Welcome - Here is what's going on

I've got two choices, the high horse approach of 'take it or leave it' or the concerned approach I prefer, which I'll explain (again):

First, I know I write long assed posts - but does anyone actually read what I write?
You may notice that there is a MidWest Events sub-forum, which was created to prevent the MW threads from drowning out everyone else (they were by far the most active of the old regions). If another region has enough activity, we can create other sub-forums as needed. Likewise, if a sub-forum ever dies down enough, it may get merged back into the general events forum.
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MW was moved as it is simply to keep it from drowning out all the other states and countries, it has that much traffic. NE was second in amount of threads and members, but not quite enough to warrant a sub-forum at this time. That doesn't mean it can't happen, it just means we have to be able to justify it. Or do you think we ought to split out 50+ forums right now so every state and every country can have a convenient place to look for their stuff? There comes a point where it doesn't make sense to maintain subforums, and there comes a point when it makes sense to create them.

Two points I'll try to close with as I make this as short as I can (pray for my brevity). First, the definition of these subforums. Right now, MW shows every state it used to have. Probably very soon, we'll narrow it to focus on the high areas that are creating all the traffic (OH-IN-KY-MI-whatever) - it doesn't make sense to keep N&SDakota in there, so slow to low areas like that will probably be thrown back into the general population. Similarly, if we can justify the creation of a 'NE' subforum, it can be created to focus on a specific area (NYC-Philly-Boston-whatever) since you probably wouldn't need to carry Maine and Vermont in there with you. But these are areas open for discussion - once we can present justification for creating such a subforum. I never said it won't happen, I'm saying it needs to be warranted.

The second point is how to achieve that sub-forum. Do you think not coming in here will make it magically appear? Or do you think bringing events in here and having a lot of member traffic will give statistical justification for creating the subforum? This is not to be interpreted as 'flood us with crap and keep it bumped to the top', but as 'keep a high level of interest, show a high membership interest in a region, and we'll do what we can to accommodate it'.

Seriously, bitching and complaining aren't going to fix anything. We respect everyone's right to be upset and to express disagreement over the decision, but it won't change things. Working with the system to get your needs(wants) met will get things changed. Help us figure find the best way to make this mega-region most useful. Help us justify subforums for certain areas. I am asking for your help. You, the members, can create a situation where a subforum is warranted. Help us make that a reality. And that statement is directed not only at the NE people, but all of our members in all parts of the world.

This last statement would most especially apply to starlightgemini and dreamgirlie19 who have done so much for this site up to this point- its people like you with all that you do to make 'the scene' in your area be known and liked, that make it even conceivable to create a NE subforum. Its a shame we don't have more members like you bringing events to us, drawing people to BL for more than just drug info - drawing them for events and social interaction. The things you've done are an example of what we need. Please, help us - you are two of the best examples we've got.

lol, so much for brevity. sorry.
 
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Did you know....

dreamgirlie19 said:
I truly dont see how thats possible. Even with formatting, there is 50 states with say 3-4 updated list of events going on at any given weekend. Never mind the weekly/monthly event threads. Way too confusing, as well as time consuming. I
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Did you know you can click on the headers of the columns? Getting the forum sorted by THREAD title, STARTED BY, VIEWS, REPLIES, or by the MOST RECENT POST (as is the default)? So...formatting titles would help you find things quicker, just by clicking on the THREAD header ;)
 
TheLoveBandit said:
First, I know I write long assed posts - but does anyone actually read what I write?
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I always do.

Did you know you can click on the headers of the columns? Getting the forum sorted by THREAD title, STARTED BY, VIEWS, REPLIES, or by the MOST RECENT POST (as is the default)? So...formatting titles would help you find things quicker, just by clicking on the THREAD header [/B]
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lol, i never did this. I guess it would work considering the point you made of the events forums in general not getting that much traffic, so maybe by my trying this i wont have 50 threads pop to the top as recent? I think at least. Ill try it. :)

lol, so much for brevity. sorry.]
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Dont be. Its much better to get what you give than not...!

