State of the QBN 2019
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- i_monk-1
If you don't have a problem with the way things are now, then you have no problem with the steady drop in posts and regular users and relevance and the eventual (but sooner than you think) shuttering of the site.
If that's the case maybe your opinion doesn't matter. To anyone. Certainly not qbners worried this'll be gone in a year. You'll still be here, posting on QBN 4.0, or you won't, and that won't matter to you either.
- is anyone listening to what we might have to say about running an internet forum?renderedred
- zarb0z0
I’ve had a think, and I’d like to share.
This is my only QBN account. I say this to call attention to my faults and flaws; investigate. I speak quickly, sometimes harshly, and I own every word—I have to, or I am nothing. Sometimes, the little chav in me feels randy, and sometimes the gentleman wishes to pop round the shops for no good reason at all. Those extremes show in my posts.
I like to think I contribute, but I confess it’s likely just in a participatory sense of community. The design work I do is all CAD, FEA/CFD usually, and there’s an incredible overlap between the (PC) tools I use to and the tools a DTP artist uses, but we share almost no software (that I can discern).
The conversations around COTD, NSFWotD, etc? Those affect me, for that’s where I “contribute” most. Otherwise, you’ll catch me commenting on POTD, or putting Yevgeniy in exceptionally unsafe conditions.
That said, before I vote for the removal of COTD (et al), I want to point out one small but glaring flaw in the logic of removing questionable comment:
Cocks gonna cock.
Tossers post trash, so when that avenue is closed, they’ll post trash where it doesn’t belong. I, for one, do not wish to expect a “clean and sober” QBN, only to find some bellend has sabotaged the POTD thread with a goatse.
So I vote for the sanitation of QBN...under one condition: there MUST be a way to quickly remove shitposts, shitposters, and troll accounts. There must. If there’s no way to stop that, then the you-know-who-you-are’s of the world will just destroy what we vote to create.
As far as diversity, I think there’s a possibility of abusing that too. We could easily find an untoward moderator asking for “proof pics” of female potentials to give them priority. We could see a lot of things. What management system does QBN have in place to make sure the ship stays on course?
Finally, there are not-so-obvious subjects to tackle. We have a “shooting of the day” thread. Why? Do we need a constant reminder that the USA’s media is literally obsessed with showing how tornadoes only strike caravan parks? There’s no equal time for such hot-button topics. And, if there becomes one, we’re no longer a Design Community, yeah? Isn’t there enough of that Elsewhere?
We have a Donnie Drumpf thread. Why? They have that in the States, it’s called “Fox News.” Who gives a toss about foreign governments buggering themselves?
We have a Cat of the Day thread. Why? There are countless websites, subreddits ad nauseum for cats, going all the way back to hieroglyphics.
We have threads so abjectly disconnected from Designing Stuff that, as Bennn said, it really hasn’t been a Design board in quite some time. Would we like it to be? Then those seemingly harmless threads have to go too, as much as I personally would not like to see that.
Finally, for those who’ve been in this game long enough to remember USENET, there used to be a system where, if you wanted a newsgroup called, say, rec.autos.makers.tvr, you would have to post your proposal to REC's RFC thread, get it voted in by the body politik, and THEN it would be approved. I close my rant with a suggestion that something similar be considered, or something where certain “karma” or “upvotes” or whatever participation-trustworthiness-me... means your posts go through immediately, otherwise they are held for approval (whereupon you get a point when it’s posted). Get rid of ALL the non-Design threads, have a rapid-response team to kill off the trolls and the NSFW content, and limit the methods by which the column on the left gets populated.
“I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”
You see, Yevgeniy, site for anonymous not productive for dreams of ink and motion. Use QBN. Is nice.
- Let's just say that the high-and-mighty of us work or aspire to work on efforts to encourage a better society.canoe
- As designers we're not sworn to that often overlooked oath that journalists have which is to promote the truth.canoe
- Maybe and tangentially, that's the reason why the $5 BS is a part of our collective challenge.canoe
- But to equate COTD and political discourse is beyond comprehension...canoe
- Can someone summarize?robotron3k
- @canoe, if the argument is that QBN is a Design Community, then any thread that isn't design-related needs to go. If that's beyond comprehension, I can't helpzarb0z
- < best response yet.MrAbominable
- I think the threads are all organic and putting too many restrictions will be severely limiting. Otherwise we go for a more organised system...Ianbolton
- Like here are the 10-15 places you can post now and leave it at that. No more new threads? Sounds limiting to me though.Ianbolton
- If you don't think COTD backs into politics you may be out of touch. Women are people now too, you guys.i_monk
- monNom2
I don't really see the lack of women here as an issue. It's an open forum and it just happened to evolve that way. There are plenty of places online that skew the other way.
