Is this site dying or is it just that time of the year?

[RTS]

2 hours ago, Ndawg12 said:

I feel the same way, there's something about this new format that I can't put my finger on exactly that is just not as "inviting" as it used to be, imo.  I've got a post about a power wedge issue that I figured would be resolved in an hour and not one response yet.  

 

Have to agree.  Since the site migration or 'upgrade' as it were...I just don't spend a bunch of time here anymore...at least not as much as I used to.   

Might just be me, but I don't know.   One thing I can tell you that I really miss is the ability to see who is viewing a particular topic in real time.   Not that that is a deal breaker for me, but just saying.

[Sixball]

Miss the free Doc. info. That guy had many inputs medical or otherwise!

[rennis]

4 hours ago, bamabonners said:

Doesn't seem to me as much conversation lately.  Is it just that time of year or is this site dying?  

 

not dying but a lot less active.  the "Show Active Topics" function in the new software sucks and that's why I'm around a lot less.  In old system it showed all active forum conversations from all subforums in time/date order.  It doesn't do that anymore and that's a key feature of a good vBulletin forum, IMO.

Edited May 12, 2016 by rennis

[bbattiste247]

I used to read topics hourly and check this site before Facebook. After the upgrade, I feel that it is not as user friendly and not as much participation. I don't check as often as I used to.

Edited May 12, 2016 by bbattiste247

[RTS]

I wonder if it has anything to do with the price of the boats these days.  I know one of the most active threads has been about that new boat that is, what, about $150,000.   Way out of my league and nothing I would be able to contribute to any discussion about.  And does Malibu even make a 'ski' boat anymore?  I don't know.  But if they did I probably could not afford it and therefore would have no questions about it.

 

Edit:  And I am sure I could go on Malibu's website to see if they still make a ski boat...but last time I tried that a couple years ago I got spammed by the local dealer (via e-mail and my cell phone) after just playing around on the website 'building' a boat.  Haven't been there since.   Won't be back to their website again.  I hate that crap.

Edited May 12, 2016 by RTS

[Ronnie]

2 hours ago, shawndoggy said:

In an effort to rein in the loose cannons, a few individuals seem to have curtailed their posting.  And with them, some of the "fun" has left the board.  

No offense intended to the mods (and I don't think acknowledging their existence violates the TOU?), but the participation rate among the mods has really really gone down in the past few years.  Time was you couldn't miss a day because martinarcher was building his own surfgate, cutting down a tower, rebuilding an engine, etc.  Even after she sold her boat, WG solicited advice on headphones and tablets and school and movies and life.  Even Ronnie was building stereos and tower speaker components.  Nowadays, meaningful posts by the mods are few and far between.  Might it be time for some new blood on the mod team?  I mean I'm not suggesting we turn the site over to @Afun and @NorrisMike , but I cannot see it hurting to have some more frequent posters on the mod team.

If all we have are "how do I change my impeller" and "what does this thing do" threads, the site gets pretty bland.  I understand the mods trying to balance out the silliness, but by the same token, people get here with their technical questions but they stay here because of the community.  If the "fun amongst friends" side of the equation gets too sanitized, so does the site, and you end up with @Ndawg12 standing in an empty room asking for help.  I mean shouldn't we at least be in there making fun of him for breaking his boat again or something?

 

 

Are you applying?

You can put me down in the column for not liking this format as much as the last. I see where there is a possibility to miss a lot of posts in a thread if you just look at the last post in the Activities option. Any previous posts may not show up. If the last post doesn't interest you, you scroll on past it and there you lose participation. I liked to see who was in the thread as well. I'm not sure that is possible with this version. We can check on it but it's been discussed by us already and nothing has came of it. I don't see us downgrading the software to get back to the "Old Way". I suspect if there are some items in this version that we don't like, the same response is happening in the other forums that use this software. That will push change to correct it.

IMO, as the site matures past 11 years old, we don't have the same membership as we used to. We can't stay the same without the same members. When we get new members, with experience from other more lenient forums, they have to acquire the Culture of this site. 99% of the new members do. We seem to be more strict with what is allowed than most sites and that's hard to readjust for some. The old "Community" is/has changed. I personally see this as a good thing. We all like to have new perspectives and knowledge brought into the forums. We all benefit from it and most enjoy it. When we have a new member with a lot of input and camaraderie but is disruptive towards the TOU's, we as Admins or Mods have to step in and bring it back to normal. Thus we are the bad guys in some members minds. There will always be a number of members that can't or won't see the problem and we hear about it over and over. Most times the member is not informed on what is really going on behind the scenes. The only idea they have is what they see publicly or in a one sided PM. We've always had the opinion that another member's dirty laundry shouldn't be aired on a public forum. With that idea, many members think vastly different thoughts on why a friend was disciplined and don't get the real problem. All of this causes problems in the forums. Some members get mad and leave, some try to push the rules to get their agenda across to the point of causing the same problems that their friend caused initially. I think this causes some members to stop participating. Not much we can do about that except to carry on. The TOU's are there for a reason. When you see members posting that this site is one of their favorite sites, I  think this reflects what is allowed here. We all know of a forum that is allowed to run with anything anyone brings to the table. They are allowed to get out of hand and it gets members fighting, name calling and generally disrespecting each other. We never wanted to allow that here and really don't care if those types of members are here at all.

