Actitivity on that MLPArena

[ChocolateStarfire]

I use template websites that are free (Wix/Weebly), and I can post a lot of images without an issue.

Back to the original post by achab1984:

Does it seem like the activity on this site has slowed down?

I was looking at some of the very active collectors when I joined. And some have not been on here for years!

I agree with some of the folks replying here--it's hard to maintain activity on *any* website, much less forums like this one, for longer than a few weeks, let alone years at a time.

There is a high cost for maintaining servers, which host all the data from posts in threads like these, the images that are uploaded/linked, and even just making sure the buttons/links/general interface even works.

I'm honestly grateful the MLP Arena still stands after 20 years. It's a safe haven for collectors/customizers of ponies of all gens/ages.

It's also hard to be social online, as in truly sociable. I think that's what Taffeta and Carrehz were getting at. "Social media," starting with MySpace and Facebook, *was* literally a popularity contest for college aged Internet users. Message boards and forums were where people actually built community, and the few that still exist need to be funded and treasured.

It's hard work to maintain a place like this, to communicate well, to have your intentions clear and kindness being the norm rather than the exception among users/mods/admin.

I'm grateful for making so many pony friends here over the years. I honestly hope the Arena sticks around. <3

[Carrehz]

ChocolateStarfire - Yep, that's exactly what I meant ^^ Social media just feels like a sitewide fight to get noticed to me.

I miss the days of LiveJournal and deviantART. I guess they're sort of "social media" sites? But they didn't seem to really have the same problems that modern sites like Tumblr/Twitter/etc have - I mean, they felt like communities.

I can't tell you how many times i've clicked on a trending topic on Twitter only to see porn. i'm not a prude but if i click on a seemingly un porn related topic I don't want to see porn.

Ooooh, right??? For some reason one theatre Twitter I follow attracts a *lot* of pornbots in the comments, no idea why, but it definitely makes me think twice about looking at the comments on there! x)

Taffeta - Aw, I like your site. I feel you on hosting costs though
The upvote/downvote system is horrible IMO. I've seen so many good/valid opinions get downvoted into oblivion because they weren't popular. A while ago on here we had the "Unpopular Pony Opinions" thread, right? We didn't all agree with each other and IIRC we did get some "Aw no, how could you not like that!"-type comments (fair enough, that's part of the fun of unpopular opinion threads XP) but also intelligent/thoughtful discussion, right? Try having one of those on Reddit... you say something like "Well, I don't like [popular character/ship/episode/etc], but to each their own" and *bam* everyone jumps on the bandwagon and starts downvoting.
(Upvoting has its downsides, too. For example, I've seen it several times where someone's posted something incorrect and they've been upvoted to the top - then someone else will come in with the *actual* answer, but no one'll see it cause their post either doesn't get as many upvotes, or it gets downvoted! :/ Drives me crazy since I can't stand misinformation - not saying that people that do this are intentionally misleading people, 9/10 it's obviously an honest mistake, but it makes it so much harder to get the correct story out there! )

re: thoughtful posting vs spam, I'm a bit more lax on that, it depends on the context. I don't mind short posts or just "LOL that was so funny!" as long as it's not *all* someone ever posts. One thing that does drive me nuts though is when people post threads that are just like "Discuss this thing". (unless it's an episode discussion thread, or similar... I'm talking casual threads created by users, not "official" discussion threads, if that makes sense) Like "Who's your favourite character?" and then the OP doesn't answer their own question, that sort of thing. like... gosh if you don't have anything to contribute yourself, then why start the convo?! I was on a forum once that specifically discouraged that sort of thing though, so that's where I picked that up from.

Double-posting drives me nuts, too.

And OMG YES the decision making thing!!! It's not just anime communities, I see that all the time with cartoons too, it's amazing. SO many people wandering into the subreddit going "Should I watch this show?" - as if we're going to say no?! Then you get the odd one that's like "Well, I started watching it and I'm at season 4, but I don't really like it, should I keep watching?" - I can sort of understand posts like this if they've only seen a couple of eps of season 1, since some shows do pick up significantly after the initial shaky start, but if you're that far into the show and you're still not clicking with it... why ask others if you should keep going?! @_@

Also no one searches to see if their questions have already been answered any more... or even just gives the first page of posts a cursory glance to make sure no one else has posted the same thing that day... okay to be fair, a lot of sites these days have crappy search functions, but still...! I really miss the days of "Use the search function to make sure you're not making a duplicate thread" being a common courtesy if not an outright rule.

[Taffeta]

Ah yeah, the duplicate post thing is a regular issue on our local area facebook group, when the same thing gets posted multiple times and everyone gets outraged about it multiple times....(heh).

Glad it's not just me wondering about how people make life decisions now, if they have to ask what they should be watching. Problem of influencers = people stop thinking for themselves. Again, not all people, but there's definitely a genre of people who like to have their decisions made for them by literally any random person they've never met before.

