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In fact just take a look for yourself and ask why RB works, and STW doesnt.
Apples and pears.
Isn't the issue here the fact it's not just a web forum? It's the magazine, print and digital subscriptions, various forms of membership and the desire to integrate/coordinate all of that which causes so much complexity? That's just what I've picked up from Mark's previous posts on the subject.
Incidentally, there is one bloke running all of RB, not a team of ten.
Apart from the software complexity, I don't think 1 person could do all the journalism, ad coord, merchandise sales, database and subscription management. I don't think there is a team of 10 either? Isn't it fewer than than that? I know I've been critical of the user experience on here, but I don't doubt for a moment that it's a massive challenge to make all that work with a handful of staff. Although some of us give in to frustration at times and have a bitch and moan on this thread (that's what it's for right?) it's only because we love it here and just want it to work smoothly. I have no doubts that's what da management want too. Fingers crossed.
The thing I find most annoying is the massive pause before stuff loads, and if the new one fixes that I’ll be happy.
If the messaging worked I’d be happier still, of course.
Still to do:
– Migrate 10 million posts from the old forum to the new
Will you also be migrating the post "likes"? People don't just award them willy nilly you know
Exactly
Incidentally, there is one bloke running all of RB, not a team of ten.
Well, it's 6 actually.
But..
RB 3.5 million posts and 20% of the traffic of STW.
A fifth of our size with no membership system involving payments/paywalls and no magazine.
It's a great forum though and a great site. But it's not really a direct comparison to us.
It’s a bike themed wordle-like game.
"SingleTrackWord" surely.
but you can change your avatar/pic at will so how would that work for you?
Anecdotally, most people don't bother beyond set & forget IME.
There's plenty of common forum 'features' I wouldn't want though...
Hundreds of sub forums
... for a start. If it's a mile wide then it's an inch deep, and people can't manage to post in the correct forum when there's just two of them.
Automatic nested quotes are painful, so many forums have posts with half the page quoted and then "me too" at the bottom. I get accused of 'selective quoting' sometimes but I just use quotes as a reference to what I'm replying to, the full text is still available and it doesn't need to be copied 17 times on one page.
Banner signatures can get in the sea as well.
Our aim is to replicated the general theme of the current forum. ie. Just Chat and Bike forums - the News forum is mostly just a bi-product of front page stories generating their own forum posts and needing somewhere for them to go.
Sub forums aren't on the plan. Avatars. The forum comes with those our of the box. We can turn them on or off. Currentluy it will use your profile image you upload in your user profile. There's a defualt image there if you've not uploaded one yet.
The success of this forum over the years, aside from your contributions, is it's simplicity. We want to maintain that.
@Cougar2 There's a forum I'm in that limits automatic nesting to no more than the last two quotes, which, if you're going to have it at all, is sensible.
Banner signatures are an abomination. Put it in your profile if you must and let people choose whether they look at it.
The success of this forum over the years, aside from your contributions, is it’s simplicity. We want to maintain that.
Good.
There’s a forum I’m in that limits automatic nesting to no more than the last two quotes, which, if you’re going to have it at all, is sensible.
I'd argue that that's still overkill. For all that people complain on here I've seen forums that are complete shit-tips by comparison to STW. As soon as you allow 'click here for nested quotes' even just two levels deep, the signal-to-noise ratio goes down the toilet.
I suppose it doesn't really matter to me now I never work in an office and my browsing can be as indiscrete as I like, but to me the lack of avatars and picture signatures is a plus for this site. I like the simpleness of mostly plain text. I suspect allowing everyone to choose pictures will give the moderators some extra work as there will always be some who see it as their god given right to display some poor taste
"Display avatars" could be made a UI setting I suppose. Though I expect somewhat far down the to-do list if possible at all.
... which is the problem, really.
From a casual user's perspective it's simple, its simplicity of use (bugs aside) is a compelling USP.
Yet time and again (including earlier on this very thread) folk pop up going "well, my dog groomer's 12-year old son spun up a forum with a hundred and sixty sub-forums and seventeen users so how hard can it be?" and the truth is that the STW forum is an iceberg, you don't see nine tenths of it.
To my mind it needs razing and rebuilding. But that's glib, arrogant even. With a massive userbase and decades of history along with a number of people's livelihoods depending on its continued existence, that's not something you undertake lightly. Mark quoted their staff numbers earlier, it's half the head count I was expecting.
