Maybe it’s just me but this site seems to have deteriorated quite considerably over the last year or two and the contributors have become less and less 

Its plainly obvious that traffic has reduced dramatically the question is why?

1. Twitter and Facebook has put the final nail in the football forum

2.  Caley thistle fans seemed to have started posting elsewhere reading pie and bovril there are a number of ex CTO posters now active on that site and they certainly don’t seem to hold back from slagging us off

3. Over zealous moderating any subject that is in anyway slightly contentious seems to get closed or deleted altogether. 

4. Caley jags forever fiasco 

Maybe I’m making a mountain out of a molehill but I personally think there is something really wrong within the ranks of support 

I’m more disillusioned with Scottish football as a whole than any of the reasons I’ve given above if I’m being honest although I’m thinking  of giving pie and bovril a go even if it’s just to help the boredom

Thoughts?

Dougal

 

 

 

I think it's a lack of Dougal. If there was more Dougal there'd be more people here with the popcorn. 

1 hour ago, dougal said:

Maybe it’s just me but this site seems to have deteriorated quite considerably over the last year or two and the contributors have become less and less 

Its plainly obvious that traffic has reduced dramatically the question is why?

ok I'll bite (a little).

 

1 hour ago, dougal said:

1. Twitter and Facebook has put the final nail in the football forum

Disagree. Whilst Twitter and Facebook inevitably affected forums initially there is now a bit more balance. Forums have more structure and not everybody likes how it is hard to search or index things in social media. Forums now try to integrate more tightly with those media so they can co-exist rather than be rivals.  

 

1 hour ago, dougal said:

2.  Caley thistle fans seemed to have started posting elsewhere reading pie and bovril there are a number of ex CTO posters now active on that site and they certainly don’t seem to hold back from slagging us off

People come and go. It has been thus for the last 25 years on CTO. I seldom read P&B but when I do I usually only last a few minutes before logging out. Each to their own though ? 

 

1 hour ago, dougal said:

3. Over zealous moderating any subject that is in anyway slightly contentious seems to get closed or deleted altogether. 

Contrary to the suggestions of some ... we seldom delete things, we rarely ban people and only close threads when they go off topic or are inappropriate. We have a very basic set of rules that have done us well for 25 years and if that means we also have standards then I wont apologise !

 

1 hour ago, dougal said:

4. Caley jags forever fiasco 

CJT has nothing to do with us. We have offered a platform for them to share info, nothing more, nothing less. The fact that some of the new office bearers are also posters on here is not exactly a revelation or a leap. 

 

1 hour ago, dougal said:

Maybe I’m making a mountain out of a molehill but I personally think there is something really wrong within the ranks of support . I’m more disillusioned with Scottish football as a whole than any of the reasons I’ve given above if I’m being honest although I’m thinking  of giving pie and bovril a go even if it’s just to help the boredom. Thoughts?

Dougal

I agree that there is a malaise in Scottish football but its been there for years. and the silly season at the end of the playing season is the worst part of any year .... look back at most seasons and its just as bad, 

Up to now I have invariably gone straight to the Unread Topic  link to find the majority of the information I needed to quench my interest in the Forum. But  sometimes there is nothing showing in that area for weeks on end making me wonder why, and/or whether or not, this part of the Forum had been terminated and eliminated. I once asked about this but never received an explanation.

At that point I then started to try to find  articles or references from clicking on the headings at the top of the first page I am directed to upon arrival on the site  e.g. Home, Forums, Team, Features  etc.. Usually that did not  solve my problem. Then jumping over to the right hand columns to open  any headings  that looked likely to contain the information I needed to assuage, or take, my interest. The feeling I was left with was that this seemed to be an awful lot of work just to access current daily news of events, team scores, reports etc.,. taking into account that this site is a very busy one indeed with a great deal of very interesting information on offer...

Which, in turn, made me wish,  even long for,  an Index where one could very quickly click on the desired topic, etc., and find whatever one was looking for  immediately. At the same time  It might also cut down on the extent of the material that currently shows on several areas/pages upon first access to the site as well.

Otherwise, it's clear  that a great deal of effort and dedication has been put into this site over many years and I would not miss my daily visit for the world. I look forward to it every day.So, much appreciated and  thank you very much indeed to every one involved with the site directly.

Scarlet. 

 

 

18 minutes ago, Scarlet Pimple said:

Up to now I have invariably gone straight to the Unread Topic  link to find the majority of the information I needed to quench my interest in the Forum. But  sometimes there is nothing showing in that area for weeks on end making me wonder why, and/or whether or not, this part of the Forum had been terminated and eliminated. I once asked about this but never received an explanation.

This is really for the tech support forum, but will put it here as it may be relevant to people navigating the site in general ..... You can create your own searches and feeds and filter in/out the content you want or don't want or you can use the defaults under the 'my activity streams' menu. The default we set is to use 'unread content 2' . This will show all unread content since your last visit and index it by newest first. It does this as we have three search fields active (see below - 'read status', 'time period' and 'sorting' all have values. you can adjust this and save it as a custom stream which will appear in your new custom searches option. (see other image below). 

One thing that WILL  mess up the (default) unread content function is if you routinely clear cookies after you visit and I have mentioned this to you many times. The system uses cookies to remember your login and to figure out when you last logged in to the site. If you insist on clearing cookies then change the time period to something like last 365 days instead of last visit and it should work better for you as it wont care when you last logged in/out. 

 

 

 

As I wrote this reply I have actually tweaked this for you ... the my activity streams will now show Unread Content (last visit) and Unread Content (all) ... set it to to use it as I have described. and then click the little checkmark shown to set it as your default. 

