This is exactly what I've been saying. We've been down this road for a decade.
Likes:
Ghost and NoUseMercenary
@NoUseMercenary All the ideas I had back in the day fall flat without a dedicated and close knit community. Basically I saw this forum as a place to share things that aren't just thread posts.
Old institutions like the design squad were amazing. Every week they had sig making competitions and some of the graphical stuff they made was amazing. I wanted the site to contribute a small reward for those weekly/monthly competitions that they did for free. In exchange they would provide a slew of graphics for the news site. We could have looked fucking way better than any other news site with unique game art on our articles but by the time Steven said we could look into it, that community was all but dead.
I started the community review section with a ranking system based on how much you contributed. It did really really well and was kind of like a more indepth user review from metacritic. It was great to see insights from our members here on old and new games.
There was a plug in that showed thumbnails of what members were currently playing/streaming. I thought it would be nice to jump on and see "Oh, NoUseMercenary is doing a raid on Destiny 2, lets have a look". I never really cared to watch streamers but I thought that the community might enjoy watching each other play in various games.
I started a clan for DUST 514 when that was a thing. I had a dedicated sub forum for the game. PSU clans on more popular games were always something I wanted to do.
I poured my fucking heart and soul into this place for years but by the time the fabled forum software update happened I was already spent and life had dragged me away from this place.
Being a forum needs to be an auxiliary function that envelopes ways that people can express their love of gaming through writing, graphics, video sharing and streaming. That was my vision because as solely as a forum we could never amount to more than 20-odd members who constituted the PSU community.
Also, seeing as you seem to be in the loop with front page, what's going on? Is Steven still running front page? Is Christopher still community manager/head admin? I have no idea who is responsible for what anymore. I answered the call for writers on the front page, stating my history in the forums as member, staff, admin and community manager and never got a reply. Too busy for that now with work and degree but was kind of disappointed at the time.
Edit: this place is now buggy AF for me. I haven't been able to reply or post for days as my mouse hovers over dead reply and post buttons. If you can't even fucking post a message in a forum, this place may as well just shut down.
Old institutions like the design squad were amazing. Every week they had sig making competitions and some of the graphical stuff they made was amazing. I wanted the site to contribute a small reward for those weekly/monthly competitions that they did for free. In exchange they would provide a slew of graphics for the news site. We could have looked fucking way better than any other news site with unique game art on our articles but by the time Steven said we could look into it, that community was all but dead.
I started the community review section with a ranking system based on how much you contributed. It did really really well and was kind of like a more indepth user review from metacritic. It was great to see insights from our members here on old and new games.
There was a plug in that showed thumbnails of what members were currently playing/streaming. I thought it would be nice to jump on and see "Oh, NoUseMercenary is doing a raid on Destiny 2, lets have a look". I never really cared to watch streamers but I thought that the community might enjoy watching each other play in various games.
I started a clan for DUST 514 when that was a thing. I had a dedicated sub forum for the game. PSU clans on more popular games were always something I wanted to do.
I poured my fucking heart and soul into this place for years but by the time the fabled forum software update happened I was already spent and life had dragged me away from this place.
Being a forum needs to be an auxiliary function that envelopes ways that people can express their love of gaming through writing, graphics, video sharing and streaming. That was my vision because as solely as a forum we could never amount to more than 20-odd members who constituted the PSU community.
Also, seeing as you seem to be in the loop with front page, what's going on? Is Steven still running front page? Is Christopher still community manager/head admin? I have no idea who is responsible for what anymore. I answered the call for writers on the front page, stating my history in the forums as member, staff, admin and community manager and never got a reply. Too busy for that now with work and degree but was kind of disappointed at the time.
Edit: this place is now buggy AF for me. I haven't been able to reply or post for days as my mouse hovers over dead reply and post buttons. If you can't even fucking post a message in a forum, this place may as well just shut down.
