Message Board thoughts - please respond

[GSNAngel]

Hi everyone,

Our goal is to make your experience on GSN.com the best it can be, and we periodically need your help in order to do that. Specifically, we’d love to get your feedback on the message boards. Your perspective is really valuable to us and we hope you will take a few moments to share your thoughts.

Traffic on the GSN message boards has steadily declined over the years, and we are trying to determine whether it makes sense to keep them going. Since you are the biggest users of the boards, we know this will affect you the most and we wanted to be sure we gave you a chance to weigh in.

Are the message boards important to you? If so, in what ways? If they went away, what impact would that have on you and the community as a whole? Is there anything we could do in addition to the boards, or in their place, that would be as, or more, engaging? Are there features you’ve seen on other sites that have worked well? Any other ideas you’d like to share?

We would really like to hear from as many of you as possible. Your voice is important to us. Thank you for your time!

[TheKid965]

Well, speaking as someone who's been around these boards for eleven years, old and new versions, this is still my favorite place to discuss game shows with others. I honestly don't know why, but I've never totally felt "at home" in any of the more "mainstream" (as far as game show fandom goes) fora and discussion boards that've cropped up since the old alt.tv.game-shows Usenet group was left to the wolves, lo these many years ago.

I've noticed the decline in traffic myself, but I doubt it has anything to do with the board itself -- it's more like the natural evolution of the Internet itself. Long-form public message boards have given way to Facebook pages, personal blogs, and Twitter rants -- well, as much "ranting" as one can do in 140 characters or less, anyway. Which is all well and good as far as these things go, but sometimes you just need to have a place where you can have a much more in-depth discussion about things that concern you. Maybe I'm just hopelessly old-fashioned like that, but I find Facebook and its ilk a poor replacement for public discussion fora.

With that said, there is one problem these boards face that GSN could potentially do something about, and it might even help drive traffic. As it currently stands, the link to get to the boards is practically buried on the main page in a non-intuitive location, underneath the channel-listing links. Not only is it very far off the main sight lines, it makes no sense to put it there. Worse still, even that link doesn't take you directly to the boards, but rather to a user's "Welcome" page, on which you have to look for a "Browse the message board" link before you're even taken there. I can see this confusing many people to the point where they don't even bother jumping through these hoops, which can also account for some (though of course nowhere near all) of the decline in traffic we've seen around here lately. Perhaps moving the link to the main menu bar in some capacity, and fixing it so it takes you directly there instead of to this interim "Welcome" page, would help in this regard.

These boards are a fairly important part of my online interaction, and I for one would be sad to see them go. Even with the changing habits of the average user in this day and age, I feel very strongly that message boards like this do still have their place, and still serve a useful function. (Apparently spammers think so to, else why would they try so hard to sabotage us?) They do, however, need to be promoted better by the sites that host them, and in this regard GSN.com could stand to improve quite a bit...

[pzimm7778]

As the Kid said, its hard to even know they are here. If you weren't already a member and knew they were here you would probably be hard pressed to find them. There used to be a fairly easy to find link on the main page and its gone. When I've lost my bookmarks I've either had to find them using a search engine or the small print at the bottom of the pages. I find them useful as its how I find out when new shows are coming and when old ones are returning.

I was going to ask something about the spam issue and approving every thread. Is there a way to set it up so that once a person proves they are legitimate and aren't going to spam the boards that they can either be manually or automatically set up to be able to start threads. It's possible this is causing less interaction as well. I've tried to start threads and they take days to be approved and sometimes never get done so for whatever reason.

[GSNAngel]

Thank you TheKid965 . We've both been around a while! Your thoughts are much appreciated. I like your suggestions too. I know I'm emotionally invested in the boards, but to me this is of the best communities I've encountered online. I think it's pretty special (as our our members).

pzimm7778 , I'm sorry new threads aren't being moderated in a timely manner. Sometimes it could take a few hours but it should not be taking days. I'll ask the team to be more careful of this. Right now the way the boards are set up we don't have the functionality to moderate new people, then approve them. That would be more ideal to me too but we're working with what we have.

