Thought – Siliconera the message board

Personally I am not interested, but if you want to open one more power to you.

@alice - Thanks for your honesty. :) It’s comments like these which guide the site in the right direction.

i probably wouldn’t bother using them unless i were to have some very specific question. they could be nice, but they seem unnecessary to me.

If there were loads of comments in each of the posts on Siliconera, I would say a forum would be a good addition to the site. However, I’m only seeing an average of 2 or 3 comments per post, which means it will be a waste of time to set everything up. No point in having a forum if we’re not really that talkative.

I’ll stop by if there’s anything interesting to talk about.

no.

I’m sort of indifferent. I’d stop by and post (or at least lurk) if the forums were active, but I don’t exactly need another forum to post on. I think the comment section here is all we really need.

No message board is needed. They always get occupied by people with far too much time anyway… favoritism is born, power-hungry mods, etc. They’re never a fair place to talk about anything it seems.

Comment boxes on news items helps put a focus on things.

i would participate, but i realize i am in the strict minority. And of course, its no fun talking by myself. But I mean, what other sites are there that talk about the 2 things i love: obscure import games, and beatmania?

I’d like to see forums. It would be nice to have a gaming message board that wasn’t entirely about sales (like NeoGaf) or systems wars and piracy (Gamefaqs/Gamespot)

I just stumbled upon the redesign - it looks terrific! I’m a sucker for black backgrounds :)

Having a forum would be a good thing if the community helped keep it active. As you also mentioned, it’d make interacting with each other a lot easier.

Of course that’s all depending on the community alone.

I’m Mr. Fanatically Focused…if there was a conversation about one of my games of the week I’d be very involved, if attempts to start conversations on my game of the week failed I’d just move on to other forums.

It seems to me like a great chunk of SE readership are working adults, and forums require a great time of time. Can’t speak for all, but personally I rarely browse or get involved in any kind of forums as it takes too long to actually find what one needs.

As mentioned above, I think the dedicated comment section is a diluted version alrdy that keeps things on topic.

NO! Keep Siliconera PURE!!!

I’m not really interested myself, though at one point I was a member at your previous board, though I lost interest when spammers started appearing on your forum. I’ve also had so much bad experience with discussion forums over the recent years, that I’ve sworn them off for good. I’d rather just shoot in a comment every now and then, if it’s something that fancies my interest.

Wouldn’t make much of a difference to me. If you do add a message board I’d prolly participate. If you don’t, we can still comment on each article like always.

I got many other forums I post on. However, I have no problem with joining another one. But I would probably only lurk. The Comment section is good enough

@everyone - Siliconera is an interesting beast. Compared to the amount of traffic the site gets the comments are definitely less than expected and like Aoshi00 mentioned I tend to think the audience here is older or than other video game spots.

So as of now the overall vibe is “no”. If there are pro-forum people out there let your voice be heard!

I think it’ll be relatively beneficial to us and the rest of the community as a whole. A good example is tips. Via Message Boards, it’s easier for the fans and members to relay any good news bits they run across.

It’s safe to say that as it stands right at this second, if we had a message board…it’d be far from being unoccupied. I say go for it.

I think if the message boards were focused towards particular elements yes, kind of like how the site as a whole is focused on imports and more obscure titles the mainstream sites tend to overlook. That’s one of the big reasons I visit here so often, and I have my own site. A message board would be organized than comments, but I don’t know how active they’d be. It would need its own design and other features to stand out, which is why my forums are stagnant. We’ve tried to get our forums going about 4 times now and it has yet to work, but I still have some ideas.

That’s just my thoughts though.

I really wouldn’t mind.

A shy link to BBS on the site wouldn’t really hurt anyone and besides, you don’t loose anything by trying. I’d say forums would have much more traffic than comment section, simply because of topics’ lifespan and total flexibility.

Spencer, you know me… I’ll just troll it!

Bring it on!

I’m putting in my vote for “no” or “pass,” just because I personally wouldn’t get involved. I do like commenting, however…

I dont see why a Forum is needed, but hey thats only my opinion

…yes

oh yes.
please.

No, Siliconera is already a great site, and a message board would only make it worse.

A simple forum would probably be worth using, if you ask me. I’d certainly try to take part in it, because for some reason I find it very awkward to hold a conversation in a comments thread.

I’d say no. If most people who comment say no, than there likely wouldn’t be anyone to socialize with on them. Plus, I kind of went through my forum phase on one site for 3 years and have pretty much worked it out of my system. I prefer the commenting now.

well, Id say that I like the idea but if you make one it should only be a forum with ni subforums or such…

I know I’ve personally wanted a forum for SE for some time now. In addition to the writing I do here, I’m a forum mod at HG101 and I enjoy it. I think it’d be cool. Of course, any forum could get out of hand. I’d say try it for a half-year and see how it goes. Also, people who comment on the articles and forum posters are sometimes different audiences…so asking commenters might not be the most accurate way to gain a consensus.

Well, a forum *would* give people a place to talk about things other than the comment sections of articles…Like, have you seen how many comments there are on some of the anime game related articles? Or some of the Kingdom Hearts articles? Some of these articles are literally years old and still getting comments. People are basically using them as forums anyway, so maybe it’d be a good idea to give those people a place to discuss things. Also, it might be a good way for Siliconera’s editors to interact with the site’s readers. So yeah, I agree with vyse. Perhaps we should just try it for a while and see what happens.

Ick Bin Nein

No thanks. Forums just end up bringing in a bunch of power hungry mods and smart mouthed teenagers. We don’t need those.

Spencer, like the others, I have to agree that Siliconera doesn’t need the message boards. Your site is excellent as it is. You really don’t need to change anything. But that’s just my opinion.

well said, Daizyujin.
i once had a lousy experience with a mod at a site i liked. i don’t like that site much any more. the forums have since been wiped and the mod is gone. he’s actually moved on to greener pastures, and put himself on good behavior, but i will always think of him as the lonely, miserable hall monitor lurking the desolate halls anxious to attack anyone posting anything less than a revelation of the highest order.

I agree with alice (first post)
Not a big fan of idle chit chat and everything I need comes from the articles and comments ^^

quote angelous and you have my exact opinion =)
(I’m too lazy in the morning to type more then two sentences…)

I agree with a forum idea. It’s not a bad one.

Honestly, I don´t think I´ll use it… Maybe a few posts now and then, but not much, if any. I don´t even post much in the comments as it is… But well, if others want it and will use it, I don´t see a problem with that, but I´m guessing it will be probably more of an extra rather than a basic feature for the site.

Peeps, you don’t have to use the boards if you don’t want to. Even the comment system is not a mandatory one.. Why all the hate ?
After all, there are some *gasp* nice boards on the web and with SE’s mature audience this move might be the right move.

I second Vyse’s opinion on this one.

In all honesty I don’t think I would use it. The main reason being is I’m quite active in other forums already. These forums cover such a wide spectrum of topics that I wouldn’t see myself participating in Silicon’s if they had them. I just enjoy the commenting on topics and stories.

Yes

well, I guess u wont make one T^T

So… any conclusions, Spencer ?

@philemon and anyone else wondering about the decision - I was really planning on doing it, but so many “no”s suggest that readers here aren’t interested in having a forum. There are more nays than yays and that doesn’t even count the large silent population who probably won’t participate.

I figured many Siliconera readers were already part of another active forum so having a message board here may have been redundant. It looks like that’s the case because so many people are against a decision.