When it comes to STW, the Butterfly Effect is writ large and anyone going "but why don't you just..." should probably take Mark up on his open invite to go visit them. I once made this mistaken assumption, I was wrong too.
Hey @Mark, sorry to keep reading of these woes, especially stw's financial ones.
I
'm sure you've already got this covered but one thing I note is the massive growth of online video content. I feel this is an opportunity being missed by stw to replace some of the loss of magazine revenue and increase your reach? Take gmbn for example, lots of regularly posted content (love it or hate it), variation, some low budget and some high budget. I occasionally look up stw's content on YouTube and it's pretty stale. Can't you take us on some of your favourite rides via YouTube - you've got a huge wealth of experience of routes, products, events and whatever else and I really feel you could use it to your advantage. There's only 1 video since Christmas, only a handful from 2024 and not one event covered in the past year. The puffer this weekend would have made a great video for you this year (assuming you would have been allowed to report from there and perhaps you actually were?).
Have you got any plans to develop your video content, or any reasons why this would be a silly idea?
I'd love to see more stuff from you.
Cheers.
at a guess, cost.
At a guess, whining. I PAID ONE POUND FORTY-NINE PEE NOT TO SEE VIDEOS!!2!!
It's a good point but as Tom says I expect it's outlay vs reward with a side order of person-hours. Shitty unedited GoPro footage of someone blowing steam out of their arse pushing up Llandegla's fire road is neither interesting nor lucrative (because it isn't interesting); whereas Danny Mac's latest grand day out probably doesn't come cheap for all concerned. And there's little point in mirroring YouTube videos when YouTube still exists.
As ever though, Mark will have the figures. As I've often described myself, despite any other perceived or actual character failings I do not believe that "daft" is one of them.
Our aim is to replicated the general theme of the current forum. ie. Just Chat and Bike forums – the News forum is mostly just a bi-product of front page stories generating their own forum posts and needing somewhere for them to go.
Good to see DEI and LGBTQ support is ongoing here!
Have you got any plans to develop your video content, or any reasons why this would be a silly idea?
Perhaps Mark should start selling feet pics and vids - that seems to be a money spinner!! 🙂
Video: It's a good question/suggestion.
The problem is the return gained financially for the outlay and expense of making video. Video is very expensive to create. At least good video. Once you get it on Youtube you are then at the mercy of the ads that Youtube pile on to make money back and also their algo, which is a distribution method way out of our control. Our big video of 2016 was MTB The untold British Story. That's had 1.2 million views and has earned us £3.8k. It's even listed on IMDB and I'm on there as a producer, which pleases my mum. It cost £50k to make. Now that was a big full length documentary so of course it was super expensive, but even video shot on a staffers go pro takes time to shoot and then to edit into something useful. Everything from the music in the credits to the graphics is an expense. Then the staff time involved. I do the majority of the video editing because I'm cheap in every respect 🙂
As a hypothetical example. If it took two members of staff say 3 days to go out and shoot enough footage to create a good video story from the Strathpuffer and then 2 days to edit it all into something good. That's 8 staff days in total so costs are over £1k to start. Add on travel costs and things are really stacking up. For arguments sake let's call it £1.5k in costs. I need to see at least £3k return on that to consider it worthwhile against what I could have those staffers do instead. That would need over a million views on YT.
Again, let's imagine that it did get those numbers and we made £1.5k profit. If we did one of those every week it would still only earn £75k/year. About enough to pay 2 people a working wage. This is where 1 person influencer operations have the edge. They can do all the shooting, editing and the rest and if they make £75k a year they are very happy. For a company employing people (we have 6 on payroll) it's not really viable. Not alongside everything else we do.
2nd Biggest video for us is this one
£194 in earnings despite 750k views.
The only people making real money out of video on YT are channels scoring many millions of views per video.
That said, we do plan on making more video in 2025 but it will be partnered with brands in order to make it financially viable. Podcasts on the other hand are much more viable for us. They take a lot less time to produce and get thousands of listens each month. To make video work we'd have to ditch everything we know how to do and work solely on video. GMBN already do that so much better than we could ever do.
Thanks @Mark, appreciate your time taken to reply when you're clearly extremely busy.
Great to hear you do have plans to partner up and make video content this year, I'm looking forward to seeing that.
Good to see DEI and LGBTQ support is ongoing here!
Maybe they could have a "Bike-curious" forum for those who usually just stay in the Chat one?
Not fussed on seeing more STW videos myself - the text-based product reviews are of more interest.
Avatars absolutely should be switch-offable if implemented. Or ideally something that people have to switch on if they really want them.
