A modest proposal to "save" the board - a new, cleaner BBS board

[The Gorn]

I still believe the following:

Being a member of the Yuku "portal" holds this board back. Professionals don't want to join vacuous Myspace like chit chat sites, and that's how Yuku is positioned and looks.  And, our basic look has stayed the same since the Realrates days - 11 years!!!

More than one person has told me that the index pages of this board are ugly. In particular, let's say you go to "Coffee Talk" - all post titles in every thread are displayed.

I really don't have a choice there. If I avoid displaying all posts in each thread, the only style alternatives offered by Yuku are flat threads and no threading as such.

Another problem with Yuku is we have no way to control what gets indexed by search engines. I have tried to Google the content here and usually I can't find any OpenIT content through Google. I believe that Yuku buries it because we aren't that important a site to them.

Yuku also has real lack in terms of searchability.

And Yuku's concept of "community" - THEIR crappy "objects" - is NOT what I want. Eventually it would be good to have a message board that could have a sort of "story based" format where users could blog a topic and open it up for discussion below. Yuku can't and will never support such a thing.

Also, culturally, I think we have a bit of history here that probably holds us back in attracting new members. A clean break with the past may be helpful.  What was important to many of us in 1999 or 2004 is probably not of as great concern in 2010.

I really don't have any time to overhaul the format of this board which includes moving the old content to a new board.

I can, however, set up a new message board that becomes the main URL of "computerconsultantsforum.com".

I really prefer to migrate over any users with the same user names.

So what I will do, if I do this, is the following:

• Reserve every current user's current handle/username (basically, I would create new users on the new board with those names, so, for example, a faker couldn't establish a bogus "Origosaurus" handle.)
   
• Anyone here who wishes to use their old handle on  a new board may claim it as follows. You may PM me here at OpenIT privately and I will assign your new board password to you and send it to you. I will do this for anyone in good current standing, which means everyone who has used the board and who hasn't been outright banned in the last year or two. That includes anyone I have had arguments with in recent memory - in other words, if you are able to post here, I will grandfather your handle. So, for example, "Origosaurus" PMs me through Yuku, so I know it's him, so I pass him back his password, as an example. So the Origosaurus on the new board is assured to be the same guy that hangs out here. Same for everyone I do this for.
  
• This would not be a closed board, it would be open and public as before. I would probably allow registration without needing an email, for the privacy conscious. But my goal with preserving old user names is to allow continuity of the same community.
  
• Start clean, everything empty, maybe with the same section names.
• Important: FREEZE the old board. And perhaps make it readable only to currently registered members, and closed for all others.
   
• As time permits I would manually move "the best of"/greatest hits over to the new board. Using the utmost discretion for people's situations and the type of things they've posted. 

If the new board wasn't used much after, say, 90 days, I would open the old board back up and chalk it up to a failed experiment.

One thing - guys, don't quibble endlessly with the details. What happens when I post one of these proposals is we always get bogged down because someone doesn't agree with some detail or they slept through earlier discussions on the subject. I've boiled it down as simply as I possibly can. Just figure out what I meant on your own.

Thoughts?

[pxsant]

What BBS software will you use?

What about hosting?  Where etc.?  On a VPS?  Some other shared BBS?

What about cost sharing for the hosting fee etc?

I think we need some sort of idea fest on how to attract new members.

[The Gorn]

What BBS software will you use?

What about hosting?  Where etc.?  On a VPS?  Some other shared BBS?

What about cost sharing for the hosting fee etc?

I think we need some sort of idea fest on how to attract new members.

Initially, nearlyfreespeech.net for the host. Probably either Drupal's message board for the main forum, or SMF, or one of the others I looked at a while back.

I predict absolutely minimal costs for hosting, unless it really takes off. So I am not concerned at all about fees. This is a hobby for me.

If it takes off, I can think about ads or a small donation pot.

[Aussie]

But I'd just like to say that, I'll stand a beer, hell, a whisky to anyone who can successfully fake either me or Origisaurus for more than 48 hours.  ;-)  

P.S.  I'll just point out that I have requested that the Dungeon-Master assign me my original RR moniker of 'Aussie', rather than the Australian sports chant that I'm currently using, on account of it's too much to type when I log on.  Some may remember that, in a previous migration a long time ago on a BB far, far away, someone had already globally gotten dibs on 'Aussie', so I briefly tried 'x-Aussie-x'.  But folks said it sounded too much like a porn star, so I wound up with first '1Aussie1', and in a moment of Sydney Olympics madness went with '1Aussie1 1Aussie1 1Aussie1 Oi Oi Oi', which, while patriotic, is a cast-iron bitch to type at every logon.  (BTW, you can tell the age of the individual by whether they 'type' or 'key').

[codger]

Aussie wrote, "is a cast-iron bitch ."

Great expression. Love it!