[phimat37]

As someone who's been posting here for 4 years, I have really noticed a decline in traffic on here, and especially having browsed the forums for 6 years, and have read posts from before 6 years ago, it seemed there was A LOT of traffic on here between 2004 and 2006, especially in the Community Games section. If you guys really want to direct more traffic, here's what I'd suggest (and going with TheKid's suggestion):

Places to put a link to the Message Board link:

• Under the list of links (Home, Cash Games, All Games, etc.), You could put a link saying "Message Board" with some sort of symbol next to it to try to get people's attention.
  
• In the MyGSN page where lots of people go to look for promotions, message friends, edit account, or add to their ever growing buddy list.

Those are 2 possibilities.

Also, to make the message board experience even better, I say you should add a Chat Room. People could chat while playing games, posting, etc. Because, when there is really nothing to post on here, people may be bored and may just want to chat, and hang loose.

I like chat rooms because it makes the experience better, plus I have seen other vBulletin forums with the chat room function. A chat room is the most obvious thing to me.

This is really the only place I come to discuss game shows, and play games. These message boards are special to me, for people to make new friends, and chat.

I would love to think of more great ways, but alas, this is all I have for now. I would be kind of "lost" without these message boards as, this board is the first link I click on everyday.

[gingersnap1001]

Without the message boards it would be harder to keep up with the promotions, other members and answering the QOTD, etc. I really like the boards but do agree, they are difficult to get to. A big part of the decline could be the social media pulling traffic to places which are quicker like twitter and facebook. For example, why click several times here to find the QOTD answers when you can get the answers quicker and with half the clicks on facebook.

I love the weekend games when I have time to play them. Take a look at how many players participate with them and it should show how popular they are.

Im sure there are many other things to tell you but I know if there were no message boards, I would really miss them.

[tigger1956]

I know I don't always reply with a response, however I do find the message board very helpful. I have been a member of gsn for a while now although I still find little suprises from time to time and I have a little trouble working thru-some of the kinks but when I do I enjoy it even more. Self-teaching is the only way I know how to roll because I'm not the greatest or HA HA not even good on a computer but better late than NEVER. Thanks again for every-ones help. tigger

[FACEO15]

I have been here since 2001 under the username of faco15 and FACEO15. I also have never left. I do think the main reason the traffic is not high on "this highway" is that you really have no idea where the boards are on the homepage. I have this board link under my favorites menu.

I do think this board has slowly declined because the classics are rerun so much and there hardly any variety.

Back in 2002-2009, it was fun to take part and watch programming when things were fresh and lively.

I still enjoy posting, but it is very minimal now!

[jigsawdonna]

I visit the Message Board weekly to see what is new. I feel it's important because you learn more about GSN by reading the Message Board. I have also found out you can get the Secret Word by logging into the Community Section and I like to read what others are saying about GSN. If I knew about the Message Board when I first started playing on GSN, I would have gain a lot of insight regarding GSN and what exactly oodles and tokens are. These are really important for a newbie to GSN. I would hate to see the message board go - somehow the word has to be spread to all GSN Members to read the Message Board and learn what is going on for that week or even month! Just my humble opinion on this subject!

[CtyMurph]

Off the top of my head as a new user of the "community" pages:

I only started because of a weekend game on the bottom of a page. The main page is very busy and it scared me away when I was checking out different parts of GSN.com

Its very hard to take a turn for the member generated games and got to be frustrating.

The time stamps are very strange and made me think twice about participating. Now it's about 11:40 am in Wisconsin...

I check the Oodles Discussion page as soon as I log in and miss out on most of the trivia oodles if it was gone.

[GSNAngel]

The time stamps are very strange and made me think twice about participating. Now it's about 11:40 am in Wisconsin...

People have to set their own time zone, or they get a default one. To set your time zone, go to Quick Links at the top of the page, click on it and then click on General Settings. From there, scroll down the page to Date & Time Options. Set your time zone, then scroll down the bottom of the page and click on "save changes." Now you'll see posts properly time-wise

[GSNAngel]

Thank you for the responses so far. They're very thoughtful and helpful. Please keep them coming!

[loisem]

Please don't take away our message board. This is the first place I come to when I need help, because most of the time someone else has had the same problem or is having the same problem, and we help each other out. I have learnt so much from the other gsn members. And we all look forward every weekend to the message board game.

