SAD MEGA THREAD C***S

This albino above must never see the light of day.  Must be an average of about 40 posts every single day since his joining date.  Years ago this was a forum for analysis and insight.  Now, with just a few exceptions, it is more like a refuge for agoraphobics and the lonely.

most are full time gamblers though. And lets face it most people are at work so you can either come a sports forum or sit in a room just watching sport alone.

@acqiesce How miserable will your own life be when you come on a betting forum complaining about how miserable some of the other people here are.

Grow up. Does your mother make you read the mega thread every day or what?

Megathread muppets have destroyed this forum

it's been done to death.

there are plenty of people who would prefer separate threads, but there are simply not enough posters. you get fewer posts for a slam final these days than you used to do for some filthy tinpot 2nd round 8 year agos.

i would really prefer the megathread to be only about tennis as well, but what can you do. you can't control what people choose to post.

there is only about 8 people who post in the Megathread. Nothing stopping everyone else having match threads.

detraveller, FOYSDC

Jul 12, 2016 -- 2:28PM, DStyle wrote:

it's been done to death.there are plenty of people who would prefer separate threads, but there are simply not enough posters. you get fewer posts for a slam final these days than you used to do for some filthy tinpot 2nd round 8 year agos.i would really prefer the megathread to be only about tennis as well, but what can you do. you can't control what people choose to post.

Out of interest do you think it should be like this at all times or just when tennis is going on. I do try to stay mostly on topic when there is actual tennis being played, and don't really mind if it drifts off topic when f all is going on, but I realise this has somewhat slipped recently with Brexit becoming a hot topic in the mega thread a lot.

The overall thing is though even when I make other threads very few people post in them these days. Eg. when I made my women's Wimbledon outright thread recently, about 90% of the posts in that thread must be from 3-4 posters. I was having a lot of the same discussion in the mega thread too with others, but I made that thread because something like that would just get totally lost if you posted it in the mega thread.

I think there's very few matches though where match threads really work anymore. There's so much streamed these days, and the amount of active posters must be decreasing all the time. On a week like this week you might have less than 10 people who would actually contribute to threads. And they won't all be watching the same matches. It's like this at grand slams too where the choice of matches in the first week are huge, and it's likely most people aren't watching the 1.01 shot on CC for their action.

I mean the way to make other threads work in general is to get involved yourself, but I know when I've done this the reality is you get very few responses, because there just isn't that many people around on the forum anymore, and even fewer are likely to be interested in whatever topic you are writing about.

And that has happened across all the forums really too. As even the football forum is pretty much dead for discussion. Unless it's a huge match no-one gives a crap anymore.

At least here you have somewhere if you want to say something you can. And there is one advantage to a big thread is that it draws others attention to the interesting activity of the time. It's not easy to always follow everything going on, but when people are talking about other matches, you can be draw to the points of interest for the time.

It's like the spread of posts is massively skewed on here though - if just a fraction of the mega posts spilled out into other posts this forum could actually be half decent.

It's hard to make a topic that actually appeals this though. People might want the dream world of each match has it's own thread with 50 posts of pure discussion, but reality is most people contributing are watching or have their eye on multiple matches at a time, there tends to be too much going on for this.

It's not easy to ignite actual discussion, I try to comment in everything I have at least an opinion on. Eg. I saw your Novak Djokovic thread, and saw you say how it didn't get any discussion elsewhere, but that's the problem, where are the people to discuss it. Problem there is no-one had any concrete information on his fitness, it was just very hard to have an opinion on this. The fitness was an unknown quantity and the field in Canada had been ravaged by injuries.

The target audience now is only about maybe 20 people. It's not easy to write something that appeals when there's that few people reading the forum. I try this myself every now and then, most recently with my women's Wimbledon outright thread, but it's a relatively lot of work to do something like that for relatively few responses when I can just write 1 line in the mega thread of I think x is value today.

