Off-topic: TV Forum & Metropol24))7 - The future

Yes but it's what was fun about the old lounge. The entire place was possibly the surrealist forum I've ever came across which at the same time is not desperate. Although TVF still has it's own identity and is nowhere near the dire dump that is Digital Spy with idiots like Beth Hart it's slowing heading towards a clinical discussion forum.

I love this place because it's strange. It seems more like a community than other messageboards and I don't want to see it vanish.

Personally I think just lumping all of Metropol into a single board would have worked but I think it might be too late. I think it needs to come back on here and the two pres boards on here should be remerged again.

Oh and I'm with JM, the chatroom should come back, even if we have to go on serbian servers again.

What he said.

Even though I got the piss taken out of me, I loved the bitching - strangely I didn't like it then but looking back, I miss it.

It's a bit po-faced in here. I rarely visit - only came back in because of my friend johnnyboy's concern expressed in t'other place..

It was fun here when I joined. I joined for professional reasons - my job is media related - but I stayed because I was entertained. What a range of intelligent, quirky (possibly anal) people there are here. That should be built upon.

I'd rather it was the old way - a media forum, including a place for Friday night stylee postings, should we be so moved, a place to interact with one's online 'friends', a place for Jar0ngates and gossip, a place where one is comfortable in one's musings.

People need a place to wind down - they could do it here with their online friends if the lounge was restored.

I met my best mate through this forum and its lounge. How fantastic is that?

Firstly, thank you to everyone who's participated in this thread. I'd no intention of closing it as people were genuinely putting across some interesting views and it's great to know people care about this place!

Saying that, I will make it clear that the old Lounge is not coming back. If it was simply a case of choosing a couple of sensible people who were regular posters there and letting them run it, I'd have done that instead of continually closing and eventually removing it. But it's not as simple as that - ultimately, all correspondence for the domain goes to the administrator and as the site owner, I have a responsibility to do my best to reply and take action where necessary on complaints. I couldn't flout that simply because a couple of others were running one section, hence a whole new site.

I don't really have much time for those who participated in The Lounge and have since chosen to ignore Metropol. Yes, the design may be different but I also think posters get a lot more freedom than I was ever willing to give under TVF's Lounge. Metropol could become as busy as the old Lounge. Two clicks and you're in their main forum, ready to read or post. The only thing I'd change would be having one big forum again - it seemed to work here but that's down to Martin and what he feels works best.

A few have also referenced the popularity and regular posting on Digitalspy - I think that's unfair. First and foremost this site is a forum for talking about television presentation - a subject not likely to attract anywhere near the numbers of DS and although people regularly talk about related topics, this isn't going to be the bustling place some want it to be. I'm happy with that.

The post count has gone down but it's still impressive. Between 1st Jan 04 - 18th Mar 04 there was 20,810 posts in the main forum. Same time this year for the main forum (inc. Newsroom) it's 17,760.

I don't know about others but I think the news separation has worked with little overlap problems (just the odd person who still ignores the yellow message on the posting page). This may result in the psychological idea of this place being less busy -clubbing everything back together would again make it harder to wake though the topic listings.

A general chatter area should be for people to talk away from the core site's purpose - about their 'real' life, introducing themselves, asking questions etc. but there is a place for that already and it's only a stone's throw away.

To try and introduce more people to the site, I'll add a section soon to TVF's registration talking about Metropol and asking if they wish to additionally sign up there. It may be possible to submit a registration with the same data automatically to Metropol at the same time but I'll contact Martin personally about that.

Thanks for the comments. Please feel free to keep them coming.

Asa

I have to say I agree with you, Asa. This forum is, first and foremostly, a TV presentation forum. That was the reason I joined, and that is the reason I continue coming back. The Lounge might have attracted a few more users to join up and participate, but they may not have necessarily been here to talk about TV pres.

Although I have had quite a bit to do with the setting up of the new lounge as it currently stands, I haven't really posted there much - and I'm sorry to Martin and Johnnyboy for this - I know Johnnyboy in particular wanted for the people who set it up to post a lot to encourage people to use it. I do feel somewhat guilty for failing to do this, but it is due to a variety of reasons. To be honest I was never particularly interested myself in a general forum - even when it was here I rarely ventured into it. Ok, I know that is down to my personal preference, but I do feel that the current system is, under the circumstances, the best way of doing it - for the time being. Perhaps in the future it might be possible to integrate them further without causing undue stress to the people involved.

