Where has everyone gone !!

[lowe1]

Whats happened to the forum

Since it changed there the posts have gone right down

there used to a bit of banter everyday but lately the only things being posted are peoples qualifiers even daily chatter which used to get replys into double figures has gone down to maybe one reply if we are lucky

[Win2Win]

It was like this well before the upgrade as more people actually view it now.

I haven't posted much for a while... personal issues

[TheGoodGuy]

Yes, it's a shame isn't it?

Unfortunately I think the forum's 'new member' numbers and existing members' posts/contributions have declined to such an extent that it's going to be a monumental task to turn it round and return to the good old days we all remember.
There is no longer any fresh and interesting input made by both new members and old alike to generate any exchange of new ideas and opinions. As Lowe1 says above, most posts consist of just lists of members' qualifiers for the day. As most members are reluctant to share their selection methods, these daily lists alone hardly make compulsive reading unless maybe they have an extraordinarily high strike/profit rate, and even if they did, there is still no 'carrot' within posts like this to encourage any constructive replies, except the odd 'well done' now and then.

The forum has become a bit of an 'old boys' club where there is a very small, exclusive clique of members, between which all the posting and discussions take place. For some reason new members never really 'fit in', or as has been the case in the not so distant past, not given a chance to 'fit in'. Some new members whose typed dialogue has been construed to contain 'bad attitude' have been (wrongly) treated with zero-tolerance and more often than not have been banned as a consequence after just one post. Others have been unnecessarily subjected to varying degrees of rudeness, innuendo and even in-house bickering/arguing, in replies made to their introductory posts. Most members with real 'bad attitude' will EITHER just fade away and disappear when they realise that they are being ignored by everyone, OR the penny will drop and they will change their ways for the better.

The methods Keith employs to attract visitors to the site/forum no doubt work perfectly well......the problem is once they get here there is increasingly less current/up to date content/banter/incentives available to them to make them want to join up and contribute further as a long term member.

I have reluctantly given up running my games (except the Formula 1 Sweepstake Game) purely because of the reduced participation over the last year or so. I freely admit that the complexity and/or format of the games has probably partly contributed to the lack of interest, but on the whole, constructive criticism included, 99% of the games have always met with overall approval, so if forum numbers and interest were to increase again, I would be happy to re-introduce some games.

The layout and topics contained in this forum don't really seem to be radically different from any other sports-related forums I visit/use. The noticeable difference is the contributing member count. They also seem to have their competitions (of which there are always several running at one time) sponsored by on-line bookies who offer quite generous bet-related prizes (though I suppose a free £50 bet isn't always going to guarantee you a win, but hey, how often do you get a free £50 bet?)
Keith, you have links to exchanges/on-line bookies on Win2Win.....couldn't you negotiate a prize sponsored by one of them and set up some kind of competition with advertising on the Win2Win racing site to try and lure some fresh membership.

Without something quite radical happening on here, things aren't going to magically improve, with the sad result being that the forum wiil eventually 'dry-up' altogether.

[barrelmaniac]

Could have taken the words out of my mouth

[vegyjones]

It's not often that I disagree with the boss, (because he is otherwise excellent and my opinion is baseless in that I have no evidence to support it )

but I feel that the RSS have made a significantly bad impact on people posting.

There used to be loads of racing discussion, but now there is virtually none.

I know that Keith is very much behind them and feels they make the forum look busier when I look at the new posts page and more than 50% of them are RSS feeds, I think this in itself is a acting as a deterrent and/or makes the place looks bad.

[mathare]

The RSS feeds stopped some time ago

[mathare]

Just to add my thoughts to this.

The forum had been going downhill for a while before the upgrade with quite a few of the former regulars (especially on the banter side) faded away for various reasons. We were getting down to the same few faces posting and most of them have a set area of the forum they post in. I do my lays & football bets, Yerots does his bets for just about every sport going, Piggy has the joint effort and Ada does his comps and that's been about it for a while now. Mick56 has been and gone it seems and even dear old Godspot isn't bothering to point every record breaking time these days.

