Forum acitivity way down?

Is it just me, or have forum activity plummited as of late? This might just be me, but it seems like every topic I create just end up with a few replies, when they would stack pages before.

The cause? My guess is that it's the removal of new forum topics from the front page. It sure as hell has made me less active, simply because I don't check for new topics anymore.

What do you guys think, are the candles at this forum slowly burning out?

I think the new layout does a poor job of encouraging most forms of social interaction on this site. It's hard to track blogs of the people I follow, and the activity feed on profile pages does not push forward information relevant to my interests.

As for forum activity, I've been avoiding the forums recently for potential Bioshock Infinite spoilers, but that's a thing of the past since I'm done with that game.

Your mom was way down.

also yes.

But, through the years I have found that forum use goes down when there Is less content.

Maybe you just make sucky threads.

Not sure if I'd call it way down, but I think it's dropped some. There's been a lot of debate over whether removing the new forum topics from the home page has had a detrimental affect on the forums, but I'm not convinced it has. In general I think the larger issue is that community content has gotten less focus since the redesign.

Forums seem about as active as they've always been. In that all discussions are primarily centred in off-topic & General Discussion, and specific game pages (minus something like the Mass Effect games) are usually left to go dry.

Or maybe you don't make threads that are about women.

This, and lack of regular staff content.

More people than we thought seemed to have used the front door as a gateway to the forums, so yeah, activity seems down. I'd hope that someday they'd add that back in, but they can't even fix this damn mailbug and haven't updated the "constantly updated" what we're working on thread in a month and a half, so maybe this is the beginning of the end? Who knows, I try to stay optimistic, I'm no doomsayer.

• removal of forum activity from main page
• inability to sort/filter forum types (i have no fucking interest in off-topic)
• broken follow system

Umm

@krullban:

I am very well aware. It does not work for me and many other people. (prefs basically do nothing, zilch, nada)

Both on firefox or chrome. Reported the problem several times already with never even an acknowledgement.

Oh hallo Hizang.

Hmmm...makes sense. I made a topic on women soldiers in games. I should have 30 pms of replies and most of them calling me stupid. Aside the one person so far...we are actually having a decent discussion.

I've been using it way less since the site redesign. I used to scroll to the bottom of the old page out of habit and inevitably see a thread title that intrigued me in the Forum/Friend Stream. These days, I poke my head into General Discussion and Off Topic when I'm bored at work!

Behave.

Those damned monthly subscribers.

Most of the threads I ever see here are "women shouldn't be allowed to learn computerZ! my toddler undressing anime game isn't sexist it's art! I hate Alexes voice!"

I don't think we need threads, the wrestling thread (Latest PPV weekly discussion) is never obnoxious or filled with people who have contrarian opinions just to raise post count! And that thread does get a bit off topic sometimes, so Kevin Bacon that shit, say something about WWE and then make whatever point you would have as its own subject within that wrestling thread itself.

1) E3 can't come soon enough.

2) And enough old users have stop coming, so there's not enough topics of 'old,' people care about. New-found topics get ignored, rather for old-style hamburger questions.

What forums are you goin to?

Been a fan for years but new to the site. So i can't speak for how it has been in the past but yeah the forum is kind of dry considering how large the giant bomb fanbase

What's that supposed to mean?

I haven't really noticed much of a difference. Might not be as many replies on certain topics thanks to not having a list on the front page but clicking the forum button to see a list isn't that hard I hope.

Yes to both.

I never used the forum function on the front page on the old design but forum activities are definitely down now.

It takes more or less an hour for a topic without replies to get knocked out from the forum's front page. It's about the same as it's been for a year now.

I was wondering about this. I used to have a tab on my friends followed page for blog updates. But that went the way of the dodo when the new site went up. Now I have to rely on the community spotlight. But I follow a lot of people. Kind of sad.

I don't know about overall, but for me personally, I guess I've been posting less because I can't reply directly to people since 90% of my posting is done on my phone/tablet.

Other than that, I've just been playing older games recently so I can't really discuss the new releases since I haven't played them.

I don't think the forum feed not being on the front page would decrease usage of the forums, but then again, I underestimated how many people used that thing in the first place.

The new forums suck. They look more like comments on a news page than a legitimate forum.

I think that the activity has totally been down since the site change. Some users will always be leaving but I don't think we are getting enough new users. Any new fans of Giant Bomb probably only visit the front page and the videos tab; the front page was great because it gave new users a tease at what was going on in the forums. Also a shit ton of active users have been banned. And a lot of shit is still broken.

Forum activity isn't because of the redesign, it's because Hizang has left us. : (

i think because of the forum design. it doesn't seem active anymore.

is the popular boards broken? it seems like it's broken. modern warfare 2 is still "popular" but people haven't talked about the game in about a year on the board.

