ROFL !

What's the point of ftbl? They stopped the magazine so if the forum goes would anyone click on the website? 

God I miss the magazine used to get it all the time when I was about to go on a flight at the airport 

No text-based media site makes any money anymore. Banner advertising is completely dead and 'sponsored' articles are dying too. The only real pathway to make money (or just to break even) is to put everything behind a paid subscription. It's unfortunate, but that's the reality we live in. Everything as a service. Forums are relatively low cost as the data/bandwidth required is negligible when compared to audio/image/video. The maintenance related costs would be unavoidable. Setting up a forum is pretty basic these days. I reckon I could setup this forum in NodeBB over a weekend. Migrating data across is where it gets interesting. But starting from scratch would be a breeze.

Interestingly, apparently forums in general have been seeing upticks in usage and new users. People have become so sick of the cesspit that is social media. They just want to have an honest discussion about a topic. Can't do that on social media platforms. Not sure why, but this forum is surprisingly well behaved. All forums have their fair share of trolls and assholes, but even they are kinda tame on here. I've seen way worse behaviour on other (non-football) forums.

You're right. It's changed over time though to what it is now.

It's pretty much self policed these days which is nice. Fuckheads that come in new and try and troll are regularly ignored which is the key I reckon. (I think these type of people thrive on burring others up and when they don't get a bite they move on. (Probably telling their mates that it's a bunch of softcock, snowflake, woke dickheads so don't bother.)

I'm not surprised forums are having a resurgence. FB is hopeless and IG is full of the nastiest, most hateful people on the planet. The comments on any post by any woman are enough to make you despair.

Whirpool, which is a massive forum, is highly moderated which is where I go if I can't find an answer to something else on the net. Lots and lots of high quality discussion over there.

442 seem to have the best analysis in england. Shame they aren't interested in taking things back

what happened to the stickied threads? lol

Yer I’ve just got on and it’s changed lol 

That was me, I unstickied a few to try and save them as most hadn’t had a post for months / years. 

This website does generate some revenue from agent-funded player puff-pieces e.g. the most recent few Birighitti articles trying to get him an A-League contract. Not sure how much revenue that generates though. 

ah I see. Can they be linked in the remaining sticky (topics of interest) along with osuassies, the youth thread and perhaps the nst thread since they get a lot of traffic? (Sometimes they slip back a few pages and 442 pages take a while to load for me for some reason)

My first flight to Europe was with a 442. Oh wait, I left it in the car and my best mate read it on the way back. 

Got it a year later. Still in box at parents home. 

Loved 442 in England in 2007. Had them on the train and national express all the time. Still remember the interview with Scott Sinclair on loan at Plymouth while at Chelsea. How times change. 

That's a good idea. It might need a new thread though because I doubt anyone but the OP can edit the existing thread anymore. I bet if someone put together a new one and it was good Bowden would sticky it. 

yeah the collapse in football media has really sucked in Australia, I loved reading 442 every flight i caught. We still have podcasts now

What are your favourite podcasts? 

Podcasts have replaced our magazines and websites even. Podcasts for easy listening and resting the eyes.

I like the Optus Football with Schwarzer. BBC Football Daily but it depends who is on.

Suited and Booted but only when they have a serious guest on like Hill or King. Otherwise they're stuffing around too much. Socceroos official has had some poor audio quality and the player interviews can be low energy. Soccerwhos are trying their best and they have some good chats. Fox was good during Covid when Bosnisch told all his stories.

in order

1. soccerwhos
2. the global game
3. A leagues of our own
4. A league off air
5. Box2Box
6. Make australian football fun society
7. Kossie and Dom Uncensored
8. Front page football

a lot of a league bias in the podcast scene. I don't care about european leagues though unless there are aussies

wish these guys would do a regular podcast

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sB5FyC0gnxw&t=555s

Great list. Number 3 is now called Round Ball Australia, for anyone looking for it.

Have to wonder how many people at FA actively monitor some of the discussion on here, its such a useful source of information regarding aussies abroad and general fan sentiment towards current domestic affairs. I mean, its free info for them...
.