I used to try and keep some banter going and would post up my daily results so others could see how I was doing and to give them a benchmark to measure their own results against but interest in that soon dried up. It was hard to get any sort of poker discussion going so I stopped bothering with that, and my gamblog wasn't attracting much attention either so I haven't bothered with that for a while.

And then came the forum upgrade. I have already made my feelings about this quite well known so I won't bang on about it again here but the main point for me is that the forum is now so much slower than it was before, and slower than other websites/forums I use. So much so that it's almost unusable at times. I click a link/button and then wait 30s for something to happen. That's not good in this day and age. I also see a "forum server is too busy" message on a pretty regular basis - a major turn-off I'm afraid. After all, how will I know when the server isn't too busy unless I keep pressing refresh, which is too slow for me to bother with too often.

In essence we've lost some of our regular community, the forum isn't attracting new posters like it used to (for whatever reason) and I don't think the current software/server setup is up to the job, personally. I still try to do my bit here and there but the motivation and incentive to join in has waned, for sure.

[scoobydoo]

And then came the forum upgrade. I have already made my feelings about this quite well known so I won't bang on about it again here but the main point for me is that the forum is now so much slower than it was before, and slower than other websites/forums I use. So much so that it's almost unusable at times. I click a link/button and then wait 30s for something to happen. That's not good in this day and age. I also see a "forum server is too busy" message on a pretty regular basis - a major turn-off I'm afraid. After all, how will I know when the server isn't too busy unless I keep pressing refresh, which is too slow for me to bother with too often.

I agree with this, the forum was better for me before the upgrade imo. I thought it was just me but it is slower, it used to be really quick to load pages.

[presto]

heres my thaughts on the subject.
a couple of years ago i got a new job, so rather than betting full time (and always having the forum open) i now rarely bet of contribute - not having a lot of spare time nowadays, though i did always pop on the forum now and again for a good read.
though as the RSS started taking over the posts from members seemed to be diluted and thus the forum became less readable and lost a bit of it's appeal.
i can understand keiths reasons for wanting the RSS (more hits, SEO etc...) however it was at the price of the forum losing it's appeal to active members who made the forum what it was.
the upgrade is a similar story, the ad's etc.... must be a usefull form of income - however for me (i use a netbook nowadays for most web browsing) - make the forum very squashed and frustrating to read, much like a newspaper colum surrounded with 'stuff' i don't care to read (the ladbrokes ad in the first post actually has the same ammount of room as the post text on my netbook).

i know running a forum is hard work to get right, and hope to be constructive with my comments.

[Win2Win]

Why is it squashed? You can turn the sidebar off ... It's then the same layout as the old one, or change Styles... bottom left.

Ada's more or less right, on the Filipino forum newbies are greeted with open arms, with about 20 folk saying hello ... here they get shot down in flames, and when they post they get critized for smallest error, rather than it being given as advice instead.

I did say I'd get rid of the RSS if people post more, it's actually got less

So someone start the Banter thread in the morning

[piggy]

i couldn't even get someone to slag me off for wanting to legalize all drugs i posted excactly the same on another forum and got pages of replies got quite heated in the end

[vegyjones]

... another... forum... ???

[Win2Win]

i couldn't even get someone to slag me off for wanting to legalize all drugs i posted excactly the same on another forum and got pages of replies got quite heated in the end

It doesn't take much to actually get folk chatting again, but it needs 3-4 people having a banter in a thread and haing a laugh, etc, then others will join in over time. Anyone game?

[lowe1]

I will try

[essexboy]

Crikey this place has gone downhill hasn't it! Well personally I put it down to the fact people can't make enough money out of this "horsey systems" malarkey, If info provided made people alot of money I'm sure the banter would be thriving! But also yes I hate this forum layout compared to the last. Looks cluttered etc not easy on the eye.