I get many PM's from members that want to help with experiences or knowledge and they are expressing their frustration with the forums. They want to contribute but when they have in the past, they have been ridiculed or argued with to the point of not posting any longer. So, we lose that members ideas and knowledge. The skill of debate is lost on some members. They can't disagree with another member without talking down or berating the other member. This causes less participation.

Admin/Mod participation is down, I agree. Life has gotten in the way for some. Hobbies have changed for some of us. We are actually lucky a few have even stayed around to make this site happen. Think about this though. How many members have been here as long as we have and still contribute on regular basis? Not many. They may still be here reading but they don't post nearly as much as they did 5 or 10 years ago. I know in my case, I still like to do the mods to my boats as does MartinArcher. I still feel the need to include some of my mods sometimes but I'm sort of in the mind of the guys PM'ing me about how your ideas are received on the forums. If there is that one guy that disagrees, he's got to blow it up and make a big deal of it. Who wants to argue with that all of the time. I believe another thing is that these new boats as compared to the older models don't lend themselves to real mods like we used to have to do. Malibu and the boat manufactures have stepped it up and offer a pretty good product. We can all mod our stereos easily enough now but how many need to post their setups when the same setup has already been posted several times. Same thing with props and ballast. How many times do we need to post the same ballast setups?  The guys that do post up their setups and have it explained in a way that it's easy to follow or the guys that have completely new ideas that we've not seen before are priceless to the other members. We Need That. Do we need it 10 times? Probably not. But that may bring down the participation level some too.  

In the end, the membership are the ones that make a site like this successful or fail. If there is interest and positive contributions, it's going to be great. If there is arguing and fighting or disrespecting. People will move on. 

 

[Chrisjjbrown]

If you guys want some entertainment head on over to team talk and check out the new troll thread.  Its a good read.......   I still like this site and I hope that it livens up a bit,  I agree with others that I am not a fan of the new format.   We just need some new characters getting in on the action.   Once College football season starts I am sure that thread will get some action.  

It does seem that every thread that gets slightly off topic now gets shut down way to easy......I know I use to enjoy the community aspect of certain threads and how they encompassed and morphed into more than one topics such as pork butts, milk bags, Sperry's, and captains hats.  

[shawndoggy]

@Ronnie -- thanks for your thoughtful response!  I wasn't trying to "call the mods out" on any recent events.  You guys have a thankless job.  If you are doing it well nobody notices and it's only when there is conflict that you get feedback (usually bad).  I don't envy the position and I'm definitely not lobbying for an appointment.  Truth be told I can see my own boating days will be on the decline soon too as my nest empties.

 

 

[footndale]

Wondering how much not having tapatalk has hurt, percentage wise? I'm a desktop user mostly, so didn't really like tapatalk, but I know others really liked it.

 

Do people know you can click on the icon to the left of a title and it will take you to the latest messages in a thread you didn't see?  Also you can setup options on a feed?

[oldjeep]

8 minutes ago, footndale said:

Wondering how much not having tapatalk has hurt, percentage wise? I'm a desktop user mostly, so didn't really like tapatalk, but I know others really liked it.

 

Do people know you can click on the icon to the left of a title and it will take you to the latest messages in a thread you didn't see?  Also you can setup options on a feed?

Doesn't hurt me at all - gawd I hate tapa talk.  Much prefer the mobile interface that this site has.

[ahopkins22LSV]

3 hours ago, rennis said:

 

not dying but a lot less active.  the "Show Active Topics" function in the new software sucks and that's why I'm around a lot less.  In old system it showed all active forum conversations from all subforums in time/date order.  It doesn't do that anymore and that's a key feature of a good vBulletin forum, IMO.

There is still an unread content option  too right, looks like a newspaper  seems to be the same filter as the unread content as the last version.

3 hours ago, RTS said:

I wonder if it has anything to do with the price of the boats these days.  I know one of the most active threads has been about that new boat that is, what, about $150,000.   Way out of my league and nothing I would be able to contribute to any discussion about.  And does Malibu even make a 'ski' boat anymore?  I don't know.  But if they did I probably could not afford it and therefore would have no questions about it.

 

Edit:  And I am sure I could go on Malibu's website to see if they still make a ski boat...but last time I tried that a couple years ago I got spammed by the local dealer (via e-mail and my cell phone) after just playing around on the website 'building' a boat.  Haven't been there since.   Won't be back to their website again.  I hate that crap.

Yes Malibu still has two ski boats. The Response TXi and Response LXr. Also you can build a boat without submitting your information. If you submit and save the boat it goes to your local dealer. They then think you are seriously interested in ordering a boat. I build boats all the time and have never been contacted. 

[Badger]

Maybe it's time for a few of us to step up our game.  I'm going to bring some more snarkiness and sarcasm to liven it up!

[ibelonginprison]

4 minutes ago, Badger said:

Maybe it's time for a few of us to step up our game.  I'm going to bring some more snarkiness and sarcasm to liven it up!