I will try to follow the forum, its just so confusing and messy. *sigh* I guess the only way to change it is to warrant the sub-forum and i will work on getting one if its the last thing i do on here ;)

Btw thanks for what you said.
 
One other thought - none of the old events forums were ever pruned. They were 'disturbed' for lack of a better term, whenever there was an upgrade or forum shuffle, but if you look at the back page now, there are threads several YEARS old. We'll probably run a prune in a week or so and clean out the old stuff, and we'll be running more frequent pruning exercises just so you don't get a flood of old and obsolete event threads. BUT we do have an archive now, so we can save the really big events (we already have SS, EDC, ULTRA, etc from past years in there) :D
 
bad idea

Ugh...this is horrible! I used to have to search through SE events just to find something that was going on in my city....NOW I have to search through all of NA events just to find something going on in my STATE! This was dumb guys.
 
Seriously, bitching and complaining aren't going to fix anything. We respect everyone's right to be upset and to express disagreement over the decision, but it won't change things. Working with the system to get your needs(wants) met will get things changed. Help us figure find the best way to make this mega-region most useful.


We are trying to make the most of the situation that was presented to us. The best thing that you can do is bear with us and help to make this forum as great as your individual forums. Things were like this before when it was all one events forum and people got around just fine. It will just take some adjusting to get used to the new format. Once all of the posts are formatted in the same manner, it will be easier to find events closest to you. And remember, you can always do a search at the bottom of the page to find posts within particular cities that are nearby.
 
Just for a little perspective on why MW got a subforum and nobody else has (yet) - all events forums were pruned back on Dec 1, 2003. Since then, MW has 17 pages of threads compared to ALL the other forums combined to make 16 pages. Or put another way - NAEvents (ALL regions except MW) has 27816 replies with 1319 posts, compared to MW having 15189 replies with 657 posts, and the Archive is kicking in 7839 replies with 65 posts.

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For dj kaotik and drgreenthumb00. I won't waste your time by quoting what we've already said about this. I'm sure you've read it and made a consious decision with the statements you just made. No need for us to try and discuss it further with you, I guess. :\
 
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TheLoveBandit said:
One other thought - none of the old events forums were ever pruned. They were 'disturbed' for lack of a better term, whenever there was an upgrade or forum shuffle, but if you look at the back page now, there are threads several YEARS old. We'll probably run a prune in a week or so and clean out the old stuff, and we'll be running more frequent pruning exercises just so you don't get a flood of old and obsolete event threads. BUT we do have an archive now, so we can save the really big events (we already have SS, EDC, ULTRA, etc from past years in there) :D
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*WRONG* The forums were pruned back on Dec 1, 2003 (thanks for reminding me, chrissie). However, in an effort to clean up this clusterf*ck, we will fix titles going back about 2-3 weeks and prune anything older. If there is something older that you want to save - put a link in THE PRUNE THREAD or bump it with a statement of "Please save this to the archive".
 
The interesting thing about all of this is the fact that there is still no justification why you'd merge everything. So what if there's low traffic in a certain forum... is that hurting the site in any way? That question has been asked quite a few times, but never answered.

And you can come up with all the title formatting in the world, but the more difficult you make it to post, the less people will post. Also, the less personal a forum feels, the less connection anyone will have to that forum. Granted, it's only an events forum, but still. People like to get a feel for what's going on in their area and socialize with those people. Why do you think the West Coast died.. cuz nobody was allowed to socialize with each other. Then when social channels were opened up again, things started picking up...

Having said that, I really see no reason to post my events here any more. Like many said, events are going to shoot through here and get moved off the first page in a flash. The mass majority of people aren't going to know how to sort and file and screen and whatnot.

I guess you have your reasons for doing this and hopefully things will work out in your favor.

mike
 
I'm gunna have to express my right to complain....

Coming to bluelight over the years, I felt the division of locations was a key feature of this message board. It created a place for people to come together and form a more personal community, among the larger bluelight community. It allowed us to express how the local scene developed and affected our lives, on a more personal scale.

I live on the entire other side of the country, so the dj lineups and peoples opinion recaps of CA/most anywhere outside of North East – serve absolutely no purpose but to make finding recent threads in my area harder...

