Forum Turnoff's

[CyberWizard]

I was wondering, what is it that turn's you off the MOST in different forums? All answers will be greatly appreciated.

[dWhite]

A forum that has been overrun by spammers, that is a big turnoff.

[htmlbasictutor]

• Slow rendering - poor background coding, server not right capacity
• Spam!
• Useless answers when you are trying to solve a problem
• Nasty replies to Newbie questions
• No replies to your posting

[socks]

Requiring to register to see the forum! That's annoying.

[alter-ego]

Originally Posted by CyberWizard

I was wondering, what is it that turn's you off the MOST in different forums? All answers will be greatly appreciated.

My biggest turnoffs on any site:

• slow page load times
• broken links
• excessive use of nefarious advertising techniques such as pop ups, pop unders, scrolling marquis and mouseover wavs.
• default forum skins where they haven't even taken the time to replace vBulletin, phpbb or whatever logo came with the software.
• excessive link spam
• staff that is above the law and better than everyone else
• rudeness

I'm sure there's more but this is all I can come up with for now.

[cwebbatya]

I would say the biggest is the "register to even view pages" and the "no follow" to any links... I mean whyyyy! :\

[edosauyi]

My biggest and worse turnoffs is poor threads and replies.

[robjones]

Sock-puppet IDs (multiple voices from the same keyboard) drive me nuts. Watching "interaction" as one guy compliments and/or highly recommends himself just indicates the poster has no respect for the other members of the forum.

The next turnoff after that is people that post duplicate threads that echo threads in progress because they're too lazy to check before adding... or threads that are already answered by stickies present in the forum posted.


Deleting the accounts of those that fit either description saves time... as those that violate such prohibitions are unlikely to work and play well with the community if they show such disrespect for others up front.

[Fastas]

me i would have to agree with spam i hate it and posting stuff and no replys i feel liek im ignored and over looked

[CyberWizard]

I have actually been seeing less spam on forum nowadays in comparison to a couple years ago. I guess now that all major forum softwares have added extra security it has at least slowed down spammers.

[Cricket]

Originally Posted by CyberWizard

I have actually been seeing less spam on forum nowadays in comparison to a couple years ago. I guess now that all major forum softwares have added extra security it has at least slowed down spammers.

I think perhaps it is simply more hidden from the public. We are still dealing with it full time in the background.

[CyberWizard]

Spam is definitely still going on but it is not the spam I really care about. The main spam I see nowadays is profile spam. This is mainly done in (you know what software ) and it registers accounts on forums and set their profile homepage. I would definitely say there are probably a thousand of those accounts here. But, that doesn't bother me as long as I don't have to put up with them spamming.

[Cricket]

Originally Posted by CyberWizard

Spam is definitely still going on but it is not the spam I really care about. The main spam I see nowadays is profile spam. This is mainly done in (you know what software ) and it registers accounts on forums and set their profile homepage. I would definitely say there are probably a thousand of those accounts here. But, that doesn't bother me as long as I don't have to put up with them spamming.

Thousands of those accounts are automatically banned.

[Midwifery Sanctuary]

Originally Posted by CyberWizard

Spam is definitely still going on but it is not the spam I really care about. The main spam I see nowadays is profile spam. This is mainly done in (you know what software ) and it registers accounts on forums and set their profile homepage. I would definitely say there are probably a thousand of those accounts here. But, that doesn't bother me as long as I don't have to put up with them spamming.

Im having trouble with this at the moment and I am finding it extremley annoying!

My turn offs are

• A cluttered board
• Adverts every where
• To many modifications/addons/features, it just look to over the top
• Threads with rubbish replies such as 'thanks', 'thats great' etc etc

[CyberWizard]

But do you remove their homepage URL, visitor comments, pending PM's One feature vBulletin is lacking (I think) is that if you ban someone for spamming all over visitor posts, their visitor posts are still there and do not get automatically deleted.

[Cricket]

You are getting into an area that I am not at liberty to discuss. Sorry.

[cecille20]

I usually turn off in a forum who doesn't have a many members or It's like Inactive forums.
Also a forum that loads slowly. And mostly, the members are not friendly. That's why it leads you to get out with the community.

[CyberWizard]

Originally Posted by cecille20

I usually turn off in a forum who doesn't have a many members or It's like Inactive forums.
Also a forum that loads slowly. And mostly, the members are not friendly. That's why it leads you to get out with the community.

I hadn't thought of that yet! I hate forums that run slow. It doesn't matter how good or friendly the community it; if the forum page take 10 minutes to load then I don't waste my time.

[~kev~]

Too many sub-forums, so I can not figure out where to post something
Image heavy theme - I like simple themes
Too many rules
Not keeping the spammers out
Lots of trash post

Are some of the things that turns me off of a forum.

[CyberWizard]

Having too many rules runs everyone off! Especially when the admin makes new ones every day