CNET for it's obtuse and unfriendly forum software.
I don't really care for it's attitude there either, I don't get a feeling of close community that I do here. Either they have a lot of people posting or no real community of users that post. I have only seen the moderators regularly posting there. maybe that will change.
I must say that they did rapidly close out a troll who tried to start a flame thread.
As for content, it depends. Most targeted forums either have a constant crew who regularly post, or they don't. I find that the former makes it more interesting if predictable. The later seems to lack soul.
FTM continues in the fine tradition of the former.
Sturner has answered my other question in this thread, thank you! (Maybe it should have been another thread?)
Here's my
Worst Ever Forum I've Been On.
It was a sports forum, regarding a world-famous event which spans three weeks every year. Therefore there's a lot of traffic over at least a month.
1. Everyone was in Pre-Mod. That means that everyone's posts were not displayed immediately, but scrutinised by invisible people who had the power to display them or not. Successful posts took hours to show up; which seemed crazy when covering a live sports event with knowledgeable and enthusiastic forum members.
2. There was a clique of old-hands who spoke in code which was nearly impenetrable to those outside the clique.
3. The same clique were crudely dismissive to anyone who succeeded in getting their posts published, who did not agree with them.
4. One thread focussed on a Big Name in this particular sport, and went on for about 10 pages. This thread consisted of a few brave people posting calm facts against The Big Name; the rest were personal abuse to anyone (the brave polite people) who had the temerity to question said Big Name's credentials and integrity.
5. This personal abuse went unmoderated, despite everyone being in Pre-Mod.
6. The "report abuse" button did not work. It looked as though it did because a reply window popped up. Having taken the trouble to enter a report, you were then rewarded with an error message. The same thing happened on the Mod/Admin email address supplied: emails were bounced back.
7. Despite all that some posts quoting urls to daily newspaper reports on this sporting event were allowed and others, in the same style, were Pre-Mod not-allowed; explanations by email were computer-generated gobbledegook. This happened to me.
8. The final straw was when I had a further email from the Mods telling me that two posts of mine had been deleted. They referred me to a thread which did not exist, and to posts which were not mine in the first place.
Shambles, amateurish, inconsistent, over-draconian, were the words which sprang to mind.