Like with all things based on the internet its very hard to keep every user happy. The past few years I've been using this forum there has been a transition from match by match threads to the mega thread!. The main problem is that there is too many matches on every day to create single match threads. As there is no Admin who works towards shaping how this forum is used to benefit the users. I suggest you stop moaning about mega threads. Unless you come up with a worthy solution that can add value to the users of this forum as a whole I suggest that you take your seethe caps lock attitude elsewhere.
Regards,
Blur fan

There's a natural ebb and flow of posters for most forums on the internet and always has been. The issue I see with the megathread culture is that it's not conducive to drawing people in to replace those that naturally lose interest / get married / expire / get sectioned etc. For example, a potential new contributor getting drawn into the nuances of what was happening in the Bouchard Kucova match might come on here, see no apparent discussion going on except in a megathread which invariably has an obscure cliquey title and is stuffed full on non-tennis chat, and just pass on through. Things aren't set up to have any traction in that respect.

So perhaps a solution would be to have an agreement to break things down into a series of 'Mother threads'. I would suggest to try three kinds of 'mother threads'.

1 - Tournament specific (eg WTA Montreal, prefixed by one star)
2 - Player specific discussion ongoing (eg Andy Murray, prefixed by two stars)
3 - The ongoing general regulars thread for the group that want to discuss politics, baseball, wifeswapping etc (prefixed by three stars)

I think that could work as it perhaps would combine elements of the appeal of both megathread culture and the old match thread culture while resolving the negative aspects of both?
Obviously it would only work if there was an agreed willingness to trial the concept for a period of time.

Anyway that's just my suggestion to throw in the mix. Peace to both camps :)

That would make more sense if sign ups would still open, but they aren't. The number of new members the last 2-3 years is absolute minimal. I'm going to guess I'm comfortably correct saying 95% of users signed up > 3 years ago, and that is the problem, the people leaving aren't getting replaced so the user pool is forever declining.

I don't think the title is that obscure either. When I set up the mega thread I always tried to make it known what it's about in the title for that purpose.

In theory the mega thread is meant to be #1 in what you say, originally it was a weekly thread, I don't really know why it moved away from this format but gradually they become longer and longer, laziness I guess, people just couldn't be bothered to set up a new thread every Monday. Through most the year there's a reliance on a handful of users to continually doing this because eg. the weeks after Wimbledon there just isn't many people around.

There isn't anywhere near the number of users around required for #2 to work. Reality is people would just create a new thread for any major news to a specific player. And I would say this is one thing in general, is when you go to single threads (only really happens during grand slams now) is a lot of the time people will create a thread on a topic there is already one 5 posts down (which is more of a problem with no real moderation).

The #1 negative imo to mega threads is that a classic match comments pretty much get lost forever these days, and it's hard to find anything from history (so think Isner vs Levine classic match thread). All the meltdowns during matches are just lost in the shuffle after they happen, but then these meltdowns wouldn't be as interesting if there was match threads anyway because there would be far less posts I imagine on the matches.

I do partly get your points n88 - but if a post about Aza being preggers can get 20 replies, why can't a post about a match?

Because it's on a topic that will attract a lot of joke replies. Half the posts are by the same person. And it's also been running over what 2 weeks now, whereas a match thread lasts a few hours.

It wouldn't take much - all the posts don't have to be quick, and 6 or 7 replies would be an improvement for most posts on here.

I'm not sure I get your angle about people only posting definite information either - this place is hardly like that is it, just discussion would be enough.

if people only could make 'quality' replies then the football forum prob wouldn't exist as a comparison

I didn't mean it like that. I meant as a topic unless you know something about Djokovic's well being it's not a topic likely to invoke much topic. Because nearly everyone here will have a strong opinion towards Djokovic winning the tournament, and given the number of withdrawals in Canada the price was already taken into an account the little unknown on how is Djokovic. I guess I could posted something like that, but it feels like I'm saying nothing if I say that.

I doubt many people are even paying attention to outrights outside grand slams too due to low liquidity, and the risk of x player withdrawing mid-tournament is greater.

Football forum is an example though. There is far more discussion here on the actual tennis than in football forum. In football forum unless it's literally like Man Utd vs Man City Super Sunday nobody cares anymore. It's just a plight of lack of users, and not being easy to invoke a discussion. I remember the days where you could make a thread on pretty much any remotely credible match in football forum and it would get replies, now most matches it takes something interesting to happen to get any replies at all.

Went round Leeds yesterday on all day piss up...walked bus stop full of hijab wearing muppets, said "IS THIS BUS TO PAKISTAN?"