Another weird one is "hate-watching." People literally watching season after season of something just so they can post hateful or mocking comments about it. There was one like this on the anime reddit recently. She'd watched every episode, read every manga and novel, even jumped on me for not knowing when the last dvd release had been, yet she describes it as her most hated series ever. And tells everyone every time it's mentions. Follows anyone who comments on it positively so she can rant about it. And the reason she hates it is something in the novels that never got put into the anime...but she likes to rant about it without spoiler tags to try and dissuade people from watching it/shame them for liking the anime...

After a few rounds of being followed by her I told her if she carried on I'd report her for stalking and harassment. She's not spoken to me since. Hopefully she blocked me.

Actually, there's another thing from that forum I mentioned. People blocking people they have never interacted with. I understand blocking someone you've clashed with, or if they post upsetting content, but this was literally someone blocking someone else because they chose to play the game differently or liked a different character...

Eh.

[Beth3346]

not really social media related but speaking on the not searching for already answered questions. it makes my head want to explode when someone i message with asks for information that i sent them previously. just scroll up in the message thread! it's not hard. but no you're going to inconvenience me and ask me to look up something you already have right there! i was raised not to bother people to the point where i won't ask for help until i've exhausted all other options. sometimes to the point where it's a problem. and these people are just asking questions again and again. i've actually had it happen where the answer was visible on my screen and they asked again!! if i can see the answer you can too.

@Taffeta, yeah the whole hate watching thing is annoying. I feel like on the internet there's an incentive for people to have an opinion on everything. and i think people also just like to hate on stuff too. like they can't say "no it didn't look appealing so i didn't watch" they have to rip it to shreds. the whole this thing sucks definitively because i don't like it mentality annoys me. i guess there is always that too cool for the popular thing mentality in people. but now instead of it being people you know IRL it's random people you'll never meet spoiling stuff. it's ok to just like or not like something. don't ruin it for everyone else. also maybe if they're still watching they actually like it.

i don't really go on any other forums these days. i was never really into fandom communities all that much. outside of ponies and web development my other main interest now days is learning about why people get into conspiracies and extremist movements. thankfully that interest doesn't overlap with ponies i don't go anywhere near the internet stuff where they hang out. i just follow and read stuff from people who do that kind of research. i don't go on Twitter much either these days.

[Carrehz]

Going back to the TL;DR thing for a sec.. I just wanted to say that I do think there's a place for TL;DRs. Yesterday I was reading something that was a very long, winding, extremely technical explanation... it would've definitely benefited from a TL;DR in layman's terms. Though I guess that's less a "too long didn't read" and more a "I read it, but it was a bit too technical an explanation for the average user", but still... I think a short and to-the-point explanation *as well as the longer explanation* is good for situations like that. Or if it's the sort of thing where you need to go "Okay first up, TL;DR everything is fine, nothing was lost, don't panic. Anyway here's what happened". I think it's a good idea in general, in the right place/context, it just gets overused WAY too much these days.

I don't understand hatewatching either. I see a lot of posts like "Oh, the show sucks, but I like [my AU/redesigned/might-as-well-be-original-characters versions of] the characters" too and it just baffles me... People seem to put a lot of energy and effort into watching things they claim to hate. I don't get it! I'm not going to tell someone what to watch/what not to watch, I just don't understand the logic there. Ditto people who spend significant amounts of their time ranting and hateposting about something. There's nothing wrong with not liking something and there's nothing really wrong with ranting about it IN your own space (posting a rant in your own blog about how much you hate something - ok, posting to a community for the thing about how terrible and awful it is - pls stop), it's when people do nothing BUT whinge and moan about something they claim to hate that confuses me. If it makes you happy then go for it, I guess, but I just couldn't spend that amount of time and energy getting all het up over something I hated... I'd rather spend that time talking about something nice.

(I guess that sounds a bit hypocritical since I'm having a good moan about it here Well less moaning and more just being puzzled over it, but... ah well )

Beth - I'm exactly the same about asking for things. I always try and have a good search for the answer before resorting to asking others. I don't expect everyone else to be as neurotic about it as I am! But it does annoy me when you can tell they just didn't bother to look for the answer. It just makes me feel like "why should I put the effort in to answer if you didn't bother to put in 0.2 seconds of effort and see that it's already been answered two posts down?", you know?

[alaskaallie]

I miss the days of LiveJournal and deviantART. I guess they're sort of "social media" sites? But they didn't seem to really have the same problems that modern sites like Tumblr/Twitter/etc have - I mean, they felt like communities.

Me tooooo ;_; they were really dying when I started being more active on the internet but I still remember them fondly. Was anyone else on the babydeeeer community on livejournal? It was just for cute and pastel stuff, and I think that's where I got the idea that my put away toys could come back out and be an aesthetic ~collection~. Though I also miss the days of tumblr being super active, with tons of funny gif replies.

