Misc WizardOfVegas Forum is Dying

I don't know about the status of the others, but kewlj is NOT a member at WoV! (I thought I just made that point....remember kewlj was banned at WoV for something "KJ" said on another site).

 

Re: Drunks & Psychiatrists

The innermost thoughts of a sober man...and his innermost thoughts when he is shit-faced drunk are not correlated. They are two entirely different thought patterns.
One is deranged while the other is not.

This bit of information does not come from shithead psychiatrists. It comes from someone who is highly experienced at being both drunk and sober. I've passed back and forth between sobriety and drunkeness a thousand times in my lifetime. The psychiatrists are full of shit.

 

This site is the polar opposite of WOV!!..By the way where's HOWMANY and JOHNO ??

 

Admin the 3 mods on WoV that do the bulk of the work are:

1. Mission146. He has the same username on this site. Some members here refer to him as husband of the year, Pierce, Pavlov.

2. Face. His username here is Fisk.

3. Beachbumbabs. Her username here is bbbabs. She is also known as BBB. She is the one that some members here refer to as beached whale.

 

I don't understand this. Why would you care so much more about "bad words" than useful info. Useful info is much more important.

 

Sooo, are your sober thoughts deranged and the inebriated thoughts cogent? It is also thought that sub conscience thought is closer to deranged in some sense. We actually have many levels of ego and when outside chemicals or brain chemicals themselves effect our brains, madness can become overt and we lose our waking control of our ids. Fascinating stuff. The human brain is just a thin membrane away from nuts.

 

Thanks for the distraction, LarryS.

I suppose first I'll defend the "alcohol as an excuse" charge. I don't recall it being a factor. Don't misunderstand me; I realize alcohol was the prime component in an MC special and everyone was aware of it. But whatever special treatment he received wasn't because of alcohol. Not a one of us said "Oh, it's not his fault". I know for sure I didn't, because that shit doesn't fly with me. I ask for no forgiveness for my own trespasses during my junkie days, so it's not part of my person to bestow it upon others. Whether a tragic medical curse or purposeful self damage, I don't care. I just care about actions on the forum. And in that regard, it goes back to my earlier stance - I just thought he was worth saving. It was perhaps no good for MC, a bit of "enabling" as you put it, but I've not been tasked with being MC's life coach.

But it's an interesting stance you've taken, what with the medical background and all. I recall a member who was a bit Aspy. I can't recall the specific member or the exact difficulties therein, but mod help and direction was given to him as his tendencies (see: social awkwardness) was causing a posting manner which was becoming tiresome to the members and threatened a breach of the rules. Due to this circumstance, he was afforded extra help. I'd suppose that would be looked on positively by all. Here you had compassionate leadership not only being inclusive to one who may not normally experience inclusion, but that also made the place more pleasurable to those exposed to it. Win-win, right? But as a sawbones of sorts, do you not include alcoholism in the scope of disease? I thought 100% of medical science already proved it was, so it's a bit difficult for me to understand your position fully.

Again, that's not to say he was given special treatment because of it. Especially from me; if I can keep my shit together, you damn sure better be able to handle your own.

 

I believe your declaration that you didnt use alcoholism as an excuse.
Yes alcoholism is a disease. And using the side effects of the disease for ones amusement is revolting. And being told you have a problem repeatedly and not seeking help if not for yourself, but for the safety of society is revolting as well.
This is a great country in that there are a fuck load of free resources and volunteers to get you on the right track. There is the internet at your fingertips to find these places and people....unlike 20 years ago before computers were so common.

I am all for personal responsibility.

personal responsibility especially for me, who once enabled a drunkard till he died...and it could have been worse. So when people maybe 6 months ago, started telling him....how they wish they had a life like him, carefree, living it like he wants to, drinking when he wants, gambling when he wants......I presented the other side to that and was criticized. Thats fine. Its just that there are 2 sides to the enviable lifestyle.

THe"you da man" because you can get drunk anytime you want and you dont have to punch a clock at a job is nothing to envy. Yeah its nice to do that for a week or 2.

