Forum archives

[Sunshine]

Wow! I was looking at archives back to about 2004 for BT.

I forgot how active we were. There were lots of regular posters. Where did everyone go?

And I forgot I ran a monthly Swim and Exercise thread where we all supported each other in keep on moving.

What is the history? How did the forum fade?

[agate]

Nobody knows for sure. I'd like to think of it, not as faded, but as different. It's more like a small community of people trying to be friendly and usually succeeding. Before we were a large hodgepodge of assorted people who often failed to communicate with one another partly because there were so many of us.

You'd try to be replying to what somebody said in a post, but by the time you submitted your post, a whole bunch of other posts would have gone up in that thread, and the topic might have gone in another direction.

You did indeed do a swimming and exercise thread regularly, BBS. If you ever opt to start it up again, I'd post in it. I exercise though it isn't most people's idea of a workout--just the PT exercises I've been told to do.

Not anything much but I like to think they're the reason why my walking isn't nearly as wobbly as it was a couple of months ago.

[Virginia]

BBS, I remember your swim and exercise thread. I was doing Yoga and working at that time. Was not as active on the forum a lot of time due to time constraints back then. But I remember most of what went on.

[Howie]

Sven from Sveden parties.

[Earth Mother 2 Angels]

((((((BBS1951)))))) ~

This is my theory of how the forums faded:

BT had a lot of crashes and was down for what seemed to be long periods of time. Members became aggravated, especially, since there were no notifications to members about the crashes/estimated time to restore the forums.

Original owner, John Lester, abandoned BT for a fantasy world website, which he created or was involved in developing. Members were perturbed and angry.

Because of the huge number of members and posters, conflicts arose periodically, causing Moderators to suspend or ban members. There were ill feelings by many about both the conflicts and the banning. People took sides, naturally.

With the many social media sites popping up constantly, people became attracted to different venues for communication. Lots of folks left BT to form groups on Facebook. They never looked back.

It's not just BT. Discussion boards are passe' and are drying up all over the world wide web. People prefer communicating in 140 characters, or three sentences. They like short cuts, such as: "IDK, how are u? 'K? Need 2 go 2 the store."

Unfortunately, new members don't seem to stay here for longer than a few posts. Some people post once and never return. Many new members post in forums, which have been stagnant for years. Some of us fill in to welcome and offer help, but we don't have the experience in the types of problems these new members have (like a CSF leak). We just don't have enough activity to meet the needs of new members.

As I see it, there have been a number of factors contributing to the loss of members and lower activity. We've tried everything we can think of to regenerate the forums. We're just blessed that Mike, David, and Dr. Dan keep BT up and running.

Love & Light,

Rose

[agate]

Rose, I've had that experience too--wanting to post in a thread on one of the other forums but realizing that I have nothing to say that would help that person because the topic is a neurological disorder about which I know nothing.

And yet it would be nice if the person got a reply. I notice that you often provide replies to people who wouldn't otherwise get a response, and I'm sure everybody here is grateful that you do that.

Maybe the time has come for people with a variety of neurological disorders to realize that we have much in common just by having that type of disorder and try to reach out to one another more--because some of the forums here now have almost nobody posting in them.

It's just a thought, a possible way of bringing these isolated people together more. I saw that stillstANNding had called attention to the informational posts about memory that have been posted on another forum.

Maybe we should all think to look at the other forums more often and see if we can put our oar in now and then. Sometimes our posts might not be welcome there for one reason or another, or we may find that nobody has read them, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.

If a person has a problem that I can find good information about on the Internet, I could try to direct that person to a link or two. That is the kind of help I received and was very glad to have when I first came to this board.

Rose, I hate those sites where you have to limit yourself to 140 characters or whatever. I spend all my time counting up the characters and end up saying almost nothing.

I haven't bothered to learn much of the shorthand. BRB, KWIM? That's about all I know. FWIW.

[Sunshine]

This all makes sense. The world has becoming an overly busy and disconnected one. The more we become technologically connected, it seems the more disconnected people become from one another. One of the many strengths to BT is the feeling of connectedness, not just the stream of useful information.

Perhaps I will start up the Keep on Moving thread again and see if it's useful to us.

[SalpalSally]

I miss the busy old days, but this is also nice.

[Virginia]

Sally, it has been nice lately. For one thing we all seem to be of one opinion, or at least accepting of others opinions, in the past week and a half. I can remember a time when the kind of discussions we have had in the past 10 days would not have been allowed on here and if it had been there would have been a fight.

[Cat Dancer]

There was a lot of heavy moderation in those days....off topic posts were hard to get established. Threads would get off topic and be blocked. I got thrown off the board, and stayed away for a very long time: the post that got me tossed was one I *thought* was in fact helpful, and supportive...but was told otherwise. And as someone said, Facebook came along and took away a lot of folks.
I don't do the "short post" thing. Twitter, tweeting, all that seems just so unnecessary. So I don't bother. I do spend time on Facebook, but not on any MS related forums. Haven't even thought to look for them there. My church, though, has a lot of on line presence (my church has always been a mail order, "virtual" church), so that's where I spend my time when I'm not here harassing folks.