Nice to see many think the same of this little group and format.
its simple as well and I have No SM compared to many.
Never had FB.
I find reddit is way too stacked one way re aus football and yer no history.
Hope we find a way and well done Muz chasing them up.

Copy of email sent to this fellow this morning.  (Daniel Findlay <DFindlay@nextmedia.com.au>

Hope I  haven't drawn attention to something that they then say 'why are we even keeping this thing going?'.

------------------------------------------8<-------------------------------------

Thanks for getting in contact.

I'm a user for the football forum section on the ftbl.com.au website. LInk here. https://forum.insidesport.com.au/Football

It's a comprehensive football centric forum that's been running for almost 20 years.

It is not as popular as it once was but it is still a thriving online community for all things football related.

In the past when Kevin Airs was the editor of 442 Kevin had the ability to appoint moderators to the forum to maintain the integrity of the platform and remove spam and other associated mod duties.

When Kevin was still with 442 there were approximately 10 or so moderators. Over time that number has swindled to one. Having a conversation with the last remaining moderator about getting new ones appointed he said to me he's not sure how that could be achieved as all points of contact have disappeared over the years.

Recently the site has been under constant spam attacks from Thai betting bots. The one remaining moderator (a volunteer) is having trouble keeping on top of cleaning the site up and constantly monitoring it.

To finally get to the point.

As an avid user of the forum since 2008 it would be fantastic if the forum continued in one form or another. Is there any way for other moderators to be appointed?

If you are interested there is a discussion here about this very subject. https://forum.insidesport.com.au/3129051/Farking-Thai-spam

Thanks again.

A shout out to Bowden as the sole mod holding it together. 

Awesome work Muz!

Awesome job Muz 👏 

❤️

+99999999999

yep, here's me

Facebook is fucked. They don't have continually running threads. It's throw up a shit opinion and then it's gone in a day never to be seen again.

Forums are old hat and probably used by older people but are a far better format for me and what I want to do. 

A really good forum that's been running forever is https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/

It's an every subject imaginable forum. Has it's limitations but it's still good.

Thanks to all for working on this

What I hate about reddit and Facebook (never got into Twitter) but if someone disagrees with you they will downvote or laugh emoji you which I think is so weak. Argue your point like a man/woman that's why I like forums 

Let's keep the forum going.I am not on social media but like the way the forum operates.

Time for you to take your rightful place as the ultimate forum leader and start your own. 

I reckon Matty Ryan would be looking at some retirement investments. 

Hopefully FTBL/Next Media or whoever owns the site still supports the forum. After all, the Inside Sport Bot continues to post links to FTBL articles. 

Mate!! Long time!! Welcome back! Great to see you around here again. 

Yes hats off to you Bowden as mentioned.
Good point by zimbos.
Why not ?
You always keep tabs whats doing here better of your own.
I’m sure most if not will jump from here and it may draw back some of the long time posters of the past.

Im sure we could all contribute a little to help if needed.

Thanks for cleaning up the spam Bowden 

I just had a look at this site. Heres a link to a thread on free forum software programs: 
https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/40001

This one was recommended:
https://www.phpbb.com/

Winner. The only thing would be how to get new people into the forum.

Haven't heard back yet from my mate at Next Media.

Give it a few days I guess.

Yeah, been too long! How you been? Need one of the old guys to come in and provide some forum wisdom to the newbies? 

Yes please come back and stick around! 🙏 

Holy shit. I just took a peak at World Football. That is a heck of a lot of spam. It's a pity whoever took over from KA didn't fully appreciate what was working here and why it was so successful. 

Can we rename this thread ftbl state of forum discussion or something? 

A good start would be if the IS bot stoped spamming the forum with all the articles on its site. Especially as the articles are not related to the threads. In Australian Football there are threads about European Football. No one engages with these threads too. 

It's clear people are not engaging with this forum as they once used to. I'm surprised it is still going. 

They must use stats as engagement figures to convince advertisers on their articles 

There's a few things that don't help.

The FTBL spam bots. Thai betting spam. Moderator coverage (because of the Thai spam). Forum functionality e.g., no obvious notifications, can't skip to most recent posts until there are 6 pages in the thread, ease of editing, search function, mobile posting functionality etc.

Also the number of active posters atm. I reckon it's getting busier from when I started posting but I wasn't here in the heyday. But message boards aren't fashionable anymore. I doubt there's a poster here in their 20s. 

What it does have is a lot of amazing, pashionate and knowledgable posters. That's golden. It makes the place a lot of fun. 

In it's heyday it was really something awesome. It was a hub for quite a few things but unfortunately when IS took over, they seemed to change tact. 

I get that they have their own vision and way of doing things, but I would have said that perhaps keeping the core of what made this such a successful place should have been kept. I don't see the engagement on here as much as I used to and that isn't great for the game in general. 

Again, I just implore anyone in charge to backup the posts ASAP. It's a treasure trove of stories of times that aren't well covered. Would be criminal to lose it all forever.

Used to get new posters everytime there was a new article as the comments section would take you straight to the forum

This forum is the best. Don't post much anymore but have learned so much from this forum. It can't die.