It's pretty much just KBrulz replying to himself these days.

It got moderated to hell.

They stopped allowing people to register posting and now it has died.

One of the reasons I post here.. tried to register and email admin before on OHB.

Fans def need somewhere to vent, discuss and/or debate.

Don't think there's anything else. Need to let more ppl know about this site.

Generally much quieter than hoops, because the mods don't allow Anons to post. I still like it and use it, because you generally get more intelligent conversation. @koberulz is not as bad a poster as some others (nor is Dazz, really)... at least they don't tend to slag or smear other people's posts unless provoked.

There's still some pretty decent discussion over there. If you're not registered, send Derryck an email and get a name for yourself. See if you can spark it up!

Derek the guy who set it up is too busy or has lost interest in running it.

Its a pity because the basketball discussion was more robust over there and many of the posters had great insights into the teams that they followed and the sport in general. It might pick up a little once the season starts but because it is difficult or impossible to join up it will slowly fade away with no new blood.

Ozhoops has been dying a slow death since about 2006. 2009 was about the last time it was properly busy. Derek just hastened the process.

Hoops feels like the last of the Mohicans- the internet and the Times have moved past forums.

For what it's worth, trying to minimise or prevent spam can get pretty time consuming and I assume Derek's measures in limiting registrations were largely about dealing with that. However, if registration is too hard and you have any level of churn, you will taper off quickly.

Hoops is a bit of a free-for-all for posting, but there are a lot of unseen methods used to try and limit the dominant types of spam which are mostly quite predictable.

These days, 95% of posts on Hoops come from registered users and most of the anonymous posts you see are registered users posting anonymously.

Social networks have likely taken a fair chunk out of forums, but depending on the time of year and which leagues are active, Hoops' traffic is fairly strong.

Still plenty of activity here with a few ozhoops regulars also drifting over.

I ozhoops heydays I only used to pop in here after a 6ers loss to watch the carnage.

That's doubled the number of new posts already :D

I used to post in both places, but haven't visited ozhoops in probably a year or so. I prefer old school forums, but this place is almost reddit-ish which makes it good for quick posts/game threads.

Def prefer this scrolling layout for sure..

I have always found those types of forums cumbersome and difficult to navigate, this one is much more 'user friendly'...

"Requests are up to date as of 23 Jan 2014."

There's your problem

Why did Ozhoops taper off?

Simple, apart from pay the hosting bill for the site the owner and sole administrator has not visited the site in 3-5 years.

The last thing he did was appoint new moderators for the NBL forum Nerf Herder, meg, singy and myself. Singy disappeared before he had even started moderating, meg preferred not attracting hate so wasn't actively moderating, Nerf Herder and myself tried to reign in the wild west Ghost town that the NBL forum became by cracking down on some divisive/disruptive personalities e.g. joycefan

Nerf had things come up in his life that limited his time to help and I finally cracked it after an untouchable ran to Twitter to complain about my moderating to Derek. So I permabanned joycefan and left.

Nerf came back and the few posts that do still happen there seem to be more civil since Townsville went bust; however as Derek is from Townsville don't expect any increase in interest from him.

Derek is the sole administrator; he is the only one who can see or approve new signups or do anything other than delete, edit or sticky posts.

Yeah there are pros and cons for both styles, I find ithard to find stuff here when it's not on the front page or the latest posts when it's been a while since I've been here, compared to ozhoops, but the lack admin involvement hindering new blood really helped the death of it come a lot sooner... plus the very loud and obnoxious minority scaring off anyone new from trying too hard...

Whatever happened to Skinner?

I mean, I know he's still alive and reffing and whatever, but back in the day he did a large chunk of the moderating and seemed to be Derek's right hand man

Double tap to his avatar, yup...

I think real life got in the way, plus internet forum moderating is a pretty shit and thankless job for the most part...

There are others here who have moderating access, but I doubt any of them actually use it as they are mostly from the early days of the forum. I have an intermediate level of moderation where some people can put posts in a Sin Bin where they are checked by me. If you would like to have that ability, email me.

Wookiee, there are some changes in the works, but if you email me any of the worst pain points, I can try to jumpstart a few of the worst things.

It could definitely use paging for one thing. The WA SBL thread is monstrous.

