I only recently read about the IMDBs shutting down their boards, with the management blaming it on people moving on to social media for their movie discussions, which is a crock of shit.

No social network is as conducive to archived discussions as a messageboard. The fuck are you going to say with twitter's restrictive wordcount? (that's not even counting the fact that Twitter itself is closing their services one after the other, due to poor management and the need to pacify investors.) Facebook doesn't seem to have any system for archives (old posts still exist, but you have to manually scroll a person's wall - so good luck unearting years-old discussion threads.)The closest is Reddit, but that they automatically lock old threads, so no discussions on old movies as well. Social networks are for people who have the attention span of a gnat and the memory of a goldfish.

I love this place. That said, any talk of "reviving" it will be highly contingent upon stuff happening again. And aside from allan1's sweet-ass gaming blog and occasional interesting posts in Comics or Media, stuff isn't really happening here at the moment. The most active forum is the one most (sane) people are desperate to avoid, and the one with (historically) the most loyal following hasn't had a new story post since June - and it's a modestly interesting one-shot from maybe the sixth- or seventh-most talented writer there. I love this place, and I don't want it to go away. But we need content generators across all the forums to keep that from happening.

Also, I think Gob needs to allow new registrations again.

Yes. It is.

There are two obstacles, however.

1) We're all somewhat busy--at least that's my perception. Supposing for a moment that there was more activity here in general, busyness probably wouldn't be much of an issue since there'd be more reason to invest time here. I, for instance, still find snippets of time to post somewhat lengthy messages on 4/8chan despite my plate being pretty full.

That being said, I look in here almost everyday. But I've been unable to post at length due to constant movement and few starting points for conversation. Typically, I've only been able to spare some glances and make some "heh" posts. I keep hoping my schedule changes and I can make some more social investments here so as to jump start discussions again, but it just hasn't happened yet.

There is a chance--a genuine one--that we could rebuild the community here as well as restore the old one. I say this because people are not as happy with the contemporary social media "comment" format as TPTB would have us believe. Even though messageboards have been marginalized, they're still a competitive format with potentially large growth.

IMDB didn't shut down the messageboards because they were less than helpful, but rather because the community thought and operated contrary to their agenda. All the movies are crappy and brimming with PC bullshit, and the people know it. The fact that they were pointing it out was a hindrance to IMDB's (and friends') desire to culture a dumbed down and easily conducted community that does nothing but consume media with little thought to what they're actually grabbing from the Hollywood trough. I have a feeling that this was the same reason that the DCMBs were shut down. Messageboards are not as easily controlled as comment threads, Facebook pages, and ImageBBS-styled outlets like Reddit and the chans.

The issue here is not the RKMBs format. Mighty Geek was simply not compelling all on its own. You want to get people here, then you have to intermix games/books/movies with politics. Whether you like it or not, it's compelling--and it's on everyone's mind.


2) No one new is allowed to sign up. It is understandable why Rob has cut off new accounts, but new posters are kept at a distance just as much as useless alts.

I love these boards for all the reasons you listed, Son of Mxy.

And all of you posting are right on the obstacle to growing RKMB again is the inability for new users to register. If we had just 10 or 20 new active members, these boards would be thriving again. And that new blood would have a lot of old members posting here again. I hate Facebook and Twitter. These boards allow for the best discussion of issues, and continuity of discussion. Beyond the foodfights, there are a lot of discussions here that have gone on for years, that fully explore serious issues, and fun issues like comics and popular culture. Or just clever wordplay and joking around.

Yes, we're all older and more busy now. But I think if there were more discussion here, we'd all find time to be a part of it. And with 20 or more new members, even if we weren't able to make it here, there'd be others to pick up the slack.

No. It's been a slow death spiral and, unfortunately, I don't think anything will save it.

We still look in here. We still post. We just don't post a great deal.

That suggests we need a catalyst for revival. Not that it's hopelessly doomed.

It'll never be what it once was, but I still look in a few times a week & read stuff. Maybe if the womenfolk who used to post here would pop in from time to time, that might spark some interest.

I've been looking the past few days wondering why there's no new posts even at the politics section, but only realized now that the forum logged me out (I don't bother visiting forums unless I see one of the new post buttons light up.)

I'm actually a little worried about WB. Not only hasn't he been posting links from Pat Buchanan and Brietbart, but he hasn't stopped by to talk about Bernie Wrightson dying. I would have thought he'd have something to say about the latter at least.

new registrations, now a thing!

Wow. Thanks.

The mad experiment will continue!

It has the opportunity, at least.

And hopefully someone will register here and will be free to express a constructive individual viewpoint without being "tribally initiated" with insults or propositions (depending on what gender their profile says) by encouraged moderators.

well hot damn. a spambot the moment registrations open up again. moderators assemble...

Are there any left?

Spambots vs I win again broken spamdroids vs self proclaimed message board hackerspamgods. This I have to see.

I could be wrong, but I thought we had a bot test.

Uh...Rob.

Not trying to capitalize or anything, but if you need someone else to delete the spam and ban the bots, then I volunteer.

Spambot for Mod!

That went well

Spambot really brought life to the place.

I win again!!

For once that phrase is used here relevantly and doesn't mean "I'm trapped like a string bean and have no counterpoints." I could get used to this.

Y'know, if anyone noticed, I've posted literally dozens of topics over multiple forums, to try and spark interest and conversation. I see they're viewed, but often no response.

The usual haters will dismiss me as only posting political stuff, which a ratio of my topics are, but I've also posted COMICS stuff, RANDOM CHAT stuff, MEDIA stuff, and just funny stuff, in an attempt to spark conversation here. And it's discouraging to be met with nearly complete silence. I try to post here every day, and I'd really like to know why it's met with silence.
I see there are views, so people are reading my topics.
So what the fuck?
Why the silence?

gay