Author Topic: What happened to the BHPC forum?  (Read 5233 times)

Re: What happened to the BHPC forum?
« Reply #25 on: 16 April, 2021, 11:45:47 am »
You used to live in Canada?
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Kim

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Re: What happened to the BHPC forum?
« Reply #26 on: 16 April, 2021, 11:53:09 am »
I can see the point/advantage of RSS - but, to me, it seems like push notification on *phones - I am happy to catch up and miss out on forum posts if it means that I have less noise, more signal and less forums demanding my time (I probably spend too much time here anyway).

I think of it as more like a way of de-webifying things into your mail client, so you can access them on your own terms.  But that's just another way of looking at the same thing.

Not that it matters, the future is barely-usable algorithmic timelines.  I'm just waiting for Twitter to properly kill off the API and force us all to use the official app or website.   :hand:

Re: What happened to the BHPC forum?
« Reply #27 on: 16 April, 2021, 02:30:19 pm »
Facebook can fuck off.  Twitter can ... hope to one day rise in my esteem to the level of Facebook.  I think it's quite telling that a number of posters on this site refuse to click on any links to twitter.
simplicity, truth, equality, peace

Kim

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Re: What happened to the BHPC forum?
« Reply #28 on: 16 April, 2021, 03:15:47 pm »
Twitter was fine as a broadcast SMS service for telling your friends what's going on.  Some still use it that way, and it's almost manageable if you carefully curate who you follow.  The rot set in with retweets and engagement and the usual pain that comes from a tech startup with a useful tool trying to pivot it to something that's worth (if not actually able to make) money.

I have a no-images-of-text rule, which serves to neatly avoid the worst of it.

Blodwyn Pig

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Re: What happened to the BHPC forum?
« Reply #29 on: 16 April, 2021, 06:31:10 pm »
Ok,  BIG question????????????????  why is this forum so successsful, it had a wee FB stint, when thing went a bit T.U., but that was closed down.

LittleWheelsandBig

  • Whimsy Rider
Re: What happened to the BHPC forum?
« Reply #30 on: 16 April, 2021, 06:34:05 pm »
Forum active membership is above critical mass with a good signal to noise ratio.
Wheel meet again, don't know where, don't know when...

Re: What happened to the BHPC forum?
« Reply #31 on: 16 April, 2021, 07:45:52 pm »
Back to RSS for a second, I use NetNewsWire to keep track of a large number of blogs, plus things like the Guardian obits page. Seems to work fine, although the target websites do have to have set up an RSS feed.
"No matter how slow you go, you're still lapping everybody on the couch."

Re: What happened to the BHPC forum?
« Reply #32 on: 16 April, 2021, 07:48:42 pm »
Forum active membership is above critical mass with a good signal to noise ratio.
This. YACF is so much better than any other forum I've used over the years.
I would also add that the membership is knowledgeable, and not just about bikes. You wouldn't believe the naive responses to some questions I've asked on other specialist forums, and that was very much on topic stuff.
"No matter how slow you go, you're still lapping everybody on the couch."

telstarbox

  • Loving the lanes
Re: What happened to the BHPC forum?
« Reply #33 on: 16 April, 2021, 08:14:18 pm »
I think you can judge a forum by the quality of its off-topic section(s).

Vaguely on topic, Feedly is a reasonably good replacement for Google Reader when I remember to check it.
2019 🏅 R1000 and B1000

Re: What happened to the BHPC forum?
« Reply #34 on: 16 April, 2021, 10:26:19 pm »
Ok,  BIG question????????????????  why is this forum so successsful, it had a wee FB stint, when thing went a bit T.U., but that was closed down.
I think ...
There is a shared vision/expectation RE the forum. 
There is a good mix of established users but also welcoming to new people.
Generally the forum benefits from being a forum used by people who already have experience of forums and other cycling forums.  You get very few "this is my first time here" people and hence you don't have the reams of "what should my first bike be?" type posts (that has a whole sub-forum to itself on the CTC forum).
It has good design, if you want to get ranty there's a space for that, if you want to get in-your-face or political there's a space for that.  There's also a space where that won't happen and you can just talk about hub gears, heat pumps, or whatever.

It's also maybe worth thinking of other cycling forums that did not do well
The CTC forum was much better than it is now because half the established crowd left when they became CUK and then more left because it was empty.
The C+ forum fell apart when they rebranded to bikeradar, which I think was a loss of identity issue.
LFGSS and BHPC went facebook, which suited their users.

BROL is still going strong (I think, I could just be looking at archived posts though as I mostly use it for reference not discussion).
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Mr Larrington

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Re: What happened to the BHPC forum?
« Reply #35 on: 16 April, 2021, 11:28:06 pm »
I ent even poked my head around the door of BROL for years, and the recumbents.com forum seems pretty moribund too.  Although the main reason for going there was the Battle Mountain board, 99.9% of which has gone to Farcebok too.
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Re: What happened to the BHPC forum?
« Reply #36 on: 17 April, 2021, 12:05:02 am »
LFGSS and BHPC went facebook, which suited their users.

It really hasn't

Re: What happened to the BHPC forum?
« Reply #37 on: 17 April, 2021, 12:10:35 am »
^? I may be only looking at our local page (Birmingham LFGSS, irony much? I know) but the most recent posts are 4 months, 4 months, 9 months and 2 years old.
simplicity, truth, equality, peace

Blodwyn Pig

  • what a nice chap
Re: What happened to the BHPC forum?
« Reply #38 on: 17 April, 2021, 06:49:55 am »
RSF went FB, then in a fit of guilt, later on then asked its FB uses whether it should re instate it’s members only website forum. YES! Was the answer, and they did, but it’s as dead as a dead thing.