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Nostalgia, groups, activity, and the reality of leaving hackforums - Soulmate - Mar 2, 2016
Hey guys, some of you might know me and some of you might not but I usually do a feedback thread around the date I joined once a year but this year I couldn't wait to do my 5 year official feedback and instead of posting general feedback I wanted to give my thoughts on some more specific issues. I'll be trying to talk about the forces of nostalgia and how everyone says the "old hf" was better (because it was), old members that were once active and thriving being banned or requesting their accounts to be closed to get away from hf, and how to get users to be more quality active.
This is going to be a long thread but hopefully it will be worth the read and not dull, if there's something I can do to make it stand out more please let me know. This is not a suggestion thread in any way but instead my feedback and I would like to generate as much discussion as possible to get the feedback of people posting on this thread as well. I truly hope that a lot of people get to read this (even if they think it's trash I would like to know) but it's probably unlikely because the only people that browse this section are staff, mini-mods trying to impress the staff by linking the helpdocs, and people that saw this from clicking on the new posts.
If you wish to read my old feedback threads from 2012 to 2015, open this spoiler: Spoiler (Click to View)
Part 1 The old and ideal vs the new and flawed HF Spoiler (Click to View)
I'm sure everyone can remember when and why they joined the site and how it looked at the time, with the popular members, usergroups, and active forums at their respective time. For some of us this was way back in 2007 during the site's first launch and I'm sure some new members will be reading this as well who have probably never even heard of Judge Dredd. It doesn't have to be back at when you first joined but can be a time period after, maybe even a few months ago. I'm having a hard time explaining this, but when you think about it that's what your ideal HF would be. Now think about what elements the site had at the time that were better than the current affairs of HF. Maybe you liked it because of certain members of the community, maybe the rules were more laid back, or maybe you were just able to profit more off of the marketplace. In the end, everybody has their "peak hf" and I'd be really interested in learning about when other members liked the site the most and why it was so.
Anyways, if the state of the site could go back to your perfect version of HF, I'm sure most people would be thrilled to see it. I'm not sure exactly where I am going with this yet, but once you think of your ideal hf, there are probably many ways in which the site was different, for example:
Better groups
Friendlier/more helpful/fun users
An unsaturated marketplace (which will be irrelevant for the purpose of this discussion)
and maybe some more active subforums pertinent to your interests.
Now, in my opinion, here is how the site could be changed for the better in each of these categories, not necessarily from changes by Omni and other staff, but the way the individual user thinks about the site and how we should act as a whole.
Part 2: The negative effect of profit-oriented groups on the HF userbase Spoiler (Click to View)
Of course I will start with usergroups, which are currently all very similar and boring in my opinion, and I've seen a lot of users shed light on this issue as well in the past few days. A few years ago, we had a plethora of amazing user groups, some were specific to niches, and some were just very prestigious and had high quality members that were ready to give their all in terms of their HF energy to contribute to the site and to their usergroup. I'm mostly talking about groups like The Alliance, 143, Infamous, The Reviewers, The Wraith, The Black Knights, TechSperts, Reverence, The Infrormers, etc (in my opinion that was their order of importance to the userbase). Now as you can see not only are all of those groups gone, but there are no groups similar to them on the forum now besides Red Lions, but they have never been very active in the first place. This, in my opinion is one of the biggest downfalls of HF right now. Sure there are a lot of fun groups with chill subforums but outside of that I don't see a lot of them contribute to the community very much, which is fine for a niche group that is a great environment for members inside the sf but not so good for the overall being of the site.
We have gotten to the point where 90% of the posts on the thread of a new group are "woah dude sick userbar" and "oh interesting a gambling group". What we need is probably something we will never get, a high quality group with no buyins, no niche bullshit and just for the purpose of helping members on the site. I know we have the mentors and staff but most of those members don't get involved in more personal stuff, I'm thinking of a group like 143 and something like The Alliance. If I had the funds I would buy the group in a second but the side is going in a profit-oriented direction and these days I really don't think anyone will invest in something like that, yet another reason hf is going downhill. Now that I'm done talking about groups, I'll move on to talking about the userbase.
I might have a very flawed perspective, but in my opinion this trend of profit-oriented groups are the reason many of other elements of the site are falling off. Of course there have always been lq members and trolls, but there were more members reporting posts to get them deleted, and more people answering questions for new members. I am no way ignoring all the bad things that have gone down over the past few years, but I'm leaving them out of this discussion because they are irrelevant if we are thinking about having the "ideal hf" and should thus be minimized as much as possible.
SO. Now that there are no prestigious groups on HF, if you are starting out as a member or if you are an older member that hasn't gotten involved in the market place, what are you supposed to do with your time on HF? Who do you look up to besides the mentors and staff? How do you set goals for yourself? Who do you ask for help? When groups like The Alliance were around, questions like this could have been clearly answered. I can't speak for everyone, but when I first became a member all I wanted to do was join TA which is why I am using that as an example. However, I chose the marketplace route of quantity over quality posting and trying to buy and resell as many products as possible. However that story is for a different day.
