mohammedroxx3 :

It's hard to explain, because in a lot of ways, I identify with some of them. I'm firmly of the belief that Vizzed was at its greatest when I was active. It may or may not be in part because of me, but the fact of the matter is, I posted 9,000 times in two separate years, and there's no way I'd do that unless Vizzed was fun.

Compared to now (I have posted a little under 900 times in the past year, so about 1/10th as active as I once was), I obviously am not as stimulated. Ignoring any motivations or elitist behavior, the fact is that I am just not as interested, and something caused me to behave in this way.

I don't know everyone's reasons, but my own are simple, I am not getting enough out of the site to justify using it so much in my free time. Back then, I was.

This can blossom into elitist behavior, but I think you've mainly hit it on the head. It's a combination of feeling forgotten, and a feeling of inferiority. At least from my view. I know, speaking from experience, that I'd hate if people forgot my contributions to the site, because I poured so much of two years into this place, and really was the most active member during the most active time period in the board's history (not the site's, as David would attest, but the board, the only part I feel is worth a damn).

I don't think there is any way of really appealing to these users. Many would only return under either impossible conditions (get rid of PG chatting/posting, fire ______ from the mod team, etc.) or through a level of ego patting that would make even me blush. Neither is appropriate, because it would go against what Vizzed is, and has become, a place where all are welcome, and no one is better than anyone else. In a lot of ways, Vizzed has improved in this respect. It's less active on the boards now, but people are more equal now, than they were, back in those super active days.

Personally, I miss the activity, because I didn't have any issues with the inequality. It only ever struck me favorably, so I come from a different world, in that respect than most users. That's not me being elitist, it's me being honest and realistic. The only thing about Vizzed that has changed for me has been the lack of activity on the boards. To make activity come back, Vizzed must either go backwards, or inspire these PG posters to become active and entertaining presences on the board.

I've experienced the gradual decide in my activity the longer I've been here. And I haven't even been here for 2 years.

Some might argue with that because of how active I am now compared to when I was Staff the first time, but part of that is because I'm obligated to post because of local quota (and I don't plan on being demoted or stepping down), but nowadays it's more random... like I have good days/weeks but then I have sections of time where I have to force myself to post... (I will say that recently I've posted without a problem though).

When I was trusted, I was able to post naturally like all the time. Without having to force myself like some days nowadays. I also had fun posting, and I was able to post 50+ times in a day if I wanted to (which now seems impossible to me >< ). When I became Staff I eventually became less involved in the forums... which tbh if that didn't exist I wouldn't have stayed in the first place. I remember feeling forgotten and ignored at that point too (still do sometimes). I think my all-time low was 30 posts a month. Heck I even left for a month, even though that was mostly due to irl stuff becoming awful.

When I came back I aimed for 100 posts a month (which I was surprisingly able to do) because I was preparing for local quota (even though I expected that I'd become local 2-3 years later than I did), and I wanted to spark some more activity in the boards. I wonder if I have achieved my goal somewhat... but one person can't do everything.

ZeroTails : You don't need to be here for long to experience massive changes. Hell, in the last year I've been local, got a second staff role, obtained 3/4 of my total CP and 2/3 of my total posts. If it wasn't because I've been staff since mid 2014, it's almost like if I didn't exist prior to last summer.

Speaking of which, last July I managed to hit like +300 posts in a single month when my previous record surely wasn't beyond 60. I didn't force myself, just posting whenever and wherever I wanted, and from then on, I've never hit below 130 posts a month. I still don't know what happened or how, but I don't need to know that anymore.

Right now, however, I seem to go a bit backwards. I don't feel like posting that much anymore, just wanting to do my staff jobs and leave all my remaining free time to deal with real life. I was in an uphill while local, managing 200 posts a month outside of a TdV, but now I've shifted my focus and the effects are highly noticeable.

https://www.vizzed.com/boards/vcs.php?v=1&m=06&d=27&y=13&u=1&user=&view=0&submit=Submit

just an indication of how different the board was 3 years ago. That day had almost 1000 posts. I'm not sure why (maybe a VCS but I didn't think those were still happening).

Still, compare that to today which likely won't hit 200 it's a stark difference.

geeogree :

It happened because people wanted to post on the boards.

The question is what is different about the board and the board three/four years ago.