It might even be that one of the things that makes this place a bit special is the consistency of viewpoint around what appeals to male designers. Where else do you go to find that?
I like that we have a proud dad's thread, and that the online dating tread is almost exclusively about men's failures and successes. As a male, that's the kind of content that engages me. I can't relate the same way to a proud mama's thread.
Anyways, I guess my point is that I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with being a man, and I don't think talking to other men is inherently nefarious. The gender thing doesn't seem to me to be the issue we're having. More likely, it's just that we don't have much young blood and the early members are getting older and have less time to spend here (case in point: Proud Dads). But that's probably more a product of changing technology expectations and our acerbic wit. I've heard from other designers that we come off a bit mean toward newcomers.
- Name three design-related forums like QBN that are 99% female.i_monk
- surely it'd be more interesting if there was a female presence here? Y'know, just to talk to.Fax_Benson
- We do have one or two, and bless them for putting up with us! My point was that the character of this place is a byproduct of the community....monNom
- if you try to change the community, you'll probably change the character of the place too... and I like the character (mostly)monNom
- JesusFax_Benson
- 'one or two, and bless them for putting up with us' lol.Fax_Benson
- They're so brave!deadsperm
- It's simple; we XX chromosomes like to talk more than type. Want to be heard, we get read enough.BustySaintClaire
- Nairn0
~153 likely unique users...
Next stage is to work out a way of displaying this info in an 'interesting' way without giving information out that would probably make people feel uncomfortable (ie. hiding usernames and URLs)
I also need to compile a seperate list of known pseuds to total up post counts properly - there are some people on here (hayzilla or Yuekit, for instance) whose response count is much lower than it should be, with older responses lost or spread across other usernames.
Anyway - creepy, huh? :)
- Sorry, "likely unique users who have posted in the past month or so".Nairn
- Looks like my Sainsbury's Christmas shop receipt.fadein11
- How many of them are active at least once a day? That would be interesting. (active like, posting something)Bennn
- Thats not an healty community if you want to know.Bennn
- What's this from?garbage
- What would constitute a 'healthy community' in your mind, Bennn? I'd be surprised if active users was much different in the 'Good Old Days'.Nairn
- i think we've all just gotten a bit lazy when it comes to posting cool shit we see around / don't have time to spend finding cool shit / we've all got old.Nairn
- @garbage—I compiled it manually over the past hour or so - I'm too dumb to automate this, but do have a borderline-autistic ability to copy/paste & alt/tab shitNairn
- @nairn, this community was way more active a few years ago. Many people have left.Bennn
- It was hard to keep up with the threads movments back in the day. Now we often have the same thread stuck for an entire day.Bennn
- because only a few persons are posting and answering.Bennn
- I dont want to be negative, but QBN is clearly less active than it was and its slowly going down every year. For multiple reasons.Bennn
- it's just a natural progression to the QBN singularity where one person argues with themselves all day.fadein11
- LOL fade so truerenderedred
- @Bennn:
Quality (of posts) > Quantity (of posts)Krassy - creepymonospaced
- @nairn Do you have a higher resolution image, I want details.
But also, MQBNGA.garbage - @garbage - I'm hesitant to post it publicly in its full form as it's not really 'my' info. What is it you want to see? Location/Post count & sign up dates ...Nairn
- ... aren't too personal or revealing, which is what I'm intending to try and make use of. it's not complete though because of pseuds and.. well, time.Nairn
- I was just curious as to how many sockpuppet accounts there are. I've only had two accounts, and only because I forgot my password for my first account..garbage
- ..so I decided to change my name. Also is georges behind any of the troll accounts. He's a legend, and I wish he was still around.garbage
- I have no way of telling that - I have access to as much info as you! I've kind of analysed each user and made assumptions as to whether they're 'real' or notNairn
- The leftmost column is 'sus?' and I only have in there so far - one of the 'women', who I suspect is not.Nairn
- Ianbolton0
Are we becoming old and boring, feeling a need to make QBN reflect (y)our conservative nature?
