Time for a change...

[brianofnazarethffs]

I know Cuntstain, A.K.A FuB has spoken with some of you via message/email etc about the future of Rant. This has been coming for a long, long time. Years in fact. The rise of social media (Twitter etc) has had an impact on the forum style for the last 10 years. We've held on thanks to the help of regular posters Sid et al and FuB for taking control of the technical side of running a forum when it seemed dead a few years back. I had to contact Ed and convince him to continue servicing the forum and informed him that Fub would take care of the day-to-day running.

I am one of the founding members of this forum, a forum that has taken many different faces over the years. I joined a mind-boggling 20 YEARS AGO! It sounds crazy to write that. The years have flown by. This forum for a period was the greatest of them all, the humour/banter and characters were unbelievable. The classic 'you had to be there'. With members such as captainhormone, Calvino, Alf, Pikey, Robbo, Sheesh, Danniitronix, Uncle Knobhead, Just1n, MadRedMonkey, Laz, Tel, Lurganred, RedDread, Nailyclops, Galway, Fatty, Duffy, Czuk, Squigles, Nonsikal et al.... (If anyone is in contact with any of these can you let me know?).

How does everyone feel about moving forward and aligning with the NQAT brand that the original Ed has created?

[OliverB]

There's only about 10 active members on here now-a-days... just move it forward and they will follow.

I'm surprised that when you had to get people to keep the place running you didn't opt to move it to TapaTalk Groups, they move your existing forum over to their platform, it's phpBB so the ACP, MCP, UCP etc are the same as they are here, TapaTalk keep the engine room running fine and all you have to do is run the front end stuff, it's free too so you would save on hosting costs and also be available on the TapaTalk app.

[brianofnazarethffs]

There's only about 10 active members on here now-a-days... just move it forward and they will follow.

I'm surprised that when you had to get people to keep the place running you didn't opt to move it to TapaTalk Groups, they move your existing forum over to their platform, it's phpBB so the ACP, MCP, UCP etc are the same as they are here, TapaTalk keep the engine room running fine and all you have to do is run the front end stuff, it's free too so you would save on hosting costs and also be available on the TapaTalk app.

Don’t be surprised. I know fuck all about the technical side. You shouldn’t worry yourself about any of that, Fub deals with that. Just worry about contributing towards the football chat

[dozer]

What else will change apart from branding?

[FuB]

What else will change apart from branding?

I will also migrate over the URL but i should be able to do that in such a way as it doesn't muck anyone about too much.

In terms of other things changing: Firstly, Sid suggested pruning out the forum to remove a lot of the historical bitching that went on. Rather than us spending an inordinate time arguing about what to keep and what to remove, i'd suggest removing all topics that haven't been posted to for a period of time, say a number of years.

Beyond that, i'll do the much needed upgrade to the forum software which will necessitate some cosmetic changes because i need to upgrade the style/theme that's in use as well.

Would you suggest any other changes, dozer?

[Fuck the Glazers]

Yeah I think we should remove the toxicity from those bad years. One it's off putting to newcomers. Most new members read the forum first (sometimes for years) then post. But having that shite hanging around is off putting.

Also we should keep it in line with twitter, FB, reddit etc who have all had to clean up their act. There are laws against online bullying, pile ons, dogwhistling, threats, harassment and obviously racism & misogyny. I aren't accusing anyone and certainly not avoiding blame myself. But the internet is very much not the wild west anymore. That applies to Rant.

Moreover it's in line with Ed / NQATs values and beliefs. NQAT and the other contributors on the pod, on twitter etc have been strong on Ronaldo, Giggs, racism, misogyny - the lot. This is Eds forum at the end of the day. He pays for it. He's also liable, I think? With this in mind having posts that refer to black people as "black pudding" need to go asap. Back em up if you must but get em off the main view.

I would also get rid of the dead topics. Threads which haven't been posted in for years. We use the forum differently now. We tend to post on matches and transfers. If people want to talk about other stuff eg politics, other sports then we can set up new topics for them as and when.

I would like Rant to be a part of NQAT and hopefully pull some members from there. But also just reflect more accurately what this place is now.

[dozer]

Imo delete everything and start with a clean slate.

[FuB]

Imo delete everything and start with a clean slate.

Whilst that's much easier to achieve with a couple of database queries, i'm not sure it's the best plan if we want to attract more users. The internet is all about "content" and zero content isn't going to look that great.

[brianofnazarethffs]

Yeah I think we should remove the toxicity from those bad years. One it's off putting to newcomers. Most new members read the forum first (sometimes for years) then post. But having that shite hanging around is off putting.

Also we should keep it in line with twitter, FB, reddit etc who have all had to clean up their act. There are laws against online bullying, pile ons, dogwhistling, threats, harassment and obviously racism & misogyny. I aren't accusing anyone and certainly not avoiding blame myself. But the internet is very much not the wild west anymore. That applies to Rant.

Moreover it's in line with Ed / NQATs values and beliefs. NQAT and the other contributors on the pod, on twitter etc have been strong on Ronaldo, Giggs, racism, misogyny - the lot. This is Eds forum at the end of the day. He pays for it. He's also liable, I think? With this in mind having posts that refer to black people as "black pudding" need to go asap. Back em up if you must but get em off the main view.

I would also get rid of the dead topics. Threads which haven't been posted in for years. We use the forum differently now. We tend to post on matches and transfers. If people want to talk about other stuff eg politics, other sports then we can set up new topics for them as and when.

I would like Rant to be a part of NQAT and hopefully pull some members from there. But also just reflect more accurately what this place is now.

This.

[FuB]

Yeah I think we should remove the toxicity from those bad years. One it's off putting to newcomers. Most new members read the forum first (sometimes for years) then post. But having that shite hanging around is off putting.

Also we should keep it in line with twitter, FB, reddit etc who have all had to clean up their act. There are laws against online bullying, pile ons, dogwhistling, threats, harassment and obviously racism & misogyny. I aren't accusing anyone and certainly not avoiding blame myself. But the internet is very much not the wild west anymore. That applies to Rant.

Moreover it's in line with Ed / NQATs values and beliefs. NQAT and the other contributors on the pod, on twitter etc have been strong on Ronaldo, Giggs, racism, misogyny - the lot. This is Eds forum at the end of the day. He pays for it. He's also liable, I think? With this in mind having posts that refer to black people as "black pudding" need to go asap. Back em up if you must but get em off the main view.

I would also get rid of the dead topics. Threads which haven't been posted in for years. We use the forum differently now. We tend to post on matches and transfers. If people want to talk about other stuff eg politics, other sports then we can set up new topics for them as and when.

I would like Rant to be a part of NQAT and hopefully pull some members from there. But also just reflect more accurately what this place is now.

This.

I'm in complete agreement with all of this sentiment. The only thing i should point out is that Ed probably isn't liable. Regardless, whatever happens here reflects on the owner of the site/domain so I'm quite certain he would support what's being said.