[BlackCurtains]

The Imgur community is pretty strong. They're very sarcastic though

[Snapdragon]

I miss the days of LiveJournal and deviantART. I guess they're sort of "social media" sites? But they didn't seem to really have the same problems that modern sites like Tumblr/Twitter/etc have - I mean, they felt like communities.

Me tooooo ;_; they were really dying when I started being more active on the internet but I still remember them fondly. Was anyone else on the babydeeeer community on livejournal? It was just for cute and pastel stuff, and I think that's where I got the idea that my put away toys could come back out and be an aesthetic ~collection~. Though I also miss the days of tumblr being super active, with tons of funny gif replies.

OMG, I had a computer that crashed and died years ago, and I remember being SO SAD because I had saved a billion gifs for all of my ~hilarious and witty~ reblogs, and I was so sad I'd have to track them down again! And I never did! But man, that takes me back! I miss all of the goofy gif shenanigans on there!

[Taffeta]

I miss the days of LiveJournal and deviantART. I guess they're sort of "social media" sites? But they didn't seem to really have the same problems that modern sites like Tumblr/Twitter/etc have - I mean, they felt like communities.

Me tooooo ;_; they were really dying when I started being more active on the internet but I still remember them fondly. Was anyone else on the babydeeeer community on livejournal? It was just for cute and pastel stuff, and I think that's where I got the idea that my put away toys could come back out and be an aesthetic ~collection~. Though I also miss the days of tumblr being super active, with tons of funny gif replies.

I was in a lot of manga/seiyuu/Japanese stuff LJ groups back when. I have no idea if there still exist spaces for that stuff, probably there is a reddit if I go looking but this was much less toxic and much more friendly.

[Beth3346]

yeah niche forums really need to make a comeback. i guess setting up a facebook group is easier and more cost effective though. but facebook

i miss the days when the internet was filled with hobby sites. i miss the hobbyist feel of the earlier internet.

[lovesbabysquirmy]

I despise the lack of accountability now.  My scammer list is pointless.  I spent YEARS working on it, only to have Ebay change its settings for "privacy".  Now you can't obtain the same quality of data. 

Also there's nothing stopping the scammers from just making a new account on whatever platform.  And I have had mistaken identity before, which was very hurtful to the innocent person!  Who knew SunnIEDaxe2777 at FreeEmail DOT com wasn't the same as SunnieDaxe 27?  (*names were made up)

I miss the sense of comraderie and community but mostly I miss the sense of accountability and transparency. 

[Taffeta]

I miss the sense of comraderie and community but mostly I miss the sense of accountability and transparency. 

This is the main reason I no longer sell on ebay. I still have stuff. Doubles. Things I need to get rid of. But I just don't want to deal with the hassle (and the fees for private sellers, the people who originally made Ebay a thing when it first took off.) How to repay your original customer base :/

I don't like how easily a lie can just go viral or spread without anyone bothering to check the facts. People need to question more. It's not even an age related thing. It's just a lack of reading thing, and a lack of thinking thing that somehow proliferates online. People rework things to fit into how they want to see it. I am not even just talking about big world issues - though it happens there too - but it spreads to stupid little things like the plots of films, novels, or what happened in a football (soccer) game.

I don't really understand but apparently everything these days is someone else's fault.

[BabyIceCrystal]

I know this has turned into a discussion about social media, but it still seemed like an appropriate place to pop my head up after years of absence. Sorry if I’m intruding, I’m not sure anyone would remember me…

I’ve definitely noticed forums in general fading as people shift more focus to instant gratification social media. It’s just so hard to have any kind of cohesion there. I miss having drawn out and more insightful conversations about ponies!

[Griffin]

I know this has turned into a discussion about social media, but it still seemed like an appropriate place to pop my head up after years of absence. Sorry if I’m intruding, I’m not sure anyone would remember me…

I’ve definitely noticed forums in general fading as people shift more focus to instant gratification social media. It’s just so hard to have any kind of cohesion there. I miss having drawn out and more insightful conversations about ponies!

Welcome back!   

[Artemesia's Garden]

People rework things to fit into how they want to see it. I am not even just talking about big world issues - though it happens there too - but it spreads to stupid little things like the plots of films, novels, or what happened in a football (soccer) game.

I don't really understand but apparently everything these days is someone else's fault.

I'm afraid it's symptomatic of a deepening problem that's affecting our society. It's called things like 'reframing' (in psychotherapy) 'spin' (in media) or post-truth. Anything open to access on the internet is not worth looking at anymore IMO or is actively misleading. I like books and asking people I know about stuff. Luckily I can make my own fun. But I'm off-topic. I agree that because we are a small, well moderated and responisble forum makes this place a gem. At it's best, it allows us a magic door back into the world of My Little Pony kept alive through collecting, customs and activities like drawing. I've already said how much I appreciate it here but it's worth saying again!