[expat]

I think the board's long history may be making it stale, so a reboot is probably a good idea if you have thr stomach for it.

In fact, on the UK board that I go to all the time, I deliberately retire my login periodically, because I don't want all the history. That's interesting in itself, because sometimes I miss a piece of history that I have buried, such as respect that I have earned in the past. But I reckon if I'm still worth respect I can earn it again, just like Real Life.

[Aussie]

"In fact, on the UK board that I go to all the time, I deliberately retire my login periodically"

I tried that, for broadly similarly reasons as yourself, on a Cornish forum.  Only thing is, when I go into Kernewek (the Cornish language), I think my construction is sufficiently idiosyncratic that the best speakers of it can spot it a mile off.  I wrote some poetry, some in Cornish, some in Sowsnek (ie, 'Beurla') at one stage, some of which was rather well received, but I made sure that that was only under one login name....since it was of a very patriotic Cornish nature, I wanted that login to be 'expendable' in case the Kowethas, (that's like the 'Cymry' or 'comrades' in Welsh), didn't cotton to it, but quite a few did, so that was OK.

[Origisaurus]

About Yucky.  Yes, it sux, and so do many other boards/blogs I've seen.

It seems you have thought this through and I'm OK with the idea.  After all, you will be doing most of the work.  Moderating is not really an onerous chore, especially now that we're all pretty much simpatico.

[Aussie]

VEHEMENT  –adjective

1.	zealous; ardent; impassioned: a vehement defense; vehement enthusiasm.

VIRULENT - –adjective

1.	actively poisonous; intensely noxious: a virulent insect bite.

2.	Medicine/Medical. highly infective; malignant or deadly.

3.	Bacteriology. causing clinical symptoms.

4.	violently hostile.

  

[The Gorn]

I consider Yuku itself about at the level of Myspace, in terms of being "professional". Yuku is about customizing your profile, and graphic signatures, and people who find each other because it's Yuku.

Some professionals do have their web presence at MySpace and places like Facebook. One freelance writer guru stalked me and asked me to friend her on my Facebook account. But I think a Facebook or MySpace presence for a B2B person is kind of weird.

Same here on Yuku. We're a bunch of 40 to 60 somethings residing at a teenager to young adult flavored site.

I am wondering if 90% of our problem with attracting new members is that Yuku looks like a Myspace type site and therefore isn't taken seriously by people like us.

And, again, stuff here doesn't get indexed by search engines, not under our URL anyway, it's always indexed under the Yuku domain URL.

[Origisaurus]

#4 - violently hostile!

[jbucks]

[datagirl]

Hey, GB ("hey" being southern for "Howdy")

From what I've seen, Yuku forums are used as attachments to front-end websites for hobbyist / special interest viewers.  My brother inherited a sports team fan site that is connected to a Yuku (formerly EZBoard) forum..  He manages the main site content while the "fans" can contribute to the forum via a link.  This was the same for the now defunct RR from whence we emerged here.  Just sayin' if you are really, really serious about getting new blood, build a front-end webpage with all the SEO content to pull in your target audience, then provide the link to the forum's landing page.

In any case, I'm with the group on whatever works for the majority of "serious" contributors... even the virulent ones.

Regards,
-DG

[The Gorn]

1) Keep the forums here and in fact, change nothing about it.
2) Create a new community page as I want it. But don't attempt to move the discussion activity over.
3) Link back to this board just for discussions.

I guess I hadn't been thinking of making my writings a keynote focus.

What you say could work. What I would want to do is create a "better" place for someone to land when they go to computerconsultantsforum.com.

Thanks for the thoughts. You kind of turned my idea inside out, in a good way.

[datagirl]

1) Keep the forums here and in fact, change nothing about it.
2) Create a new community page as I want it. But don't attempt to move the discussion activity over.
3) Link back to this board just for discussions.

I guess I hadn't been thinking of making my writings a keynote focus.

What you say could work. What I would want to do is create a "better" place for someone to land when they go to computerconsultantsforum.com.

Thanks for the thoughts. You kind of turned my idea inside out, in a good way.

Well, no, I'm not exactly proposing #1.  Having just spent 5 min fighting the Yuku editor, it would be great to have a "nicer" interface experience.  Creating a new, cleaner BBS would be fine by me.  I was just making the observation that most "successful" forums do have a "controlled" front-end.  If you chose to freeze this board, though, you could provide links back to old posts until you had a chance to sort through what to keep and what to toss.

If you wanted to make your writing a focus, that's fine, too, but I was thinking of something more generic and quasi-static.  I don't think a blog-with-comments format is really what you were wanting, was it?  It would be nice, though to have link lists of "greatest hits" of the most useful, popular, thought-provoking posts, product recommendations, etc.

Like I said, though, I'm with whatever ya'll think is best.

Regards,
-DG