Likes:
Cuguy, Fijiandoce and PBM
This forum software is a steaming pile and wasn't at all what was promised and discussed for the last decade. This forum is not an integration or reflection of the front page at all. It is completely disconnected and buggy beyond belief. It took me 15 tries just to like Ghost's post and even more to get the Reply button to register. This place has not been cared for for a very long time. The entire community was behind the forum changes that you're trying to push right now and with an insane amount of effort, work, hopes, dreams, and tears, not a damn thing became of it. I'm sorry to sound negative, but I just don't see anything happening. I really don't. I'm fully behind everything Ghost said.
Likes:
Ghost and Fijiandoce
The problem is a result of adblockers. The annoying video ad can get blocked in the sense that it won't display, but you CANNOT click any buttons under the invisible Frame. Scroll the page up bit (beyond where that video ad would be) and you can click your Reply, Like, etc buttons
Likes:
Libra-75 and Fijiandoce
Had the same issue and resolved it by blocking the whole thing manually.
I must say, there's an absolute abuse of ads in these forums. I wouldn't participate at all if it wasn't for my ad blocker.
I must say, there's an absolute abuse of ads in these forums. I wouldn't participate at all if it wasn't for my ad blocker.
Likes:
NoUseMercenary and Libra-75
Oh, so that's why I can't click the like and reply button when it's in the bottom part of my screen. I have to scroll it up a bit. 
Likes:
NoUseMercenary
I'm trying...We fixed a few issues, but the forums are secondary to the main site as far as priorities from the staff. Best I can do is help keep the forums up to date with new content / posts / threads. Attempting to create somewhat of a live community with daily posts, responses, etc.
Likes:
Libra-75
Unfortunately there seems to be very little interest in this forum, outside of a few of us who are trying to be active here and bring some life to this forum.
I think you are doing a good job. It's not easy to get a "dead" forum going it seems.
I think you are doing a good job. It's not easy to get a "dead" forum going it seems.
Likes:
NoUseMercenary
It's nice that you care and that you're trying to do something, but it's honestly in vain, to be very honest. The ENTIRE STAFF, including all Mods and Admins, all got together and tried with an incredible amount of effort and motivation for well over a year to bring this place back to life and didn't hear a single thing from higher ups during that entire period. It was downright insulting. Hours and hours and hours of ideas and plans and all kinds of things were put together and not a single solitary thing came from it. Most of the staff and most of the members are now gone and aren't coming back because there's no point. You've been here for almost as long as I have, so you know very well what's happened over the years with this place. I've been here since 2004 ... it's insane to think we've almost been here for two decades. I was one of the first Mods this site ever had. I worked for both sister sites before they merged into PSU when Kieran purchased the 3-letter domain name for $50,000. I was always in chat with Kieran and was there when he was discussing purchasing the domain name. He always kept me up to date with everything going on behind the scenes. I was here for several massive server upgrades because the forums couldn't handle the massive influx of traffic coming to it. He lied to us all, however, when he sold off the site to new ownership to go work on another project of his. I don't even remember what that website they made is anymore.
The owners don't care give a flying crap about the forums and they haven't in a decade. The caring utterly stopped the moment Seb and Kieran sold it to the new owners. Literally nothing has been done since then. This new theme is an embarrassingly pathetic attempt at doing anything here. The ridiculously invasive ads that slap you in the face make the experience unusable here. You shouldn't need an ad blocker just to be able to restore basic functionality. The mobile experience is an absolute nightmare and nothing will ever be done about it. It's not important. Only the main website is. The forums were supposed to be an extension of the main website with full interaction between the too with social media integration and all kinds of things. That never panned out and never will. There's no parallel functionality between the two. The forums don't even look like the main page. It's ridiculous. This forum is dead because the people that own it don't care and there's honestly nothing that can be done to revive it. It's flatlined. It's gone. It's very sad to see because I've been here so insanely long, but this is the state of things right now. I've never seen such neglect for anything in my life. It's been going on for a decade now. There's just no way around it. I've been the Administrator and Staff member of several gaming news sites. All have died except this one. I'm glad the main website is still up because I've seen so many die over the years. But this place is now decaying in its grave.
I'm not sure why I'm still here. I guess it's hard for me to let go of this place.
