Feedback Change: Lounge made Private

WOV is a gambling forum.

 

Although that particular thread has gone off-topic several times and become it's own defacto "lounge" for former and current WOV members, the topic of the thread itself is still very much gambling related, just like the discussion of a gambling magazine or gambling company would also be gambling related. Since that thread shares the properties of both "off-topic" and "gambling-related" discussions, it could conceivably belong in either the "Lounge" or the "Miscellaneous Gambling Forum". We understand that several visitors like to read that thread without registering, so we've moved it to the "Miscellaneous Gambling Forum" after making the "Lounge" is private so that they may continue doing so.

The Lounge is for topics that have nothing to do with gambling, such as movies and politics.

We still have a long way to go, but there have been several off-topic discussions in that thread that we've split off into their own threads. This is true for both off-topic, non-gambling related discussions and off-topic, gambling-related discussions in that thread.

 

Not at all. If we wanted to bury that thread, we would have left it in the Lounge where it would no longer get indexed by Google, would no longer be viewable by guests, would no longer appear under "Today's Posts" or "Recent Posts" or "New/Unread Posts", and would no longer attract the views it currently has. Instead, we moved it to the "Miscellaneous Gambling Forum" so it would remain visible, and left a redirect in the "Lounge" so that the members looking for it there can still find it.

Popularity = traffic, so it's the opposite of vexing to those trying to build a community.

Correct, hence this trial.

The topic itself does. Some of the discussions within it do not.

As well as move off-topic, non-gambling related discussions to the off-topic section. The problem is that there are so many off-topic discussions in that thread that it would be too time-consuming to go through hundreds of pages trying to clean it all up, so we've accepted that it has become a defacto "lounge" for former and current WOV members and give it more leeway.

 

All fair points, but the big question is, by having a public Lounge, are we attracting those users you mentioned at the expense of users who would like to discuss gambling? If the answer is "yes", then that is not what we want since our priority is to attract users interested in discussing gambling first, and not off-topic matters such as politics. If the answer is "no", then we obviously have nothing to lose by keeping the Lounge public. But which is it? It's hard to tell. Our suspicions are that visitors interested in gambling are coming to this site, seeing that a good proportion of the active and current discussions have absolutely nothing to do with gambling, and are moving on to other sites actually discussing gambling.

Again, though, this is just a trial. Nothing is set in stone and this is completely reversible. Perhaps a compromise solution would be to make the Lounge public, but keep its posts and threads from appearing under "New/Unread Posts" so that they aren't given visibility. That's something else we can consider.

 

Done.

 

We don't think the issue is that gamblers will find the lounge offensive or inappropriate. We think the issue is that the first impression they have of our site, where non-gambling, off-topic discussions have such prominence, is a negative one that forces them to look elsewhere for a genuine gambling community. Imagine you are looking for a gambling forum, you google it, you find ours, you click to see what we are about, and notice that about half of the current and active discussions aren't even about gambling. It's not exactly an inviting proposition for those seeking to discuss gambling.

Imagine a middle-aged woman interested in recipes and looking for a recipes community, found RecipesForums.com, but when she visited the site, she noticed that most of the current and active discussions were about sports or poker. She would probably look for a different and more relevant site.

So it's not about the Lounge being offensive, just like how sports or poker probably wouldn't offend the woman in our example above. It's about the prominence of the off-topic discussions versus the rest of the on-topic discussions which ultimately reveals the relevance of the site and the interests of its member base. We are wanting to elevate the prominence of the relevant parts of the site, and reduce the prominence of the irrelevant parts in the hopes that it will attract more users who are actually interested in the topic of our site (gambling).

If the Lounge represented only -- say -- 10% of the discussions happening on our site, then this wouldn't even be an issue. But when it represents about half of our site, then it begins to affect the image and relevance of our site, which in turn may affect registrations from those actually seeking gambling-related discussions.

So by reducing the prominence of the Lounge and therefore elevating the prominence of the rest of the site, we're hoping new and old members alike will discuss more gambling-related topics, which will then attract even more users wanting to discuss gambling, and this will hopefully create a vicious cycle that leads to even more gambling-related discussions. That's the idea.

Of course, the Lounge is still there for those who wish to discuss off-topic matters, it just no longer figures so prominently in our site since you actually have to register and specifically visit it to find non-gambling related discussions.

Another option we're considering is moving the "Community" section of the site (which houses the "Announcements", "Introductions", and "Lounge" forums) from the top to the bottom of our site so that the first section visitors see is the "Betting" section with the "Casino Forum", "Poker Forum", and all other gambling-related forums to give them even more prominence.

These are all relatively simple changes from our end, so we want to stress again that none of this is set in stone and if any of it doesn't work out, we can easily reverse it at any time.

 

What we're hoping for is that this change will reduce the proportion of that off-topic activity so that it falls well below the current ~50%, not mask it such that it remains at ~50% of overall activity. Furthermore, we're hoping that that reduction of the percentage of site activity attributed to the Lounge happens not by reducing the activity in the Lounge, but by increasing the activity in the gambling-related forums by increasing their prominence.

This is what we're hoping to fix. Something is fundamentally wrong if gambling threads aren't receiving traction about off-topic threads are in a gambling forum.

It certainly does, but is it attracting mostly folks interested in gambling or not? That is the question.

That's why we haven't eliminated the Lounge, it's still there for you folks to continue using.

We wish it were that simple, but with websites, first impressions matter in terms of converting registrations.

This is precisely what we're trying to fix.

Why do you think it is?

The Lounge hasn't been eliminated, it's prominence was simply reduced. You folks are still free to continue having off-topic discussions there.

The WOV thread should not be affected as it's still public and linked to from the Lounge and appears under "New/Unread Posts". The Lounge will see less activity only if those who used to post there stop visiting it.

We are aware of the risks, but we also don't see us growing or reaching out to more gamblers by maintaining the status quo. So what we're trying to figure out is why more gamblers aren't registering and participating here, and one theory is because the prominence of off-topic discussions may be uninviting to them, and the heated off-topic discussions are drawing attention away from gambling-related discussions. People have a fixed amount of time, and who doesn't enjoy a heated political discussion? So we have the impression that folks are investing more time in heated off-topic discussions at the expense of gambling-related discussions. That's why we're wanting to decrease the prominence of the Lounge and increase the prominence of the Gambling-related sections. If we're wrong, we'll simply revert back, but that means we'll have to look at other solutions to fix the problem of why our members prefer discussing non-gambling-related topics than gambling-related topics on a gambling site.