Single Digit Community?

Is it me or this forum is basically consist of single digit frequent members? Maybe not exactly single digit, but, certain very few. All I can remember is the typical MS haters, about 3. 1 super MS supporter. 1 guy who always complains LCD and shooter games. 1 guy who post politics. And randomly have some threads talking about geeky toys or stuff that I cannot comprehend, which is about 10 people. And then there is me being me.

Roughly counted 20 members are frequent forum users.

I kinda hope this place it more lively.

On the other hand we don't want it too lively; I moved here from CodeProject forums because they were so busy that within a couple of minutes anything you posted dropped off the front page so there was little continuation of threads like we have here. Additionally there were so many posters that you never got to know many of them well.

Perhaps coffeehouse lurkers should say hello in this thread so we can see who else is around?

Additionally, don't forget that C9 is much more that just the coffeehouse, so there are a lot of 9ers who don't come in here.

Herbie

7 minutes ago, magicalclick wrote

Is it me or this forum is basically consist of single digit frequent members? Maybe not exactly single digit, but, certain very few. All I can remember is the typical *MS haters*, about 3. 1 super MS supporter. 1 guy who always complains LCD and shooter games. 1 guy who post politics. And randomly have some threads talking about geeky toys or stuff that I cannot comprehend, which is about 10 people. And then there is me being me.

Roughly counted 20 members are frequent forum users.

I kinda hope this place it more lively.

Its getting lonely here, isn't it? It must be like it felt on Novell forms around 1997. If you count me as MS hater, you're wrong. I certainly don't hate MS, just some of its actions. Currently I hate its lawsuits targeting open-source projects like linux, and almost none of the few members say anything.

My guess is that things will liven up Mix - I heard that those up for the Niners awards are all going to be issued 'Channel 9 guy' suits before the conference starts..

@Ian2: Only if we get to Sumo wrestle in them too!

Herbie

2 hours ago, magicalclick wrote

Is it me or this forum is basically consist of single digit frequent members? Maybe not exactly single digit, but, certain very few. All I can remember is the typical MS haters, about 3. 1 super MS supporter. 1 guy who always complains LCD and shooter games. 1 guy who post politics. And randomly have some threads talking about geeky toys or stuff that I cannot comprehend, which is about 10 people. And then there is me being me.

Roughly counted 20 members are frequent forum users.

I kinda hope this place it more lively.

well i do not know if or how you counted me but to be honest half the time i do not post due to how often the thread is

a) started by a troll

or

b) a troll has jumped in and all the other replies are to the troll

for example a recent thread started to have a good chat about the fate / future of MS and turned into a troll fest and charles had to lock the thread.

for a long time we have had that problem of folks feeding the trolls ... i guess it's never going to stop.

I am glad that the current C9 software is way more stable than the last one ... i think that time period of the site hurt the membership, i think we lost a lot of folks during that time.

and so it goes...

@magicalclick:

I'd contribute a lot more but I don't want to waste everyone's time.  

I read most of the threads, but often have nothing to add. I do agree that the active forum members can be counted on your fingers.

W3bbo, Dr. Herbie, figuerres, ian2, magicalclick, dovella, Bas, Charles, jamie, who am I missing?

Me.

4 hours ago, magicalclick wrote

All I can remember is the typical MS haters, about 3. 1 super MS supporter.

That seems to be the typical ratio for most tech sites. It's surprising that it's no different even on a Microsoft property.

 @magicalclick: There are people I work with that watch the videos (I noticed the Eric Lippert video today on a collegues screen) but never participate in the forum.

A certain way to get more traffic is not to be so heavy handed on trolls, but then the site becomes terrible as the flame-ways are fought.

I am sure that the C team are more focussed on the content delivery, with the forum as a bonus. Stack overflow is great for answers, but no real dicussion occurs there. Commenting on Arstechnica articles can reach the many hundreds, and again that is rather fragmented.

3 hours ago, Sven Groot wrote

Me.

D'oh! I knew I'd miss people. Sven and vesuvius.

8 hours ago, Dr Herbie wrote

Perhaps coffeehouse lurkers should say hello in this thread so we can see who else is around?

"Hello"

I'd post more, except I'm a wee undergrad and too busy with CS work. I can't keep up with everything that comes out these days, so I'll end up in one of three cases: 1) Like magicalclick, I wont know what the heck any of you guys are talking about in regards to any of the cool stuff or 2) I'll finally read up on something cool, but then there will be a post on here discussing it to great lengths that I can't exactly contribute something other than "This is awesome" or 3) You guys just know too much. Yeah. Don't want to be naive.

@MasterPie: Don't worry about how much you know -- I treat the coffeehouse like an episode of QI --  it's more important to be interesting than to know everything!

Herbie

well, I had followed C9 videos for a long long time before started look inside the Coffeehouse or even post here. to me C9 is primarily a video site.

8 hours ago, Dr Herbie wrote

Perhaps coffeehouse lurkers should say hello in this thread so we can see who else is around?

I'm normally lurking in the forums, post once in a blue moon.  Think I've watch 80% plus of all the videos on here, though the influx of marketing vids (pretty much anything under 5 mins) is reducing my ratio these days 

The members of Channel9, especially some Microsoft employees need to buck up and let people have opposing opinions without stalking them until they change their minds or leave.

So somebody posted some opinion about Microsoft or technology you don't agree with. Just let it go. This is just an internet forum.

People on other forums are able to let opinions they don't agree with go as opinion. In better Universities this happens. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was able to speak at Columbia without there being any type of inflammatory behavior for example.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=773638342167920349#

People don't love Microsoft and all their technology. It doesn't matter that Microsoft pays for the staff and hosting for this message board. This board is not htauth protected and is open to everybody. Keep that in mind.

I came back here after years of ignoring C9 (and all of the other channels) because I didn't have the time. (I'm sure many of you wish I would have kept ignoring C9  ) I made the time because I felt like the Microsoft that produced great point-click-and-ship tools in the past was loosing ground to bloated academia that is so pervasive in their languages, API, frameworks, and toolsets today. C9 in the past seemed to be the best channel for getting your voice to developers inside Microsoft and as a place to better understand them. For better or worse this simplfied site doesn't appear to be that place anymore. There is still some value here (videos) but there's just not enough meaningful conversation that leads me to believe anyone is listening.

By no means do I want my opinions to demean the hard work of the niners who run this site, produce the videos, etc. It's a daughting task I'm sure. I just hope for all of the trouble that it's worth it. Thanks niners for keeping this site going for all of these years.