I am not going to rehash the entire topic. But yes its a disease. Tourettes syndrome is a disease where you can sit and laugh at the symptoms of the disease. Especially if its untreatd. But one can take a Tourettes patient to the mall and watch the reaction of people while he barks and curses.....and get a kick out of it...or you can go to the internet and find somewhere that can help the guy.

I am not big to sit back and let a sick person amuse me through the symtoms of his illness

You didnt do that, ok, I believe that. But plentyof people found it amusing.

 

Larry you are confusing or combining two different issues, Mickey's life as an AP and that he is an alcoholic, in your judgment. Yes there are some that read mickey's adventures and admire his life, especially the part about freedom and not punching a time clock. Especially those that do punch a time clock and aren't particularly happy and content about doing so. They look at it with a "grass is greener on the other side" admiration.

I have had some of that too, on various sites that I have participated on....other members looking at my life as an AP with admiration. And that is why I try really hard to present my life and share my experiences accurately, because it is not all peaches and cream (whatever that analogy means..). And I think Mickey represents his life and shares his experiences pretty accurately and fairly as well.

I personally find Mickey's adventures pretty entertaining and informative, but that doesn't mean I want to give up my home and take up the care-free lifestyle of Mickey's past, the homeless AP. But it sure is enjoyable to read.

As for his perceived alcoholism, AP and alcoholism do not go hand in hand as you seem to be indicating. I gave up drinking 5 and a half years ago after my heart surgery. It wasn't a good mix with my antibiotic regiment and although I could have resumed after things settled down, just never did for the most part.....I have a beer or two on a sunday afternoon while watching football.

Again let me stress that drinking and AP do not go hand in hand. As a matter of fact, many AP's that do drink, I believe including Mickey, try to keep the two activities separate because they don't mix well.

Having said all that, I don't think it is your place or mine or anyone's to judge and discuss Mickey's drinking. That is his issue and he's a big boy (that's what she said....Michael Scott) and nothing you nor I or anyone else says, is anything that he is not aware of. All your doing is showing your judgmental side.

 

Gentlemen, enough of this BULLSHIT (you too, Admin).

Back to the topic at hand: WoV appears NOT to be "dying" after all.

Traffic is up 25K since last December.

see: http://www.trafficestimate.com/wizardofvegas.com

OK, now that that's settled, it's time to lock up this train wreck of a thread and MOVE THE FUCK ON!

 

I disagree with that assessment. I don't know what those numbers mean. I mean if MrV visits WoV 90,000 times during the month, those numbers will skyrocket. So those numbers can be manipulated, even if unintentionally over a short period of time. One or two interesting threads that has the finite membership visiting multiple times a day can do it. Also I would think a couple months like January/February where two/thirds of the country is a frozen tundra and it gets dark early and folks spend more time in their homes in the evening would naturally improve the numbers on a seasonal kind of thing. And hell...an active Buzzard alone can manipulate those numbers.

So, you can point to that if you like MrV, but here is the undeniable truth. WoV has about 200 to 220 members visit on most days. Occasionally under 200 on a weekend day, when the working crowd isn't cheating on their boss's time. And while these daily visits were falling dramatically for a while, it seems to have leveled off in that 200 - 220 range. I guess that is good news for WoV....I don't know. But this average of let's say 210 is still significantly less than the 300+ that used to visit daily just a few years ago. You can check at the wayback time machine.

And secondly, this is a matter of opinion, but I see far fewer threads of any quality. Maybe that's just fewer of interest to me, but I think most objective observers will agree. I believe Axel even agreed with this not long ago. It's just not like it used to be in quantity or quality. I am not wishing anything bad to WoV, but don't piss on me and tell me it's raining. WoV has experienced a decline in recent years.

 

Were the old girl in fact "dying," the numbers would be going up, not down.

I agree that SUBJECTIVELY it's not what it was, but OBJECTIVELY, i.e. numbers-wise it is not in a death spiral, it is climbing upward.

 

Well said, Mission.

