general feedback I receive is that most everyone wants to go back to a traditional forum anyway.
The good news is the conversion back would be relatively easy. I've been experimenting with it in my copious free time (LOL) and the screenshots below are the current "beta" of that.
Personally I'm just glad this site exists in whatever format, both for what I've learnt and been able to contribute to. If it brings back some of the members who have dropped off more recently that would be awesome but I'm not sure how to reach them other than an email to address in profiles if they are not checking in so often.
Wendell, this new format looks better to me. I like that it has options to format posts and to like posts. These features are missing in the current format.
Thanks, @matt8200 for the feedback! 🙂
I agree, this current forum is pretty simplified in terms of text formatting and doesn't have reactions. I'm glad I didn't get too deep into this software (well, deep enough, but lots of stuff going on this year that kept me from spending as much time on it as I wanted).
