Topic: [Opinion] Off-topic sub-board - what do you think? (Read 370 times)

From my observation about OFF TOPICS in the forum, the boards looks to me like it is relegated topics that are posted there, I might be wrong but that is the way I see it. Other boards in the forum specifically focuses on perticular discussions, which makes them unique while 'off topics, looks like they are not important discussions. Another disadvantage of OFF TOPICS is that I believe all the signature campaigns don't count posts in the board, so it will discourge most members that are in signature campaigns to make posts there.

The name GENERAL DISCUSSION is better, it captures every discussions that might not be suitable in specific boards, and I believe that members that are in signature campaigns can make posts that will count for them there, except if indicated otherwise by their campaigns. General discussions, sounds more interesting than off topic, something that is mentioned as off, doesn't sound too appealing to engage in discussions there. Finally I don't think that it is necessary to have more than two sub boards in our local board, so that there will be more concentration on existing ones.

Hmm... This may lead to a broader discussion if users may have to decide on this Mod.

So aside "General" board, can we get a a title like the "Service Discussion" board? That is in replacement of "Politics and Society" board while "Off Topic" board have to remain since it is not all discussions that is related to " Bitcoin and the Cryptocurrencies",  neither just "Politics and Societies".

Perhaps, we it would make some good service compiling "Politics & Societies including "Economy" discussions in my port of "Service board ".

Then it should be noted that the "Service board" is all about "everydays activities in the society", "Economy and welfares", "Technological innovations" and assorted role of discussions that can lead to quality needs.

The Off Topic is actually okay where irrelevant topics can be moved into.

Thank you for this point you made. Coming across this trend, I thought of the same reason you mentioned. But I decided to read through the comments to see if there’s anyone with the same view. Luckily I found your comment.
So I think should be put in to consideration, but if the majority goes with the idea of renaming it with “General discussion” then they’ve won, and so we go with it.

I'm of the opinion that a General discussion board be created, whereas the Off-topic board shouldn't be deleted, that board is just like the security meant to guard and clean up we local board and to scare away spammer and shit-posters.

However, the general board should be within the guide of Bitcoin community discussion. Furthermore, if we should delete the off-topic board this will give room for shit-posters, trolls and trash to increase, thereby messing up the purpose and creation of the general discussion board.

But if we still have off-topic intact, this way it will help in the sanity of this very LB, and discourage people who will intend to post low-quality threads in the general discussion board since they're aware that their post will get moved to off-topic board or even get deleted.

The name of every product matters Same applies with contents title
In this case the Board title.
Though not really a priority, we already perceive or most perceive off topic as a place where shitpost would be rampant
Which I still believe.
Maybe using General discussion would change people mind in checking the board out
Cause personally I don't even bother to check it out
Though changing the name would help but it's not going to reduce shitpost
But luckily we have a moderator and the level of shitposting has reduced.
I would have recommended a general discussion thread but it would definitely be abused and would likely catch the eye of campaign managers.

I like as you bring this matter come round table make everybody shook mouth for inside as e concern all of us. E go make sense if we rename am to general discussion because that name off topic get as e be. Person like me now wey nor dey post for off-topic for general board na con my local board na I go come dey post off-topic, e nor make sense na so I go suggest say make we rename am or general discussion.

@Igebotz, I like your leadership patten as you de carry us along for di decision making on how to make our local board more enjoyable. Change na constant thing for life and e de good to de change for di better, so di topic wey you raise de very necessary to rob mind on. I de support say make we change the name of our off topic sub board to GENERAL DISCUSSION board. Di name "off topic" make am be like say na discussions wey no get relevance na im we de discuss for di board. I believe say dat na why di board no de get di activity wey im deserve, plus di fact say signature campaigns no de count posts for off topic.

Some members for dis thread de support say make we create additional sub boards wey GENERAL DISCUSSION go de among, me I no support dat idea. I believe say di fewer di boards di more activeness wey dem go de, so I support only main board for crypto matters, politics and society for wetin concern di matter and general discussion for topics wey no fall into those categories.

This is complete sense here, i completely agree with you on this. There is no need removing the off-topic board or changing it, no matter how clear the forum is currently we can not just neglect that some day one or few newbies will come to mess up the thread either by ignorance or on purpose, despite i still would prefer the off-topic sub board to remain.

What should be talked about, is adding another sub boards if possible, but we also have to think properly and decide since the sheriff optioned for our opinion on this, our pick should be well thought of because any changes done now in the LB will take another longer time before Theymos may consider looking at this board for any other improvement.

However, the fear of having my post moved to Off topic has been one of the reasons why for the past few weeks, I have been more selective of the kinds of threads I comment on in the main local board. And as such I'm happy this suggestion came up, of which I will say that having an extra sub-board named "General Discussion" is not a bad idea, but renaming"Off-topic" to "General Discussion" isn't necessary, as "Off-topic" plays an important role for the sanity of the local board.

NOTE: The fear of the Off-topic board has made certain Newbies who want to stay relevant on the forum, good quality posters today

Henceforth, if only Sir Theymos could grant us an extra 1 more sub-board (i.e General Discussion), it will be a welcome development.

