Yes. I am on a desktop.
Does anyone on CC know of other places/ways to track the site traffic on CC? Someone who used to post on CC used to be quite knowledgeable about this sort of thing.
I only hang out on parent cafe and (rarely) on parents forum. On those forums, it seems to me when long time posters are banned, it frequently upsets the balance and we lose other posters with them. Sometimes many other posters. To me, it looks like that happened in 2016, and again very recently. This isn’t an argument for or against banning those not following the rules, or about the rules themselves. Just an observation that it looks to me like it decreases participation, sometimes dramatically, in the forums I follow. And that participation is not being made up with new parents joining those forums.
I’m not at all clear it’s a CC goal to keep parent forum and parent cafe active forums.
fwiw… I haven’t seen any analytics on this and wouldn’t know how to interpret if I did.
ucbalumnus might could tell us.
This! And I don’t think that it is fair for the powers to be to babysit this forum and appease tattletales.
Oh my goodness, I should look into that. I worked with a lady who had lived through the Khmer rouge as a child. She was two years old and her parents had come to the US for grad school. She was left with grandparents. Her grandfather was one who disappeared. He was a railway executive, went to work one day and never came home. I asked her what she remembered most about that time and in the saddest voice I’ve ever heard she said “Being hungry”. She was around 8 years old when it was over and she and her grandmother finally got to come here to join her parents and her now little brother.
What they told you was wrong. They didn’t try to keep it open whatsoever, and we had no warning that it would be closed. None. Nobody got time outs, warnings, deleted posts, anything, just bam, closed. We were very angry at how it was done, and some people left cc permanently. It was unmoderated, so sometimes it got a little vicious, but that was snuffed out pretty quickly, it was nothing like Facebook is.
It is my understanding that someone started whining about it to the moderators, who didn’t want to moderate it, and they shut it down. Seems like they could have given us a chance, or even a tiny bit of advance notice.
A lot of these threads people post what they are doing, but there’s no response, no back and forth. I’m here for a conversation, not just to write in a journal.
Isn’t “back and forth” another name for a “debate”? That seems to be the problem. ToS seem to be narrowly defined. For a conversation to be interesting, it needs to be broad, not narrowly focused.
I like the serendipity of this forum. It feels like lunch or wine with my favorite IRL friends. There are other forums that specialize in each of the categories, but i spend enough time on the computer already!
Thread categories I follow most often in the parent cafe:
-retirement, moving, downsizing, financing, aging, etc. (yepp… ages me). I still visit the parents taking care of parents even though my parents are now gone, perhaps trying to foresee a path for myself with my own children.
-travel, even with a unique Covid twist. Love it when locals share their insights.
-anything real estate, home decor, remodeling, architecture
-summaries of what’s happening in your part of the world on both important & mundane topics of the day. Guess I trust all you more than the news!
-consumer issues (deals, product reviews, & more)
-home entertainment ideas & reviews (especially during Covid)
-love the ‘say it here’ thread… what a great way to let off steam! (and know “I’m not alone”).
addendum:
I would actually love a civil political discourse. How will we ever come together if we can’t even discuss with each other? I had a great conversation recently with a friend on the other side of the political fence, and it was enlightening. It didn’t change my mind fully, but truly helped me understand her viewpoint better, to the point that I’d be willing to compromise in some areas, if that were even a choice. Never enter a discussion with hopes of winning an argument. At least I rarely win. But I hope that I may leave a seed of thought, and take away a few as well.
Anyone ever participate in a National Issues Forum? BIG plug. Trained moderators on timely topics, with the intent of deliberation to reach some consensus. If you participate in one of the current ones (rather than a topic from a prior year), the discussion is actually shared with policy makers.
I just went to the NIF website. Wow! Thanks so much for sharing about this.
Never heard of National Issues Forum but will definitely check it out!
I love the “Say It Here” thread but am often frustrated by not being able to respond except by a “helpful” click. It really is the most potentially “conversational” of threads. Not everything needs a response of course but some posts scream for it. Most don’t need a thread started and we don’t have a “complaint” thread for general life angst and “say it here” sort of fills that role. So why can’t we respond to “say it here”? Was that a condition from the beginning or did it evolve?
Wow so much good content and thought here. Could we ever have a politics thread/forum again? What would be the conditions?
Why can’t we comment on Say It? Not sure how that was decided.
If Cc has really weeded out the “bad boys and girls” then maybe we could all handle a discussion/debate!
Its stated in the very first post of the thread. http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/319650-say-it-here-cause-you-cant-say-it-directly-the-get-it-off-your-chest-thread-p1.html
Well, that person was banned so apparently didn’t control themselves outside of that thread! LOL.
Was moderation accommodating her request or did they just agree that was the best course of action?
Sometimes several things happen at once, or in close proximity, so its hard to know what to attribute things to. Posters get banned and very active threads get closed and several active posters who participated in them get frustrated and leave to post on those topics elsewhere. So its hard to clearly ascribe cause and effect.
The thread is 13 years old so predates my joining CC. Predates my 10th birthday. Probably predates all the mods. - at least as moderators. The mod who made the note is no longer with us.
The thought process was likely if the user wanted feedback, she would create her own thread.
“No response” threads are not unique. Most threads with decision stats are no response as an example.
The say it here thread is an example of damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Some users may want to respond, but they seem outnumbered by the complaints when a user does respond
What I like about this community is asking questions of a general audience. If I ask about travel or cooking or a hobby, I am getting answers from a broad range of people and that is usually what I am looking for.
As an example, I’d much rather ask you all, a general group, about a good recipe for XYZ. If I were on a baking forum or chef forum, the answers would probably be way too involved or specific or not translatable to the lay person.
That’s why I love the Dressing Young thread. I have joined some style blogging communities in the past, but most of the women on their are REALLY into fashion and they were throwing around terms and lingo and design collections that I really had no idea about or interest in. I just want to know what type of shoes go with this dress!
Re: the Say It Here thread, and the “no replies” default. . . I can kind of see how that became a thing. If we started offering advice or sharing frustrations with someone, then the thread gets off track and then the next person feels funny launching into their Say It Here.
Also, sometimes it feels good to just vent and then not have to follow up and explain more.
I often type to Say It Here, then don’t post because some people know me IRL. Just typing helps sometimes.
I know there are others who like the college aspects of collegeconfidential as much as I do. But look at how many responses have zip to do with college.