Re: If you were the owner of GS, what would you do …
I was a “silent reader” for a long time before I joined GS. What always made me hesitate was the fact how people gang up on others and make fun of them. I always found this “holier than thou” attitude of Sr. guppies very discouraging. It used to be a good place, felt more welcoming. However, now it just comes across as if everyone is tippy toeing around each other. I see a lot of Pakistan bashing going on here. It’s become more of a battleground between Native Pakistanis and Overseas Pakistanis. Why would someone take time out of their busy lives and post on a forum where they don’t feel welcomed? I think everyone needs to chill out a bit, be more open towards criticism and not take anyone’s post so seriously.
Over the period of time, we moved away from the rejection of thread bumping. It was against the policy to bump a few years old thread, till we realized that majority of those threads are bumped by new comers who found the thread through Google, registered themselves on GS, just to post in that thread … and what we did as soon as they posted? We would lock the thread with a warning that bumping is not allowed. Not a great way to welcome a newbie, don’t you think? Now we don’t do that.
Another thing we eliminated to certain extent is if a newbie started a thread on somewhat of a controversial topic, people would jump on him and would start calling him troll. That culture is going away, but not fully eliminated yet.
Re: If you were the owner of GS, what would you do …
as for the topic - as sexist as it sounds, i would get rid of all the mostly female goody-two-shoes mods. this demographic is not meant to be moderators. judgmental gossip-mongers yes. professional ass-kissers yes. moderators no. replace them with some lazy guys who log in only once a day at max and moderate solely based on reported posts.
Re: If you were the owner of GS, what would you do …
If you want me to be brutally honest … The public at large are becoming dumbed down by twitter and facebook and youtube … they are today’s news … GS is yesterday … the platform is wrong. It used to be perfect in the 90s now GS needs to consider changing platform …
Lot’s more interaction is necessary … games even … more real-time messages, more focus on articles and rather than standard threads … direct vlogging rather than having to go youtube or vimeo as conduits and areas that GS users can have as a private space - their own pages - not just blog pages but their own profiles … in fact when logging in everything should be from the profile point of view rather than an external point of view - seeing the board as a bulletin is outside looking in … Facebook has it right looking inside out … it defaults at the profile and everything is driven from the user’s point of view … when people have their own private space they start to decorate it and take pride in it … you will notice that few people really develop their profile pages on GS … there is a reason for that - It is because profiles are an afterthought on GS not a starting point.
Images … need more and faster provisions for them again like vlogging pic posting needs to be quick and smooth … Start to restructure the Google puller archives into subjected areas i.e. wedding, fashion tips, etc … I notice some older posts have lost some information especially images … these images could really be given metadata to pull more crowds but it is a lot of work … Might be a useful exercise though. Imagine having an area on GS where similar topics are grouped and ready for immediate inspection by newbies and regulars … So these annual threads about 15th of Shaban will be immediately available to see in an area and perhaps many thread will not be opened - but rather the older ones continued … so what? It will bring in the traffic … also put a feature on thread OPs that any responses will send them an email … this way they can track their own started threads through email reminders … like what happens on Linkedin forums … the annoying thing is to get lots of emails from posts … but if they are you own threads? Then we always like to read those … and it keeps the people warm …
Re: If you were the owner of GS, what would you do …
I would try to attract more users from Pakistan because GS looks like more of western kind of forum and I know there are lot of Pakistani silent users and from them some prefer to watch the drama rather than be a part of it and some don’t post because they might think which I heard from one person that “everybody on GS is writing in English and I’m not confident in writing because my English is not so good and also people here have a different mindset being NRP, so I’ll feel like an alien there”.
This site needs a serious facelift. Maybe that would attract more enthusiastic members. The appearance of this place is sooo outdated.
The app has flaws too. Can’t access my notification from the app. Update the mailbox system. It just looks so old like uncle/aunty-ish so that’s who it’s going to attract.