Whoops wrong thread..

n88k - end of the day, no-one can force anyone to post, and I agree all the forums on BF have suffered of course.

I was just pointing out the disparity between 'potential' posters shown by the megathread, and replies elsewhere, which is something that doesn't apply to the other forums on here.

I still find it odd that those posters are happy enough to ramble off 1000's of replies about MMA or other stuff, but can't be bothered to post a single thought about a tennis match or bet....on a tennis betting forum!

GrantCKing is the worst of them all

I used to like the tennis forum.  There was a lot of decent posters, dlarssonf and DStyle being two on this thread whose opinions I always enjoyed reading. 

Now there's about 1,000 new posts on one thread every time I log in.  Even if I could be chewed reading them, by the time I'm done there'll be 100 new posts, usually from wisewords and GrantCKing talking about what they had for tea or who's going to win the darts.  I have no axe to grind with these guys and they can post about whatever they please, but I have no interest in having a discussion with someone who appears to have verbal diarrhoea and only posts on here for lack of any other option in life.

There are three things that are guaranteed in life, death, taxes and an Anti mega thread popping up on a quarterly basis, Sir_Peasant usually makes them, IQ12 is probably his other name.

It's a junk thread, Taylor Swift, cats, WWE, cack American sports, obscure indie bands, gay rights and Politics are the topics on any given night, sometimes tennis is thrown into the mix.

At the same time, they only really bother the people that have no life, suffice to say I am not overly bothered but would prefer if they died, there is no comments section on the internet that moves faster, rendering it almost pointless to read let alone post.

Not sure why GrantCKingaman has taken it in the neck more than most, when he is merely a periphery figure.

A mugs mug.

Kind regards.

amazing

they all attack me then go busto and are never seen again

Grant sees them all off

This from football forum highlights what has happened.

tobermory • August 11, 2016 1:21 AM BST
The number of threads in use on football forum August 10 , 2016 was 27

August 10, 2010 it was 175

tobermory • August 11, 2016 1:43 AM BST
In the last entire YEAR of the boxing forum there have been 130 threads started

On ONE DAY - November 7 , 2009 - there were 134 threads began on there

And of course one I personally remember is when Barcelona scored in the last minute vs Chelsea in the CL in 2009 I think it was, there was 4 minutes between the top thread and bottom thread on football forum. Today there is 5 days.

If you look at those numbers Betfair must have lost like 85% of their posters.

Guess people wonder why there are 10,000s of posts about bollax though n88 on here in that case...?

Maybe, just maybe there are far fewer posts and threads on here than before because they all get sucked into the vortex that is the MEGATHREAD

But that misses the point why the mega thread began in the first place. The mega thread began because on the average week it's pretty much the same 6 or so posters talking to each other. This is why those posters get to know each other much better too. In the old days you had 100s of users active, so you weren't always talking to the same users.

Reality is if the mega thread stopped there would just be next to no activity full stop, you probably wouldn't even get 100 posts on here in a week. It doesn't help that honestly a lot of the other threads these days are utter crap, look at the recent spam for example. The majority of threads active in August really are just inane nonsense.

There used to be mega threads than ran alongside match threads, they were called outright threads, maybe had about 10,000 post over a season.

I suspect a lot more people would post if there were two megathreads, one for 'Tennis Talk' and one for 'Miscellaneous'. If the usual suspects were willing to discipline themeselves to post all tennis related stuff in the tennis mega and everything else in the miscellaneous mega, that would at least allow people interested in tennis to avoid having to step over all the party games, broken glass and inane sh11t that fill the usual megathread(s).

Aug 19, 2016 -- 11:59PM, Journeyman wrote:

I suspect a lot more people would post if there were two megathreads, one for 'Tennis Talk' and one for 'Miscellaneous'. If the usual suspects were willing to discipline themeselves to post all tennis related stuff in the tennis mega and everything else in the miscellaneous mega, that would at least allow people interested in tennis to avoid having to step over all the party games, broken glass and inane sh11t that fill the usual megathread(s).

sounds beautiful. too bad we don't live in a perfect world

i like the megathread, if it was spilt up i likely wouldn't use either.

what you are really complaining about is not being able to nab tips as quick as you would like. get your own opinions and the megathread is a nice place to talk while betting tennis.