I again suggest that this thread be locked up, not necessarily because the subject is no longer relevant, but because it has become so damned toxic.

 

First of all, I think those numbers look at the wrong thing, anyway.

The truth of the matter is that raw page views are not the most relevant factor because they correlate to monetizing the site effectively, but they only somewhat cause monetizing the site effectively. For example, you could have 62,000,000 page views, but if none of those page views led to revenues from our affiliates, then the raw page views wouldn't matter.

Now, if you look at the thread, "WCD Sold for 1.7 Million to LCB," you will see that Zuga says that, when LCB purchases a site, they like to see RoI, "...Anywhere between 2-4 years and we are happy." He later says the sites are performing, "As Expected."

That would mean that they are on pace to show RoI somewhere in that range, and RoI would include not just the purchase price of the site, but I would assume, any monies paid to those who work for the sites in any way. At least, for those who do paid stuff.

Now, the specific subject matter of this thread is WoV, but WoV/WoO is something of a package deal, in my opinion. I do not know whether or not WoV has been independently showing RoI, but I do know that the two sites are almost interchangeable in the sense that they both draw visitors and page views from one another. Given that the combined sites are apparently performing, "As Expected," I doubt if WoV is dying or going anywhere anytime soon.

I definitely would like to have as many Member visits as possible as that results in Member posts which results in Forum activity, but again, that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with monetizing the Forum. Not directly, anyway. Members produce content that can then lead to monetizing the Forum through people reading the content and then clicking on our affiliates which monetizes the Forum, but the mere presence of a Member (in and of itself) does not directly monetize the Forum. To wit, you could have 200 extra Members per day come there, and if none of them post anything or click on the affiliates, their mere presence does not monetize anything directly or indirectly.

The same with Forum posts, except for the fact that content is important. However, it is important to remember that every post is NEW content when it comes to the potential for search engine optimization. In other words, absent deleting stuff (which we generally don't) the overall amount of content on the sites can only improve.

I would certainly like to see more people post and more members log in per day, as long as they post according to the rules which we have to maintain a certain appearance and level of decorum on the Forum.

However, whether or not the Forum is, "Dying," at least relative to the site has not to do with any of those things. One might say, "WoV is Less Active Than It Used to Be," and then I might try to gather specific numbers (such as page views) to refute that. I don't know if I would, though, because my main focus is just Administrating over there to the best of my ability.

 

Thanks!

I think it should be fine, we seem to be getting it back on track.

 

This threadis not about return on investment. Its about embers leaving,/punished via banning and the over effect on attendance.



If the owners get a whale to sign up on bovada and gets a large sum of money in return based on massive play......thats not what this thread is talking about.

So the catchy title is more about attendance and interest....not about financial gain.

KJ an AP says there is less interesting topics than before. And I have since the beginning talked about the 300 daily member visits vs the 220 currently.

I would talk about it via memory and the "eye" test. While KJ came here and actually pulled up old records and verified my memory.

so mission.....any explanation??

Its been suggested that a massive amount of members went "invisible"/ Nut I think the numbers take into account invisible members because if you actually count the number of names listed(me and freddy independently did that once or twice) there are about 10 percent less than then number listed as the count.

so leaving out financials since like i said a single whale can make a great profit.... and without picking apart the title of this thread which wasnt meant to predict a fast death.....what is your reason for KJs comment and my comment...of less member visits and less interesting topics.

 

If the one that makes the most posts is the most valuable member then EvenBob is the most valuable member of WoV.

 

In that event, I will say the following things, hopefully this touches on everything. If not, let me know. And, again, I don't have any easy access to the raw numbers because that is not at all my area.

1.) Fewer Topics:

-Though it was quite sometime ago, we had a number of Members leave when the site changed hands, and quite a few of those were pretty active Members. If the site changes hands, it changes hands, so if people want to leave, then that is their prerogative. When you have longtime Members leave or who are Banned, then the result will occasionally be fewer topics. If a few of those Members are extremely active, then you might see some time before New Topics counts recover, if they ever do.