As for the design of Metropol, when it started we did aim for it to keep a similar feel to this place. But it did end up looking a bit shabby and the colour was not popular. So in August last year I decided to give it its own distinct and unique look, which Martin and I felt might help to make it look and feel bolder and perhaps even begin to attract people from outside of the TV Forum community. Maybe that was a mistake. But by then the two places had already become quite distinct and I got the feeling that both Asa and Martin were quite happy with that - I didn't feel that it would be right to upset this by re-designing Metropol to match TV Forum (I still don't know how Asa might have felt about that!). I am sensitive to the fact that a lot of people would have preferred an arrangement like this, but at the end of the day it is up to the owners of the sites, who have so generously given up their time and money for them to even exist. Neither TV Forum, nor Metropol 24/7 are public services - sometimes I think people seem to forget that!

As for the idea that TV Forum is going downhill, I'm not sure I can sense that myself. I can remember a fair few other times over the years when people have said this kind of comment, and nothing has ever come of it. There are always going to be fluctuations in the amount of visitors and the amount of people even interested in TV pres - a whole variety of issues effect that - but I don't see how anyone can think that the site is going to diappear down a black hole because there are a few less postings than two years ago. As long as a place exists where like-minded people can talk about TV presentation, I really don't feel that there is any cause for concern.

do not think anyone would deny that it is very nice of asa and martin for creating the forums ... but, it is in their interest (in this case martin's especially) to ensure the forums are performing, otherwise the time and energy they have put in to date would be a waste of time.

metropol got of to a slow start, and never took off. the redesigns implemented so far and the inclusion of more and more separate forums have failed, miserably. is it not time a different approach was tried?

No need for topic anymore as MP24))7 has merged forums together for one big forum but now there is a big space on front page.

It's good to hear from everyone on this subject.

I feel that the only real problem that exists is integration between the site. It's more BBC1 and ITV1 at the moment, rather than BBC1 and BBC2.

The fact is that both guys, Asa and Martin, have done a brilliant job. They have both tried their hardest and their best. But, the same relationship does not exist between TVF and MP247 as did TVF and the old Lounge.

It's no-one's fault. I am a marketing man, I run a marketing company, and despite your best efforts, despite your most creative ideas, sometimes the market just says 'no'. You'll never understand why, you'll never hope to understand why, that's just the way it happens.

That said, MP247 can hardly, in its own right, be qualified as a failure. Quarter to quarter, the activity is going up. But not as much as we would all hope.

Since Asa has now said that the old Lounge will never re-appear, we have something to focus on. One avenue for returning things to normal has been cut off, so we simply concentrate on finding a new one.

In the golden-oldie days, when the Lounge was still part of this site, it had a completely different look for a few weeks. Traffic went down. When the old look was re-established, traffic returned to normal.

I am quite happy to take over the running costs of the new Lounge, wherever it is situated, if Martin decides that he wants to give this a try.

A new forum, but the same look as TVF, preferably with the same database and log-ins. What are members' views on this?

The level of "concern", shall we say, over how this place is run is testament to how popular this place is among its members.

On a regular basis, I laugh to myself about how much I love this place. It's just one of those things - I'm by no means a messageboard kind of person. I read perhaps five at most on a regular basis. I post on a couple. But I take part in TV Forum and Metropol like the world's about to end! All those years ago, hunched over the monitor in the corner of the room, wearing my anorak, watching BBC One idents... and here I am, in 2005, having grown out of my geekishness, STILL POSTING!

The thing about this place is that it has character. The place is full of em, in fact. It's the old thing - you don't realise how good it is until it's gone. We moan about how simple certain people are around here, and how it ain't as good as it should be, and that's what happened to The Lounge I suppose.

Personally, I hate change. And when Metropol came along, it took ages to get used to it. But now I am and I personally don't see any massive problems with the structure of the sites. I suppose it is a BBC One/ITV1 thing, but that's all psychological, and somehow it seems to work for me.

We all love each other really.

What do you mean by the "same" database? As in a copy of the existing TVF one, or one shared between the two (if such a thing is technically possible?). That might not be a good idea, as I keep on getting the "sorry we're too busy" screen too often when visiting TVF.

I think that exposing Metropol better on the frontpage would be a better idea than putting the Lounge in TVF.

A quick mock-up here: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v517/Antz_UK/TVFMP247.jpg

Apologies for the quality. Always happens when I save to JPG

That's the key issue as far as I'm concerned.