- canoe3
Regarding mg33 recent NSFW comments...
All that shit has to go... if it was racist, it would have been gone a long time ago... well it's not racist but it's pretty damn close to that same feeling ya get when ya see racist shit... Boobs of the day, chick of the day, etc...
Throwing "complete lunatics" aside, I have to wonder...
"We closed membership because certain adults couldn't be trusted to be mature and responsible and not act like complete lunatics...'
is the exploitation of women an example of adulthood?
- From a "dude's perspective"canoe
- Good point.mg33
- Are you saying guys like Simon... or women who are very into the pinup / modeling game are exploiting themselves? (and in turn... not adults?)PonyBoy
- I'm not trying to start shit... truth is you guys are attempting to walk a line of morality here that will fall apart in another thread (especially...PonyBoy
- ... on this site given how far creatives will go to get their point across visually)... where are you going to draw the line and who's going to do it?PonyBoy
- I think it’s just a matter of context and purpose. Cotd is clearly only about posting naked chicks. Professional photography as a recent work is different.monospaced
- Hot gash and slots to fill...don't you dare take it away from QBN. They'll rebel by not posting any design related material anymore....Oh wait.utopian
- Meh. COTD is just a personal advertising board for Simon now. Like that drawing of the day guy a few years ago.toemaas
- A woman chimes in; I occasionally peak into CotD & find the majority shows a variety of natural & sensual feminine beauty. You add the level of sexuality to it.BustySaintClaire
- deadsperm-4
- www.qbndied.com ?hans_glib
- Do your thing.
The sky's the limit.deadsperm - www.qbnpro.comrenderedred
- hahaGnash
- Nairn0
My literal only suggestion for 'improvement' is a couple more mods - I presume Jaline's totally offline these days, leaving only one, perhaps two as far as I know.
If there's one distinction between QBN of today and NT of yore, it's that there was a stern mod policy which we used to play around.
if we could have two more fairly active mods, perhaps one in a different timezone to the states, then membership could risk being opened up a bit.
Actually my other suggestion would be some none-automatic way for new members to sign up after recommendation by existing users - via email or something. Again, that requires some active moderation, and a hammer if the suggester's abusing shit.
Whatever though.
- btw, not to say 'whoever' is still modding here's not doing a good job - I know I wouldn't have the patience for dealing with the likes of docpoz's shit.Nairn
- Have we agreed to bin off the NSFW and COTD the threads? Keep the NSFW button on the posting bit though. Still relevant for some things obvIanbolton
- canoe0
Does anyone miss the discussions at Under Consideration?
- BusterBoy-2
Two things.
1. Just moderate the shit out of the trollers. Robo adds nothing. Well occasionally he may surprise, but pretty rare. If something is a clear troll, just fucken delete it.
2. I'll scroll through the COTD and NSFW threads, but really, they serve no purpose here. Surely you can get your jollies from the 8 billion other sites out there. You know...the ones my son sprung me watching! :)It ain't that fucken hard.
- Just because Robo says some shit you dont like does not mean he is a troll. Drake von Drake was a troll.eryx
- Also COTD has some really amazing posts from talented photographers. Sure we could go somewhere else but it is more likely to find great pictures in that threaderyx
- Any time robo posts in a design or career thread his advice is spot on, constructive and welcome. It’s amazing.monospaced
- 1. What do you add?! I can't think of anything 'busterB' is known for... maybe you should be deleted?
2. If you don't like a thread—don't click it, ffs...PonyBoy - ... or 3. *whispers* go start your own perfect lil site */whispers*PonyBoy
- Wanting better content is one thing...but if you don't add to it or you simply want to delete folks cuz you disagree or don't like what they add is pretty weak.PonyBoy
- I definitely don’t add design content to the site even though I live design all day pretty much. Maybe I should start doing that?monospaced
- fuck me...all I said was...if a post is clearly a n attempt at trolling, delete it. If you don't think I add anything...good for you. ICGAF.BusterBoy
- "'all I said was' 'robo adds nothing'". You judged robo w/out a 2nd thought but got a touch defensive when you yourself were judged in the same light...PonyBoy
- ... my point of posting wasn't to put you down, Buster but to hopefully point out how fucking 'high and mighty' the tone is in this thread at the moment.PonyBoy
- You obviously decided to pick and choose my words mate.BusterBoy
- "Well occasionally he may surprise, but pretty rare."BusterBoy
- The majority of his posts are pure trolling. Delete that shit.BusterBoy
- By all means keep his other stuff. Don't recall saying he should be booted off.BusterBoy
- But feel free to pick and choose what you want to read pony. Well done.BusterBoy
- robotron3k0
old Newstoday in 2005
look at the pixel font and how the content was design focused.
this was the heyday of NT, complete with a badass music station.
why can't we go back to some of this type of look, feels more substantial..
