This, right here is why Wilders is dying a slow death. This is the main reason. Admin stubbornness with things like this, stifling conversation, leads users to other forums when they can discuss things more openly and thoroughly. Policy is driving people away.
Policies and procedures have to change If these form is to survive, and they wont so wilders is on life-support until the plug is pulled.
"If wishes were horses all beggars would ride". I wish it would go back to the way it was 20 years ago.
Personally whether i see it right or not, the posting of just links en masse over many subjects (some relevant-most just to add something to make it appear there's forum activity) when lots of members either dismiss or pass right over unrelated content that many times has just gotten in the way of members in need of logical discussion and yes comparisons between security programs should always be allowed and attracts discussion. Focusing on just a few of the same old topics over & over again like sandboxie (for one example) and user's running into issues with the same might be of use to some but there are far more products that deserve equal attention like comparison of security programs only to be met with restrictions refusing members to engage in them which is probably why there's been a continued exodus to the other forums which do allow members to openly and intelligently if not objectively allow those comparisons.
You got that right. I sent a message to the mods a few months ago complaining that there are too many threads that are just links to posts from other sites and that there is very little discussion in most of these threads. That if we wanted to read other sites we would just visit them. There were times that if you clicked on "New Posts" of the 25 that come up on the first page, 20 were just topics from other sites. However, give the mods credit, this has really decreased lately.
As long as a discussion is civil and about products (not personal) it is fun to read, at least for me. Why close the thread just warn/ban member that can't behave like adults (and get personal).
People would have trouble finding it because I find the search facility here is as poor as I've ever seen. This forum does cover a great number of topics - many of which may only be of interest to a few. For example, many have mentioned malware and other security software. As a Linux user I have no interest in these topics, but my RSS feed pulls up a 100 topics which I peruse daily and always find at least 10 that I look at. It would be very interesting to find out how everyone feels about this topic. It's a shame only members could contribute to such a poll, because I lurked here for 5 years before bothering to sign up. I'd love to know how many "tree people" [ https://www.answerbag.com/q_view/439143 ] there are out there.
Very disappointing response to be honest after this thread and the request of many old time members to ease things up. I cannot count the times where I have seen posts completely removed and edited by a mod saying "Edited because discussion of A vs B" when someone is asking a simple question like which in your opinion is lighter Kaspersky Free or Avast Free - just as an example. Seems like things or the policy won't change.
Seems to me that things are going OK. This is a BIG forum, there are lots of ongoing conversations. I'm not learned enough be sure which statements are worthwhile vs which are baloney vs which are downright dangerous. I don't know enough about it so I need moderators help for that.
To me it seems like addressing the dinosaur is the room. Wilders have pretty much two choices: To stay the same and slowly die out or to change. Change is never easy, but sometimes it is necessary. As users we do not have much of a choice. I got accustomed to keeping my head down in forums to avoid being banned, which happens way too often and I am getting tired of it, this new age sucks.
I moved away from where there is an unfriendly atmosphere. Also, I got addicted to filtering: adding to my ignore list.
Castlecops security forum was shuttered for good years ago, and it had nothing to do with a decline in popularity. The owner of the forum simply had too much on his hands with his employment at Microsoft, while also trying to run the forum as well. Obviously his job with MS took precedence. Also, unless I'm mistaken, someone please correct me if I'm wrong, the Mods here are unpaid volunteers. They probably are not going to make any changes that create more daily, time-consuming moderation efforts, above and beyond what is already required from them. That said, change can be and is usually a good thing. It relates more to running a successful business, but I remember a quote I saw years ago: "Innovate or Die"
this is a bad time we are living in now. censorship is all around the world and people are getting used to it. political correctness dominates the truth and true statement. freedom of speech is withering, even on online forums. I stopped posting a long while ago and just watch. Soon, I guess I'll just lose interest and silently go away. I guess many old members here are getting old and are quietly saying good bye to many things they used to love, use to be lingering when they were younger. oh well.
I don't think that mods and admins should allow this forum to become mainly political. Politics only rarely has anything to do computer security with some exceptions: regulations that seek to ban strong encryption etc And I say it despite, I would admit, slipped some political remarks during those years I suspect that newer generation is not replacing older generation due to difference in communication platforms they use: social media on smartphones instead of forums on PCs etc In work, at least when employeed by corporations, people can't make much about their OS since those tend to be managed by company admins and company policies usually prohibit install of unauthorized software Admins probably should think about to which audience this forum could be useful in 2023 and if it is indeed realistic to gather those people there. I.e. mobile security seemed like topic that would be popular and useful for many, but it didn't gained that much active discussions (although those few suggestions to tweaks and even security software are personally interesting for me) Maybe something for SOHO sector also although I wonder how much different it would be to discuss those things compared to general threads about security software, tools, and security tips and tricks
I don't think this. Some yaers ago I was moderator in a little Forum, naturally unpaid, but I found very fun it, and I was not worry for the time that it took me.
Anyway, many here, I too, said that another factor is that actually there are not so many news and interesting programs like once, and this decreases the discussions and the speeches, independently form the Forum policies.
Interesting is subjective. There is a overload of news in general and I've found several interesting news posted here, on this very forum, instead of scroling through social media or looking at main pages of tech news sites I don't always have time to comment on them unfortunatrlly
I'm sorry, I made a writing mistake: I wanted write " new ", adjective, refering to programs, and not news, noun. I agree that here in the Forum the are several interesting news.
I don't see that and never have. The staff here have always been accommodating, much more than any other forum i belong to