You've been here since '06. So you CAN do that.
Anyone here less than 5 years, probably not. 

I've seen long time members post stuff that I got banned a week for.  
Got money that says I have a thread named after me in the Mod forum...... *shrug*

Sorry. I'll go back to lurking now.

[jetskipro550]

I've been on this site 11 years and I'd be willing to bet that 80-90% of my posts were in the first 5 years. I'm still on the site a couple of times a day but just don't post anymore. It just isn't the same anymore...and that all started before the afun and docphil drama...I'd say the recession in 09-11 really changed the make up of this site as far as members go. Also being really into boating (or anything) for 11 years is hard. So much can change in ones life over 11 years and time, money, and enjoyment from/for boating ebbs and flows.

[Ronnie]

2 hours ago, ibelonginprison said:

You've been here since '06. So you CAN do that.
Anyone here less than 5 years, probably not. 

I've seen long time members post stuff that I got banned a week for.  
Got money that says I have a thread named after me in the Mod forum...... *shrug*

Sorry. I'll go back to lurking now.

Nope. Actually, anyone can do that.

You never get banned for a first offense...

[Cory]

My interest in the site has waned lately (my billables are way up!!!).  I did a couple projects on the boat this year (swapped my 2015 underwater transom LEDs for 2016 models; installed the new surfband, updated firmware, got the action mount for the GoPro).  I considered posting on these small projects, but I can't post pics directly anymore and linking to pics uploaded to third party sites is too much of a pain.  So, I didn't post.  Probably the main reason I'm posting less is I don't have a new boat this year and I think it will be a while before I purchase another BU.  

I have been reading a lot of trawler blogs--I really wanna boat the Inside Passage up to Glacier Bay, relax in the the San Juan & Gulf Islands, BC Sunshine coast, etc.  But that is a different type of boating and more of a retirement dream.  We are still getting out on the BU about once a week lately.  

I really miss seeing who is lurking on a given page in real-time at the bottom.  Can't that feature be reinstated?  

[braindamage]

7 hours ago, UpperleftWake said:

Well, i'm on the verge of ditching my wetsuit in favor of a heater top. Weather has been awesome here in Oregon :). Going to log another few hours in this 80+ degree weather in the PM!

Wakesurf. by Mason Obray, on Flickr

Completely totally insanely jealous...

site is great. I am on a jeep forum, a water ski forum, and many other inboard forums. While the silliness is certainly missed,, this is still the best forum out there!!

dont really like the new format but ill get used to it?

[Chrisjjbrown]

^this right here....I hate that I have to upload my pictures to another site then link them here.   That's JV if you ask me.  We should be able to upload pics with out resizing to a tiny resolution.  

[formulaben]

11 minutes ago, Cory said:

 I considered posting on these small projects, but I can't post pics directly anymore and linking to pics uploaded to third party sites is too much of a pain.  So, I didn't post.

I totally understand bandwidth costs but I'd wager this is by far the biggest obstacle to posting around here.

[Chrisjjbrown]

Let's get this thread to 100 pages for old times sake.  Give the community something to rally behind.  

[braindamage]

^^^just boosting my post count!!

[ctvandy23]

I just joined  back in January but looked around a bit back in the fall when I was first thinking about buying my first Bu.  So I don't really have much experience with the old site, but the new site seems just fine with me.  A lot of good advice and some great topics, but like everything else in life things ebb and flow!  I still enjoy checking in every day and reading the various topics.  I do agree though that posting pictures could be easier and certainely takes away from posting sometimes.  

[SmoothWaterMan]

3 hours ago, ahopkinsTXi said:

There is still an unread content option  too right, looks like a newspaper  seems to be the same filter as the unread content as the last version.

Yes Malibu still has two ski boats. The Response TXi and Response LXr. Also you can build a boat without submitting your information. If you submit and save the boat it goes to your local dealer. They then think you are seriously interested in ordering a boat. I build boats all the time and have never been contacted. 

3 ski boats

Response

Response LXR

Response TXi

 

And yes, new format blows. 

Side note, @martinarcher I need to get in touch with you. 

Edited May 13, 2016 by SmoothWaterMan

[braindamage]

When I joined the topics were all about getting the wakeboard boats to surf...then it was all about surfgate (game changer!!), then all about DIY surfgate (ghetto gate, slurpeegate, etc) and whether the platform could handle the pressure, then about martinarcher and the automated gates. In the middle of all this was a lot of "what is this, what prop, what board, ballast options, and a lot about chee-both good and bad.

I think there was a big step change as people grappled with how to make their old boats act like new ones so they could keep up with a rapidly changing surf boat world.

I think things are starting to plateau to more stable topics and a higher percentage of posts are kind of everyday. It's still good, there just isn't as much excitement of new stuff in between.

there is still a ton of square windshield rebuilds, upgrades, help me buy a boat, Craigslist deals, etc... As I said before, I like it...

Edited May 13, 2016 by braindamage

[Shodan01]

A post per hour - not to bad for a dead site :-)  (I WAS KIDDING).....