Unfortunately, it's impossible to gleam any information from that page. We don't know where they posted, why, or how short or long the posts were. All we have is the number of posts. It's plausible that half the posts were one word farts in Crazy House.

Oh wow that was so long ago......when you think about it memories come rushing back. When you think about back then and now. And also how much the board has changed since then. :/

legacyme3 : except I don't remember the crazy house ever getting that many posts. Sure it got some but it never dominated a day that I can remember.

Still, I agree with the general sentiment that "people wanted to post on the boards." Why that has changed I can't put my finger on either but it was "more fun" back then. We (as staff or as a site) were less picky about the "quality" of posts and more concerned about simply having conversations.

geeogree :

I think that it's in part "quality" and in part a desire to post things that were less than PG. People were more willing to make a risque joke back then, because there wasn't fear of a ban. Whether it's because the moderation was loose, or because the line was clear, and closer to what they wanted than it is now, is irrelevant.

Something I've said for years, is still true today I think.

Activity on a site is largely thanks to the staff you have. Nobody on staff right now is a prodigious poster. In the past year, the only staff to make at least 2,000 posts are gamerforlifeforever2, you, David, Jordan, and Vanelan. I don't see anybody rushing to converse with gamer, and you/David/Jordan/Vanelan are often posting in other forums than ones that are conducive to connecting with the community in the way you are talking about.

For example, looking at your posts over the past year, three of the forums you post most in, are private to me, and I'm not a low-ranking member of the site. One more of your top 10 is in the Treasure Can, and the other of the top 10 is in the Lodge. In short, half of your top 10 most posted in forums (including 3 of your top 4) are places new members can't converse with you. I'm guilty of this myself, as 3 of my top 5 are also places new members can't post (IT is Trusted+, so is the Underground, and I am also in the Treasure Can).

Continuing this line of thought, David mostly posts announcements and other administrative tasks. In the past year, almost 1,000 of his posts have been in Contests/Netplay forum. The rest of his top 10 include News and Updates and three restricted forums.

The other two, Jordan and Vanelan, post a lot in the RGR forum, which makes sense, as it appears we are trying to push the RGR.

It just looks from an outside lens that the site cares too much about the RGR to survive as a forum as it once did in the days of 2011-2013. There's no one staff member who is doing for the forum what Jordan/Vanelan are doing for the RGR. This extends to the locals as well.

I don't think there's any real way of reversing this course, unless you do something insane like hire Zander and pray to god he stops spamming so that way people will get more active. He's the best candidate in that regard because he's posted like 7,000 times in the past year, and a staff position instantly makes a person more interesting to talk to from a newbie perspective (the people we are trying to get active, so that there will be more posts now and in the future. Newbies are the lifeblood of the site, and all sites). Think back to when you were a 12-14 year old kid, and highly impressionable. For a lot of people who come here, it's a "dream" to hold a staff spot. To attain it, they mimic behavior they see in staff. If they happen to mimic someone who posts a lot, then they too, will post a lot, and become noticed. It's some wack-ass psychology, but it's psychology.

geeogree : It could be a VCS. I remember participating in one in early 2014, so they were still around.

legacyme3 : Yeah, people is less prone to make non-PG jokes now. I've seen some old threads which now some mods would request a perma-ban for. 

I totally agree that the site has lost the focus on the forums at large. I think that what has happened is that now we value "contributions". These contributions come in the form of content, which means not just posting. Many people, like me, are specialising in certain actions that aren't posting heavily, sometimes even not needing to post at all.

We must also agree that Vizzed has grown to be something else than a board. The VGR, the Music Room, the future Battle Arena... It's to be expected that people doesn't focus as much in the forums as the veterans, mainly because they didn't come here for the boards and just come here when they decide to discover more of the site. I myself took like half a year to become a member from newbie.

Reversing the course would need to completely shift the focus of the userbase and the future users, and is something beyond possible. We're now more focused on games and have the board just to hang out or communicate with others in our free time. Just like the kids who grew without internet, we must understand that new things get in the way and kids won't grow in the way we technically want them to.

