This post is going to be a huge rant. If you aren’t a fan of rants or a bit of bad language then I suggest you stop reading this now.
The Forum Insider was meant to be an online community for forum enthusiasts, developers and a place to discuss new emerging trends that was an UNBIAS source of information. You know what it has turned in to now? A few things:
- A place for little kids to bitch, whine and complain about changes to forum scripts such as the commercialization of Invision Power Board.
- A place for developers to happily spam their product about saying “x is better than y so why not use x?”
- A place where the members fuel each other for arguments, fights, and snap snap snap at each other.
- A MyTopix fan-boy website.
I used to visit The Forum Insider every day (sure I didn’t post that often) as it were a great information resource for updates on other discussion boards, a friendly place to chat with other developers, and maybe even a place to gain a few customers (not by spamming MyBB everywhere though!)
Sure, MyTopix is a nice new feature driven forum package but do we really need every second topic in the user announcements forum to be about every little source code change in MyTopix? A thread about screenshots for MyTopix? What the hell makes this board any better than others to make it deserve a thread about admin cp screenshots in the User Announcements forum?
There seems to be the little MyTopix fan club now trolling the TFI (Forum Insider) forums too. Like I said, this resource was supposed to present an unbiased view of discussion systems not promote MyTopix at every little chance there is.
People come to TFI to bitch and complain about changes that IPS have made to their forum software, IPB. Even though they’re a competitor, I say good luck to them and they have every right to make the decision they did. What people don’t have the right to do is complain about their decision. They need to get over the fact the board is paid and find another system to use or fork out the licensing fees. For something that has had a lot of work put in to it (like any Microsoft product for that matter) they deserve to earn a bit back from it.
Arguments. Oh boy does it piss me off when reading threads to see people bickering at each other saying crude comments such as “I might reply to ekerazha later, I can’t be bothered to spend the time required to explain simple facts to an arrogant idiot right now”, “ekerazha stop talking out of your arse, and stop pretending you know what your talking about!” and then the all famous cynical roll eyes smilie as a reply to those messages.
Is it really necessary to make personal attacks against these people for their thoughts, beliefs or whatever? It is their opinion and sure if they have some wrong facts then set them straight in a nice manner and don’t just bicker with them over it. Jesus people.
I thought if anyone knew how to act on community forums it would be the members of TFI as most are either developers of a board or are active participants or users of board software but recent posts have proven to me otherwise.
Things like this seem to have erupted when Long left TFI. Come back Long!
It may seem like I was attacking only MyTopix here but I just took a recent example..
Comments
Peter Hall (March 9th, 2005, 1:40 am)
But what [i]would[/i] you have at TFI instead? Even those of us who were there since the first days of tBS don’t remember much else ever happening.
Developers don’t have much to say to each other. Anything that they don’t want to keep secret from their competitors is usually not worth saying in the first place, so why bother? The original developer’s forum at tBS got about 10 topics in it before the novelty wore off and people stopped posting.
I think it was just as bad when Long was at TFI too. I really can’t see how you can solve the problem without killing the community. I’ve come to accept it as it is, the good and the bad.
Chris Boulton (March 9th, 2005, 3:08 pm)
I would have it like it used to be where developers and everyone could just discuss things like we used to without arguments or fights. It may not been as active but it sure was a nicer place to be around.
Nothing will probably change about the place but this was a bit of a rant when I was slightly pissed off about TFI and a few other little things..
Daniel Murdoch (March 9th, 2005, 5:12 pm)
Funny. I wasn’t aware I had a trolling fanclub.
Black Hat (March 22nd, 2005, 11:51 am)
MyTopix is so popular on TFI because it’s a hella sweet software. Stop complaining about it.
Chris Boulton (March 22nd, 2005, 4:53 pm)
^ Amazing how you found out about this site. Proves my point exactly.
Anyway, this is my site so I can say whatever I like and afterall I am only stating my opinion.
Troll.
The Wolf (March 22nd, 2005, 11:09 pm)
Well! Look what the cat dragged in?
MyTopix is a great board, its only natural that people will talk about it. MyBBoard is also good, and one day it will have its time in the lights.
The Wolf (March 22nd, 2005, 11:11 pm)
Geh, I should say, I agree with you about the fighting to a point. Sometimes we (me) go to far.
Adam (March 23rd, 2005, 6:57 am)
Hi Chris, nice article.
MyTopix is great software, and everyones entitled to their opinion.
Eric (April 7th, 2005, 1:04 pm)
Unfortunately your problem is solved. Invision Board has bought TFI, moved it their servers and have deleted an unfavourable IPB thread.
http://www.foruminsider.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=1086
Long (April 8th, 2005, 5:27 pm)
And the world keeps on spinning. Yay!
Dietrich (January 14th, 2006, 12:16 pm)
Well, sorry to see this blog and ditto post so late, but I have had the exact same feeling about TFI. I know I haven’t been too kind to some people, including you, but the reactions of most people on TFI on most topics are really at a childlish level. They have even led to myself also posting topics I should have never posted, and which didn’t improve anything to the situation at all.
It has no use to go and tell them (as I tried), as you could see they even managed to get here and tell the opposite. I am also not going into big discussions at TFI anymore, as they in some way always seem to cause a flaming war. Hopefully the situation is getting better sometimes.
After all, I will be reading your blog in the future if you don’t mind.
Tikitiki (January 21st, 2006, 1:54 pm)
I would compare this to the RCT3 section at the ataricommunity.com forum. Its become as uncontrolable as a box of monkeys, and after 2000 posts, I left. When bctrainers was the moderator, it used to be an awsome place to chat about the future of RCT3 and everything, but now its turned into a monkey palace. I never thought that I would ever leave that place, but it came to it and it has. After that I decided to join the MyBB community, and become an active supporter/modder.
P.S. I like this new Chris