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lappinitup

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This site always has been and still is, the first place Norwich City fans head to when the want to let of steam, articulate their thoughts, or simply peruse all things about the club they love. I know of many people who have never signed up to the site but read it on a regular basis.This place is always first with breaking news and a source of information which the Archant journo''s regularly pick up on and then follow with an article a few hours and sometimes, days later. Indeed, some of the Archant journo''s started out as posters on here such as Mike Bailey and David Freezer whilst others have used it as a springboard for their own ambitions.With the large volume of traffic that passes through here and the advertising revenue it must accumulate, along with dwindling sales of  the printed versions of their papers, Surely Archant need this as an income stream so why do they seem to treat this site with such contempt. Is it because they feel the site has a bad reputation and they want to distance themselves from it but can''t, because of the revenue they would lose? If this is the case, why did they let it get a bad reputation in the first place?For the last two days there have been problems with this antiquated software and yet nothing has been done. No acknowledgement, nix, nada. And yet, when a rival site was set up, threads mentioning it disappeared, signatures deleted never to return, it was almost like a twenty four hour suicide watch. Clearly the thought of losing all that lovely lolly spooked them into action. Once the threat receded, they withdrew to their previous complacent position.As nutty has said, this place has a wonderful diverse array of posters and for all the meltdowns, bickering etc, somewhere in the middle is always the truth.It''s time Archant woke up to what they have and support it rather than treat it as a necessary evil.

ps:  I have just tried posting this on the ''error'' thread three times so let''s try a new thread.......

 

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I doubt they will ever spend the money to update this forum.The issue of porting all the old threads over has been cited, but surely archiving them separately would be easy / cheap? That dreaded "other site" was literally set up for a few hundred quid.

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Oh and I''ll add (as I thought of it after I posted, oh for an edit button) that the concept of forums, is pretty much dying, and its likely Archant looks to Facebook and Twitter more now.

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Plenty of forums are still going strong though, especially football related ones. Look at the success of places like Reddit and 4chan. It would be a shame for them to die out in favour of 140 character football hot takes- quite difficult to have a decent debate on twitter (or any debate with some people).

This forum is still extremely busy but is either completely neglected or subject to sudden and sweeping moderation. You''ll barely see any sign of moderation for months and then- bam- over one weekend SDP''s post count jumps up and a number of threads get deleted. It shouldn''t be too much to ask for some updated software that actually works with the most popular internet browsers and some low level moderation to keep things ticking along. I''ve said it before but you only need to take a glance at TWTD (a forum without the backing of a company like Archant) to see how it can be done.

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The trouble is that ''the other site'' is massively dull and some posters that are on both forums do not act like themselves on Norwich talk

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[quote user="Hoola Han Solo"]The trouble is that ''the other site'' is massively dull and some posters that are on both forums do not act like themselves on Norwich talk[/quote]So don''t use it then.Jesus, we still doing this?

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[quote user="Hoola Han Solo"]The trouble is that ''the other site'' is massively dull and some posters that are on both forums do not act like themselves on Norwich talk[/quote]So don''t use it then.Jesus, we still doing this?

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Proper site with proper posters. Despite all the hardships this weekend these hardy posters showed the great British spirit that''s such a part of our history and carried on regardless. It''s a far cry from last year when a very few not so hardy souls turned tail for pastures new with prophesies of doom about this forums future. How did that all turn out?

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[quote user="king canary"]Plenty of forums are still going strong

though, especially football related ones. Look at the success of places

like Reddit and 4chan. It would be a shame for them to die out in favour

of 140 character football hot takes- quite difficult to have a decent

debate on twitter (or any debate with some people).

This forum is still extremely busy but is either completely

neglected or subject to sudden and sweeping moderation. You''ll barely

see any sign of moderation for months and then- bam- over one weekend

SDP''s post count jumps up and a number of threads get deleted. It

shouldn''t be too much to ask for some updated software that actually

works with the most popular internet browsers and some low level

moderation to keep things ticking along. I''ve said it before but you

only need to take a glance at TWTD (a forum without the backing of a

company like Archant) to see how it can be done.[/quote]Well said.A quick look at TWTD..... ''427 guests have all visited the site in the last ten minutes''. (That figure doesn''t include registered users).Morty.

