Likes and chat are the devil

[Victor 10,911]

It has long been swirling in my mind but a brief run-in with @Knight of all people in the chat consolidated one thought:

 

Likes and chat are a detriment to VHL activity.

 

It is no secret that now 48 seasons in, the VHL is not as active as it once was. Although also not quite as inactive as it briefly was once but that's a whole different story. The move to this, third website, slowed things down briefly but then bounced back with the S40 draft and for 4-5 seasons after that. Recently, activity has gone downhill again.

 

Now, likes are not a new addition to the VHL but they weren't really a thing before this website, so S35. There was no like system on the very first website (S1-S23) and a pretty shitty one on the second, which meant that if people did appreciate a post they usually quoted it or replied with a or Not brilliant activity but it was something. However, likes are very rewarding and ego-stroking, so I can't pinpoint the issue on them. 

 

The real culprit is chat. Now, chat is actually an older beast than likes, or at least likes in their current form. We had some form of the Facebook chat thing at the bottom since the start of the 2nd site in S24 until it got murdered for reasons when this site got upgraded. The replacement is less than satisfactory – you can still chat to people individually but only if they're in the big chatbox. And if they're in the big chatbox, they're too busy chatting shit that they could really be posting on the boards.

 

 

So

 

 

I propose we murder chat and likes.

 

#MAKEVHLGREATAGAIN 

[Toast 887]

Kill chat. Keep likes for the sake of my ego. 

[hedgehog337 3,483]

[boubabi 4,725]

The site isn't active because the site neglected the recruitment and people went inactive.. I mean, half the league is from inactive players. 

[CowboyinAmerica 2,880]

10 minutes ago, Toast said:

Kill chat. Keep likes for the sake of my ego. 

 

 

(Brilliant!)

[Victor 10,911]

5 minutes ago, hedgehog337 said:

I almost liked it damn it! Its a disease!

[FacePuncher 1,343]

I have no opinion on this, I just liked your post because I'm a sarcastic ass

[Victor 10,911]

1 minute ago, ADwyer87 said:

I have no opinion on this, I just liked your post because I'm a sarcastic ass

You are everything wrong with the VHL, I now understand why eaglesfan is so persistent in trying to ban you.

[Kendrick 4,741]

12 minutes ago, boubabi said:

The site isn't active because the site neglected the recruitment and people went inactive.. I mean, half the league is from inactive players. 

Well the site did that, but also people who recruited were also being trashed for doing so...hell I seem to remember some of the people who trashed us recruiters at first.

[boubabi 4,725]

Indeed, but the recruitment reward had his problem nonetheless. But, the lack of initiative from the top level in the recent seasons were part of our struggle. Yes indeed, the chat will eventually remove some post, but people who often are in the chat are still decent poster as well. 

[STZ 5,354]

I'd like to see the amount of times someone liked a post and then never replied.. I don't think it'd be very high.

 

I tried to do it here and couldn't resist chiming in...

 

Kill chat tho.. What are we, sexual predators?

[Kendrick 4,741]

1 minute ago, boubabi said:

Indeed, but the recruitment reward had his problem nonetheless. But, the lack of initiative from the top level in the recent seasons were part of our struggle. Yes indeed, the chat will eventually remove some post, but people who often are in the chat are still decent poster as well. 

The recruitment rewards were less than they are now. Also when the recruitment reward was at it's height and people like myself went out to recruit, we pulled in about 6-8 people that became 800 TPE type members. To me the only way to survive (regardless of the recruitment reward) is go out and get members, something Green and Myself did a lot of and got bashed for it.

[Kendrick 4,741]

2 minutes ago, STZ said:

I'd like to see the amount of times someone liked a post and then never replied.. I don't think it'd be very high.

 

I tried to do it here and couldn't resist chiming in...

 

Kill chat tho.. What are we, sexual predators?

Yeah chat is so stupid. Chat takes a lot away from conversations that could be dragged out on this board.

[boubabi 4,725]

Yes, but you worked in an efficient but limited area of recruitment, aka bringing member back or on other sim league. At some point, those will run out in "new members", we can't extract infinite member from them. The effective recruitment would be to reach a member base that are new to the sim league world, which is where we'll acquire passionate people. Which isn't the case anymore.  