Anyways, as a result of there being no groups to look up to and wish about joining, the average HF member will have almost nothing to be able to do on the site if they don't go on the marketplace and specialize in hacking or anything like that. I'm posting this thread because I know a lot of members that have told me something along these lines or went inactive because all their favorite groups were gone.
Sure, if you are new or don't really care about the image of a group and maybe just like the userbar or the niche, you could be looking forward to joining but to me that type of thinking doesn't seem very healthy, even though it's better than having no role model members or desired groups.
I'll reiterate and talk more about this later in the activity section of the thread, but for now let's move on to what also ties hand in hand with the userbase, and the groups. Since what I am essentially saying is that the quality of usergroups essentially dropped the quality and activity of members here, and now my next point is that this has also made a lot of subforums more inactive.
At this point, about 90% of HF's activity is either in the lounge, in groups, or in the marketplace. Firstly, it's reasonable that since there aren't as many active quality users are there used to be, subforum activity decreases. Secondly and more specifically , since there is no longer an MRT or Alliance, people that post in the malware removal sf will likely not get a response and et cetera.
If I'm wrong about any of this or if I am being too deep or reading too much into it or whatever feel free to call me out by the way, but this is just how I see HF with my own eyes at the moment. It would be amazing if the music section and mobile gaming sections were more active, but there isn't really a desire for that sort of thing now.
Anyway, that's all I have to say for the part of trying to get back to something like the old hf, and now I'll try to talk about activity and what happens when active members leave the site.
After being inactive for about 6 months due to taking care of real life issues and have school I have come back to my reclusive self and about a week ago I started being active again and saw many changes, most of which didn't surprise me but I noticed a huge decline in activity. I realize it's the middle of spring and people have school but even on holidays, the weekends, and etc I see less active members than in the past 4-5 years I've been on the site and that's a huge problem. For the sake of the argument I'm going to say that it has nothing to do with Omni but is something that we (the typical users) are in full control over.
Once again this is partly due to the fact that there are no appealing usergroups but also because a lot of users have been drawn away from the site because maybe all their friends quit or they were unhappy with the new direction HF was heading in. In some cases, people grow and mature out of HF, and a lot of the Tim emir beers quit once they are done selling and purchasing items from the marketplace but for now we will consider those irrelevant to this discussion because I am talking about the departures of the truly helpful members who have made a difference.
Once again I would like your guys' opinions on why you have decided to stick around to try to imitate the same conditions for other people to make the site more enjoyable for everyone else. And, if there is anyone reading this who used to be active but either mostly lurks or doesn't go on the site in general, what would have to happen to make you active again like you used to be before you quit? It would really be amazing to get some of the older members to become active again, but of course we can't forget about the new members.
Part 3b Activity of New Members Spoiler (Click to View)
Whenever you first join the site,M you are essentially forced to pick between two sides, and for the rest of your stay you will mostly be posting from different personas, but of course some lean more towards one than the other. The two sides I'm talking about is either to try to be as HQ as possible in order to impress the people you look up to on the site and try to make a difference, and the more LQ side of wanting to be known as edgy, a troll, funny, empress other lounge whores and maybe the people that got you to sign up on this site or people you've gotten very close to.
Side note: Now I'm using LQ and HQ and kind of benchmarkers for the useful of members to the site when in reality it's much more complex than that but you get in the idea. If you end up too far on the HQ spectrum you will probably become staff or a mentor and if you are too far on the LQ side you will probably get your account closed.
So now, as members that are trying to make HF a better place and trying to make other members as high quality as possible we have to figure out how we can get members with potential involved in the community and get them to want to give back.
Imagine HackForums as planet earth, where population is rapidly declining and human kind is dying out, so the rest of us are tasked with rebuilding humanity. Once we have birthed our new members, we must do everything we can to protect them and shelter them until they learn to provide for themselves on their own and one and one day grow up to be like us. Obviously this excludes any trolls and a lot of people probably don't want to help new members but some of them have really great potential. Also, I'm not only talking about normal members that have just joined but existing l33ts and ub3rs that want to grow and help HF as well.
I know I may get hate or called a try hard for writing all of this, but just think about if you truly like this site and want to stick around how devastated would you be if all your favorite parts of it were gone and less people started to use it?
Let's start a new era of HF with helpful tutorials, giveaways, and helping out other members 🎉🎉🎉 I know a lot of people won't take this seriously but I strongly dislike the current state of HF brought about by toxic users, inactivity, and money groups and disagree with the direction it's heading which is why I'm trying to write down everything (literally everything) I'm thinking to help improve the site as users.
Part 4 The Reality of Members Leaving HF Spoiler (Click to View)
Now this section is a little more of mourning than trying to give feedback but it's really tragic how many good members we've lost that gave moved on from the site. If it's due to real life issues or just growing out of using the Internet forums every day and basement dwelling I totally understand but some of the people I've talked to that quit are still doing the same things as always but just not going on HF as a part of their Dailey routine. Anyways, this kind of relates to Part 3a as well.
