BoundForum Problems/Solutions/Ideas

[angel_uk]

There's an old member (Cape Cod Richie) trying to get back on the site, who says they can't log in, reregiser or get in touch with any site staff. Any advice I can pass on?

[MsBehavin]

I take it he has tried following the instructions GU gave to log into his account from the old site?

http://boundforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=887099&f=4#p887099

Once he has confirmed to you he's done this and its failed I'll send an email GU to see what he can do to help.

Thanks for letting us know Angel.

[angel_uk]

He's not receivng the password recovery email, so he's not getting past the first part of those instructions.

Thanks.

[MsBehavin]

Ok, thanks for passing on the message.

I've sent GU an email explaining this so hopefully things will be resolved before too long.

[gaggedutopia]

Have him email me directly. gaggedutopia[at]gmail(dot)com

[crispycritter]

Ok, so tie me up and torment me if you've already been asked this, but what is up with the "chat" function for the forum?? I've tried both clicking on the button at the top, entering in my desired chat name.. and it says it can't connect or some such error.. and on xchat (irc), it says the server can't be found??

Thanks in advance!

[MsBehavin]

We used to have a chatroom function which was used well for a couple of months then fell quiet... so quiet that when it failed it was decided that because not one member had noticed and commented on it that it probably wasn't really worth the maintenance it required to keep it going. A chat function has been the cause of considerable debate both on the forum (search "chatroom") and in the mods playground. For it to be worthwhile there has to be a need and the unfortunate fact is over years and 2 chatrooms any chat facility is pretty dead soon after the initial set up.

You can of course PM GU and put forward the case again.

[crispycritter]

Heck, I could set up a voice chat server if it were wanted. I've done this many times for many other forums.. Since I have a commercial-grade internet line, I have plenty of bandwidth to do so without fear of over-shooting any ridiculous data caps. (don't even get me STARTED on that load of BS.)

Like I said, I'm one of those "Drum-Pounding, Guitar-Playing, Computer-Building Uber-Nerds" your Parents warned you to stay away from! lolz. Don't worry. I don't bite. (unless asked to.)

[Franzia]

Ok.. no problem here. But as I was randomly reading I realized this is one of the very few topics where almost everybody has an avatar. Almost looks as though you need an avatar to post in this thread!

Years ago most members used them- have people become so grim and serious in a search for anonymity they don't want them? Or if they have no custom one to upload, have they forgotten the default 'gallery' button in their profile settings? I feel naked without one.

[Closed_doors]

This comes as more of an 'observation' than an idea or suggestion. This is my first experience with a moderated forum and I've found my initial enthusiasm for the site has waned a little. I understand why a forum might need be moderated, especially one that touches on a subject that many would find distasteful.

Other forums I am a member of (including one I moderate) work a little differently. Posts appear instantly they are submitted which allows replies to follow as soon as others read it. On the more active forums, this can result in 20 or more responses in a day, or even less time. The interest amongst members of those forums stays high with many folks adding replies to a thread several times in a day, especially if the discussion is lively. Here, I post something, then have to wait 24-36hrs (Time zones play a part) to see the post, then a further 24-36 to see a response, then my reply sees that almost a week has passed and by then, the thought train for that thread has evaporated. It's the sort of forum that I would only check in on about once a week to make the visit worthwhile, having more than just 1 or 2 posts to read. I also find myself less inclined to post because I don't have the patience to follow that thread for weeks and weeks, just to see where 10 replies might lead. I would bet, many, many of the non-active members would get posting too if this was the case.

Yes, the other forums I am on do get the occasional offensive post, but the moderators simply delete it and warn the sender via PM. A 2nd offensive post sees that member locked out. The people here seem far to intelligent and open-minded to let something as trivial as an 'offensive post' spoil their interest or offend. I see the member list here is at least 10 times greater then any of the other forums I belong to but you get less than 10% of members posting. And, of those active 10% of members, their posts over a month would not even add up to the posts my unmoderated forums with far, far less members get in ONE day. In this past 7 days since joining, I've counted precisely 9 posts, 4 of which were mine. I've had 22 posts this morning alone (7 on 1 thread) on the 'AKRON' forum which has only 55 members but is unmoderated. Its the sort of forum that makes you want to check in 3-4 times a day in case the discussion gets too far ahead of you.

I'm a newbie here and am not trying to change anything. This post is intended to be informative, not critical. It's merely an observation. My interest for the site and all it represents is high. My patience when following a thread here is not. I guess it depends on the membership's desires. If this is what they want, so be it.

Thanks for Reading,
Mike.

[stephanie_cd]

This comes as more of an 'observation' than an idea or suggestion. This is my first experience with a moderated forum and I've found my initial enthusiasm for the site has waned a little. I understand why a forum might need be moderated, especially one that touches on a subject that many would find distasteful.