I always respect the decisions of the site admins - but as a very long time member, I have to disagree with this decision wholeheartedly ... people are always objected to change – but I don’t see any substantial benefits to this change to allow the majority to cope with it easily. (As you have apparently made clear we must do anyhow)

It’s sad to say – but I may never check for local events on BL again… this decision certainly will push many members to other boards and websites – who lack the professionalism, informative nature and community factor – simply because many of us don’t always have the time to sit on a message board for hours, just to find the needles in the hay.
 
I just noticed that we can't even post our own events threads!?!!? 8o

I understand you're reasoning for this..... as many many people cannot seem to read and follow guidelines and MANY events threads do get closed because of this.

But...... :\ I always put a lot of effort in the thread I do each month for my favorite weekly. For whatever reason I'm always happy to get the next month's lineup for it and post the new thread. And I like to add pictures and make it look pretty. Now I can't even do that?? Sad. Just. Sad :( :( :(

I'm not a complainer. I don't think I've ever complained about any changes that have been made to the site. But this really sucks. I'm sorry to bitch :(
 
alphakry said:
Coming to bluelight over the years, I felt the division of locations was a key feature of this message board. It created a place for people to come together and form a more personal community, among the larger bluelight community. It allowed us to express how the local scene developed and affected our lives, on a more personal scale.
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Exactly.

Excellent points by alphakry and soultitanium.

And I agree... there are much easier ways to get event information now that everything is jumbled together 8(
 
Doctor Love said:
I can't start a new thread in this forum, anyone know why?
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New rule is only moderators of this forum can start new threads.

I guess that's an attempt to reduce the inane posts by people who can't read guidelines.

However that punishes those of us who can read and follow directions 8(
 
soultitanium & alphakry:


Well, I quoted most of what you wrote, but for the sake of brevity I'll sum up with the major points:

1) Why merge the forums? Well, actually, the question has been answered.
One of the basic questions any forum has to be asked periodically is ‘If this forum didn’t exist, is there enough reason to create it’ and with that reasoning, several forums might have faced elimination. Instead, we chose to merge our regions back together into a more active forum
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Yes, there is administrative overhead associated with maintaining low traffic forums. You've got several mods (remember, there used to be four per region) who may just be coasting and not really contributing for each of the six regions. Any changes the admins have to make had to be done for 6 different regions, and they've got to question if it's worth it for a combined traffic that is less than 5% of the entire site. In their opinion, no it wasn't worth it - so, here's what probably would have happened:

Canada -> Gone
USA West -> Floundering, and either gone or brought to life (see below)
USA MW -> Steamrolling as it always has
USA SE -> Floundering, same situation as West
USA NE -> Making it...and probably surviving well.
Latin&South America -> Gone

Even if West and SE were left going for a bit longer, they would have been killed unless there was a significant increase in traffic. I know over the past several months BigCat007 and @lterEgo have busted their butts doing a lot of postings for their regions, but even so, there was rarely more than 10-15 threads going in either of those forums for any given week. You know yourself how significantly the traffic in West dropped over the past few years. Rather than let our members from those regions lose any place to call home, we merged them and gave them all a communal space. Yes, its crowded, but at least there is a home for these events.

2) Lack of a sense of community - it is undeniable that this merge will cause members to lose the sense of regional identity. However, the comeradery, socializing, and haning out still have a place with us. Within the thread for an event, nothing will have changed in terms of peer pressure to meetup, sharing the memories of another great night hanging out, blasting the dj that trainwrecked, etc. Within the event threads, the feel would be the same - we did not intend to change the content of those threads. AND we added the NASocial forum to have more of the friendly discussions that brought members together of a similar region. NASocial will host all the community related threads that fit, or didn't fit as often was the case, within the confines of the regional events. Hopefully, you all will see the NASocial as a place for what soutitanium was referring to in "when social channels were opened up again, things started picking up..."