I had been a member from almost the start. Never heard from any mods, never got involved in flame wars, never posted anything that hadn't been safely posted here or elsewhere, certainly nothing that wasn't in the public realm.

Didn't get into the valdemort or stuff , yet logged in one day and could not post.

Sent an email asking what the problem was, perhaps my account had been hacked ??? never go a reply.

Really Quite Odd.

there was a 3 letter acronym in my above between the "or" ??? "stuff" referring to an infamous historical debate that I was NOT a part of ;)

there must be an automatic edit/delete here - cool ;)

@Isaac - I think pagination would be it, really, on threads list page and in threads, otherwise I dig it... no pain points other that Mock :D

Actually, a link to the last post on the thread instead of just the timestamp would help, but that's only minor...

It's all mattic's fault. What a douche canoe. Bullied the thing to death

@Isaac - I think pagination would be it, really, on threads list page and in threads, otherwise I dig it... no pain points other that Mock :D

Actually, a link to the last post on the thread instead of just the timestamp would help, but that's only minor...

No pages in threads please! Scroll much better.

"Ozhoops was killed by one person
Unlikely we've heard the last from him
Stupid Tasmanian."



I would've thought it was a Queenslander you were referring to ... but would you be "eyeballing" a suspect ??

If we're taking suggestions, I think the main difference-makers would be

- The ability to jump to the first unread post in a thread (but I'm guessing that would take some serious work to achieve)

- Allow more than 1 page of threads, so that slightly older topics could be more easily found without needing to resort to a google search. I think this would also help to minimise duplicate threads. I think about 3 pages would be enough (or alternatively just stick with one page but have it show the most recent 150 threads rather than 50)

- I don't know about other people, but my bookmark to this site uses the "Latest Action" link. For some reason, threads with just 1 post (i.e. no replies) do not show up in that view. It would be handy if they did.

No pages in threads please! Scroll much better.

- I don't know about other people, but my bookmark to this site uses the "Latest Action" link. For some reason, threads with just 1 post (i.e. no replies) do not show up in that view. It would be handy if they did.

Can there be a stickied thread about how to embed videos and images?

Or someone want to tell me how to do it?

HTML. YouTube offers an HTML embed option under 'share', for images use this: http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_images.asp

"plus the very loud and obnoxious minority scaring off anyone new from trying too hard."

that certainly stopped me from going over to OzHoops to read what was going on.

On possible changes to this site, I support pagination (as per Koberulz, makes last unread post easy to find) and an improved search facility for old threads. Also support easier insertion of links.

That said, I find the current format and style pretty good value for the price!

Pagination on OzHoops was awful.. hopefully if we do end up getting it here, there'll be at least a larger number of posts per page before it starts paging.

Bouncers are gr8 m8

Pagination on OzHoops was awful.. hopefully if we do end up getting it here, there'll be at least a larger number of posts per page before it starts paging.

BJ Carter was better than Anthony Stewart

You never forget the first argument you have with Mattic, mostly because it's probably still going.....

I know I've been working on an upgrade forever, and my dev version doesn't help you until it's live, so take the following with a grain of salt.

A 'like' button would be amazing as far as popular posts. Not threads, but individual posts within the thread conversation.

there was a 3 letter acronym in my above between the "or" ??? "stuff" referring to an infamous historical debate that I was NOT a part of ;)

8. Reserve registered names so others can't use them.

The ability to jump to the first unread post in a thread (but I'm guessing that would take some serious work to achieve)

I don't know about other people, but my bookmark to this site uses the "Latest Action" link. For some reason, threads with just 1 post (i.e. no replies) do not show up in that view.

Can there be a stickied thread about how to embed videos and images?

Also linking of Twitter posts.

This is a test for the jump-to-latest-post functionality.

Edit: OK, it works. If there has been a post since this function was added, its thread in the index will have the last post date linked to the comment. Anchor links in HTML can be unreliable in pages with loads of anchors so I can't promise this will work in the mega-threads.

Edit again: Give me a minute. Will try to get this happening for every thread.

I really wish all SBL fans would feel free to start per-round topics for their comp rather than the mega-thread.

This is a test for the jump-to-latest-post functionality.

Appreciate the responses, but could you address the linking issue? I think I recall you saying it was an issue with IPs being associated with spam, but is there a reason it remains disabled even if registered and logged in?