- would doing that make the content more design focused?hans_glib
- That's it guys, NT was intense, 4 columns, about design & everything, the QBN became myopic with a tab design style.robotron3k
- it's just if you posted something about politics back then, there was always another topic close by about design. it seems there is less content also posted toorobotron3k
- on QBN because of that. again, isn't QBN split into a private site? we lost people there no?robotron3k
- we once had a radio station, job board, 2 discussion threads, a cinema!robotron3k
- Politics has poisoned the well.PhanLo
- Design was at a fucking Hay day, lettuce knot forget!robotron3k
- Maaku1
Who is paying for this website to stay live? And who is in charge of making updates?
- Elon MuskKrassy
- The owners are totally absent since decades. Its really weird. Just a simple mailinglist to keep us informed of stuff would be nice.Bennn
- @Bennn what do you want to be informed about?Krassy
- I dont know, one email in 15 years would have been cool, lol
Like, an email to tell us they closed QBN to new members. IdkBennn
- Moderator17
- ha i get itCALLES
- Nice!moldero
- lolKrassy
- hahaprophetone
- lolpockets
- ahhaa i wondered why its been quiet lately ;)helloeatbreathedrive
- Iol that’s goodfuturefood
- Bennn-6
QBN looks like a ship with no Captain, its just floating around 'till the ship crash on a reef.
I just try to say that we/they should start thinking of a plan for this community, to make it alive again, otherwise the end is coming.
Personally, i'm ok with the fact that its not 100% design related content. I now see QBN as an online community where we talk and exange about anything.
It would be a shame to let a 20+ years old web community go like this without trying anything to reinvigorate it a bit.
- It's fine as it isKrassy
- it should morph back to a pixel font style, 3-column format, add a qbn radio (why not!), job board returns and mobile first, boom! we back in biz! #QBN2020robotron3k
- yeah, no.Krassy
- so, the rest of us that still around, are we like GHOST PIRATES?! :Ografician
- Are you a designer?monospaced
- i_monk13
Post more design content if you want to see more design content.
- Bennn-5
I think people are quitting QBN for multiple reasons like
- getting older and losing interest in this kind of stuff
- too much sensitive content for their taste
- trolls, haters, bully and getting ridiculed or obstinate
(in sum, the negativity)
- not enough design related content, many were here for that at the start
- and the more we lose people, the less content we have, that would make some people leave... downward spiral.- I should have quit when they deleted the PSB thread. man, that hurt.d_gitale
- Just the Set PSB thread though, right? We've simply not bothered having any PSBs in ... i can't even think how long.Nairn
- no, I am talking about the 'Win an iPad' PSBd_gitale
- Oh, right. Did that even become a thread?! I remember the banner at top - drinks and PSBs or something, but only the drinks ever happened, afaikNairn
- The internet has changed, QBN has too, we're 20 years old now, careers and devices were'nt even invented when we started. accept change that's all.robotron3k
- BTW, How does this channel compare with the white-people-only-ve... QBN Pro?robotron3k
- yeah, it's a bit daft to compare QBN of today with NT of 2002 when there was no FB, Twitter, Instawhatever. NT was attractive because it was quite uniqueNairn
- robot, we're just talking on how to make QBN evolve.Bennn
- guys, the default landing page takes you directly into the hear of our chaos, where as it should default to show real design content https://www.qbn.com/…robotron3k
- also you lose the tab nav to the feed once you go in a subsection. The poor attendance of QBN may be part of a UX issue, it appears we have no design talk hererobotron3k
- remember NT, we had tons of activity, the design changes, but over time many ghosted or shifted to Pro. the clunky nav didn't help eitherrobotron3k
- Smells to me like time of a great A/B testing of a new QBN lading page. Should we do a PSB for this?robotron3k
- less design posts because FFFFFFOUND went 404Krassy
- Akagiyama1
I just want a 'night-mode' option.