 

 

As has been said, it's close season and people have other priorities and, unless there is upheaval in the shape of relegation or speculation about a new manager or the existing manager being sacked, things inevitably go quiet so maybe it's no bad thing that we don't have that much to discuss until the football proper begins.

Also, just three years ago ICT were a hugely successful team permanently in the top tier and regularly in the top six competing in and winning major finals. Sadly, we are now a mid table Championship side so, for now at least, it's perhaps not surprising that interest in general and traffic on this site has dwindled a little. Come March or April, if we are challenging for promotion I am sure you will see a difference.

If I could, then I would
I'll go wherever you will go
Way up high or down low, I'll go wherever you will go

Run away with my heart
Run away with my hope
Run away with my love

Scotty ,

All noted with interest and especially that adjustment for the" Unread"  situation which I was unaware of. Putting this site together must have been a really  taxing  and time consuming process but at least you have the comfort of knowing you succeeded beyond your wildest.....

It's possible that you may be interrupting your holiday  and dealing with irritating people like members of the Pimple family must therefore  be a real bore. I know , I have to live with them as well! Undoubtedly they have their faults but their hearts are probably in the right place so onward and upwards, Sigh? And thanks for the effort.

Re the cookies removal I am not quite sure what you are actually referring to since I am  well aware (and have been for some time now) that removal of cookies is not the best thing one can do and had already set CCleaner, the only cleaner I use on my computer, specifically not  to eliminate cookies by blanking out the boxes for them alongside all the other stuff on offer for cleaning listed  beside both  Edge and IE11 respectively. Meaning that they should NOT be cleaned during the scan. So, hopefully that is not actually happening but, with computers, who knows?

 

 

I think it is inevitable that this site has become less vibrant over the last 2 or 3 years.  It is a reflection of the downward fortunes of the club since the Scottish Cup win and a brief European adventure.  Not only does that sap enthusiasm, it also polarises opinion about what the appropriate expectations for the club are and some folk simply don't like listening to views which are very different from their own.

I had a look at P&B a while back and was surprised at just how poor it is.  Following Dougal's OP I have been dipping in and out of it and it hasn't got any better.  It does, however, have the advantage that it allows fans from different clubs to read and comment on each other's threads. There are also reasonable threads about wider football and other topics which allows discussion with a wider group than possible on here. It therefore has its place.  But if you simply want discussion around your own club then CTO is a far superior medium in which to do that.  CTO has so many advantages in terms of it's structure, functionality and quality of discussion. 

Maybe the mods here get things wrong from time to time, but the thing is that all people should be able voice their opinions or ask questions without being subjected to some sarcastic or abusive comment from some know it all with far more ego than respect for others.  Of course there are people on here who some will find irritating in one way or another, but this is a club specific site and one of the joys of it is that it provides a platform for all.  If you don't like a particular poster then settings allow you to ignore them or you can simply scroll down to the next post without reading.  We are very fortunate to have such a well structured and well run site.  Long may it continue!

 

There's several reasons the forum is slowing down, social media is a big one whether it be football, cars or other topics the single subject forum is no longer what folks want - you can get the social media groups with instant replies and people don't have to put any structure to their content. Responses can be short and acknowledged through 'likes' and sharing - that's more important than the content or any structured points.

It can be seen on here, there's a lot of posts which have few sentences or lines of text - nobody wants to spend time building structured points or those that do are the minority and the 'usual suspects'.

On other Forums that I am on they have  a Private Message facility that can be very useful when trying to contact members. Not being very good with computers I don't know how easy/difficult that would be to include

And here is me thinking that CTO had improved. There is new blood, there is enthusiasm - there are the negatives and the digs but that is what forums are all about. I dip into Pie and Bovril every now and then but I get a sense of a number of excellent but few in number regular posters and a lot of goody two shoes.

On an average Pie and Bovril thread you have to scroll through page after page of GIFs, memes, and vacuous posts to find something worth reading. 90% of posters have absolutely nothing to contribute, but spam every thread they enter with incessant nonsense. Even the 'good' posters write like insufferably smug, snarky, first year undergraduate sociology students who think they're archie. I've noticed many of the "I'm off P and B where my witty posts will be appreciated" crowd here attempting to imitate the 'cool kids' on P and B, and failing miserably.

This forum has plenty of roasters to be sure, but they're OUR roasters.

3 hours ago, Biggin said:

On other Forums that I am on they have  a Private Message facility that can be very useful when trying to contact members. Not being very good with computers I don't know how easy/difficult that would be to include

You can do that on here as well 

I love CTO. 

I hugely admire the efforts of those that maintain it.

I am befuddled by this thread.

If anything, Doofers has it right - less success by ICT = less footfall on the forum.

Anything else??

Too many befuddled old Jeggies ?

Jhesus - Had my thread about the Cove game deleted and a warning from P&B ?

2 hours ago, IMMORTAL HOWDEN ENDER said:

Jhesus - Had my thread about the Cove game deleted and a warning from P&B ?

Caleythistleonline can no longer contain IHE's drunken posting sprees. Pie and Bovril represents humanities last hope. Lord help us if this boy ever gets a Reddit account. r/Romania moving to Defcon 2 as we speak.

that must have been some thread to get deleted on P&B !

2 hours ago, Scotty said:

that must have been some thread to get deleted on P&B !

Probably too many big words!

They have a separate section for cup games !!  They include all the teams from the same group in the same thread - and nobody really comments. So I decided to start one of my own in the Championship section ?