3. You are so dissapointed you won't come back - well, that's the inital reaction by a several people, and you are perfectly in your rights to choose which forums you frequent when visiting BL. I wish you wouldn't give up so quickly, give us a chance....but it is ultimately your decision. I've already made several requests for our members to help us make the best of this merger, indicating that it is your visiting that will ultimately kill the events all together or allow us to create subforums for the regions once again - it is all dependent upon you, and your decision to visit/read/post in these forums. Choose to leave, you hurt us further. Choose to stay and work with us, we can make all kinds of cool things happen to make everyone happier.

4. Too much hassle to find your info - we've stated many times that we're working on it. It's only been a few days, GIVE ... US ... SOME ... TIME. Title formatting may not be the great panacea, and sorting the forum may not be the best work around, but give us some time to sort it out and see what works.

Nobody said this was the "end all be all", this forum is intended to be a work in process - looking at suggestions on how to improve and acting on the ones that make sense. Right now, splitting the forums back out doesn't make sense for the site, and we're sorry that is an inconvinience to the members. We're doing the best we can, and I hope you'll help us make the situation better.

===============

Doctor Love
For now, if a member would like to get an event posted – please add your info into the NEW EVENTS thread at the top of the forum and the moderators will split it out as a separate event once we have all the necessary information and can set up the thread title properly. We may, at some time in the future, open the forum back up to the members for creating initial posts, but for now members may only reply to existing threads. This will give us a chance to refine our guidelines and forum structure.
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starlightgemini said:
I just noticed that we can't even post our own events threads!?!!? 8o

I understand you're reasoning for this..... as many many people cannot seem to read and follow guidelines and MANY events threads do get closed because of this.

But...... :\ I always put a lot of effort in the thread I do each month for my favorite weekly. For whatever reason I'm always happy to get the next month's lineup for it and post the new thread. And I like to add pictures and make it look pretty. Now I can't even do that?? Sad. Just. Sad :( :( :(

I'm not a complainer. I don't think I've ever complained about any changes that have been made to the site. But this really sucks. I'm sorry to bitch :(
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Kristen, all you have to do is add your info to the new events thread and a moderator will split it off into its own thread. Once that is done, you can edit the thread when you get more info, pictures etc. It's pretty much the same, only you will just have to add the info to the new events thread first and wait for it to be split. And this way they can stop posts being added without the full information or incorrect titles.
 
Really, adding your own events posts has only changed in that you add it as a
reply.gif
now instead of a
newthread.gif
, then wait a bit for us to split it out - then you still have the same editing capabilities you used to have. The only drawback is having to wait in the NEW EVENT queue until a mod splits it out (which hasn't been more than a few hours for any event so far, and shouldn't be more than a day for any event...ever). Yes, this can be seen as punishing the few good people in order to contain the many bad people, but the closer statement is the other one that was made about the staff having their reasons. First, is to bring order to this chaos. Once that order is established, anyone can see how to follow suit - so if we open it back up to members creating new posts they will have all the examples needed to have their info up in the proper manner. Yes, it is a mess right now, GIVE .... US .... SOME .... TIME - hopefully by this weekend things will be a little better.

As for other reasons we may have, I'll say that we are seriously looking into calendar functions that integrate with our site software. I can't tell you how it will function, or if we'll find one that integrates well, but we are looking into it. If something is found, it wouldn't be implemented until the next site upgrade (which is dependent on admin schedules, which means who knows how long - not knocking them, they've just got a lot going on over the next couple of months). If we do get a calendar function implemented, we'd want the mods to control what gets put in it until we get adjusted to it and feel confident we won't have it crashed or spammed to death by less mature members. By running the EVENTS forum as a mod controlled forum, we are laying the groundwork for any calendar function that we can find. So, there, there's at least one other reason for controlling the posts.
 
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chrissie said:
Kristen, all you have to do is add your info to the new events thread and a moderator will split it off into its own thread. Once that is done, you can edit the thread when you get more info, pictures etc. It's pretty much the same, only you will just have to add the info to the new events thread first and wait for it to be split. And this way they can stop posts being added without the full information or incorrect titles.
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Oh. I think I misunderstood it somewhat. Thanks for explaining it, Chrissie.

Ok that isn't so bad then :) If I have freedom to edit my thread once a MOD starts it for me.

And at least now we won't have dozens of new threads that violate guidelines.

My feelings about this have gone from :( to :\
 
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