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Post by G on Dec 18, 2014 14:35:21 GMT -5
Oh I realize that but to be honest the last semi-decent participation Ive had was probably around 2011 anyway. When Ive been visiting your board recently it felt like your board was still chugging along nicely. Its funny your friends and members post on your board to keep it going and I always felt like mine left to hurt me and my board. In the end I had to learn to accept thongs and post in spite of it all. Id come and post just to keep it existing myself. Then after what happened to me in 2012- 2013, I had to step away to focus more on me and I finally felt content just to let it die, but thr urge to come bsack has overcome me the last few weeks. I guess because its mine and zi just dont feel comfortable quitting. It letting it go.
Its sad the state of message boards. I remember the mid to late 90s it was great to find a place where others with the same interests would come and discuss things at length in ongoing conversations. Now advent of social media on sites like Twitter and Facebook our attention span no longer wants to converse as well as we are oversaturated with outlets. Most of them serving up fanboyish crap in rah rah fashion. If you wanna reply you are just a faceless passerby never to be seen again. There is no such thing as a regular anymore. I always felt true conversations happened on message boards but nobody has the attention span anymore.
Sorry about the typos. Part of the problem is on my phone the page side scrolls and I cant see half of what I typed until after its posted. And to edit text is maddening because it takes forever to get the curser to go where I need it to. I have the worlds smallest touchscreen keyboard. This took me about 30 minutes to type whereas on a pc I know i could have done this in under 2. My hand is cramping as I speak.
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Post by defiant1 on Dec 19, 2014 0:20:06 GMT -5
Oh I realize that but to be honest the last semi-decent participation Ive had was probably around 2011 anyway. When Ive been visiting your board recently it felt like your board was still chugging along nicely. Its funny your friends and members post on your board to keep it going and I always felt like mine left to hurt me and my board. In the end I had to learn to accept thongs and post in spite of it all. Id come and post just to keep it existing myself. Then after what happened to me in 2012- 2013, I had to step away to focus more on me and I finally felt content just to let it die, but thr urge to come bsack has overcome me the last few weeks. I guess because its mine and zi just dont feel comfortable quitting. It letting it go. Its sad the state of message boards. I remember the mid to late 90s it was great to find a place where others with the same interests would come and discuss things at length in ongoing conversations. Now advent of social media on sites like Twitter and Facebook our attention span no longer wants to converse as well as we are oversaturated with outlets. Most of them serving up fanboyish crap in rah rah fashion. If you wanna reply you are just a faceless passerby never to be seen again. There is no such thing as a regular anymore. I always felt true conversations happened on message boards but nobody has the attention span anymore. Sorry about the typos. Part of the problem is on my phone the page side scrolls and I cant see half of what I typed until after its posted. And to edit text is maddening because it takes forever to get the curser to go where I need it to. I have the worlds smallest touchscreen keyboard. This took me about 30 minutes to type whereas on a pc I know i could have done this in under 2. My hand is cramping as I speak. I don't care about typos. The important thing is that a person understand what you are saying. There was one day awhile back when my tracking scripts only registered two visits in a 24hr period. The scripts count every visit to a checklist as well as the messageboard. I posted on my board the contributing factors, but it's clear that interest in comics are down either way. I think the perceived sabotage or feelings of abandonment here are you focusing on what the board needs when the members are more interested in what they want. Brother J likes looking at comics off the beaten path. Vikingspawn likes sci-fi and Jim Shooter comics. Starbrand likes Jim Shooter comics and flipping comics for a profit. I have a few lurkers and people that post irregularly, but those three are the ones providing just enough input to keep things going. My board was healthier when I was buying comics or scanning long boxes of comics. I have stuff those guys have never seen before so they are curious even if they think it looks like crap. You have probably observed this, but the MOST unreliable people are your friends in real life. My friends always wanted a play by play on what was discussed and who I was pissing off, but they never once visited or posted. They also acted weird when my cartoon was published. It was as if they were jealous I had something going on. One friend wrote a rant column for the magazine that published my cartoon. People would ask for my autograph, but they never asked for his. Don't think about what you want or your board needs. Think about what your guests want. Even then, that may not be enough. The STL board was dead and it was filled with info people wanted. Defiant1
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Post by G on Dec 20, 2014 17:05:20 GMT -5
Im not really concerned with trying to gain viewership back. I honestly made peace with that a long time ago. Not that I wouldnt mind having a few regulars I could rely on, Im just not concerned with trying to chase after posters anymore. I think I followed your advice a long time ago and treat it more or less as my personal blog.
