Monumentally bored this morning, so out of curiosity went back to the beginning of the Lounge and had a look at a few threads. Lots of names of people who haven't posted in ages, for whatever reason. This used to be such a good, active, fun place.

Made me feel a bit sad.

You're not wrong :(

Looking at it, I think the main problem is that this board is focussing on dead shows - looking at the big list above only Battlestar Galactica, Doctor Who, Heroes, Stargate Atlantis, Smallville and Supernatural are still going - with over 50% of the shows now ended.

Hopefully things will pick up when the new season starts in a few weeks, and we have new episodes to discus...

I did wonder about that Phillip. It's surprised me that the Heroes board hasn't been more active now that it's on the Beeb :ermm:

That could well be because I assume most of us have already seen it either via downloading or watching it on the Sci-Fi Channel :)

Sc-Fi channel for me. :)

I thought ( from seeing the first few eps ) that it would be something I`d be happy to rewatch, but then it seemed to follow too many stories and got a bit boring sometimes. <_<

I've been watching it for the first time on the Beeb.....although I had to record the last two eps and have not had a chance to watch them yet.......no excuses for not being more involved on the Heroes board though..... :blush:


I wasnt around when this board first starte up, I was one of the refugees from the Beeb boards, but a lot of the folks who used to post regularly have slowly disappeared since I've been a member..... :(

You're not wrong :( :shrug:

Must admit I haven't made much of an effort to post on the Heroes front but it's the kind of show so far where each ep adds a little bit to the story without anything amazing happening. Fun to watch but not something I'd really discuss in much detail :ponder: :shrug:

Plus I'm lazy :blush: :lol:

That's kind of my point, though. Not singling you out Sarah, but even when it was on Sci Fi the board wasn't that active :shrug:

I was just using Heroes as an example, seeing as it seems to be the "big" thing at the moment.

My original post was mainly about how busy the board used to be - The Lounge as well, not just the show-specific boards - as opposed to the few regulars who still post here. I just think it's a shame that interest and/or participation has dwindled to such a degree.

:(

Looking at the UK Premiere List, Eureka and Prison Break start up again soon. Maybe those will get some postings. :)

Dunno about that Steve, the pace has slowed in the Lounge but it's nice knowing how people are. Especially given how long people have posted on this board.

As for the shows, I don't really have time to watch a lot.

If you think this board's having a problem, then you should see 24Natic, where Moe nearly closed it and only kept it open after pleas from the posters.

I think we should just be pleased that it's still open.

Karen`s ( Kudz`s ) Alias/Lost board is closing soon. :unsure:

Thought my ears were burning... ;)

There used to be around 35 regular posters to begin with on Natic. There are probably around 5 who regularly post on now. People come and go but it really isn’t as busy as it used to be.

I certainly wouldn’t say this board is dead. Whenever I pop by there seems to be new posts. I’d say it just slowed down somewhat.

The reason why we reached a point where we considered closing the board was due to a series of unfortunate events, which have since been sorted. As far as I can see nothing like that has occurred here. :)

i think the old regulars had priorities or lost interest in tv shows :unsure:

i moved here due to the BBC board closing <_<

i think also the problem is due to the fact that everyone have their own way to watch a US show (well download) but no one do it at the same time so i think it's difficult to have a discussion (someone start a thread and have to wait for a while to have someone else review .... kinda lost the interest or is already thinking of the next episode) ......... compare to a show watched by everyone at the same time ( :ermm: like doctor who :rolleyes: ) :unsure:

Kind of telling that this is probably the longest thread we've had for a while that isn't called "The Bar" or "What Did You Watch Last" isn't it? :lol:

I think Phillip's first post made some very valid points. Would it be worth reorganising the main board? Maybe shifting some of the older shows into a sub-forum called "Dearly Departed" ( :lol: ) or something like that? Maybe having new dedicated forums for Lost/24/CSI etc? Just something to liven it up and maybe encourage passers-by to join up :shrug:

I can rarely be bothered to discuss shows in depth other that to say whether I enjoyed something or not. To be honest, I seem to have little time to visit here and post these days, and I quite like the fact that it's fairly chilled out, and I don't have oodles of pages of posts to wade through each time I log on.

I mainly like to know what people are up to, and what they've been watching, reading and buying (I'm nosy me ;) ). Plus it's a useful source for any interesting culty news of note that I may not found out by myself.

