Is BigSoccer dying?

Discussion in 'Customer Service' started by Suyuntuy, Nov 19, 2021.

  1. Suyuntuy

    Suyuntuy Member+

    Jul 16, 2007
    Vancouver, Canada
    The featured article in the front page is from over 5 months ago (Euro 2020 Preview), the blogs were last updated nearly a year ago, the Twitter feed is dead, the shop redirects to a Nginx test page, and the forums don't even have Dark Mode.

    It's like a Sears.
     
  2. NorthBank

    NorthBank Member+

    Arsenal; NYRB
    United States
    Mar 29, 2006
    Connecticut
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I don’t care an iota about those things you mention. All I care about is that my club’s forum keeps working.

    And since BBS forums are often self-managed/moderated, all we really need the owners to do is keep the lights on.

    OK, dark mode would be nice.

    In terms of dying I am much more concerned with the decline in active contributors.

    But I hope that if the system keeps working at least as well as it has in the last couple of years then perhaps there might be a slight uptick in users, as they realize that actually this is a better place than Facebook and Twitter, especially for longer form dialogue.
     
    Ismitje repped this.
  3. JimWharton

    JimWharton Member+

    Feb 25, 2017
    It seems to just depend on the forum and moderators. The Chelsea forum is very active, the Sounders forum is crap.
     
    NorthBank repped this.
  4. NorthBank

    NorthBank Member+

    Arsenal; NYRB
    United States
    Mar 29, 2006
    Connecticut
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Good point. The Arsenal forum has languished a bit and NYRB is almost dead, due significantly to each team's drop in the standings. Honestly glad to hear that yours is rocking. Gives me a bit of hope for ours, as we seem to be climbing back up.
     
  5. Kryptonite

    Kryptonite Fancy Title Here

    Apr 10, 1999
    Columbus
    Club:
    Columbus Crew
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    When you click on "forum list" on the top left, the forums are out of order.

    They've been this way since the forum software changed.
     
    soccernutter repped this.
  6. It's called FOOTBALL

    LMX Clubs
    Mexico
    May 4, 2009
    Chitown
    It absolutely is dying, there are probably 50% less posts here than a decade ago

    Shoulda stuck with vbulletin.
     
  7. dark knight

    dark knight Super Moderator
    Staff Member

    Dec 15, 1999
    Club:
    Leicester City FC
    Sorta doubt that’s the cause. At least in the US forums it seems like it’s had a mini resurgence.
     
  8. NorthBank

    NorthBank Member+

    Arsenal; NYRB
    United States
    Mar 29, 2006
    Connecticut
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Yeah, I'd say the decline on the Arsenal board stabilized in the past year or so. And lately there seems like a bit of an uptick.

    I'm fine with it being a smaller community with fewer posts. As long as it keeps running like it is. Kinda like email as a communication tool.

    A few years back I thought more about BS death due to attrition, but I don't feel that way any more.

    Also, I think everyone's viewpoint is very influenced by which particular fora they follow, as well as the standing/form of the particular team they follow. Arsenal is a good example... our fall from Top-4 a few years back definitely had a part to play in BS traffic.

    Long Live BigSoccer!
     
    dark knight repped this.
  9. Jazzy Altidore

    Jazzy Altidore BigSoccer Yellow Card

    Sep 2, 2009
    San Francisco
    Club:
    Los Angeles Galaxy
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Reddit sucks up all the growth in message boards.
     
    It's called FOOTBALL repped this.
  10. NorthBank

    NorthBank Member+

    Arsenal; NYRB
    United States
    Mar 29, 2006
    Connecticut
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    FYP
     
  11. It's called FOOTBALL

    LMX Clubs
    Mexico
    May 4, 2009
    Chitown
    What, you don't like being accused of being racist or transphobe or misogynist no matter what you say
    Whatever happens, please preserve the archives for all eternity. Don't rely on archive.org. All these comments here are valuable insights to how things were.

    I asked the owner of another board to do the same, he ended up nuking everything anyway. Thankfully, archive.org preserved some, but still. Message board comments are more valuable than some realise. They're a literal time machine.
     
    Val1 and dark knight repped this.
  12. Suyuntuy

    Suyuntuy Member+

    Jul 16, 2007
    Vancouver, Canada
    During the first year of the web there were no chat rooms yet, but we had a feature carried over from the BBS days (if anyone remembers that): graffiti walls.

    There were many surprisingly valuable things written in those walls for that first year, when most people using the incipient WWW were old Internet hands, mainly computer nerds and researchers.

    It's all gone, of course.

    Reddit is terrible for soccer. Far too many newcomers to the game whose only interest seems to insult each other. There are some people there who were around in the days of rec.sport.soccer, but they give up fast on it.

    Actually, those of us who were on Usenet back in the 80s notice the similarity with Reddit. Of course, what is different is the people.
     
    The Jitty Slitter repped this.
  13. sbahnhof

    sbahnhof Member+

    Nov 21, 2016
    Aotearoa
    Bad news, it was excluded from Web Archive...

    BigSoccer-Excluded-Web-Archive.png

    ...AFAIK, a site has to voluntarily opt out from it - or the site's software doesn't support archiving, but it's unusual. Other forums with the same owner are on Archive.org just fine, so, something strange happened. It really needs to be in there, as a start point.

