Considering shutting down the General Discussions board

I'm considering shutting down the General Discussions board for serveral days in order to let the C++ Programming board's post count catch up. I have several reasons to support taking this action: first, it looks bad for us to have more posts on the discussions board than any programming board; second, shutting down the board would help concentrate on programming; third, it gets dull having the same board being used so often, and shutting down this board might cause some of the discussions to go underground on the C# board or the Linux Board - this would be especially helpful because it would help to even out the post count on the boards.

So, what do you all think of this idea? Please vote in the poll.

i think comparing post counts between the various boards is silly, but its your site :)

Heck, the GD should be like school. Shut it down for the whole summer. :p I vote yes (with slight bias as this means less lunacy for me to moderate ;)).

I thought post counts didn't matter. ;) But seriously, closing the GD board would encourage off-topic conversations on the specialized boards. This could be a simple problem that is easily fixed, or a lingering strinky dead rat under the porch, either way we would have to work to sift the threads that need attention from those that are merely a fun release. I don't see any real advantage to closing the GD board, so I vote no.

-Prelude

GD boards usually has more posts in almost all the forums out there. i don't really think the other boards postcount will go up more then usuall if the GD closes down (unless, ppl starts non programming threads in the programmig boards)!:)

[edit] DAMN beaten

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Originally posted by Prelude
But seriously, closing the GD board would encourage off-topic conversations on the specialized boards.

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That's exactly what would happen!

preludes always a step ahead

i vote shut down all the boards and let us go back to our lives and quit vegitating here

another thing... the GD may have a higher post count, but the C++ board has a higher thread count

I think post counts are a bad indicator - problems in the programming boards are usually solved within 2-3 replies, while discussions aren't problems, so may last longer.

As it's been said before, though - it's your board.

i think you're kidding... (at least i hope so).

but in any case look at your post count! you're the webmaster, and you have a puny 134! god knows you have a lot of nonsense threads to catch up on. :D

well he's the one paying for all this enjoyment we're havin here..atleast some of us...and so he's hardworking and doesn't have time for garbage like this. i mean, dammit screw this im going to bed im tired of making opinions that will not change my life or anyone else in any way shape or form. i mean, like all these post that DAMMIT im doin it again thats it im GONE

Hey! I have a job too you know! I shouldn't have time for this! :D

Stop replying to this thread. We're upping the post count on GD :D

EDIT - one possible solution is to post fake post counts on the forum title

if(people == :D )
vote=NO
else
if(people want == :( )
vote=YES

cout<<vote;




OUTPUT
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NO

Well with all the contests going on, perhaps a fair warning should be given if you decide to temporarily shut down the GD forum (which personally I think it would be a good idea).

It's probably too much work, but what about opening the GD on weekends only ?

Or moderate it more closely only allowing stuff that is in some way related to programming ?

Don't know...

One way to promote less GD posting is to not have your post count increase when you post in GD. So basically the only way you can increase your post count is by posting in the other forums. Then again that will only increase the amount of worthless posts in the other forums.

On a side note, a lot of the discussion on the GD board is related to programming.

Either way, have no worries, because all in all it doesn't really matter, so i vote no, keep the GD board up.

If you want to make the post count less, then I would suggest a mass prune of the GD board - say anything older than 6 months.

Having deleted a couple of my ancient messages on GD, this works well (if a little tedious).

Now you could either put these messages in the bin, or move them to a "read only members only board" so that they are available for the terminally bored\b\b\b\b\bcurious, but otherwise invisible to the casual visitor.

>>shutting down the board would help concentrate on programming

But I'm here trying NOT to concentrate on the fact I spend ten hours a day programming.

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Originally posted by Salem
If you want to make the post count less, then I would suggest a mass prune of the GD board - say anything older than 6 months.

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This sounds like a good policy and I know its in place on some other forums I visit....every thing on their equvilent GD board is time limited...this keeps the board in a manageable state and prompts people to post meaningful threads in more suitable places.....


If you close the GD board, you do run a risk of reducing the fun factor of this place......and I dont think that would help anyone.....

I think Salem's idea is pretty sweet actually. It'll solve your post count conundrum, and may encourage that damned Unregistered guy/girl to register.