As has been said though, I do think there are probably too many forums for old and dead shows, and maybe a forum re-shuffle would help. :shrug:

According to digitalspy, Journeyman starts on SKY in November - perhaps it could have its own little forum ? :unsure:

I think a re-organisation to freshen up the board wouldn’t be a bad idea, if Kudz’s Alias/Lost board is closing down soon then we could add a Lost section and invite her members to join us over here. If 24natic isn’t doing so well ( sorry Moe ) again we could have a 24 section and ask Moe’s member’s over here. You could even ( and I brace myself for brick’s from Sarah and Katie ) think about closing the US Drama board ! :o and have an expanded US Drama section over here. Better to have one healthy, active board than several slowly dying. :shrug:

Sounds like a good idea to me :)

Perhaps we should split the TV off into two sections - an old 'classic series' one for series which have finished (and this would include series like Babylon 5 and Star Trek, which although finished, still have occasional projects going), and an 'ongoing series' section for ongoing shows - be they "cult TV" (like Stargate or Heroes), or traditional drama (like 24 or Prison Break).

Heh! Good luck with that... the core Natics are very attached to that place... :lol: (As I'm sure Nick will vouch!)

Re the the Drama Boards, I'd be happy to be merge them into here (obviously with Sarah and Katie's blessing). I rarely get the chance to go on there so in all fairness they're in charge. :whistling:

I also agree that a forum reshuffle would help. I’ve always been of the idea that around 10 sub-forums for any forum is about right. If you have more, it just start gets complicated. The ‘dearly departed’ idea that Steve suggested is very good. All the sub-forums (Alias, Buffy, Angel, B5, Firefly…etc) can easily be dumped into another one in the form they are. That would certainly freshen up the front page.

Just to go back to what Michelle said as well. Back when I initially got into ‘forums’, I used to have so much enthusiasm for dissecting shows in detail and analysing every single bit. Nowadays, I either like or dislike. I’ll make the odd comment here and there too, but I just can’t be bothered to analyse everything anymore. That’s why when I visit some of the other 24 and Lost forums I actually can’t believe how seriously some people take stuff.

<< Tents fingers and cackles maniacally >> :lol:

It`s our secret hideaway. :blush:

I was going to say that it`s useful to have a board to go to if the Culty Board is down for maint, but I can`t get onto the Drama board at the mo. :lol:

Oh, and since Jane ( Bouncycastle ) has joined the Culty Board now, there`s hardly going to be a huge influx of people from over there joining this board. :ponder:

Some very valid points and good suggestions on how to take the boards forward.

I'll offer my apologies at this point. I haven't really been able to be as active, or certainly as pro-active with regards to the improvement of the boards as I would have liked to be recently.

Bear with me guys and I'll do my best to shuffle things around and take the suggestions on board.

If anyone else has any suggestions, feel free to post them here.

As current joint admin with Moe and Karen (Melian) for the US drama board but, knowing neither gets on very often, I've kept a close eye on it and, as Sarah says, it's kind of an illicit getaway :ph43r: But, I have to admit, although we get regular new members, they never follow up with posts :shrug: The only board that really gets used is the "other US dramas" board which Sarah, Jane, I and, occasionally, some of the Culttv members use.

I would be OK for it to close down as long as we had a decent forum on the Culttv board for mainstream US drama as well as Sci-fi/Cult etc. :) I think, maybe, a lot of Culttv members don't bother to look at the US drama thread cos they figure it won't interest them. Perhaps, a different approach (and I'm only just coming out with this now so have no ideas on what that approach would be :blush: :lol: ) would entice them in and get them interested in shows, or at least discussing them, even if it was only why to say they didn't enjoy it. As far as I'm concerned, as long as it's not insulting to an individual or deteiorates (oh, crap, I've forgotten how to spell :lol: :blush: ) into an argument, all conversation is good :thumbsup:

Integrating the US Drama boards would seem to be simple enuf. Probably, leaving CULT TV as it is and closing down the other. Currently, threads in the US & BRITISH DRAMA section are often duplicated across both boards.

The big difference for me is that the postings on the Drama Board are for stuff airing in the UK, as opposed to things which have been downloaded or watched by John in the US. :)

If that makes sense. :unsure:

*Cough* And we`d need an MV/ Sully/ Kerr Smith section *cough*

:ponder: I see Sarah's point. That's a case for a separate area in the DRAMA section for UK-paced threads.

I think I joined the US Drama forums so I could chat about shows that don't get discussed much here. I don't think I actually started posting though as there is only select shows I tend to watch.