Edited March 14, 2016 by boubabi

[FacePuncher 1,343]

19 minutes ago, Victor said:

You are everything wrong with the VHL, I now understand why eaglesfan is so persistent in trying to ban you.

I'm awesome, idk what you're talking about!

[boubabi 4,725]

The chat is good to connect with people, which isn't the case really on the board. If you wanna create strong links with members, some sort of chat is needed, trust me. 

[Kendrick 4,741]

3 minutes ago, boubabi said:

Yes, but you worked in an efficient but limited area of recruitment, aka bringing member back or on other sim league. At some point, those will run out in "new members", we can't extract infinite member from them. The effective recruitment would be to reach a member base that are new to the sim league world, which is where we'll acquire passionate people. Which isn't the case anymore.  

Only partly true actually, and the reason I know that is because I recruited them haha. I recruited people that hadn't been in any sim league like this (i.e. @DollarAndADream) as well. Bringing back certain guys had it's lasting effect on things to with guys like Flyersfan and Smarch. My initial point was that recruitment took a heavy hit with people who weren't recruiting started whining about the amount of TPE those who were recruiting got. That is the opposite mentality that can be put out there.

 

Also, this site did great without a chat, so those theories are somewhat debunked.

[hedgehog337 3,483]

If closing the chat isn't gonna bring unnecessary spam in forums - you can think about it then.

[boubabi 4,725]

1 minute ago, Kendrick said:

Only partly true actually, and the reason I know that is because I recruited them haha. I recruited people that hadn't been in any sim league like this (i.e. @DollarAndADream) as well. Bringing back certain guys had it's lasting effect on things to with guys like Flyersfan and Smarch. My initial point was that recruitment took a heavy hit with people who weren't recruiting started whining about the amount of TPE those who were recruiting got. That is the opposite mentality that can be put out there.

 

Also, this site did great without a chat, so those theories are somewhat debunked.

Yes, but the site had a shit ton of more active members in it at the moment. You saw it the brief transition of the 2 chats, the site was struggling big time 

[Victor 10,911]

3 minutes ago, hedgehog337 said:

If closing the chat isn't gonna bring unnecessary spam in forums - you can think about it then.

I'd love more spam on the forums tbh.

[Kendrick 4,741]

Just now, boubabi said:

Yes, but the site had a shit ton of more active members in it at the moment. You saw it the brief transition of the 2 chats, the site was struggling big time 

As someone who has been here since the start, our lowest points have been when chat is here. Not to say there is a co-relation there, but it's hard to argue chat brought more activity. It's fact, some chat in the chat and it causes for less discussion on the board regardless of if that discussion is Sports, Politics, School or economy related.

[Molholt 2,185]

When I was a kid we didn't have chat!

 

garble garble garble

 

I never go in chat.

[JardyB10 4,865]

I only check out the chat if there's more than a few people in it. It's mostly boubabi linking Youtube videos and sigs, and then talking about something entirely random like Fong politics or girls or something.

 

I'm oddly not against either. I wouldn't mourn over chat though.

 

Likes I think are fine. I am most definitely guilty of liking posts and not commenting, but that's generally because my "like" is about all the input I have to give. I also like things to indicate that I read the article/watched the thing. Otherwise I suppose I'd comment, "Great article!" or "Cool thing!" which I don't really think the world should be missing that much.

[Tagger 2,722]

Eh, with chat most of the time you end up talking about stuff that you wouldn't post on the forum anyway. I don't know about the VHL, but I know back in our older football leagues, we used AIM a lot more frequently than this chat is used, so maybe looking at there being no on-board chat in the old days is a little deceptive. 

 

I don't think chat is a problem, in fact some of my favourite threads in this league have been made as a direct result of the chat (TIMEZONES! SOMEONE I GAVE MY PASSWORD TO HACKED MY ACCOUNT AND IS TALKING TO PEOPLE ON CHAT!). And the awesome thing about this chat is that you can see what was talked about just before you get in there! I remember some GM (can't remember who) was talking to an admin about "being a dick and drafting Von Braxton" and then I entered the chat and was like "HEY WHAT'S GOING ON IN THIS CHAT?!"

[Victor 10,911]

Yeah (no pun intended) but that was on old chat, when it was like Facebook. That was alright, chatboxes are silly though.