Let's be honest, other than a few trolls, how many people want to look at last years kitty litter?

One problem is that occasionally (yes rarely I know :)) there are some worthwhile threads put on GD relating to tech issues, software problems, virus problems, issues spanning multiple languages/platforms etc that dont easily relate to the other boards, but are still rather useful and occasionally worth refering back to........

Maybe the inclusion of a Tech board to cover this stuff would be worthwhile?

You could perhaps have a constantly pruned GD board for all the banter and junk....and another board for worthwhile issues that cant be easily categorised under other boards?........

Maybe start by deleteing those "how do you tie your shoe" and "It's hot" threads. No offence to the ones that posted them but it is just dumb.

I also like Salems idea about putting all threads older then x months in a read only archive board (members only).

Or if some mod has some spare time, sorry, I mean a lot of spare time. he can go through the posts (+6 months) and starts deleting the ones that aren't technical or usefull. some members here will lose maybe half their postcount, but who cares.

>>Maybe the inclusion of a Tech board to cover this stuff would be worthwhile?
I also think this is a good idea (maybe the best so far). the techboard will be for questions like "I have this problem with my pc" and the GD-board for things like "How do you tie your shoe". And then you can put the prune for that board on a month or maybe two.

Something close to what nvoigt sad, try to limit the posts in general discussion board a bit more closely to tech/computer/programming related postings. Do a mass purge of all the posts that have nothing at all related to these topics?

I think it's a bad idea. I see a lot of people coming to the GD board for help other than programming... say, hardware related. And I know there are other forums for this. But it's a nice haven for those of us that know there are people here and know they can get help here fairly quickly. I vote no.

Well why do you need to cut down on the posts in GD.. Thats the truth that the GD board has more posts.. So leave the truth alone..

I can see the problem with the GD board being so huge......especially when its largely rubbish being posted...

At one point I used to read the majority of what was posted there......now I hardly skim the top........

shut down GD?

but the private game is my life;)

shut it down if you like, it would help

Shutting down the GD for a while would give me a much needed break from having to read things like the above from Dean. There hasnt been much of interest in the past while, though I enjoy the GD when something interesting does come up.

Still, people enjoy the GD so I inclined to wonder if it shouldnt stay open. The only reasons I said yes stem from exhaustion.

>>At one point I used to read the majority of what was posted there......now I hardly skim the top........

Exactly. Anything good gets lost in the garbage.

If GD board gets shut down (even if its temporarily) the other boeards will get flooded with nonsense threads that has no relevance to that specific board.:mad:

Or perhaps make the board undergound(but atleast it still exists)

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Originally posted by Troll_King


I think that some positive could come out of this thread. For one thing we have learned that the moderators don't do their job. I vote for new moderators.

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i vote for removal of morons that make insightful posts about the fact that everyone who doesnt agree with them must have been molested as a child.

I second that motion. All those in favor, please state so by saying "I". :)

I

Close the GD board, open a board for hardware/software questions and delete all non topic threads at once. Alternativ could be to only allow registered users on the GD board. I don't know...I do know that I spend to much time BS'ing and not enough time programming.

I.

>>Alternativ could be to only allow registered users on the GD board.

Thats a good idea actually. Combine with culling posts after x months. It'd also be nice if the Mods were told to get sniper happy on the crap here.

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Originally posted by Troll_King


Are you a girl?

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Are you a strong, sexy man? :D :p

getting serious...
what gave you that idea? (or is this another dean tangent?)

God, I remember, like Fordy, when I used to make sure to read every post...even when everything started to back up onto the second page, but then after that came the mass spammings, and I packed up and left for f-diddy, then we I came back here I didn't know most of the people...our little community had been overrun with idiot kiddies, and all of the posts (everywhere!) seemed to have been lowered in quality by an immense amount...of course, I can only imagine that when Dean left for that short while, the quality went up quite a bit ;)

Ooo, I forgot. I cast my vote as no, but I could see how this would help a bunch...think about it! Close the board for a week or two and most of the annoying newbies would leave...and people could focus on programming. I mean, most people who are mainly in this board for the General board go to fdiddy as well, anyhow.