The owners don't care give a flying crap about the forums and they haven't in a decade. The caring utterly stopped the moment Seb and Kieran sold it to the new owners. Literally nothing has been done since then. This new theme is an embarrassingly pathetic attempt at doing anything here. The ridiculously invasive ads that slap you in the face make the experience unusable here. You shouldn't need an ad blocker just to be able to restore basic functionality. The mobile experience is an absolute nightmare and nothing will ever be done about it. It's not important. Only the main website is. The forums were supposed to be an extension of the main website with full interaction between the too with social media integration and all kinds of things. That never panned out and never will. There's no parallel functionality between the two. The forums don't even look like the main page. It's ridiculous. This forum is dead because the people that own it don't care and there's honestly nothing that can be done to revive it. It's flatlined. It's gone. It's very sad to see because I've been here so insanely long, but this is the state of things right now. I've never seen such neglect for anything in my life. It's been going on for a decade now. There's just no way around it. I've been the Administrator and Staff member of several gaming news sites. All have died except this one. I'm glad the main website is still up because I've seen so many die over the years. But this place is now decaying in its grave.
I'm not sure why I'm still here. I guess it's hard for me to let go of this place.
Likes:
Libra-75 and NoUseMercenary
I remember the deafening silence of those above me. The new owners never talked to myself or Mr. Bishop at the time when we wanted to try anything to breathe new life in here. We went to FORUMCON one year, Bishop and I, to try and scout new ideas, new strategies and everyting we proposed basically got the "we will see" reply. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING ever happened here. I can't remember who exactly paid for it, but someone not the owners paid for a dragonbyte software package to try and get some fun aspects going here to try and keep people on site. Took months for them to even get the plug in installed on the test site. Not sure it ever went live here.
You, me, not even Ghost could have saved this place. It was receiving no financial backing or support from above at all. Hard to keep afloat when people keep loading you up with bricks.
You, me, not even Ghost could have saved this place. It was receiving no financial backing or support from above at all. Hard to keep afloat when people keep loading you up with bricks.
Likes:
NoUseMercenary and PBM
Well I'm here and listening to everyone's feedback, relaying ideas to the owners. Limited staff (all mostly volunteer) and limited budget. But I'm open to ideas and will do my best. Right now, I'm just working with what I have and helping keep the forums somewhat up to date with fresh content. The most popular thread lately has been the "What Are You Playing This Weekend" as it's fun to hear what everyone has going on each weekend and what new or old games they are playing. We have a a few old time members posting regularly and even seen some new faces pop-up.
arfi-gorgona-O (from 2005), Libra-75 (2013), Fijiandoce (2007), Cuguy (2007), Brandon (2004), Aquanox (2005), TidalPhoenix (2006), Ghost (2009), mynd (2006), AsterPhoenix (2008), MacP (2008), Two4DaMoney (2007), Sub-stance1 (2008), F34R (2008), FinalxxSin (2015), VerizonLover (2013), Keefy (2007), robvandam111 (2010), VintageElise (2007)
^ These are all members I've seen post in recent months, some of them checking in weekly/daily. Dates are year they joined. So we still have a lot of forum veterans still checking in. Would be great to coordinate with everyone and have us all online at the same day at least one day a week. If we all jumped on at the same time, including myself, that's 20 of us. That would be a good start.
arfi-gorgona-O (from 2005), Libra-75 (2013), Fijiandoce (2007), Cuguy (2007), Brandon (2004), Aquanox (2005), TidalPhoenix (2006), Ghost (2009), mynd (2006), AsterPhoenix (2008), MacP (2008), Two4DaMoney (2007), Sub-stance1 (2008), F34R (2008), FinalxxSin (2015), VerizonLover (2013), Keefy (2007), robvandam111 (2010), VintageElise (2007)
^ These are all members I've seen post in recent months, some of them checking in weekly/daily. Dates are year they joined. So we still have a lot of forum veterans still checking in. Would be great to coordinate with everyone and have us all online at the same day at least one day a week. If we all jumped on at the same time, including myself, that's 20 of us. That would be a good start.