It seems fine to me it just seems that there are a few "it" topics that usually crowd the front page for a few days as people discuss them. It also depends on when you create topics. I've created some at like 3am that get no responses at all because nobody is around at that time.

I've been checking the forums way less since the new design (which I love) and it's removal from the front page (which I'm sad about).

I've all but stopped using them because it seems that lately there has been a huge increase in negativity, complaining, and just general bad behavior. Not my cup of tea anymore, I guess.

God damn it Dave.

Conflict drives message board communities. Despite how freewheeling Giantbomb is as a site, the community here tends to be easily offended and group thinky. It eventually just makes things boring. But it's still better than most other sites. So...

Another thing I hope we don't start seeing is locking/merging things into megathreads. That kind of stuff destroys individual responses. People just say their 2 cents, never expect a response and move on.

Things have to be ugly. Locking should be rare, and it's okay to have 5 threads about the same thing. Mods can get obsessive about keeping a clean looking page, but it smothers entertainment.

Everything. Anything.

No forums on the front door means it's extremely easy to forget they even exist.

I really do hope it's made a priority of some sort, it used to set a great and welcoming tone for the community's importance to Giant Bomb as an overall website and encouraged people to get more involved.

The new site was actually a huge step back in terms of the social aspect of the site.

I made my thoughts clear in the beta about how bad it was to remove the forum feed from the main page, but no-one noticed. Since the launch of the site and the increase in people being vocal about that change it seems we may eventually get something to that effect added back... If they ever finish making sure the site is stable.

However, there are further really bad issues that are probably leading to this decline in interactivity between users. Following people is how literally irrelevant - nowhere can you see the blogs of people you followed, or anything they have done (I say nowhere as the Friends thing on my profile has never displayed anything but a blank space). That really sucks for all the prolific bloggers and people I used to keep up with. This is shit that also used to be on the front page.

On top of that, PMs are crap now. When someone responds to one they don't get bumped to the top of your inbox, so unless they are unread they get buried in a hell of @ replies. Secondly none of the responses are timestamped - pretty useless.

People don't want to dig deeper to find good stuff, that should be presented to them when they reach the site homepage. Instead of a useless damn Twitter feed (I have twitter to read the crew's twitter, it doesn't need to be on the sodding homepage) there should be content I'm interested in on the front page. I do hope the site design guys are starting to listen.

Overall the forums aren't all that busy. Then the ill fated new website and now its really dead. I don't see the point of the community spotlight crap when the community is small and people want forums, not to see some sumbitch blog about something.

@boocreepyfootdoctor said:

I really dislike you now, just thought I'd let you know.

It does seem like activity is down, but maybe it just feels that way because I don't find myself here as much as I used to. The reason for me is the removal of forum topics from the main page and if this poll is anywhere near accurate, it seems like there's a good number of people who feel the same way.

I think I've heard that once the ComicVine stuff is finished, we'll start to see various community related things making a return. The site and its content is awesome enough that I doubt people will stop visiting so hopefully everyone will get back into the mix once things are back to normal. I hope -_-;;

I know I've been using the forums less. It seems like new topics aren't frequent enough to warrant visiting as much as I used to. Same can be said of new replies to topics. I'm also of the opinion that the topics haven't been interesting or thought provoking like they once were. It feels like more uninformed users asking faqs rather than informed users debating on topics.

I've noticed that activity has been down as well. I would trade the Ryan Davis Retweet Feed for the forum thing they used to have in a heartbeat.

BURN!

I don't know, I think people are kind of sticking to a few threads daily. I think the new layout scares some people away as well.

I only ever visited the forums through the thing on the front page on the old site.

I think it's actually blogging activity that is way down, feels like 70% down or more, and since those are often attached to forums the forums feel less active.

I think the new format really disincetivizes blogging, As @claude pointed out the easy way to keep up on somebody's blogs is now gone.

which is unfortunate since it was my favorite forum material to read and generated the best game related discussions imo. One nice thing about the blog material is the OP's generally write about actual gaming experiences, instead of news/weirdness/rage of the day which forum topics often seem to be.

Some of my favorite bloggers seem to be just gone from the site altogether. Mixture of off site burps, random bans and disinterest I suspect.

Hopefully that will come back soon.

I was pissed years ago when they took away the staffs messages and front-paged the forum. Then I got used to that..then I sort a really got to like it.

Now they change everything back and I am pissed again... But I do find the staff's tweets or whatever informative.

I don't know about informative. From the twitter feed, I quote:

ryan@taswell

RT @patrickklepek: BEEP! BEEP!

Heard whispers of some suspect banning, but never seen anything concrete. Can you be more spesific?