I think the biggest reason for the decline is that there is no longer any connection with gsnlive tv. When we were interacting with gsnlive tv and had to log in to have a chance to play a game on live tv, more people came to gsn.com and the ones on tv would mention the chatroom and we had more people in the chatroom then. Now there is never any mention of the gsn chatroom on gsn tv, I bet that most people watching gsn on tv now don't even know that there is a gsn website.

I think another thing that has driven players away from gsn.com is when you first started doing the oodles we could buy really nice gifts with our oodles, now there is never anything new or good to buy, you have to bid on the gifts and have to bid way too much for anything good. Most of us feel like we don't have a chance to get anything good now, so we just don't try anymore.

If you want more people to come to the gsn website, mention it on gsn tv. And if you want us to stay, give us a reason to stay. The only reason I stay now is for the chatroom and the weekend message board games. And if you had a fair way for all of us to have a chance at getting the really good prizes with our oodles that would help. I have suggested before that instead of bidding on the prizes, do it like a raffle, have a set number of chances at a set amount and only be able to buy one chance. For example if the prize was the coffee maker, have 100,000 tickets at the cost of 1,000 oodles, you could only buy one chance and when all the chances are sold, have a drawing, fair for all.

[CtyMurph]

GSNAngel, Thank you so much. I had no idea that I could change settings. Turns out I was in London and didnt even know it.

[M2nFarisFan]

Well, I don't watch a whole lot of GSN. Most of my time on the boards is in the Green Room - I frankly don't have the time or interest that I did to start community games or discuss Dick Clark's haircut on Pyramid from 1986. I don't think it's a genre anymore....it faded as a network option in the mid-90s, and the bulk of the audience either 1.) remembers the old days and are the diehard obsessives/nostalgics, or 2.) likes the shows on GSN.

I think the biggest thing that drove people from the boards is that there is a seemingly "elite" on here....a few members take up the bulk of the posts. I think a lot of people are afraid to jump in between them when the discussion becomes a bit heated, and frankly, you can see it, starting in ~2006, when the mass exodus began. We lost a lot of members because the website became one for bullying and insults and such. Does it mean that people just can't take the heat? Perhaps. But the best thing to do is probably get rid of a few rogue members and give them the ultimatum of cleaning up their act and make the posts PG-rated, or send them elsewhere.

Furthermore, I think I'll second the prior statements that I don't think a lot of people know about this forum. I've been a member for 10 years (2002-04 as ArktikBlast02, 2004-06 as redoctober 90, and 06-now as M2nFarisFan) and let's face it, people just don't give a hoot about game shows anymore. When I manage a site, my forums are my ad dollars, my revenue stream to pay hosting, everything. If someone has 1,000 posts, those are 1,000 impressions I sell. People are going to visit that more often. Needless to say, the forum has to be noticed. Maybe make it so it's part of the community, e.g. GSN TV, GSN GAMES, GSN BUZZ (like it used to be). I'd even put it as a palette on the main page, like a Trivial Pursuit "pie" on the front page.

Ease of use is the key. I'm not a big fan of this whole "admin says OK" deal, especially when I've been on this board for so many posts and there are many whom have posted in the four digits here and five on the legacy forum. Maybe make it so once you hit 50 posts or so, you don't have to have admin permission (I've heard of myPHP forums before where this is an option). If you can't root out the bad people after 50 posts, you probably deserve to be spammed. I don't necessarily disagree with giving the green folks on here limited rights, e.g. no sigs or avatars until 50 posts, and certainly in the first few posts you get the OK from admins. But for the rest of us who have been loyal, we need to be able to talk about things ASAP.

Finally, there is an element of targeting your audience on here. I've seen a lot of posts on the tech help, and they sound pretty angry. It would behoove GSN to make it so when they post about Oodles, or tokens, or whatever currency GSN likes to sell on here, that we can go and make them want to post again about something a little bit more pleasant. Perhaps a good idea would be to reward members with Oodles for winning GSN-sponsored community games embedded in the forums, or (as is now) ramp up the Oodles for posts thing. We do need to make them a bit more interesting than simply "for 200 oodles, name your best Christmas present". Perhaps a decent one would be "for 200 oodles, what color was Todd Newton's tie on Whammy! today?" First responder with the correct info gets the oodles. I'd even go and put a module on the main page with "popular threads" or a "live feed" a la a newswire.