Annoying things on other forums?

I'd have to agree with you on that - it makes it harder to navigate.

 

One of the things that bothers me is a lot of subforums. When I go to a site, I do not want to have to worry about posting in the wrong section and getting in trouble.

Some forums are so divided that I scratch my head and wonder "just where am I supposed to post this?"

Those are the kinds of forums I stay away from.

 

I don't spend time on many forums, but one that I do visit has just two things that do discourage me from visiting and participating more often ...

- the forum is sponsored by a magazine and is therefore treated as a bit of an afterthought by management - it merits a good deal of development and topic sub-forums, but they aren't going to nourish it any further, heaven forbit those greedy members would get something more they would find interesting and worth visiting (kind of a backwards attitude toward the customers, I wonder if their advertisers realize)

- a fair handful of the frequent posters (not the majority) are ... don't know if 'troll' is the word ... but quick to post the most snide, snarky and denigrating comments about Big Names in the field whenever the opportunity presents itself - if and only if those BN's don't post on the forum (or aren't known to, they could be in disguise of course) ... they come across as immature and jealous of more successful people, and not interesting to read ... currently they are gleefully kicking and pulling down a BN who nearly died of a serious head injury last year and continues to need charitable support, how low is that?

- there is one more thing that isn't bothering me at the moment but really stops people from connecting with a forum ... if one member makes themselves a sort of gatekeeper, and makes it a point to post critically against any new member ... maybe even worse than newbies being ignored ... I don't remember the term for this behavior

- another one more thing, trolls should be addressed by management and not be derailing otherwise good discussions ... I don't have to see how mods take care of business and prefer not to


I enjoy forums where members are knowledgeable, interesting, have a good sense of humor and can offer criticism maturely and objectively, without emotion. Who do not personalize their comments, assume they are always right or show intolerance for what others say. That's interesting to read even if I'm not posting.

 

High signal to noise ratio..Log in hit new posts and a majority of the posts are either off topic or are in otherwise useful threads that have spiraled into back and fourth joking.
To many ads
To many forums/subforums
To many lock downs (no sigs/avatars/pms)

Admins that give back, what I mean this is forums where admins will try every trick in the book to try and get you to promote their forum then won't link out or credit articles.

To much activity, I'm probably in the minority here but I'm not a big fan of really large forums. If I make a thread and an hour later it's buried on page 2 or 3 of the thread listing, What's the point no one is likely to see it anyhow. Plus with forums that large you loose the community feel (everyone knowing each other) that I love so much about forums.

 

Good point, Dan. DigitalPoint is an example of this. I don't know why I waste my time there, but any thread I post is usually nowhere to be seen by the end of the day. It's sad, really. It kind-of kills the whole point of a forum - and that is ongoing discussions; not get an answer or two, and then into the archives you go.

 

DP also has a huge lot of ones that PM you with spam now too. I still get PM's off an on.

 

Yeah, me too. About once a week at least.

 

I could go on forever, but some of my two biggest annoyances:

1. I usually hate the forum structure of every big-board sized forum. They have great content worth being there for, but it has such a shitty layout it kind of evens that out.

2. The lack of professionalism on a lot of big-board sized forums. The reason a lot of these forums are so big is because they are very old and one of the first in their niche. Everything else about them (besides their content and activity) completely sucks. I'd love to see some modern and newly launched forums with awesome innervations and creativity to grow at a much faster rate.

 

When they look ugly. It annoys me to know that I could make that place pretty and the owner doesn't let me to. I offered my services to the owner of certain anime site so I could design the whole site for them, main page AND forum. The design was an html/css design, which can be seen here Dbz-Zone | Watch and Stream Full English Dubbed/Subbed Anime Online , it also had JS and it was easy to use. For the forum I offered to re-make it completely. But the person is so hard headed, he didn't let me! Or well he always say 'maybe' but never tells me concretely. I am a mod at his forums and I can't go in there!! It frustrates me I make so many pretty banners but the forums make my banners ugly!!!