It is not about any other site. I was simply pointing out that Archant

will take action when they see a threat to their income.

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[quote user="nutty nigel"]Proper site with proper posters. Despite all the hardships this weekend these hardy posters showed the great British spirit that''s such a part of our history and carried on regardless. It''s a far cry from last year when a very few not so hardy souls turned tail for pastures new with prophesies of doom about this forums future. How did that all turn out?[/quote]Turned out just fine Eddie.You loveable old troll[;)]I have a fairly good guess, who is running as fast as his trotters will carry him, will be along any minute.[:D]

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[quote user="lappinitup"][quote user="king canary"]Plenty of forums are still going strong

though, especially football related ones. Look at the success of places

like Reddit and 4chan. It would be a shame for them to die out in favour

of 140 character football hot takes- quite difficult to have a decent

debate on twitter (or any debate with some people).

This forum is still extremely busy but is either completely

neglected or subject to sudden and sweeping moderation. You''ll barely

see any sign of moderation for months and then- bam- over one weekend

SDP''s post count jumps up and a number of threads get deleted. It

shouldn''t be too much to ask for some updated software that actually

works with the most popular internet browsers and some low level

moderation to keep things ticking along. I''ve said it before but you

only need to take a glance at TWTD (a forum without the backing of a

company like Archant) to see how it can be done.[/quote]Well said.A quick look at TWTD..... ''427 guests have all visited the site in the last ten minutes''. (That figure doesn''t include registered users).Morty.

It is not about any other site. I was simply pointing out that Archant

will take action when they see a threat to their income.[/quote]Never said it was mate, was just pointing out that you can buy yourself an extremely functional forum platform, for literally a few hundred quid.

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[quote user="lappinitup"][quote user="king canary"]Plenty of forums are still going strong

though, especially football related ones. Look at the success of places

like Reddit and 4chan. It would be a shame for them to die out in favour

of 140 character football hot takes- quite difficult to have a decent

debate on twitter (or any debate with some people).

This forum is still extremely busy but is either completely

neglected or subject to sudden and sweeping moderation. You''ll barely

see any sign of moderation for months and then- bam- over one weekend

SDP''s post count jumps up and a number of threads get deleted. It

shouldn''t be too much to ask for some updated software that actually

works with the most popular internet browsers and some low level

moderation to keep things ticking along. I''ve said it before but you

only need to take a glance at TWTD (a forum without the backing of a

company like Archant) to see how it can be done.[/quote]Well said.A quick look at TWTD..... ''427 guests have all visited the site in the last ten minutes''. (That figure doesn''t include registered users).Morty.

It is not about any other site. I was simply pointing out that Archant

will take action when they see a threat to their income.[/quote]Never said it was mate, was just pointing out that you can buy yourself an extremely functional forum platform, for literally a few hundred quid.

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Has SP Pete been contacted?  Surely the nonsense of the last few days is fixable, even if the long awaited upgrade (lol) and long lost edit button isn''t.

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Morty why are you posting nearly everything twice or is this another foible of our message board now![;)]

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[quote user="morty"]Never said it was mate, was just pointing out that you can buy yourself an extremely functional forum platform, for literally a few hundred quid.[/quote]I agree. Why do you think they seem so reluctant to do so?

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[quote user="OldRobert"]Morty why are you posting nearly everything twice or is this another foible of our message board now![;)][/quote]Clearly building up my post count[;)]

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[quote user="lappinitup"][quote user="morty"]Never said it was mate, was just pointing out that you can buy yourself an extremely functional forum platform, for literally a few hundred quid.[/quote]I agree. Why do you think they seem so reluctant to do so? [/quote]As I said earlier in the thread Pete cited problems about porting all the old posts over. To be honest they all should have been archived in some way, every few years long before now. There is absolutely no need to be going back to day one of the forum anyway. They could archive huge parts of it.I just think that they plain don''t want to do it.

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[quote user="morty"][quote user="OldRobert"]Morty why are you posting nearly everything twice or is this another foible of our message board now![;)][/quote]Clearly building up my post count[;)][/quote]It''s taking me about four attempts to post anything with error 503!