And then with this. It makes you to even wonder more in thought of what back in the day held. What you were allowed to do and get away with. Is most or some things you can't do now that you even get banned or perma for. I'm not surprised those days would come off more fun when everyone was more relax with the way they posted and do cheeky things. But now uh....I don't need to say since we all know what now is and how things are runned on vizzed. @.@

So I was wondering has anybody been watching that series called Containment about the virus outbreak and how they had to keep everyone within a certain part of the city contained? Tonight was the last episode of the season and the last episode period.

There was supposed to be a second season but apparently it was canceled. They shoved everything into the last episode and left a loop whole concerning one part. Me and my sister loved the series but there were severally bad parts in the series (me and my sister both literally cried on one episode). There was actually really good parts too. They could of done so much more with the series and we are so let down because of how they ended the whole thing. (Possibly couldn't afford a second season) but with how amazing the series was despite some of the really sad/graphic scene's they could of made a killing off of it , imo.

Info= It aired on the CW if anybody was wondering. If you haven't seen it.. it's a good series but quite a let down..

In response to the issue of posts (or rather, lack of... ):

Just 4 words: Good Reads, Good Threads. One of the main things that attracted me to Vizzed even before I joined the site were the thread topics. Certainly, I'd found Vizzed by looking for old games I loved, but when I saw the kind of discussions being held on Vizzed, I realized that this wasn't the average "lurk moar troll every1 lolzors" type of community (not that it doesn't have trolls, I didn't forget them, don't worry) and I just had to click on the registration button. It was amazing to find that people here would talk about everything from Pokémon to Final Fantasy to dreams, their pets, cures for random ailments and even about more serious topics such as having a baby (before you think the wrong things, I was reading some of Singelli's serious posts). People were always replying to interesting threads and even though all I could do was read them as a Guest, it was enough to get me interested in registering to join the site. In other communities, I don't necessarily enjoy posting or reading, but here, I always look forward to seeing what the "topics of the day" on Vizzed will be. (Keep in mind though that I'm one that loves communities and "relaxing in towns." Other people may only have registered for the games, so they wouldn't even think to look at the forum threads.) I remember being kind of overwhelmed when I first registered because I had never really seen so many rules for posting before. Every single forum would have their own individual rules in addition to the all-encompassing rules of the site, and I started ruling out the forums one by one when I realized that I couldn't figure out if I was allowed to post there or not yet (I actually thought there were level or rank requirements or something for posting XD ). When I finished going through all of them, I realized that I couldn't post in any without "taking a risk," so I just held my breath and then posted in what I deemed to be the "safest" forums for me. When no Ban Hammer came to crush me for wishing someone well, I thought it might be safe to post about my favorite things, starting with anime Studio Ghibli, which I didn't think many people would know about. Vizzed looked like it might tolerate some anime/manga discussions, but I thought that since the majority of people here are about retro gaming, they probably wouldn't be too interested in anime/manga so much as comic books and TV shows. Then, when no Ban Hammer came to squish me for mentioning Studio Ghibli, I thought that maybe no one was really watching me after all. XD Just in case though, I continued to write one-liners to give out whatever information I thought I wouldn't mind parting with if I was banned immediately the next day. At some point, I noticed that people were playing some games in the forums and I wanted to try that too. In the other forums I used to frequent, we always had a lot of games (no spam rules or anything though), so I was pretty eager to try them. I started to play until I saw someone calling someone else out for "sandwich posting." Well... From what I could tell, sandwiches could range in size from a triple decker to just a slice of bacon, so I just decided to post only when absolutely necessary, or when I was the host and people required a response to be able to keep guessing Hangman letters.

Then, I met Vanelan... dun dun dun… I don't know if he remembers but we met during one of Davideo7's music streams and Vanelan was able to tell me where I often posted. *gasp!* Senpai somehow noticed me! D= (Or actually, he probably looked on my List Posts by Forum page, but I didn't know about that at the time, so yeah... ^^0 magic. lol ) Anyways, he gave me the impression that Vizzed wasn't as intolerant of some things as I'd originally thought, so I started to post with more confidence after that. In hindsight, ignorance is sometimes bliss because I often stop to think about who I would be offending if I posted about certain topics now (and it doesn't matter if we're close or not on Vizzed). For instance, I would think to myself, oh, Tyri hates anything about broccoli so I probably shouldn't post about them in his threads ("I love miniature trees!" was totally one of my responses when I first joined the site x_X ) and oh, Eirinn doesn't eat meat, so I should probably refrain from going on and on about being pretty good at cooking steak ( =/ yeah, I've totally just given myself away now, sorry T_T ). Then, there are days when I think, "I got it! I know what kind of thread I can start-" and then I realize that someone's already made a thread about the topic ages years ago.