 

im probably the fussiest person ever when it comes to forums.....i really dont like

☺ admins who lock/delete/archive threads older than a few months-im bad for bumping old threads, and i like looking back at things
☺ cliquey forums-some forums, unless your in the popular crowd, you dont get replies to your threads or anything, and i hate it.
☺ pop up ads-one forum i am on, used to have an advert (weight loss i think) of a fat lady dancing that went over the post button-luckily the admin removed it when everyone complained
☺ smileys that replace words...it makes some words unreadable
☺ forums where theres trolls, flame wars and fighting and the staff dont care (or sometimes even join in the trolling and enjoy banning members who have opposite views to them)
☺ forums where the moderation is too strict, and your afraid to post in case you are banned
☺ a design that makes your eyes bleed. or one where the text is unreadable against the background
☺ mispellings and text talk in forum descriptions (now thats just lazy)
☺ too many sections-makes a forum look empty, and your never sure where to post things

 

The things that generally annoy me on most sites:

Staffs lack of responsibility. One of my competitors has been hacked 10 times within the last two years, and only twice have they ever admitted it. Due to this, I know of at least ~22 people who had issues with their personal information being obtained (Stolen emails, credit card, and social security being stolen; its mostly their own fault for using easy passwords and having public information, but this site never warned its users).

Maturity of the forum tends to get me as well. I don't expect much maturity as I run mostly game-related forums, anime fansub forums, and other less than mature categories, but I expect a minimal level.

Lack of organization/repeated forum topics. I don't get why a place would have 5 forums that could have been merged into one forum, especially when they have next to nothing being posted there.

Drama... This one really gets me. My main site allows flaming (Restricted to a rant forum), and its used pretty often, but its all inter-forum politics generally, and rarely brings outside drama to it. On my competitors site, they have a flame forum also, but its filled with drama relating to members personal lives (Goes back to the responsibility bit, as private information was leaked publicly across different networks). Rather than delete these threads (Which SHOULD be deleted, as they cause problems for people in real life), they are left unchecked, and often have the staff themselves sharing information on the people.

Most of my pet peeves come down to morality and ethics, and the way the staff deals with issues.

 

Ditto. Default styles are just plain... boring in many cases, and way too many big boards use them. Why? I don't know, it's not as if many of them upgrade the forum software a lot...

Agree with the default emoticons bit, although to be fair, I don't think I've ever seen a forum package offering good smilies by default. Can't they at least ask a professional graphics designer?

You mean intellitext or whatever those green links are? Yeah, I know, they're usually one way to kill people's interest in a website. As for other annoying advertisements... strangely, it seems the bigger a site gets, the more obnoxious the advertisements get! I've barely seen a big forum/site that doesn't look like someone went mad with monetary gains and random flashing advertisements, as if as soon as a site reaches big board status, the admins only start thinking about money.

That's why I'd never use Vanilla. That and a few other such forums are plain hard to navigate because they're just... too unorganised.

Ditto. Although popups and full page ads are just ridiculously over the top and annoying.

I know what you mean.

This is why I basically hate the structure of the boards at GameFAQs. All old topics get locked, or when they reach 500 posts.

Definitely an annoyance.

I made that mistake myself once... thankfully people realised it and eventually told me smilies were replacing normal words, and it got fixed.

Definitely. The first one seems to get more and more common the larger a forum gets.

 

Where to start?

I become quite aggravated when I witness members bashing others (for no apparent or acceptable reason) and being able to continue on doing so due to the administrator's lack of care or attention. It's crucial to maintain a healthy and well-balanced environment, and letting (e.g. or supporting) such behavior to take place without any sort of disruption or action taken is not acceptable. Allowing members to simply flame each other to no end will not only bring the overall morale down to a lower level, but it will create a rather negative "image" for those who may be interested in registering. The lack of action on the management team's side not only conveys a lack of care, but also a sign of complete and utter disrespect.

Additionally, members who present themselves as "mature, respectable individuals" without backing up such an image will anger me. This is something that the members of a community should decide naturally over time.