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Likes:
Libra-75
I feel that! A while back this place was getting overrun with spam bots. iirc from the moderation logs; Kudo's to @TidalPhoenix for tirelessly keeping this presentable! No way for this place to go down. So at the very least i figured i could take some of what i've learned over the years and see if i could band-aid something together.
It's not elegant (magic numbers will get you shouted at 10/10 times), and kinda jank to the max, but it works. No spam bots overrunning this place making it a hell hole. No spam bots abusing forum features to spread their junk at the sites expense.
IMHO, the site also needs to bridge the main site, and the forums better. But that also leads back to the owners needing to get the check book out and paying people to produce something that potential users would consider of value. I think some of your stuff Justin from back in the day contributed to me sticking around. The site kinda needs a 'front man' almost.
It's not elegant (magic numbers will get you shouted at 10/10 times), and kinda jank to the max, but it works. No spam bots overrunning this place making it a hell hole. No spam bots abusing forum features to spread their junk at the sites expense.
IMHO, the site also needs to bridge the main site, and the forums better. But that also leads back to the owners needing to get the check book out and paying people to produce something that potential users would consider of value. I think some of your stuff Justin from back in the day contributed to me sticking around. The site kinda needs a 'front man' almost.
Hehe! Didn't know I counted as a forum veteran, but hey, I'll take it.
Likes:
Libra-75
Not being able to hit the reply button without disabling ad blocking is pretty freaking obnoxious. Was work just trying to respond to this. And yeah, that was the original plan ... to mesh the main site with the forums like you're describing. A "bridge". They aren't linked at all and look nothing alike. I don't even know how this theme came to be.
I also I deleted 30,000+ spam bots and blocked IPs that were being used 800 million times. I did a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff when I had free time. This place was literally insane with spam. At least it's normal now. It's just dead.
I also I deleted 30,000+ spam bots and blocked IPs that were being used 800 million times. I did a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff when I had free time. This place was literally insane with spam. At least it's normal now. It's just dead.
Looks like Alerts are working again. And as far as information from the site owner, they don't feel comfortable giving access to the site code to any forum admins as the potential risks outweigh the benefits if something were to mess up code on the main site or mess with our site's SEO. If you have recommendations, I can pass them along to him. He said if anything breaks or needs a big overhaul he prefer to work on it myself.
However, he is happy to bump up forum member's privileges if anyone wants to step up their role. So if there are any volunteers (or old members needing an upgrade) just let me know who and he'll get them upgraded.
However, he is happy to bump up forum member's privileges if anyone wants to step up their role. So if there are any volunteers (or old members needing an upgrade) just let me know who and he'll get them upgraded.
Likes:
Libra-75
Was just gunna chill this evening after the F1, but figured i'd post here for anyone interested leading on from @Brandon's post about difficulty with the reply button.
I imagine most people will be running an adblocker, but since you can't run this on all devices, if any one was interested, you can deploy a pretty decent network wide adblocker using a raspberri pi (useful for family members for example). Does a pretty good job, and you don't need any 'advanced' tech-fu to get it done. So maybe a 'side-project' for the weekend/summer/winter etc.
I use edge's incognito because its the only browser i have with no active adblock:
Not gunna lie, i have no idea what this site looks like with no adblock lol
I imagine most people will be running an adblocker, but since you can't run this on all devices, if any one was interested, you can deploy a pretty decent network wide adblocker using a raspberri pi (useful for family members for example). Does a pretty good job, and you don't need any 'advanced' tech-fu to get it done. So maybe a 'side-project' for the weekend/summer/winter etc.
I use edge's incognito because its the only browser i have with no active adblock:
Not gunna lie, i have no idea what this site looks like with no adblock lol
Likes:
NoUseMercenary
Here's an update from Robert, the site admin.
"The best thing to do:
- Create a bullet point list of what things would need to happen to "bridge the gap" between forums and main site (= getting main site users involve with the forums and getting forum users frequent the main site).