But I'd urge the STW team to consider the likely low uptake on those, so I expect the user experience would involve a majority of default images and the odd actual user pic.
Regarding the videos isn't this where the PB scenario would work ?
PB only make about 50% of their videos that come onto the homepage, the rest are submitted by people who want to self-advertise etc.
So for example on the front page there's a Golfie video Jake Murry, Jackson Goldstone etc... these are not PB videos but have been requested to be posted. The Golfie one may only have 5500 views... but if you count up all the non-PB videos over a year i bet it massively stacks up into a lot..
From looking at reviews on here, Loamwolf, PB, Vital etc it's clear there's a LOT of sharing in the industry as things seem to appear for the same products on the same day and are not quite word for word, but fairly similar in their reviews... So can't see why things like that wouldn't be viable.
Might be the voice of the minority about videos, but I don’t watch them so really not all that bothered whether there’s more video content or not.
Not fussed on seeing more STW videos myself – the text-based product reviews are of more interest.
I expect as well there's a generation gap at play. I can read an article far faster than I can someone else read it to me. Yet when I had apprentices, their primary search engine was YouTube. I doubt that teenagers make up STW's main demographic. Whenever I see videos mentioned on here it's usually preceded by "How do I turn off..."
I expect as well there’s a generation gap at play.
Yeah I expect the core audience here skews to Gen X, but perhaps Mark can elaborate on that side of things.
I expect the core audience here skews to Gen X
I agree, but us Gen Xers are a fair bit longer in the tooth than we were when we (I) found STW in the mid 2000's and unless the plan is to retire the business as the audience retires then it needs to attract the yoof somehow
"Can we have an emoji that says “stop whining when you’ve not even paid for it” ?"
Biggest turn off on this forum are comments like the above.
Only thing that makes this site work is user content. Full or Free. Those who view or visit are exposed to advertising. Thats it really.
I had the physical mag in the past... But things move on.
I'm amazed STW keeps going sometimes.
Those who view or visit are exposed to advertising. Thats it really.
It’s been mentioned a few times now that the revenue from those adverts has, through no fault of STW, fallen off a cliff.
No judgement, that’s how things are.
@imnotamused But when the audience retires they’ll have more time for riding bikes?
Blimey, not even got the new forum and we are arguing about it already...
I’m amazed STW keeps going sometimes.
Thoughts - Forum+Magazine
Forum minus magazine - the forum will keep going.
Magazine minus forum - I doubt the magazine would continue for long.
There's a magazine?
I’d argue that that’s still overkill. For all that people complain on here I’ve seen forums that are complete shit-tips by comparison to STW. As soon as you allow ‘click here for nested quotes’ even just two levels deep, the signal-to-noise ratio goes down the toilet.
@cougar2 being able to directly quote full stop would be fine.
Ie. A quote box with the user and post directly linked
+reply for multiples that you can stack then deal with when you're done rather than scrolling up and down trying to find the post you want to reply to.
But the user and link is the most important bit, means people will be actually be able to keep track of what's been said by who.
Went to subscribe (digital version). It does not seem to have an option NOT AUTO RENEW every year. Or am I missing an option somewhere.
Gonna check that out again.
Is there a timeline for the new database? I find that I now tend to avoid visiting STW as the slowness is so off-putting.
Posting or editing a message is even worse.
Yes, the massive pause before anything happens is really annoying. I'd got the impression the new database was weeks away rather than anything longer, though?
I’d got the impression the new database was weeks away rather than anything longer, though?
I heard it would be ready on Friday afternoon.
The slowness is due to the bloated nature of the current forum. We are preparing to alunch a new forum on new software called WPFORO in the coming days. Although there will a be a new forum we aren't expecting a big improvement in the site speed for logged in users at launch. This is becuase for a short time the two systems (old forum and new forum) will still exist side by side. Even though our plan is to close the old forum to new posts we still expect that it's very presence as an active bit of software will impinge of the site speed. BUT, we will be turning it off asap. The wait will be while we manage the site search maps that Google indexes.
Simplified.. Google currently has links in it's database to the pretty much the entire Forum going back to 2008. If we just delete the old forum then hundreds of thousands of links in Google's database will be broken. That could devastate our google ranking and with over half our traffic coming from Google we have to manage that carefully. There are ways to manage issues like this so that Google doesn't cut us off, but it's tricky.
TLDR: New forum coming very soon. It will be different and great but it might still be slow. After a short while we'll delete the old forum and then it will be fast.