Good morning from Whiskey Creek, where said creek is currently resembling more of river than a creek, which is a good thing. And I’ve heard Pine Mountain Lake is now full and actually spilling out where it’s supposed to spill out. Again, very good. And Folsom Lake is by one account nearly back to its proper level. What’s a bit of a bummer, however, is that an estimate made this past week by an international meteorologist association puts the number of people who’ll have NO RAIN because of el Nino is at 40,000,000. Well, I guess we’ll just have to take turns.
So, on to today’s Welcome column. Allow me, please, to be honest. I’m feeling a little discouraged about our CBA web site. What we’ve always known is that more than anything else the level of daily traffic on the site is driven in large part by the Message Board. And once again a thread has appeared asking the question, why so little activity on the Message Board. What’s happened to the robust interaction that characterized the board for so many years? Well, I did a “Topic and name keyword search,” (which, by the way, anybody can do—box at top left,) on “Message Board” and was pretty much instantly able to come up with a listing of most of the reasons people have for not posting anymore…
Too much of a hassle to post from I-Phone
You must re-enter your username/password if you have not posted within four or five day…again, a hassle
Posting images, clickable links, etc. are problematic
Pasting in text from elsewhere loses its format, which results in unwieldy message
Facebook has supplanted the Message Board
When the new site was launched, the message board took a major step down
Have to scroll down to see number of replies for all threads
Don’t like colored boxes with white lettering
Requires too many clicks to reply to a post
Big white spaces are left after posts
Too much censorship on the Message Board
Can’t see which threads have the most recent additions
Can’t see the time of day a post was made
Sorting features are confusing
Message board is too sterile looking
There is no “return to topic” place to click on
The use of all caps makes them “yell” a bit, which they needn’t, and shouldn’t
The use of several colors adds no additional information; it’s just noise and distraction
There’s no share function
No way for recent posts and replies stay at the top
I’ll admit I may have missed some, but the foregoing is more or less what we’ve heard. So, as I did on the 8th of this past November, let me ask again… can we get a volunteer to collect all the changes that people would like to see, think through them to determine what can and can’t be done and where trade off’s can be made and then work with our web team and programmers to make the changes needed to re-gain past Message Board levels of participation? Is there anybody out there who cares enough about this to put some time and thought into it?
Here’s the reason I ask…right now I’m putting two and a half to four hours per day into keeping the web site up. I don’t feel I can squeeze out any more time than that. The complaints about and suggestions for the Message Board, which has been a KEY part of what keeps our bluegrass community in touch, deserve to be addressed. Do we have someone in our community who’ll step up?