It’s a good suggestion but not always practical. We cannot force people not to post in English. It’s not just the command of the language but the fact that it’s easy to type English.
Then it’s a misconception that we don’t have Pakistani posters. There are many who if dint knew English, very confidently post in Roman Urdu, though they may get replies back in English. See, just like it’s very hard to write an English sentence in Urdu script, it’s equally challenging to do the opposite for some.
Re: If you were the owner of GS, what would you do …
It be wonderful to see more and more posters from Pakistan posting and openly speaking their minds. In fact a whole lot more diversity in this place.
I thought I was the only one who knew that Aussies don’t do Turkey for Christmas…imagine if such things become common knowledge here, we might see more cultural tolerance here.
Anyway, I’ve seen so many posters being mocked and driven away because of their poor command of English.
I agree. May I remind you of my sarcasm is the new humor thread. An Op with not so good English is almost always the target of that new humor. We need to get rid of that culture.
Re: If you were the owner of GS, what would you do …
I often read about the old GS and old guppies being more fun. I don’t know what I missed because I only joined in late 2012 and I wasn’t very active across the board initially.
Some of the things that others have already mentioned and which I’ve noticed too:
It’s not so easy to form friendships here. Some regular GS posters provide really good advice, but once or twice when I tried getting to know them personally, I realized they treat GS world separately from their real life friendships and wouldn’t consider you a friend unless you’ve met in person. I can understand the need to be cautious online, but the general unfriendly vibe and closed off attitude are a turnoff nevertheless
I don’t like the ganging up routine that we see on GS every now and then. It’s funny how so many people here act as counsellors and reprimand the bad behaviour of Pakistani society but when it comes to GS duels, they know no limits. I am all for a healthy debate, but personal attacks are not acceptable.
As a mod, I feel like certain members resent you just because of the title and based on their previous history with a mod, they put you in the same category which isn’t fair
Some comments/suggestions:
I agree that GS needs a new look and more user-friendly, up to date features. But since you didn’t ask for technical suggestions, I take that back
I like X2’s idea that members should be more involved in running a poll, starting a competition or games thread, etc.
I think in general people need an attitude adjustment. Those who are “anti-mod” need to calm down and be respectful. We all are members first, mods/admins second. A lot of the married women on the team are in their 20’s or 30’s. Calling them “aunties” (we all know the negative connotation associated with the word “aunty” type) is disrespectful.
In addition, taking someone’s personal information and keechar uchaaling on them is really low. If someone engages in such behaviour and refuses to back down, they should be prepared for consequences regardless of their history or contributions to GS. If I owned GS, I wouldn’t tolerate insolence and name calling. That’s not how I was raised and that’s not the company I keep.
Despite all our efforts to increase GS traffic, I don’t know how we can do that without attracting new members. We all have a life outside of GS and it is much more important than an online forum. So there is only so much time we can spend on GS in a given day. That said, if we keep GS interesting and active, and promote a healthy, respectful environment, I don’t think the future of GS is threatened by facebook or twitter b/c GS is specific to all things Pakistan and it provides a forum for us to share our perspectives and life experiences.
It’s amusing that some people have commented moderators aren’t doing enough whereas others feel the place is too restrictive and anything controversial they say will get them banned or their post edited/deleted. One thing I’d like to clarify is, we have more than one moderator per forum because not everyone can be available 100% of the time. When a mod is going to be busy or away due to personal commitments, they let the team know so others can step in during their absence. If you still feel that certain mods are just “lazy and incompetent”, then you should report to the admin team.
Agree with Sehrysh that everyone’s definition of family-friendly is different and one has to take the opinions here with a grain of salt. We should be open-minded enough to know that one person’s opinion doesn’t constitute that of GS or the real world’s. However, statistically speaking, if someone on GS thinks one way then probably some people in real life are like that too. If you want to change a mindset or increase tolerance, do so respectfully without throwing around personal insults or dirty jokes. Also, generally, humour works better than sarcasm.