You correct in stating friends make lousy members. I found they have a sense of entitlement and that board rules dont apply to them and when called out on it they just leave. I think the abandoment issue you reference is more a sense I felt where they felt like I needed them more than they needed me so anytime something happened they pretty much acted like good luck getting along without me. I know where each decided to leave and what the circumstances were.
I remember with cyberstrike he got bent out of shape when we posted comments about superheroes being depicted as gay. So he left and I went and tracked him down and pretty much apologized to him and he comes back for a couple weeks and then Spider-man in the Ultimate universe was going to be turning black and we made negative comments about it and away he went like the topic was off limits. Thats kinda what I mean by entitlement. If you dont run your board the way I want Im out of here. I cant have that. These people dont do anything to help me around here. They dont get to tell me what I can and cannot post about. Id rather have a dead board than have people acting like they hold the success or failure of my board in their hands. Ive gotten to the point Im rather impervious to the board being dead and Ill just post what I want. I have things I want to post about and ideas of getting back into comics. The board has always been set up where people can post about what they want. Message boards are pretty much dead and I pretty much failed at building mine. It feels a bit too late to worry about tracking down viewership. Its pretty much just a place for me to shoot the shit and vent. I guess Im content to just let things fall the way they will. When youve been dead as long as I have life to me is just coming here and the board still exists.
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Post by defiant1 on Dec 20, 2014 20:38:01 GMT -5
It sounds like you have come full circle and have an objective view of what you have here. I'm not saying that because you agree with me. You injected some valid observations of your own.
If you analyze what makes people post and why, you'll see different motivations. You have people that are seeking information. You have people that want to force out their own information. You have people who do both.
The people who seek information lose interest if that information isn't supplied. It requires a steady supply from someone. The lurkers are typically seekers that aren't finding anything compelling enough to come out of the shadows and discuss. They aren't bad guys. They just feed off what they see and that's all they want. If members were really posting something the lurker had an opinion about, they would post.
The people who want to force out information are typically not very social unless what you are actually assisting their cause. They are not there for the community. They are there to sell something or promote something.
The last group is usually the hardest to find. They are there to be part of a community. They understand that an equilibrium has to be met and through that conversation blossoms and it's beneficial for everyone.
I don't have a lot of patience or mercy for the people that come to a board just to promote their pet project and leave. In most cases, they are parasites looking for a new host. When Dave Sim (once) and his street team (periodically) were posting on my board, I thought the threads were informative and noteworthy enough to keep. I let them post for a long time even though it's something I'd normally discourage. Eventually, they became obnoxious because they weren't posting in the correct category allocated to them and they weren't even reading my requests that they follow the board guidelines. I booted them. Dave Sim's spam on my board was a prolonged exception to my normal guidelines. Too many other flunkies have shown up promoting their pet projects and rudely leave. To me, this type of member is simply undesired.
I think the tracking scripts give you a good idea where you are getting traffic. We don't get the same level of keyword data, but we can sometimes get ideas from the structure of the URLs that refer people here. As long as you are getting traffic, the blog aspect of the board works.