Whenever I attempt to make a post with a hyperlink in it I get an error message:

Error 5.029291. Please contact the forum operator.

Can there be a stickied thread about how to embed videos and images?

koberulz, I've upgraded your account level to be able to post links and also Sin-Bin posts.

Cheers, that'll make life a bit easier.

Added a guide (linked from the footer and in the new-topic and topic-reply forms) explaining how to embed YouTube videos and tweets.

While we're talking improvements...
If we really want to bring the magic, I'd like to request that koberulz begins each post with

Hey,

And signs off with

- koberulz

For particular user levels, every post has a Sin Bin link. Clicking it will withhold a post from public view until I've reviewed it. You can use this to alert me to spam or posts that are particularly offensive or legally questionable.

Added custom width. I was hoping that max-width CSS would deal with things but while it works for images, with iframes it requires a second div and I don't have time to write a reliable output filter for that.

I don't see it? You sure you upgraded the right account?

Just tried to post a link, that's still not working either.

Test

Okay, had to log out and log back in. Sorted.

Thanks again for that.

Quick and basic search function added at the bottom of each page and linked in the footer. Search form. Will try to find time to add paging tomorrow.

Dev preview for anyone who cares.

Current state of the Hoops upgrade dev version. Slow going. The demo content shows how long ago I started on it... pic.twitter.com/AjYolbobrL

— Hoops.com.au (@HoopsForum) September 1, 2016

Good on you, Isaac. You're a small champ. Anyone who says otherwise is a chump.

The ability to jump to the first unread post in a thread (but I'm guessing that would take some serious work to achieve)

It's certainly possible and I'm not worried too much about the database load, it's just non-trivial to build.

I would definitely like to build in the ability to watch threads for replies and it would probably relate to that. I figure that could bump forum traffic by 20% so there's a commercial case for it too, but we'll see.

Probably more a matter of where it fits within the interface if you need to have links for the thread proper, the most recent post in the thread, and then the earliest post added since you last viewed a thread.

Current thinking is that you would have a list of the last, say, 20 topics you browsed, and there would be an indicator in that list when you returned of how many posts had been added since last read.

Technical innovation is the cornerstone of competitive strategy!

Perhaps the new platform will take care of this repeat posting issue that turns up every now and then?

I'll put that on the list. It's likely people double-clicking or submitting twice rather than waiting.

Great work Isaac

Forums are dead...long live Forums!

I vaguely remember seeing a poll on here before..

Is that something we can create?

There wouldn't have been one here for a decade. I do have a poll-specific site and did some integration at some point, but it's long abandoned.

Let me try to get the basics upgraded before worrying about any of that.

Yeah def, really appreciate your effort on feedback.

I immediately DEMAND Galactic Overlord mod status so I can delete all these off-topic posts and give a life ban to the trolls like Issac who have taken MY tread off-topic

:))

Great dedication Issac, the good treads are a credit to what you have freely provided to us all, the bad threads are unintended consequences of giving intoxicated monkeys internet access.

By the way, as you would know, i do like the ability of having occasional access to "non-de-plumes" and the ability to post as "anon". I hope that remains.

Thanks again

^ Register a handle for yourself and you get the right to vote.

^^ @Caps Fan, did you mean "noms de plumes"? That's French for pen names. :D

Caps Fan, I think there might be a shift to enforced registration, but the ability to use a temporary anonymous alias for particular posts while logged in is likely to remain. These would be obviously marked and essentially replace anonymous posts as people know them now.

"Caps Fan, I think there might be a shift to enforced registration"

IMHO - I think that this is essential, and still requiring to be logged in to reply as well.

" but the ability to use a temporary anonymous alias for particular posts while logged in is likely to remain:"

I think leaving the alias is good.

FYI Isaac, I still do some moderating here and there (a very light touch though). Mostly changing titles of deciding nba finals match/playoff threads each year for those who haven't watched the reply and restoring posts when threads are incorrectly flagged for moderation. Very rarely have to delete spam.

I love this forum. I will cry if it ever closes.

I was hoping that max-width CSS would deal with things but while it works for images, with iframes it requires a second div and I don't have time to write a reliable output filter for that.

)

Wouldn't be high up the priority list. But I've considered an edit option with edit history which would serve instead of a preview.