Not a bad suggestion but Service sub-board is the last thing we need right now. We're not getting that if we're being real to ourselves.


We have the X number of posts but still lacking good number of active posters to have multiple boards.  3 sub-boards is very much OKay for now.

We can look at how clean this board has been since we had structure and a local moderator to help with cleaning house. In my opinion, the topic linked in the OP should be in Off-topic, if the same topic was posted in the general board, mods would have moved it to off-topic also. I feel the off-topic sub-board should stay the same. There is no need to rename it to General discussion although I understand the sentiment of people not wanting to post in off-topic section, other local boards have names for their off-topic sub-board like Miscellaneous or others. I guess people just do not like the name “off-topic”.

I voted for things to remain the way they are right now, i don't see any reason why we should rename the off-topic board. One mistake wey people dey make be say, they think say off-topic means low quality, it doesn't, off-topic just mean say the topic no really dey about bitcoin, crypto or e no fit in any other board, hence it should be moved to off-topic.

That being said, make we continue like this first, any topic wey no fit into P&S and wey no dey suitable to remain in the main board, make we move am go off-topic, i think e make sense like that.

Firstly, i want to commend you @ the sheriff for always having the interest of the local board at heart, without digressing from the topic of discussion am of the opinion that the OFF TOPICS child's board should remain, if there is need for further modification and adjustment it should be added by making a request to Theymos instead of renaming the existing ones we already have. If you look at some other local boards like the Bahasa Indonesia board, India board, Italiano board, the Netherlands board, Portuguese board, Russian board, Romanian board, Turkish board, Spanish board and France board you will see that they have a lot of child's boards so the Nigerian local board shouldn't be an exception and besides we are one of the most active local boards in the forum.
 
Taking a look at the monthly overview of local boards activity by @Bitmover for the month of September you will see that Nigeria local board is among the top 10 and you can also see the opinion of @Bitmover in this thread Proposal For Naija (Nigeria LB) Sub-Boards Creation

Sir igebotz,  you don do well to ask the house how we feel about off topic board, to be sincere here, the off topic board don really serve it purpose, because all those post wey no get anything to do with Bitcoin don reduce drastically which to me, na very good development, but the major issue about this off topic board now is that, the traffic there they extremely low, because most people wey dy campaign no go wan post there since the post made there no dy count.

So I believe that if them go fit change the board name to that general discussion wey you don suggest already, e for dy really good because so many discussion wey dy there  dy really interesting to chuck mouth, so in essence of wetin I dy talk is that, if them go fit rename am to that general discussion wey you suggest, na truly a welcome development.

To be frank I don't see any reason changing of this, if a topic can't be on the main board, politics and society,  obviously they will need to be on the off topic sub-board. Even the off topic board in main forum is in similar manner.

Currently the LB and its child boards are okay like this, the only one that may be needed might be service board, but now I haven't seen much thread about rendering services here again, so I think this may be added later on, except others may want it now?.

I think op already edited that part you mentioned and if you look from the #1 you would see that he edited it and it's now fine. People can join this discussion as you said, and 2ru 2ru e no go easy for them to choke mouth for the mata wey him dey ask from the community. Me also like as him create pulls so that people go choose the one wey dem want if them no fit come comment here make we know or see their efforts through polls.

Yeah renaming it is actually the best because nobody would like to be having a discussion on off-topic board because is not recognized and is seen to be a board that doesn't add any positive idea to the forum, however the idea of using the name "General Discussion" In place of the off-topic sub-board is very nice but however I think is likely going to contradict the purpose of the main board because if we check there purposes the both name has the same role on this our local board because someone can have the same discussion on the both side, so in other words it could results to information overload on the local board because almost the same or similar threads could also be created on the General Discussion since there wouldn't be much rules.

So actually for the sake of our main board to remain autonomous as it has been, I would suggest that we look for other names that could have a little difference or purpose from the main board, though I dot have any particular name to mention but I'm just suggesting if we can reconsider other alternative names aside from the General discussion but is fine if the majority is okay with the already established name.

Poll created - I believe the two covers everything. You raise some important points there. I'm still on the opinion of leaving everything the way they are but I don't want to be the Pinnacle of decision making here.

Let me first applaud you for bringing this up, this shows that you're not a leader who is willing to be only concerned about himself, but chose to consider other people's opinion regarding a matter, from my own point of view, am very fine and ok with this, there is a need for us to have the off topic board here because there are some post members made which may not be well fitted into a particular sub board, and instead of them being deleted, its better to place them on off topic.

Secondly to buttress on the idea which some members raised that why not use general discussions instead of topic for some post, well i can still buy the idea on that, we can have it if considered needs for, but i want to emphasize on the aspects whereby some members could be annoying in creating threads that are nothing but off topic posts (shit post), isn't it then better for them to have their garbage on off topic than the moderator deleting it and they feels bad on that.

lastly, i will direct this to the moderator himself, being a leader is sometimes demanding and one have to be more considerate, but while doing this, we should also remember that we cant please everyone, while trying to do so, we may disappoint everyone instead, this is my own opinion, its either you leave it as it has been, which is the off topic board to remain, or if general discussion board is being created, i don't think there will be effective use of off topic board because most off topic posts will still fits in on general discussion board.

