Weird things happening with the forum | Page 123 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

Um, hello. I’ve been away for a few days and didn’t know this was blowing up. Sorry.

I locked those threads on Thursday. I started on the final page (27), working backwards and locking any that hadn’t had a contribution in many years. I got a bit carried away – I wasn’t feeling well and probably should have waited till I was thinking a bit more clearly. I certainly should have let people know before I got started. When it was done I had to rush off and pick my kids up, then life got in the way, then it slipped my mind. That was a mistake and I apologise.

That said, this was discussed quite thoroughly in March. In that thread there were lots of complaints but actually not many constructive suggestions on what to keep and what to lose. I really don’t recall many people making a case for many individual threads to stay open, despite my requests. And I really did ask for specific feedback, for example:

Joe said

It seems fairly certain that we’ll prevent new threads from being created in ATN , to avoid the free-for-all that we currently have (“What are you whistling right now?”; “What’s your favourite colour” etc). But I would like people to chime in with suggestions on what else from the current crop we should keep.

I proposed a core set of six threads in my first post here, but if people have a burning desire for more please speak up and say which ones.

I originally said I’d be making changes in a week, but I’ve left it open longer because I wanted to hear people’s thoughts. Thanks to those who have engaged in this. I’m still trying to come up with a way of presenting non-Beatles music in a more manageable way. Then there’s the question of whether we keep other arts (books, films etc). And then where do you draw the line? Why not continue the sports discussions? And all the rest? This is really tricky to get right, and I’m genuinely open to suggestions as long as they’re polite and non-confrontational.

Honestly, if more people had bothered to reply with specific suggestions I might have kept more of the threads open, but very few people did.

The intention was always to limit the number of threads in ATN . That was flagged in my very first message in that thread:

Other than that, we’d like this to be a Beatles forum first and foremost. So in a week or so [sic], all the other ATN threads will be moved to a new archive section, locked and made read-only.

I decided against the archive section. Regardless, I repeatedly said I was planning to lock the old threads, and I repeatedly asked for suggestions on which specific threads to keep open. People even asked for the opportunity to comment on certain threads before they were locked, so the plan was definitely clear:

Starr Shine? said

Can I post in that thread one last time with Chloe the cat? Imma cry, #pureTragity. (tbh I was thinking that that thread is the type of thread Joe hates the most I think)  

OK. On to semantics.

Ron Nasty said

And if you read this post in that thread, @Billy Rhythm, Joe said existing threads would remain “fully open”, and that he would give “fair warning” of further changes. So over half of the threads suddenly being locked is a surprise, and even the mods seem surprised that among them are threads that they were led to believe were not to be locked.  

As I stated earlier, I’m sorry for not giving fair warning. That aside, I actually said in your link: 

Joe said

I’ve put a stop to new threads from being created in the ATN section. You can still reply to discussions that are already there, you just cannot start brand new ones.

The rest of the forum will remain fully open.

I realise this won’t be popular, but it follows a lot of the discussions that have been going on here. New ATN threads don’t get started all that often, so it shouldn’t really make much difference, but I didn’t want someone to start a chat about something that would have to get locked/migrated/merged at a later date.

I thought that was clear enough, but evidently not. The above statement explains that the creation of new threads was being stopped. “The rest of the forum will remain fully open” refers to the non-ATN parts of the forum, ie the thread-restriction would be ATN -only.

You misquoted this as “The rest of [ATN ] will remain fully open”, but [ATN ] changes the meaning of what I said. I also wasn’t referring to locking threads in that particular comment.

OK. On to specifics.

We had dozens of threads on individual bands. I think we had at least three or four on Queen alone (my fault for not merging/deleting them at the time, but never mind). There were also multiple Bowie, Dylan and Pink Floyd threads, other ones on Buddy Holly, Mac DeMarco, Harry Nilsson, Kendrick Lamar, Flaming Lips, Green Day, Phil Collins, Belle and Sebastian, the Lovin’ Spoonful, Neil Young, Tom Petty, Rush, Jonas Brothers, Frank Sinatra, Billy Joel, and many others.

I haven’t got on to sport, but imagine there being threads on all of those too (or go looking for them if you want). TV? There’s the Simpsons, Futurama, Pawn Stars, American Idol, Stranger Things, Doctor Who etc. Then there were the miscellaneous ones on DVD-A authoring software, cute animals, insomnia, fixing Fender amps, the MPAA, Photoshop, and so on. As I’ve mentioned often before, I think other forums (Facebook, subreddits, the pub, wherever) are much better for this sort of thing. 