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[quote user="OldRobert"]It''s taking me about four attempts to post anything with error 503![/quote]It does seem to be getting worse today. [:''(]

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People say a few hundred quid - there''s several opensource forum software applications available out there for free that will easily surpass this in terms of features etc.
Setting it up really isn''t a long-winded job however I understand if they want to keep the forum history and migrate it over that will require some work - depending on the back end system''s their currently running. Nothing impossible though and certainly you''d think it''d have been addressed by now..

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Don''t really think there is that much wrong with the message board. Ok there are a few glitches today and yesterday, but generally the forum is one of the clearest and easy to use forums I''ve seen.   Most of us have worked out how to do quotes properly, although something seems to have changed on that front recently, so maybe that needs tweaking - and as for the lack of an edit button, which is a common complaint - there is a preview button to check what you write -

you just have to take the effort.  Frankly, imo, some of the other so called "up to date" forum platforms are not nearly as clear as this one and having tried one of the others and occasionally posted on away clubs forums, this one is the best one out there, by some margin.  It works ok on android too.  Maybe not the most up to date, but it''s a bit like the referendum.........be careful what you wish for........

 

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What''s the advantages of turning a fans forum over to Twitter and Facebook?

Are the negatives, both too shorter amount of text to seriously debate, and a lack of anonymity?

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morty wrote the following post at 03/07/2016 3:53 PM:

Oh and I''ll add (as I thought of it after I posted, oh for an edit button) that the concept of forums, is pretty much dying, and its likely Archant looks to Facebook and Twitter more now.

Ah so I guess you have returned to finish it off then.👍

Was doing fine without you, Brexit thread went down hill fast since you got back, but hey what''s new.😉

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[quote user="Vanwink"]morty wrote the following post at 03/07/2016 3:53 PM:

Oh and I''ll add (as I thought of it after I posted, oh for an edit button) that the concept of forums, is pretty much dying, and its likely Archant looks to Facebook and Twitter more now.

Ah so I guess you have returned to finish it off then.👍

Was doing fine without you, Brexit thread went down hill fast since you got back, but hey what''s new.😉[/quote]Awww, is someone after an argument?[:)]

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[quote user="OldRobert"]Has SP Pete been contacted?  Surely the nonsense of the last few days is fixable, even if the long awaited upgrade (lol) and long lost edit button isn''t.[/quote]
I emailed the moderation team Sat morning when I couldn''t post, to let them know there was a problem but haven''t had a reply so assume it''s not being looked after this weekend.
I always stick up for Archant but I too am a loss to understand why they don''t upgrade the software which they have been promising for a couple of years. I know Pete said they need to merge 15 years worth of posts but I''m sure no-one would be bothered if they just scrapped everything over a year old and started again.
It''s a real shame tbh as Archant have some good products with their newspapers and their new pinkun magazine but this place lets them down.
Not sure who''s holding it back but I suspect it''s someone over Pete''s head as I''m sure he''d like a new messageboard and less complaints

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Thing is they don''t need to actually port all of the threads, just update the current forum code so that New Threads were duplicated on the new backend and all "Reply" buttons ran a script to migrate that specific thread to the new backend if they weren''t already there and then posted that reply to the both copies of the thread. Do that for three weeks or so, then switch over to the new backend as default and leave this forum as an unupdateable archive but with Reply buttons still migrating the thread to the new backend then when someone fancied adding to the Quag or cheeseboard threads or even just wanted to call someone out for contradicting something they said three years ago they still could....Hell, the trickiest thing is that if they have done account security properly (tchyeah right) then they might not be able to migrate all of the users over, there are workarounds to that by monkeying with the login page...

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You can see why Archant don''t bother though. Zero investment and the board is still popular.

How much do you realistically think the advertising on this page makes Archant? The usual rule of thumb for Adsense on internet pages is 100,000 unique views a day will generate £10,000 a year.

This site doesn''t get anywhere near 100,000 unique views so you can see why there is reluctance to spend any money on it - especially as every time some one tries to start a rival board it doesn''t really have much effect on the popularity of this one.

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