- Then let's discuss each of those points. Some might not tie in with our editorial direction, others might be great and easy to implement. Like what JP mentioned, we wouldn't post about non-PlayStation related topics on our Socials (like the McAfee story). Some ideas like that we need to discuss and see what makes sense in the bigger picture for us and what doesn't.
- Feel free to do a brainstorming session with some of the still active forum members to gather ideas - Time is the biggest enemy. Out of the people involved with the main site, nobody has time for content creation on the forums (and wouldn't want to distract anyone of their main site responsibilities either, just not enough time). So anything additional on the forums would have to be self-managed by the community/mods."
------
So if you guys want to help me put together a definitive list of ideas that will help make the forums better, we can relay them to Robert. Maybe break them up into quick fixes and long term improvements.
Robert also said if there are veteran forum members on here who would like mod status on the forums to help better manage things, to let me know, and I'll pass it along to Robert and he'll upgrade you.
"The best thing to do:
- Create a bullet point list of what things would need to happen to "bridge the gap" between forums and main site (= getting main site users involve with the forums and getting forum users frequent the main site).
- Then let's discuss each of those points. Some might not tie in with our editorial direction, others might be great and easy to implement. Like what JP mentioned, we wouldn't post about non-PlayStation related topics on our Socials (like the McAfee story). Some ideas like that we need to discuss and see what makes sense in the bigger picture for us and what doesn't.
- Feel free to do a brainstorming session with some of the still active forum members to gather ideas - Time is the biggest enemy. Out of the people involved with the main site, nobody has time for content creation on the forums (and wouldn't want to distract anyone of their main site responsibilities either, just not enough time). So anything additional on the forums would have to be self-managed by the community/mods."
------
So if you guys want to help me put together a definitive list of ideas that will help make the forums better, we can relay them to Robert. Maybe break them up into quick fixes and long term improvements.
Robert also said if there are veteran forum members on here who would like mod status on the forums to help better manage things, to let me know, and I'll pass it along to Robert and he'll upgrade you.
Likes:
Fijiandoce and Libra-75
PSU (or more accurately the community members) has tried to bridge the gap many times before, and has had a modicum of success every time they have. It's just never supported.
@Agriel had youtube content that was pretty decent. Alex (@Ghost) arguably resulted in PSU's biggest influx spike in years when he covered Dust514, and covered that in detail. I can't recall who got him over to Reykjavik for the conferences. But if you wanted to know something, this (PSU) was the place. IMHO, you need that, but more people doing it for things more than just a single title.
It's nice to cover news related to the console, but that's kinda filler content, no? It's nice to have 'X title launches X date' on the front page, but there's nothing really to discuss with this.
There is no PSU pundit for 'X' title that's played the series since birth. Knows the in's and out's, has well formed objective opinions etc. etc. Or even some all knowing gaming Gandhi to guide people through their console journey.
Kyle was the last editor i can recall off the top of my head who actually produced 'additional' content for the site beyond just everyday business:
As for changes to the site:
- Need a sign up on the main page (can just link to forums - i don't know if we still have disqus integration with the forums anymore, but we did when it got implemented)
- More importantly, we need better sign up options, we only offer email and password:
One of the things i've become accustomed to having to do is implement this in our projects:
Kids these days will literally sell their souls if you can make it all one button apparently... jokes aside, the appearance of us giving options makes us look more 'modern'.
As an aside: I have no idea why we have country as a requirement. It literally serves no purpose as far as im aware. I don't think we do any region-fu with out content
@Agriel had youtube content that was pretty decent. Alex (@Ghost) arguably resulted in PSU's biggest influx spike in years when he covered Dust514, and covered that in detail. I can't recall who got him over to Reykjavik for the conferences. But if you wanted to know something, this (PSU) was the place. IMHO, you need that, but more people doing it for things more than just a single title.
It's nice to cover news related to the console, but that's kinda filler content, no? It's nice to have 'X title launches X date' on the front page, but there's nothing really to discuss with this.
