I, for one, miss the comments. But there is no place to comment on the missing comments other than sending an email in. The post today in the blog mentions using the Chamber but the free Chamber is not too exciting. Plus as the article states, you cannot comment on particular posts, etc. You can say, “pay to join” and I do see that there are more “paying” posts than free but I worry it also won’t make up for the missing comments. Is the free forum doomed from the start? What can we do to actually make us not miss the comments?
5 Likes
I’d start commenting in the articles thread. The easiest way to drive traffic to a thread is to post in it.
I also miss the comment section. The free threads here have minimal interaction and aren’t specific to certain articles. I’m sure the PFB+ threads are great but it costs money. The free part of this forum is barren. Quite disappointed with the decision to close the comments.
3 Likes
One is about what degree you got from OSU and one is about cord cutting. Those are irrelevant to OSU sports, they don’t count. The other 3 have less than 20 comments combined. And one of those 3 is complaining about the lack of options and involvement for free viewers. It is barren for free viewers. I expected a better response to be quite honest.
Kyle have y’all looked into possibly enrolled students discounts? Like maybe half price or something think that could be a good way to help some of them out not sure if that is the issue or not here just a thought. Personally as someone that was in school when this blog first started and a member since y’all started the black orange etc membership it is definitely worth being a member. I think I speak for anyone that remembers the ole orange power days and just the chaos that was Online OSU sports talk.
8 Likes
The more students the better.
I also miss the comments. You can comment in the Chamber but it’s not streamlined for getting to the comments on the post. Maybe post a link to a Chamber forum for discussion and relink back to the post for ease of use.
In general, I find myself visiting and consuming PFB material much less frequently and I expect I’ll probably end up looking at PFB once every week or two rather than multiple times a day.
6 Likes
That’s not a bad idea Blake. Have a link at the end of the article to a specific thread in the Chamber for just that article. Make those free threads. Still won’t likely be as good as the comments but it’s better than nothing. I agree that without the discourse, the traffic is gonna slow down. Maybe not but I can feel it going that way for me too and what’s happening in the Chamber now isn’t going to keep me.
Correct me if I’m wrong here but you are saying that you went to PFB multiple times a day to see what Richard Kennedy and friends were yapping about in the comments and not for the content we produced? Because if this is true — and if the majority of people feel this way — then we’ve made a massive miscalculation about not just the Chamber but about what our site is as a whole and what it represents in the OSU community.
6 Likes
That is a great idea and could help to get more students engaged in the recruiting process, among other things.
Not to arm chair qb the decision to close the comments, but I think doing it on the bye week may have made adoption a little slower. The friction to sign up for a new account is too high when there isn’t that much happening. I’d bet after the game a lot of the complaints about a lack of free message board content will go away.
Maybe you should do a Richard Kennedy impression and start a few threads, “Why stars don’t matter,” “Why OSU has the best OLine in the country” (This was my personal favorites of his), “Why the moon landing was fake.”
7 Likes
Didn’t care that the comments went away, I stopped checking them after I joined PFB+. Thrilled that the Chamber has (mostly) civil and thoughtful conversations.
Use to check the site 1-2x a day for content, not commenting much. Now I probably check both places 5x (+) a day.
Think the changes to the site are top-notch and impressed with how the PFB company has grown.
8 Likes
Why Kyrie should be Scientist General of the United States.
7 Likes
People seem to be burning up their computers commenting on Articles now.
1 Like
I can’t remember the last time I made a comment on PC.
2 Likes
I could get past the negative parts of his commentary pretty easily since they weren’t directed at me. It was mildly entertaining in the moment, but I never specifically went there to see what fantastic idea he had next. The four or five bad apples we had drove the decision to make this change and overall it makes for a better conversation (actual discussion) starter. The format may not be ideal currently, but neither was the layout of PFB in its infant stages either. How long has the Chamber been running? Two months? Instant perfection shouldn’t be expected given how long it’s been around.
1 Like
I’ll just say that I disconnect from the company WiFi from time to time so that they can’t see how many times I’m reviewing the comments in The Chamber on a daily basis. I only checked the main PFB a few times a day for new content, but mainly skipped the comments for reasons already noted.
I have to admit it’s a little jarring to not see any comments at the bottom of the articles. Even in the Chamber Era, it was still part of the rhythm of the PFB experience to skim the comments and see if anything interesting was happening down there.
I don’t know if this is technically possible, but it might be… the ideal solution would be to have a dedicated Chamber thread for each article, and have that thread mirrored both in the Chamber, and also at the bottom of the article. In the old days, that might have been as simple as an iframe, but it’s probably not that simple any more. I don’t know cause I’m an old. Maybe whatever fancy software you’re using for this forum has some sort of plug-in that handles this. 
Someone who never saw Ernest Anderson play can figure this out, right?
1 Like