Not sure why anyone would feel the need to leave the SON Community, but if they choose to, that's their choice.
Overall, as of this writing, nothing has really changed except that I created individual show forums for the current soaps and moved their show-specific threads into their designated forums. Anything proposed for the future can and will change, depending on feedback. I'm not opposed to other thoughts and ideas.
Everything new or different is complicated. You move into a new apartment complex, it's a complicated process because you have to adjust not just to a new apartment, but the overall setup of the community, between neighbors, amenities, parking space (if available), etc. It takes time to adjust to any change.
The original post took a while to write, and while all the explaining might seem complicated, it's actually very easy once you start adapting to it. The capabilities of this forum weren't available 25 years ago, or even a year ago. The updated software introduced these features, and it would be ridiculous not to use all the available tools to make this place better than it ever was. When the day we honor our 25th anniversary comes, and the site still looks and feels like it's from 2001, I'd consider myself a failure.
After dealing with all the issues people brought to my attention over the last couple of weeks, they have now been fixed. Any lingering issues are browser-based from the client side, particularly since the problem did not occur in other browsers, with a few exceptions, and does not affect all users of the referenced browser(s). I did see people talking about Microsoft Edge being affected, but they didn't seem to have the issue with Chrome. Either way, unless I'm told of a current issue with login/logout or max_connections (error 500), and the poster has done the advised clearing of their cache/cookies (and I do mean clearing entirely), only then will I consider looking into the issue again.
As I said in my original post, I have to look at things holistically. Sure, the soaps can suck, and fans don't want to watch, but I'm not going to allow the SON Community to go the way of the Soap Opera Digest print magazine. Complacency is just one of the reasons it went away. It wasn't just that print was dying. Similarly, over the 25 years since the SON Community started, we now also compete for attention with posters on other platforms discussing their favorite shows, including X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, Threads, TikTok and YouTube, etc. We need to adjust to compete just like any other platform or service.
I honestly did not remember this. But I had been looking into it, and since you brought it up, I was able to finally find the solution. I do recall we had the feature in place at one point in an older version of the software, but it was panned by users for misuse. In bringing it back, I removed all the negative options and have been manually adjusting poster accounts that had/have negative "reputation" points.
That happens sometimes. While cleaning up the Discuss The Soaps forum by moving topics into their respective show forums, I found a few topics that received little to no response, and some posts from posters I never knew we even had.
I've actually seen a lot of veterans returning to the SON Community over the last couple of days, and I feel it's been the most functional during that time. This is likely due to the login/logout issue and the max_connections (error 500) being resolved. We'll see.
The welcome threads were not created for active discussions or as a catch-all. They were created for the simple purpose of introducing the individual show forum for each respective show. As for the monthly discussion threads, particularly the BTG and GH discussions, I've found that many people don't post in them because they get lost and can't keep up with what's being discussed, including which episodes. If there are roughly 20 episodes per month for each soap, and you are just watching the first or fifth episode, and the monthly discussion is at episode 18, you are left with little to discuss because most of it has already been touched upon. I've seen people get annoyed with others who are discussing matters that happened days ago in an earlier episode, immediately discouraging that person from commenting.
While not necessarily in response to you directly, I know that a daily (or weekly) thread could see five or fewer comments per post, but by not attempting to grow the place, I'd, again, consider that a failure. I want to see that when this place turns 25 in a few months, it is a thriving community, not one that should have been put out of its pasture years ago. To my point, there's a forum that was unofficially spun off from SON over a decade ago, and I was shocked to see how much the posting activity had dropped. To your earlier point, in their case, I presume it's probably more closely tied to the lack of interest in the primary show that posters would most often talk about.
Thank you. I definitely see how much you and others care about this place, and that is why I keep it as up to date as possible. Using my analogies again, if I left this place as is, it would wither and die with a dead engine and dust/dirt/grime all over the place.
By
Errol ·