-When we talk about banned Members, such as yourself, then you might argue that we are losing those potential Topics by choice, and we are.

-Now, I am not referring specifically to you because, again, I had no hand in your ban whatsoever, so let me talk about people I have banned:

-When I ban someone, the fact of the matter is that the topics are going to go down because they will no longer be there to post the topics they may have otherwise posted. However, we have a set of Rules in place such that we want Members to comport themselves with a certain level of decorum because we (as in, combined) feel that makes the site more attractive to new visitors (who may not all post) and that the Rules are conducive to resulting in the type of content that we would like to put forward.

-When I say, "We," I don't necessarily mean, "Me," because I do not necessarily agree with every Rule to the, 'T,' but I don't have to in order to like the overall product and I don't have to agree with every Rule in order to enforce them. I doubt if every cop in the world agrees with every single law. If you want an example, it is, 'No Profanity,' my ideal rule would be, 'No Gratuitous Profanity,' essentially the profanity rule that used to be in place. It's more subjective, but with the old rule, I'd be more likely to Edit offending posts than ban anyone.

2.) Member Visits:

For one thing, I don't know that the medium of Message Boards, in general, is as popular as it once was. Another factor is the fact that you had some Members who said they would not visit anymore who actually don't visit anymore, at least, not while logged in. You have some Banned Members who do not visit anymore.

3.) I think, 'Members Who Visited Today,' includes Banned visitors and, 'Hidden,' visitors. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure it does. I can see them all, anyway, but that's because I'm an Admin.

4.) Fewer Interesting Topics:

I think that is subjective, especially with respect to KewlJ. KewlJ is a card counter who made up a not insignificant amount of the card counting posts/threads over there. Without him to create card counting threads, I should imagine our raw number of card counting threads starting out with a cognizant, lengthy and interesting opening post have gone down. Because there are fewer card counting threads, there is less for KewlJ to be interested in.

Likewise, you were one of the big Sports Betting posters. I don't know what your other interests are, so I don't know what you consider an, "Interesting Topic," and therefore cannot answer to your opinion that there are fewer of them.

 

I gave some thought to the invisible members thingy. I can't see why it would be a higher number now than before. No reason to suspect more members are using the invisible feature. I would guess it is a fairly stable percentage and being that the overall visit are down, the invisible percent is likely to be as well.

But what would be counted and artificially inflating the number today vs a couple years ago, would be 1.) increase in banned members that sign in. Since there are more banned members as time goes on, this group grows. And we see a handful of banned members log on each day that should not be counted as they contribute nothing. I myself logged on to read some stuff in the last week. Some days there are a dozen or more names in red on the list. 2.) increase in moderators since the LBC takeover. It used to be 3-4 green names daily, now it is double that. 3.) Again, I will mention Buzzard. He and his many handles are artificially bumping up the numbers. There might be others as well. Freddy?

I would say these three things probably are over-inflating the legitimate daily visits by 10%. And keep in mind the decrease from 300ish to 210ish was already a 30% decrease. Add another 10%. I don't consider myself a math geek, but that's a 40% decrease.

Again, I am not rooting for or happy to see a decline....but it's definitely there. Maybe it's leveled of, which would be good for WoV. Well not "good" but a start. I would think the powers that be would want to get back to where they were at the high point. I mean that high point is the point that the folks at LBC based their projections on, not a 40% decrease. But then again, one of the powers that be, doesn't seem to have the interest that he used to. Afterall, he's had his payday...and good for him.

 

MickeyCrimm, if he doesn't mind, is another great example.

Unbelievably great content, unbelievably great threads created. 100% legitimate AP-related posts, just great stuff. Why do you think I tried so hard to be able to keep him around?

In the end, though, the constant Rules violations were too much and we could not edit his posts forever. I recognize (as have others) that we have lost untold amounts of excellent new topics and MC posts as a result of him being banned, but the need to ban him eventually outweighed his value to the Forum.

But, yeah, new content might suffer a bit for him being gone. That's another really good example.