I'm at a stage now where most collectors aren't going to tell me anything I want to know. That's fine, because I still have things to say occasionally. I'm not interested in preaching to the spammed when they actually WANT to be spammed. That's one reason I dropped the CGC forum. So many agendas, so much bullshit, so many people gagging on the spam and letting it overflow from their own posts like porn stars sucking off a guy. I used to work with a black guy. He'd look at someone talking to their supervisor and say "My God! Where'd you learn to kiss ass like that!" That's how it feels posting on most boards. In some homes, it must be standard protocol for the guys to put on a dress before they start chatting on a messageboard.
This is long enough!
Have a Merry Christmas! I just had a water pump put on my truck by a friend and now it's got a very small leak that has to be fixed. I think it's just a hose, but it's buried under a bracket that holds the AC compressor and the alternator. I have plenty of time off, but I'm hoping I can get the problem fixed in one attempt.
Defiant1
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Post by G on Dec 23, 2014 19:40:32 GMT -5
No, that wasn't long enough. That was good stuff. I didnt respond sooner because I have been sick as a dog all week. Anyway the analogy of different types of web posters was interesting and spot on. I guess I never think about things to that level. I guess I have always desired the member who treats the board as a community but I just havent been lucky enough nor smart enough to keep them. I always felt if I had 3-4 who actively contributed, than the board could function enough to keep things flowing. I had that a few times in the past but 1 by 1 they dropped off. When you get down to two or less it becomes a real struggle.I always envisioned a board with 7-8 regular posters as being pretty much a self sufficient board where you could almost leave and it would pretty much continue to run. I gu ess that was always the dream. The reality has been at best I had 3-4 regulars to sustain conversation much like you have now and its dwindled downward from there. Im not posting about this to whine about things. As Ive said before Im at peace with everything but it is interesting to me to analyze things and see what's in my power to change.
I'm in no position to be an information board. I have neither the knowledge, resources nor time to make that happen. This is where I had hoped I could do my part to get things started and you hope your members bring subjects and posts to the table. Of course it didnt work this way for me but that was always the hope. I used to post new subjects and threads up here all the time. Often linking sources and including pictures hoping it would start discussions but more often than not it would go without comments. I found my audience hard to please. They often wouldnt respond on my attempts to get things started nor would they bring anything to my board. It felt like they wanted to be coddled and could sense my board dying and they were just watching. I know you could tell me 100 ways I could have done things better and maybe so, I have this feeling that pretty much all available members have their favorite boards and we are all getting members from the same pool.
For instance, you see a lot of the same members at valiantfans as you do on cgc and maybe lyria onward to your board and so on. Not that i wouldnt want a few of the better members but overall im not even sure I want that crowd. But it feels like that is the only pool of members to go after. Yet you know in the vast world of the internet there has to be more right? Well for me its felt like the same small enclosed pool of potential members and its almost felt like Ive blacklisted. I dont know if it has to do with anti-valiant stance which makes up a large portion of thr pool or what. Its really had a feeling like I've been given a scarlet letter and people just want no part of me or my board. Obviously im overthinking it. But the membership i seem to desire is not from the usual pool that seems spread over a vast array of message boards. But instead is the silent lurker waiting for a reason to join and post. There has to be a lot of those out there. But i dont think im up to the challenge of trying to bring them in. So ill just continue on as is.