I think salem had an excellent idea.

based on this i withhold my vote.

what are most of the newbies doing here? chances are they have a problem and posted it at the c/c++ forums, then saw the general board, and figured 'what the hell, i've got free time, why not see what's going on there...'.

closing the general board may get rid of a lot of the nonsense posts. but are we so anal-retentive that a bunch of posts on a general board bothers us?

when it hits the c and c++ boards, then i'll worry. and the chances of that happening increase when there's no general board.

>when it hits the c and c++ boards, then i'll worry. and the chances of that happening increase when there's no general board.

im not so sure, look at forums, like http://www.opengl.org , it has no GD forum, and ther's not much junk posting going on there, maybe its strict and fast moderating, or maybe just the people realize the board's not for junk posting.

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Originally posted by ygfperson
closing the general board may get rid of a lot of the nonsense posts. but are we so anal-retentive that a bunch of posts on a general board bothers us?

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Good point
Well I hope where not and I don't mind the GD board at all and I am not sure why the webmaster want to close the GD but it could be a couple of reason.
His new web host charge after how many hits he gets.
The GD DB gets expensive to store.
He don't want to pay for our pointless spaming.
He wants a "pure" programming site
etc...

You actually hit a nerve there...I know over at fdiddy we're having space issues, (only 30MB left :eek: !) so we're weighing different options about what to do with that...so maybe you're right. The poor webmaster has to conserve enough space (especially now that he moved the site to the same host as us) for actual posting, and all of this useless "How wide is your garden hose?" posting is taking up valuable space.

While this thread started as a joke (I wouldn't want the discussions to go underground onto the C# and Linux boards...), it has also spawned some good ideas - the tech board would help organize the boards better, and I have already mass-moved all of the posts over 180 days old onto a new board, A Brief History of Cprogramming.com.

As far as space goes, we still have about six hundred megabytes left. On the old server, we were running into some space issues.

It looks like there are only usefull threads in there, good job.
Did you go through all the threads???
Very cool and many thanks

I did a mass move of all old posts. Perhaps some time in the future a few volunteers and I could pick through the board and try to find the most informative threads and put those on a separate board.

I'll help with that.

You can count on the help of the mods as well, webmaster.

Oh and TGM check your PM box, it's urgent. Thanks.

I rather doubt that shutting down the OT board will encourage
more use of the other c-related forums. People usually come and ask their few C++ questions and then gravitate elsewhere.
If there's no place else to gravitate here, then they most likely
would gravitate elsewhere. So, I don't think you can force an
increase in the others forums by closing this one. Uh, uh.

rick barclay

Sounded like one of MY jokes there webmaster-ie many ppl may not have found it funny.....PS I know I may like to flame, but if you want any junk sorting through, you know FOUNTAIN is your choice...let me know...I am old enough to decipher junk from usefulness!

hey webmaster....ever just woken up one morning and thought "Damn...I'm not very funny, am I?" ;) :p

But you know I love you anyway...

and -KEN- extands his ho-ness to the cprogrammin.com webmaster. When will it end.

your board, your rules...
but you're asking for votes so... I'll just go with the majority.

To think about shutting it down is a bad idea, really. We, programmers sometimes may also need life, discussing about stuffs other than programming.

Life full of programming is so no life.

Even other type of forums out there (Non-programming), they still have a GD board so that the forum will not be dull.

Post count doesn't really matter much.

I strongly disagree with the idea of shutting down GD board.

Keep it on.

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hey webmaster....ever just woken up one morning and thought "Damn...I'm not very funny, am I?"

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I don't know, this is just about the funniest thread that I've read in a long time!

I'm against the deletion of old posts, unless we run into a space problem. Closing old threads, maybe, but I still think even if old posts aren't thought-provoking or whatever, they can still be entertaining.

Wow, I see you used my idea for a tech board....excellent!

Can we add a sticky on there to tell people what its there for and ask them to not clutter it with irrelevant stuff?

I dont think shutting down the GD would do anything at all, other than encourage off-topic posts in other boards.

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But seriously, closing the GD board would encourage off-topic conversations on the specialized boards.

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In my opinion, that is the main reason to keep the GD board.

Someone voted and bumped this. The issue is dead now. I'm closign the thread. Any objections...well PM me and complain.