Most of the locked threads hadn’t been added to in many months or even many years. I also wanted to consolidate the music threads, to allow a place for discussion but in a less scattershot way. To that end, I purposefully left open threads on musical genres, eg early Rock ‘N’ Roll , country music. I’m not planning to lock any of those (and I promise I will let people know before doing anything else like this).

I left Prince and Led Zep open, among others, because they’d been recently active. I was intending to wait until they too died down before locking them. I left some other threads open because I wasn’t sure what to do with them, so this whole process isn’t final (ie some might be reopened, others might get closed). As for Bowie, yes I’d love to chat about him on my own forum, because I love him as much as I love the Beatles, but I’m not going to be a hypocrite and leave it open when I’m closing others.

Unless… help me here. Tell me why certain locked threads should be reopened. Not just because you like them, because we’re a broad church with a huge range of individual interests. But how might a discussion on X make this forum better, and how is it impossible outside the currently-open places? Let me know here.

It might be that we can leave some threads open for legacy’s sake, but only for major artists (Dylan, Bowie, Prince, Led Zep), but not start new ones. Would that help? Then all other music chat can go into some dedicated genre threads, ‘What are you listening to’, or somewhere else that already exists.

But… can I meekly make one request? We’ve got a seven-page discussion on which ATN threads to retain. If you want to defend any of them, can you please do it there? Otherwise we’ll potentially have two discussions in parallel. I’m happy to debate the rights and wrongs of the way this was (mis)communicated and executed here, but otherwise let’s keep this ‘weird things’ thread on topic.

Sorry also to the mods for springing this on them. Really sorry. Thanks especially to MMM for assuming good intentions on my part, even when they were clearly evil. 

Take aim, fire.

Can we talk about ads? I know some of you have seen some weird/ugly/annoying stuff happening here recently, and it deserves an explanation.

First of all, I know ads aren’t great. Nobody likes them. But they do help keep this site free and to allow me to work on it, without which I’d probably have to shut it down. I’m more than familiar with the moral/philosophical debate around keeping the web free, versus exercising the right to turn ads off. If you’re not using an adblocker, thanks, I appreciate it, as will other web publishers. I promise that if I ever win the lottery I will remove ads altogether.

There have been some recent changes to ads, though. In May I started working with a company which does automated machine testing of ad placements, to try to get the most effective combinations and positions. They also draw on more partners to bid on the ad space, which theoretically will mean more money (and will allow me to continue writing and making great web stuff full time, rather than having to get a proper job – at the moment I’m not there yet).

The testing takes some months to complete. Users (many more than the total active users on this forum) may either see the old version or a new permutation, chosen at random. The site itself will remain unchanged, but the ad placements might look odd or ugly for a while, until the ineffective ones are retired and the better ones remain. Sometimes it’s likely to be awful, but that’s part of the machine learning process. At the moment only 10% of users are part of the testing, so 90% of people are seeing the old version, but during much of May it was up to 50-50. I’m keeping it low at the moment to minimise disruption, but may change it again.

I want to prevent any popups or overlays from appearing, so if you do see any of those please do take a screengrab, and either post it here or email it to me (joe at beatlesbible dot com).

If any ads are obscuring text/pics or login forms, that’s obviously not great either. It might just be a temporary glitch during testing, but again if you see this happen please screenshot it and let me know.

I’m more than happy to discuss this further if anyone wishes to do so. And obviously I’m sorry for any inconvenience.

Ron Nasty said
The guest number is broken, @Joe. I refuse to believe we’ve not had more than one guest on the forum at a time for weeks. AG and I did an experiment the other night where it was showing one guest and she asked me to close my always open tab. It didn’t take the guest count down to none.

Also, possibly connected, in actual threads, I keep finding the “Currently Browsing this Page” missing.

This one may just be me, but I keep having some weird navigation jumps. I went to log in elsewhere earlier, pressed the button, and instead of logging it jumped to The Albums index!  

Now I remember why I wanted to talk about ads! To do the machine testing I had to run the website through a proxy service. It doesn’t really need explaining in depth here, but it did have some unexpected consequences. I think the guests/currently browsing stats might well be related, in that the proxy for some reason doesn’t allow proper logging of visitors. It doesn’t really matter too much though.