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Post by defiant1 on Dec 24, 2014 10:09:12 GMT -5
No, that wasn't long enough. That was good stuff. I didnt respond sooner because I have been sick as a dog all week. Anyway the analogy of different types of web posters was interesting and spot on. I guess I never think about things to that level. I guess I have always desired the member who treats the board as a community but I just havent been lucky enough nor smart enough to keep them. I always felt if I had 3-4 who actively contributed, than the board could function enough to keep things flowing. I had that a few times in the past but 1 by 1 they dropped off. When you get down to two or less it becomes a real struggle.I always envisioned a board with 7-8 regular posters as being pretty much a self sufficient board where you could almost leave and it would pretty much continue to run. I gu ess that was always the dream. The reality has been at best I had 3-4 regulars to sustain conversation much like you have now and its dwindled downward from there. Im not posting about this to whine about things. As Ive said before Im at peace with everything but it is interesting to me to analyze things and see what's in my power to change. I'm in no position to be an information board. I have neither the knowledge, resources nor time to make that happen. This is where I had hoped I could do my part to get things started and you hope your members bring subjects and posts to the table. Of course it didnt work this way for me but that was always the hope. I used to post new subjects and threads up here all the time. Often linking sources and including pictures hoping it would start discussions but more often than not it would go without comments. I found my audience hard to please. They often wouldnt respond on my attempts to get things started nor would they bring anything to my board. It felt like they wanted to be coddled and could sense my board dying and they were just watching. I know you could tell me 100 ways I could have done things better and maybe so, I have this feeling that pretty much all available members have their favorite boards and we are all getting members from the same pool. For instance, you see a lot of the same members at valiantfans as you do on cgc and maybe lyria onward to your board and so on. Not that i wouldnt want a few of the better members but overall im not even sure I want that crowd. But it feels like that is the only pool of members to go after. Yet you know in the vast world of the internet there has to be more right? Well for me its felt like the same small enclosed pool of potential members and its almost felt like Ive blacklisted. I dont know if it has to do with anti-valiant stance which makes up a large portion of thr pool or what. Its really had a feeling like I've been given a scarlet letter and people just want no part of me or my board. Obviously im overthinking it. But the membership i seem to desire is not from the usual pool that seems spread over a vast array of message boards. But instead is the silent lurker waiting for a reason to join and post. There has to be a lot of those out there. But i dont think im up to the challenge of trying to bring them in. So ill just continue on as is. There is a file called "hosts" on a Windows computer that list the web domains that the computer hosts. When you type a domain into the browser, it first checks your own computer before checking the web. I added valiantfans to my hosts file. If I type valiantfans into my browser or click a link to their site, my computer thinks I host it. Since I don't, clicking the link errors out and I get nothing. In other words, I'm so tired of valiantfans that I can't even accidentally visit their site. There is NOTHING there I want to see. For the longest time, I wanted to communicate the problems I had with modern comics so that they could be fixed. It fell on so many deaf ears that I don't care anymore. The lack of desire I have to even discuss comics is at it's greatest now. I have no respect for most comic fans these days because they are oblivious to the failures that the industry has become. It's like trying to teach someone algebra and they are too obsessed with stacking wooden blocks. Their own idiotic practices have driven the cost of comics up to $4 a copy and people defend it saying what a good value they are. Comics could cost half that if the volume of sales was higher. If people actually wanted them, they'd be priced reasonably. I don't think you are blacklisted because there aren't enough people who know who you are. I think the number of collectors has become so small that everyone who is going to post already has their places they want to talk. A large number of comic related people are only talking so they can make money off of the hobby. If you aren't aligned with that agenda and providing assistance in some way, they want nothing to do with you. Defiant1
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Post by G on Dec 25, 2014 4:37:03 GMT -5
I know I'm not blacklisted, I'm just saying it "feels like it". But that seems to emply I'm taking the fault off me and I know a lot of it is my fault and failures. I'm not trying to deflect blame elsewhere. I know my lack of content and perhaps I did things to alienate my members. I won't hide behind some feeling that I should have had better or done better, etc, etc. But I do kinda feel like it doesn't matter much what I do, it doesn't feel like I'm going to get much out of whatever I put in so I just go on with an attitude of well gee whiz, Ill just do whatever whenever because its mine and nobody cares anyway. No point in fighting it. The board is what it is.
I feel the same exact way about new comics. Comics today seem to have no connection to what I once knew and loved so I can't see things getting better, only more of the same shit that destroyed the last 20-25 years worth of comics. My only desire now is to rebuild my collection to some degree and I ain't even gung-ho about that. Go after more Charltons which I'm glad I didn't sell one of those but that means I've found the passion in buying again and I'm not sure when I will buy that first book. So what is left for this board to do?