Bu**er me!

I go into hospital for a few days and come out and you've redecorated :o

It's all looking damn good though. I'll try to get on regularly, (health issues permitting)

Now all we need is a "pimping crew" to ambush other forums and poach (errm, I mean, alert) their members to the existence of this board :naughty: :shifty: :whistling:

James thought he would spruce the place up a bit whilst you were away..... :lol:

Speedy recovery mate...... :thumbsup:

Aw. :(

Hope you`re feeling better, Jamie. :hug:

:o hope you are better :)

Fair play Jamie, we've been waiting for you to go on holiday/into hospital for ages so that we could change everything around while you were gone! :lol:

Seriously, hope you're on the mend mate :)

Aw Jamie I hope you're ok now! :thumbsup: If it makes you feel any better I tried to logged on the other night it was down for maintenance then the next day everything had been moved! :)

Well I will admit I haven't been posting as nearly as much as usual but saying that, the reason is probably the fact that posting on the board sometime negates to little or no replies mainly due to the lack of members visiting the board. Or it could just be a summer drought.....

Maybe losing the culttvboards domain is a limiting factor, I have noticed that over the past few months here we have had little uptake of new members. Being a BBC convert when the board was striving with members it seems to have past its best as it were. Now its yet to be seen if the shake up will have an effect and although it looks good it seems to have expanded out the topics slightly which may just dilute threads over more ground making the problem worse.

And the introduction of more 'Mods' just seems to create a situation of too many chiefs not enough Indians in my opinion, but I guess thats dependant on the fact on how many mods we have lost recently which I have no idea about.

But the board creators seemed to have jumped ship and I think that was the turning point and downward decline in these boards, which had been noticed by me. I think we owe Steve thanks for bringing this up hopefully now we can ressurect these boards, but I don't think restructuring will be the be all and end all of our problems.

Hopefully now that Jamie is getting better they'll be some more activity in my favourite section: 'Doctor Who' :)

As far as I know, I'm the only Indian here (Native American-type, that is). If that makes everyone else a "Chief" by default, then we are definitely top-heavy. ;)

Evening Dan :)

A general drop off over the summer is to be expected, given the proportion of the boards that are based around seasonal shows. From memory things always quiten down over the summer months to a certain degree.

I think there are a number of contributing factors though, and I think that the seasonality of certain boards is just one such factor. The BBC Boards-cull aside, we've never really advertised ourselves to any great degree. There are obvious drawbacks to this strategy, not least of which is a sluggish rate of expansion. However, there are also benefits. If you think back to the Beeb boards, we've not been plagued by the same troll/spammer problems that were fairly frequent there at times. Essentially, these boards were originally set up to provide a few of us with a haven as the Beeb closed down their own boards. To that end, they have served their purpose already, they will of course, continue to serve that purpose for as long as they're needed.

The introduction of the drama boards shouldn't have any direct impact on the cult section of the site, which, a new/classic split aside, is largely similar to the previous cult tv section. Bringing the drama section back on board seemed to be a natural progression.

Re the moderation situation, we've lost a few, we've gained a few. Essentially however, there are no major differences.

I think it's fair to say that the Admin team have been pretty scarce of late, for one reason or another, however, we are still about, and we do listen. Personally, I feel that this is a relatively minor issue, especially in terms of it directly influencing the volume of traffic passing through the boards on a daily basis. Steve was absolutely correct in raising this topic. By doing so he's prompted the largest scale change to the boards in quite some time, and this together with the advent of the new television season over the next month or so, and with some smart tactical advertising, we should gradually see things start to improve again before too long. :)

Oooh, do you have an exciting tribal-style name ? :ponder:

Don't give him too much credit, he'll be honking his horn about how he saved the boards from impending doom. :lol:

On the points you made I can only hope that the new shake up and new season of shows brings some more topics and more people in to actually post. I've been a bit down here seeing as I don't really post in 'The Bar' section and as of late really thats been the only section to see any posting activity.

An example is that it was just announced that Doctor Who would not be getting a series in 2009, now 6-12 months ago we would have had a discussion lasting 25+ posts now I think its about 5.

And on the point of 'too many chiefs not enough indians' I got that saying from the staff at where I used to work (B&Q) where this was an obvious problem. But I only really mentioned it as every other post seems to have blue, red, orange and purple stars and its actually rare to see just normal members posting, but this is probably to be expected in quiet times as they visit the board more often as of course they have to check up to moderate their forums.