A lot of these members have either asked to have their accounts closed or were banned for breaking the rules but it's sad to see them gone regardless and honestly I'm not really sure how it could be prevented. Every since I came back about a week ago a lot of my time spent has been reminiscing old threads from a few years ago and going through my old reps and going to all the user's profiles and checking out what they've been up to, when they last visited, what they posted, and etc. If their accounts were not yet closed, most of the time they were either active a few days ago or a few months ago and I miss them dearly and wish they would come back. Without awesome members like them making the site into what it is today, we would be nowhere.
Every time someone leaves, the site gets a significant amount of quality posts decrease every day they are not here and not seeing another member may cause a chain reaction of a whole group of members to never want to go on the site again. I'm speaking from my personal experience, but I'm sure some of you can relate. Again if you are an inactive member reading this, it would be great to know what happened to make you less active besides dealing with stuff in real life and what it would take to have you contribute again.
For now this is all I have to say and for the rest of the thread I would like to make a memorial of inactive/closed members that were once posting strong in the community... I will start out with some old friends of mine but feel free to post about who you miss that used to run amuck the forums and I'll add them to the list.
HackForums Monument
RIP | Gone But Not Forgotten <3 [spoiler]
I'll update this later with some more people that inspired me and I looked up to, meanwhile feel free to post names of inactive or closed members but like I said this section is just more nostalgic and for fun than anything[/spoiler]
So this now concludes my thread, because I am only l33t my character limit is 12,000 which I have long bypassed and which is why I had to put the rest in another post. I know most people won't read this, especially not all of it but if you are looking for some insight about the structure and my theories of HF as of now please read it, it would mean a lot. If you think I'm crazy or something or when you see the first sign of error or disagree with something feel free to post it immediately. I would love some feedback and now that you've picked my brain I would like to know what everyone else is thinking. I have written all the content on my mind and I'll spend some time editing the thread to make it look nicer right after I post it.
(Mar 2, 2016 10:04 PM)mael Wrote: u seriously think im going to read all of THIS?
I was definitely expecting replies like this, no I don't expect you to read it but some people might find it interesting
Also, I messed up the last part and I can't change it now because of the character limit from combining the two posts so I can't edit the monument part spoiler or make any changes to the format what do 😟
(Mar 2, 2016 10:26 PM)Soulmate Wrote: I was definitely expecting replies like this, no I don't expect you to read it but some people might find it interesting
i was getting them out of the way for you. ur welcome.
(Mar 2, 2016 10:17 PM)Crumbs Wrote: Do you have this post available on Kindle library ? I'd like to read it over the weekend.
Great feedback...I wish I was around in the "Peak HF" phase, as I do see lots of people around complaining about the community now compared to "the good old days"
Either way, I like it here. I think it's a good place to be, maybe some more activity in certain forums is needed but I'm not to fussed.
I think the big thing that the community needs to work on is introducing new members. I see plenty of green and blue around, but never newbies coming to check the site out (unless they're spamming or promoting some sort of scam)
(Mar 2, 2016 10:40 PM)MaxCrypto Wrote: Great feedback...I wish I was around in the "Peak HF" phase, as I do see lots of people around complaining about the community now compared to "the good old days"
Either way, I like it here. I think it's a good place to be, maybe some more activity in certain forums is needed but I'm not to fussed.
I think the big thing that the community needs to work on is introducing new members. I see plenty of green and blue around, but never newbies coming to check the site out (unless they're spamming or promoting some sort of scam)
Thanks for the feedback, I enjoyed it.
Thank you for your response, everyone has a "peak HF" phase though maybe you're not in it yet or maybe you already passed it or will realize it later
However I definitely agree that we need to start treating new members better which is exactly what I talked about in 3a it's just really hard when most of them are trolls and multi-accounters
(Mar 2, 2016 10:29 PM)Romantic Wrote: Soulmate I love you Goodnight! xo
Goodnight, hope you read and enjoyed my feedback 🤫
Groups, for me, are the single biggest factor of activity on the site. Back when multiple groups would routinely release information, guides, or have a broad variety of help desks was when I actually was interested in browsing the rest of the forum. For over the past year or so I've just been bouncing around "lounge groups". Don't get me wrong, I love lounge groups because of the close knit community and friends that are a product of them but there's a point where there's too many. When groups don't lay out set goals and a clear motive for their existence they either quickly get sold or turn into a general userbar group. It's hypocritical for me to say, but this much activity within group subforums hurts the rest of the site. Revamped groups or a change in user mindset or not, it doesn't matter much to me anyways since I barely use forums in general anymore.
Quote:since there is no longer an MRT or Alliance, people that post in the malware removal sf will likely not get a response and et cetera.
Knautschtabak and few others are doing an awesome job regarding the aforementioned forum although I do concur with many points of the original post within reasons. 🙂