There is no PSU pundit for 'X' title that's played the series since birth. Knows the in's and out's, has well formed objective opinions etc. etc. Or even some all knowing gaming Gandhi to guide people through their console journey.
Kyle was the last editor i can recall off the top of my head who actually produced 'additional' content for the site beyond just everyday business:
As for changes to the site:
- Need a sign up on the main page (can just link to forums - i don't know if we still have disqus integration with the forums anymore, but we did when it got implemented)
- More importantly, we need better sign up options, we only offer email and password:
One of the things i've become accustomed to having to do is implement this in our projects:
Kids these days will literally sell their souls if you can make it all one button apparently... jokes aside, the appearance of us giving options makes us look more 'modern'.
As an aside: I have no idea why we have country as a requirement. It literally serves no purpose as far as im aware. I don't think we do any region-fu with out content
Likes:
NoUseMercenary and Libra-75
A couple other things:
actually starts to look like it belongs to something when it's given a little bit of tlc...
I can make the change to the header colour, but that's about it. That PSU logo, and path to said logo is above what i have access to. Same with the background. If there is not directory already present, or if we use our own special directory, i have no access to that (im not asking for access tho just for clarity lol). I can try with the following path: /app/themes/psu-foundation/dist/images/playstation-pattern.png but i don't particularly wanna break something so...
- CM kinda needs to liaise with staff on what they're doing, what content can be brought to the forums (main site content shouldn't be spammed in forums), and additionally what the topic of the day is on the forums. For example; when Clank hit, would have been a good time to observe what people were interested in with clank, such that you can potentially focus on that better next time (and better shape your editorials). Or even make a point to mention something in the pipeline if it was on the editors books (like if you had an interview coming up, for example). Even if it was an upcoming featurette, CM needs to be on the lookout for opportunities to pimp our own staff content (coz at the moment, that's literally all the site's got to pimp).
-
This needs to be sorted. I don't know if it's just me, but the styling is borked on all my chromium based browsers (those header tabs shouldn't be floating like that). It's been like this for years. That aside, the default placeholder icon, and text need to also be sorted - its amateurish @F34R pointed this out years ago. I've looked, but we aren't allowed to make changes that involve creating anything 'new'. So my hands are tied.
- While we're at it, i had to manually edit the borders in the admincp so that the staff bar wasn't all but hidden - you could literally only see the tops of text. That's been like that since the headers got borked.
actually starts to look like it belongs to something when it's given a little bit of tlc...
I can make the change to the header colour, but that's about it. That PSU logo, and path to said logo is above what i have access to. Same with the background. If there is not directory already present, or if we use our own special directory, i have no access to that (im not asking for access tho just for clarity lol). I can try with the following path: /app/themes/psu-foundation/dist/images/playstation-pattern.png but i don't particularly wanna break something so...
Likes:
NoUseMercenary and Libra-75
Thank you @Fijiandoce - I've posted your comments in the staff thread for the site admin to take a look at. I definitely think we can make the sign up process better. Forum styling could be better too.
As for getting staff to cover content outside of the daily news grind, I think that would be great. Most of the staff are volunteers, so it would be good to pick their brains on what games they are dedicated to and provide more in-depth coverage on them.
As for getting staff to cover content outside of the daily news grind, I think that would be great. Most of the staff are volunteers, so it would be good to pick their brains on what games they are dedicated to and provide more in-depth coverage on them.
Likes:
Fijiandoce
@NoUseMercenary i see the forums got a bit of a face-lift. Thanks to those that made it happen! I'm not any kind of UI artiste, but it looks a whole lot better now!
Just wanted to add to my note on the borked styling since i honestly don't know if others see it this way, or if it's just me: But below is my 'out of the box' chromium Edge install, alongside my not 'out of the box' firefox install - Note how the Firefox browser is rendering the page elements correctly.
Just wanted to add to my note on the borked styling since i honestly don't know if others see it this way, or if it's just me: But below is my 'out of the box' chromium Edge install, alongside my not 'out of the box' firefox install - Note how the Firefox browser is rendering the page elements correctly.
Likes:
Libra-75 and NoUseMercenary