Also, the more people I know, the less I sometimes want to post because I just know our personalities are bound to clash at some point, and the last thing I want to do is start any flame wars. It took me a long time to get my courage up to post about certain subjects (and I had to talk to a few people first before I could decide on actually making the posts).

As for what Leggy said, it's psychology but it's not wack and people don't just mimic (although "MynamesSkittles" has been doing a great job of using his copycat abilities so far ). They will usually do that when they're first learning the ropes, but at some point, their true personalities will burst/shine forth. Personally, I'm in favor of getting the Staff to interact with the community more though, since that's always been my role in every gaming community I've participated in. I've been learning how to turn the conversations into post form, because I'm more used to holding group conversations in the Main Towns where anyone can just pitch in and talk all at once. Having to follow some type of order for responding to whatever happens kind of puts a dampener on the interactions, but it's not impossible although it's a lot slower than talking in real-time.

Oh boy, I have not hit Italics in such a long time but I did that today. I have never been so motivated to go on such a posting spree in such a long time, but I guess that is because my close friends on vizzed are encouraging me to do so.

This is so fun, I hope I can do this more often with friends. But I'm not even sure if that would help boost the activity in the forums the next day and so on.

Mohammedroxx3 : I think that when we do big sprees like that, the forum activity might increase slightly the next day because a lot of us make new threads for others to post in

The effect is marginal unfortunately....

More often than not the increase lasts a day or 2. There aren't enough people posting often enough to maintain any increase in activity.

geeogree : That's pretty much the sad truth about it. Its really when people want to post they will post. I wasn't sure to question this I mean I did in my head, but it seems you have given me like the answer I need. Its funny how you question something in your mind looking for an answer, and when coming to post in a thread or reading one you get what you are looking for. ^-^

Man, this thread has really died down, hasn't it? Well, I'm feeling down in the dumps because the Cincinnati Bengals got their butts kicked by the Cowboys. Have you guys ever felt like that after watching your favorite team get pummeled?

Rehab is such a pain.

It's not so much the actual rehab that is annoying, but the after care required of me to keep my prescription. I have to attend weekly meetings for an hour and a half, and the facility takes a bare minimum of 45 minutes to over an hour to drive to. On top of that, I have to do weekly urine screens, as well as a monthly meeting with the doc ( obviously for the script itself ), and another hour long meeting with the counselor one on one. If I actually needed this "therapy" then it would be all well and good or what ever, but I don't. I'm sorry most addicts relapse within the first year of sobriety, but I'm not one of them, and it ticks me off to no end that I have to go through all this crap just because of every one else. I literally have to lie about attending AA ( Alcoholics Anonymous ) or NA ( Narcotics Anonymous ) meetings every week, as well as about having a sponsor and every thing else we are "supposed" to do after entering recovery.

I mean I understand why they do it, but it just gets freaking old man. And more so than any thing, these facilities require this kind of thing just so they continue to get paid. If you stopped showing up, or only had to come once a month for the script ( since that's the Federal law behind it ), then they wouldn't make nearly as much money. They charge people's insurance / the person themselves for each individual weekly meeting, on top of doing so for each doctor's appointment / one on one with their counselor.

On top of all this, this kind of program is required of me by my Probation Officer. It's not enough the state charged me over $3500 for getting arrested over literally 1 and 1/2 Xanax pills, but I'm also required to attend a rehab facility and pay for all that out of my own pocket ( or insurance has to pay for it ). The system is set up to keep the poor from succeeding, which is another thing that drives me insane about this whole mess. I understand I broke the law, but some thing so small shouldn't put me over $5,000 to $10,000 + in debt.

It all just gets me so heated... I just want my script and to be left alone. Is that really so much to ask for?

I'm so disappointed with the staff right now. Whoever voted in favor of allowing thing1 to return needs their head checked. Maybe they forgot how much bulls*** he stirred up the last 3 times he was permabanned but I certainly haven't forgotten. Such a mistake. It won't end any differently this time around.

I'm going to +1 that. I'm sure the staff knows how I feel about it too.

Nothing good will come of this.