I've done some drawings recently that I want to post here but that means I uploaded to a host site and then properly tagged them to show here. I want to do it. Its in my plans, but being I'm still doing everything from a cumbersome phone and not an actual pc, I wonder when Ill get around to it.
I don't know man. I'm just saying despite endless good intentions. And in the past countless hours of trying it just hasn't been meant to be. And I'm okay with that. I don't know if it was bad timing, bad members, wrong agendas or whatever. Comic Crack didn't find a core group. So the feeling of blacklisted is only that, a feeling but I know what I do doesn't amount to a group creating a vendetta against me. It just seems either I need to post what please me, scrap and fold the board altogether or find a new focus besides comics which my interests is at an all time low as well. I miss the board more than I miss comics. I just don't know much what to do with it anymore. I'm not sad about it. But it feels like the place is a hack of what it once used to be.
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Post by defiant1 on Dec 25, 2014 20:02:11 GMT -5
It's fine. Whenever I post about comics online, I feel like I'm repeating things I've said 10 time before. I'm becoming less interested in the Marvel movies too.
Defiant1
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Post by G on Mar 30, 2015 17:42:22 GMT -5
Just had the most significant event take place which will greatly improve my productivity here on Comic Crack. I still do not have Internet at home. My only way to look at this site was on my cell phone. Due to the absolute horrible events of my life in 2012 -2013, I got relegated from my Samsung Galaxy S3 I was using at the time to using a month to month Straight Talk phone which was a complete piece of shit and virtually impossible for me to post on this message board without me spending 30 minutes to type just a couple of sentences. I've been using that for the past year and a half. At work they have mine and Defaint1's board blocked so I couldn't use the work pc to post either. Tonight my lovely wife wakes me up for work and surprises me with a Brand new Galaxy Note 4 with Verizon service. In reality, I just went from a 1984 Yogo to a 2015 Cadillac. Posting here and elsewhere is no longer going to be a problem. I'm so happy. Feel like I got a brand new computer in my hands. One thing on the agenda is to become a lot more active on here and elsewhere. Perhaps a slow comeback is taking place. Thanks for bearing with me through my ordeals. I hope to see and converse with you guys a lot more now. My wife is the bomb. It feels great knowing I got it right this time around. Thank you friends of the Crack for hanging in there with me. It's time to finally be able to post the way I want to!!!
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Post by defiant1 on Mar 30, 2015 18:42:03 GMT -5
Just had the most significant event take place which will greatly improve my productivity here on Comic Crack. I still do not have Internet at home. My only way to look at this site was on my cell phone. Due to the absolute horrible events of my life in 2012 -2013, I got relegated from my Samsung Galaxy S3 I was using at the time to using a month to month Straight Talk phone which was a complete piece of shit and virtually impossible for me to post on this message board without me spending 30 minutes to type just a couple of sentences. I've been using that for the past year and a half. At work they have mine and Defaint1's board blocked so I couldn't use the work pc to post either. Tonight my lovely wife wakes me up for work and surprises me with a Brand new Galaxy Note 4 with Verizon service. In reality, I just went from a 1984 Yogo to a 2015 Cadillac. Posting here and elsewhere is no longer going to be a problem. I'm so happy. Feel like I got a brand new computer in my hands. One thing on the agenda is to become a lot more active on here and elsewhere. Perhaps a slow comeback is taking place. Thanks for bearing with me through my ordeals. I hope to see and converse with you guys a lot more now. My wife is the bomb. It feels great knowing I got it right this time around. Thank you friends of the Crack for hanging in there with me. It's time to finally be able to post the way I want to!!! Glad to hear it. Can the phone act as a hot spot if you were to get a computer? I'm ignorant about smart phones. I hate phones in general. df1
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