I remember Graham Arnold talking about why he chooses players in the scottish league and he seemed to engage points only mentioned here as far as I've seen. Wasn't a smoking gun but i did wonder...

What made 442 forums so successful was the fans. It was a proper place for engagement. We even created a fan led football show out of it. We had a commentary team. 

Granted most of us who led those things have gone on to other careers and have not really found the time to be on here all the time. 

When I look at the forums, I'm thrown off by the constant threads posted by the IS bot. If I post in a thread and then come back later to see the responses, but the thread has been pushed to the bottom of the page by the IS bot articles, I don't really want to bother. Forums are successful when there is genuine engagement and that engagement leads to something substantial. With outlets like Reddit and Discord, people probably get there fix on those platforms. This forum needs to come back to it's core. The way it does that is through a fan led process. We need to make this forum a valuable resource for fan engagement on Australian Football. 

It needs a proper mod team to start so they can monitor and overlook the boards. Then you need to develop a clear vision for what the boards will be and what they will drive. Once you have that, then you can start to think about all the other little minutae. 

Very sad if FTBL/forum is dying.

This is one of the few sites I'd log onto every day (sometimes multiple times) to keep my finger on the pulse of what's happening in Oz football. It leaves a massive gap...

What do you wants mods to do that they're not doing already?  The only thing I can see that's a problem is the bot articles. Do you want the mods (Bowden) to delete those?  Do you think that would drive traffic back? 

Not having a crack. Just a genuine question. 

reckon its plateaud and isn't dying further for the last few years. Need to get a few old posters back though

I can start deleting the non-Australian Football article threads that appear in the AF subforum if people think that would help. 

I'm possibly a minority here again - I scan all the bot articles every time I come here and that shows me some of the things that are happening in the football world. I like seeing them there and the variety of content suits me as the one place I start.

It does not bother me that the threads I have been specifically following and contributing to get pushed further down the page because I am looking on a PC screen and it doesn't take long to find the ones that have had attention from other posters in the last couple of days.

I can see it being an annoyance if you don't come on here at least every two days (roughly the time it takes to disappear off the front page if there has been no activity).

I can see it being a problem if anyone does put effort into an informative article that people read without adding activity and it pushes back out of sight. The Sticky route is fine for things that have permanent interest but would add to the problem if we ended up getting 10-20 stickied threads pushing other recent activity back pages.

For whoever mentioned forum pages loading slowly for them - it has been that way for me for years. Possibly due to the database getting larger all the time and the data queries having to hold a lot more information in their 'head' while it gets the pages in order. Something in the user settings that would let you limit the age of threads up front (only show me anything created in the last year for example) could make data retrieval faster but from what we have heard I doubt there is much 'future programming' going on at the moment and I have no idea if anyone is actually looking at the Query coding to find ways of keeping it efficient over time.

An option to block users has been discussed many times but to find a different use for that function - if you could choose to block threads posted by a user you could block the robot if you didn't want to see all those articles pop up. Just a possible improvement/enhancement.

Im with RIMB, If the clickbait article heading strikes my fancy ill read the article (Usually disappointed btw) otherwise just ignore it.

I'm not having a dig at Bowden. Him and I go way back. I have nothing but the utmost respect and time for Bowden. I was simply just giving my own view about the forums. I thought that was what was happening here, a roundtable about what makes the forums a great place. 

The Australian Football section should I think stick to Aus Football. An article about Neuer's international retirement is not relevant to the Aus Football thread. Create a hub where Australian fans can come and talk about the game - here and abroad - but keep the themes relevant. 

I also see RIMB's point too. Perhaps a redesign to seperate the articles from the genuine threads. The biggest challenge is going to be how we drive numbers to the forums and get them to engage 

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Zimbos I don’t think Muz saw it you having a go at Bowden.
We all know here be it long timers and newbies - I suspect everyone sees his great contribution value and manners here.
Muz I take it was just asking what to bring to the table due to the forums current circumstances.

Im no leader that can add much help in the workings of this place but a happy fellow forumer who’s open to anything you more in the know can come up with and put in my 2bobs worth if I can.

Keep it going fellers for the point is how can we improve the site and grow it again.