    BigSoccer is owned by Social Knowledge LLC (https://www.socialknowledge.com/), it says in our privacy policy - they run several forums and took over around 2017(?) and certainly seem like a good fit for a community forum - but their site doesn't list BigSoccer. Maybe it wasn't updated. The homepage here may be a similar issue - the problems that @Suyuntuy listed are not major ones by themselves, but altogether, a homepage that isn't current ('2019'/'2020') gives off a vibe of lack of attention. Though I know everyone's busy.
    Who is the site designer? Why does the homepage downplay the forums so much? Can anyone active edit it, or no one?

    It's more than the archive - shuttering the site would be such a pointless loss, if it ever happened, because it's an active community and tons of people use it. If you want to feel better about site traffic, just click New Posts: 200 threads had updates in the past 8 hours! It's still a big site now.

    Do you mean 'Soccer cups', or elsewhere? We had a thread for the old tournament forums from 2016 and 2018 that were there, and they and the USA/MEX ones were kindly moved into more suitable boards, but not on every list.
     
    NorthBank repped this.
  14. Kryptonite

    Kryptonite Fancy Title Here

    Apr 10, 1999
    Columbus
    Club:
    Columbus Crew
    Nat'l Team:
    United States

    There used to be threads in the "Free For All" section that were basically chat rooms. You'd post, come back several hours later and there'd be tons of catching up. They still exist to a degree, but they used to be a lot more active.


    Yeah...site traffic has definitely gone downhill, but it's not dead yet. People definitely have a "here's the cool new thing" mindset and they forget about the old thing. Example: What were AIM and Yahoo Messenger replaced with...and how do those things differ?

    MySpace was essentially "GeoCities and Angelfire for Dummies." They gave you the template. You could essentially build a homepage...only this time, you didn't need any knowledge of HTML or other coding. All of a sudden, here's Facebook...which is slowly being replaced by other social media outlets. It was supposed to be Google+, but that failed.


    And here's what I mean by "top left."

    Click "forum list" and you'll see that your list of forums are out of order.

    Screenshot_20220211-223636.png
     
  15. Suyuntuy

    Suyuntuy Member+

    Jul 16, 2007
    Vancouver, Canada
    It's still one of the most active soccer forums in the English language. But people seem to be moving away from forums, and more into apps now. Which is a shame, a forum has a certain element of randomness that apps lack.
     
    Chesco United repped this.
  16. NorthBank

    NorthBank Member+

    Arsenal; NYRB
    United States
    Mar 29, 2006
    Connecticut
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Wow, I didn't know the owners even had control over this. I thought if a site was publicly accessible it was gonna be showing up in Archive.org. But the more I think of it, I see how the site might have to open up certain API's or something like that, in order to allow archiving.

    In any case, I whole heartedly agree that it was be a colossal shame if BigSoccer forums weren't viewable in perpetuity. Assuming of course that that capability generally exists for most public websites.

    In the meantime (if the owners and administrators are reading this) please, please, please do everything you can to just keep the site alive. "As is" is OK by me. Technically speaking, it may be a little dated, but it works well IMHO. And has many advantages to the big alternatives/apps.
     
  17. It's called FOOTBALL

    LMX Clubs
    Mexico
    May 4, 2009
    Chitown
    I used to browse the low-fi archives all the time, and use the Spy, which showed all posts in real time. Why did they get rid of that, they truly went backwards when abandoning vbulletin.

    Reddit isn't much different from this place, since it's full of plastics and gloryhunters. They skew younger, that's about it.
     
  18. The Devil's Architect

    Feb 10, 2000
    The American Steppe
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
  19. It's called FOOTBALL

    LMX Clubs
    Mexico
    May 4, 2009
    Chitown
    Needs more understanding that POC view America thru a different lens, a more accurate one. I'm now banned from all u.s. forums, NT and clubs.

    I'm sick of arguing with bungadiri over this every few months, so I'll let it stand. But yall should think clearly about POC representation in those forums, you do need to hear what we have to say, IMO. I feel I was respectful enough in the post that got me banned, but apparently not enough.
     
    Jazzy Altidore repped this.
  20. Jazzy Altidore

    Jazzy Altidore BigSoccer Yellow Card

    Sep 2, 2009
    San Francisco
    Club:
    Los Angeles Galaxy
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    lol please the politics forum is nothing but basic bitch woke crap. I got banned because I disagreed with the prevailing wisdom that AOC is a genius. Many attacked me and when I gave shit back I was banned for trolling. It’s the same as Reddit only more pathetic because these people are in their 40s or 50s so they have nothing to look forward to in life.
     
    GreedyG and It's called FOOTBALL repped this.
  21. La Trucha

    La Trucha Moderator
    Staff Member

    Nov 16, 2009
    42 Wallaby Way, Sydney
    Club:
    Melbourne Victory
    Nat'l Team:
    Australia
    All I want is that BigSoccer employs a dark theme. It’s 2022.
     
    TheJoeGreene and Kryptonite repped this.
  22. Suyuntuy

    Suyuntuy Member+

    Jul 16, 2007
    Vancouver, Canada
    Kudos on the site holding strong in the middle of a World Cup. I remember the old times when it didn't.
     
    soccernutter, NorthBank and dark knight repped this.
  23. Kryptonite

    Kryptonite Fancy Title Here

    Apr 10, 1999
    Columbus
    Club:
    Columbus Crew
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    There were times it'd go down during non-WC times.
     
  24. Chesco United

    Chesco United Member+

    DC United
    Jun 24, 2001
    Chester County, PA
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    Argentina
    Like the 2009 Confederations Cup.
     
  25. NorthBank

    NorthBank Member+

    Arsenal; NYRB
    United States
    Mar 29, 2006
    Connecticut
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Yeah but not yesterday. And AFAICT that was some pretty serious volume of hits/posts going down.
     

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