We may either let the off topic remain as it is and nothing like general discussion board or scrap the off topic board to create a general discussion board, but the two cant exist together, if members support for either of the two, then you may create a poll and we cast our votes.

Personally, I will like the sub-board 'off topic' to be changed to general board because like you said there are some topic that are not off topic but those not fall into the other boards discussion and many members might want to contribute to such topic will deviate from it because it is in off topic and the knowledge to be gotten from such topic will shattered and vital information will be overlooked.

Also, a lot of members in signature campaign avoids off topic sub board because it is a waste of time to them. It will be good as a moderator, that you delete any off topic post since majority of them are irrelevant to forum and people hardly visit such off topic boards, but that will be a lot of work on you. I am cool with General board because one will learn something new from such board.

I see, but to me if am to contribute to the renaming I will say it's better we have; Politics and society (Naija) which is already there, "Bitcoin discussion", "Altcoin discussion", "Economy", "Trading" and then, the "off-topic".
This will make the board balance well. I hope you get what i mean?

I agree with Marvelockg reply- indirectly answered your suggestions.

As for me i didn't really see the need for renaming the board bcos there are some topics  under this board that are not cryto  related so were to classify them will become a problem.so and suggesting , instead of renaming it  we should create more board becos off topic is best name for that board. if  i say lets take altcoin discussion , that means we have to either delete or create another board for those topics that are not related to altcoin .

I'm aware of that thread, but this is different - it was a requested thread, whereas this is not; I merely created this topic to address current questions and to see if the rest of the community agrees. BTW, we can direct a community discussion to Meta; this is an internal matter.


Opinion and off-topic are two different things; if that portion scares shit posters or people who only want to write to meet their signature quota, it's a win for the community. If you've been around for a while, you know that I don't moderate opinions, only trash posts.

Apart from threads that are moved from the main board to off topic, it's primarily deficult to see people going to the off- topic board to have a discussion probably because most campaign restrict users from posting in off topic and we know that it's mainly some high ranked users who are part of a signature campaign that normally gives quality contribution on all the boards both on the main and sub board in the Nija local board.

Also, the name off topic tend to send a kind of message that threads that are on that sub board are of low quality or one that is irrelevant and that's why it's been shifted to that sub board which is the possible reason why we don't usually have a lot of engagement on that board.

Changing the name to General discussion will obvious make it much lively than it is currently but I think it's still not going to be the best improvement that we need. What I think will work well is that, the politics and society sub board can house all the general topics that's worth talking about relating to general news, societal issues,  Nija politics, some random information that can help board members and any general topic that's not of the category of being tagged Off topic. maybe changing the name to general discussion might work or leaving it this way and putting a discription that tells that general topics are also allowed on the sub board could be another good way.

The off topic board can still remain as a trash bin where low quality post and spam post will be pushed to so you know that once your post continues to pill up on that board, it's clear you're a nuisance to the forum.

The summary is that to encourage active engagement on the local board, we need fewer boards and we just need to work on how to make the ones available to become more active. The change of name is not a bad idea as long as we see regular quality discussions going on their and not just a change of name that doesn't reflect on how willing members are to visiting the sub board.

Hey Igebotz,

I know there have been lot of discussion about board to be included during creation of our local board, I will suggest you either make reference to that topic created by our brother here Agbe (Proposal For Naija (Nigeria LB) Sub-Boards Creation) lot of people contributed the ideal board to be included. If not for time consumption you could have just go through that topic and see what majority points out then send the request to theymos for renaming, that will be more better since your post here has already scared people away by saying if off discussion will be deleted.

Majority of people who are to comment here are already on a paid adverts so they are afraid to post not to be deleted were it would serve as lost to them, for my suggestion that part should be removed to make people post freely so you can see different opinion from people maybe after you go through this topic you can then filter out the most mentioned name and you send to theymos as second option.

That is, either you go through this topic created by Agbe (Proposal For Naija (Nigeria LB) Sub-Boards Creation)

Or

you remove the statement; This alone will make people not to have interest to comment or contribute. In a discussion like this, you make it neutral for people to have their opinion contributed because is already scaring people off from this discussion.

Thank you

DPHOR

Hello Community,

I've been thinking about it, and several people have expressed their opinions/suggestions about the off-topic sub-board - some believe it should be renamed General Discussion (which may be a better name), Altcoin Discussion, or something else rather than off-topic. I agree that the off-topic sub-board has served its purpose and is still very important to the local board, but there are topics that do not fall into Politics and Society, Bitcoin-related, or off-topic but were moved to the off-topic sub-board because there was no reason to have them on the main board or Politics and Society, so I'm opening up this thread for further discussion.

If the community requests modifications, I will mention to this thread in any message I write to Theymos. I don't make decisions; I'm only here to serve, so whatever you decide is what I'll pass across.