Other forums I am a member of (including one I moderate) work a little differently. Posts appear instantly they are submitted which allows replies to follow as soon as others read it. On the more active forums, this can result in 20 or more responses in a day, or even less time. The interest amongst members of those forums stays high with many folks adding replies to a thread several times in a day, especially if the discussion is lively. Here, I post something, then have to wait 24-36hrs (Time zones play a part) to see the post, then a further 24-36 to see a response, then my reply sees that almost a week has passed and by then, the thought train for that thread has evaporated. It's the sort of forum that I would only check in on about once a week to make the visit worthwhile, having more than just 1 or 2 posts to read. I also find myself less inclined to post because I don't have the patience to follow that thread for weeks and weeks, just to see where 10 replies might lead. I would bet, many, many of the non-active members would get posting too if this was the case.

Yes, the other forums I am on do get the occasional offensive post, but the moderators simply delete it and warn the sender via PM. A 2nd offensive post sees that member locked out. The people here seem far to intelligent and open-minded to let something as trivial as an 'offensive post' spoil their interest or offend. I see the member list here is at least 10 times greater then any of the other forums I belong to but you get less than 10% of members posting. And, of those active 10% of members, their posts over a month would not even add up to the posts my unmoderated forums with far, far less members get in ONE day. In this past 7 days since joining, I've counted precisely 9 posts, 4 of which were mine. I've had 22 posts this morning alone (7 on 1 thread) on the 'AKRON' forum which has only 55 members but is unmoderated. Its the sort of forum that makes you want to check in 3-4 times a day in case the discussion gets too far ahead of you.

I'm a newbie here and am not trying to change anything. This post is intended to be informative, not critical. It's merely an observation. My interest for the site and all it represents is high. My patience when following a thread here is not. I guess it depends on the membership's desires. If this is what they want, so be it.

Thanks for Reading,
Mike.

Hi, Mike -- you've left us a LONG post, so I'm afraid the rather one-sided reply is going to be long as well! (I'd love to discuss this with the other mods and write up a group reply, but the others all have "real life" things going on and can't necessarily log on every day right now.)

In more or less the order you mention various points:

Almost all of the other members here are reading your post and thinking "huh? 'Have to wait?' What's this guy talking about?"

MOST people's posts appear the very second they hit "Submit." Posts from new members need to be approved by a moderator to make sure it's an actual person posting on topic, and not a "spam bot" advertising fake Viagra in Ukranian. I wish I were kidding on this one, but a few months ago this site was under siege from multiple spammers, spambots, and who knows what all else, shilling products in Chinese, some Cyrillic language, and some sort of horrific, apparently Google-translated English. They also posted (or tried to post) a thousand .jpgs, .pngs, and anything else they thought they might slip past the anti-spam filters!

The joke turned out to be on them...and on us, I suppose, since HUMANS had to look at dozens of posts per day, disapprove them in bulk (five at a time, and we were wishing that we could do more at once) and ban five to ten new "members" every day for about three months. It was a royal pain in OUR nether regions, but the forum members weren't annoyed and distracted by a dozen "new posts" per day that had nothing to do with bondage!

Anyhow...once a new member makes a certain number of moderator-approved posts and gets past that "probationary period," their posts then appear the instant they hit "Submit" as well. I'm pretty sure that number is "three" and the fourth post (and all subsequent posts) show up instantly and automatically. I know that nobody had to approve YOUR fourth post!

(Also, as noted above, this has been a relatively weird time for moderators -- instead of three or four of us logging on several times a day, the past couple of weeks have been one or two of us logging on once or twice a day.)

So -- that pretty well sums up your perceived issue of "every post needs approval," which isn't really the case, and "this forum is pretty well behaved," which it really IS, if you don't count the spammers!

As far as "forum activity" goes...wow. I really don't know where to start on THAT one but here goes:

From the time I first discovered this forum, through the time I signed up in 2005, and until about two years ago, this forum was VERY active, with dozens of posts per day! For what it's worth, though, and as I'm sure you'll see if you start reading back through some of the archived topics that interest you, at any given time there have ALWAYS been a lot of inactive members, and only a small percentage of the total membership actually participating.

If you go to the blue bar towards the top of the screen, click "Members" and then click on "Posts," that will "sort by" that column. You'll see that we have 601 PAGES of members (at 25 per page), and if you start painstakingly clicking forward three pages at a time, you'll eventually see that we have 360 PAGES of members with ZERO posts! That's more than HALF the members, and there are another 65 pages of members with exactly ONE post!

Why? We often wondered and occasionally discussed it -- the best guesses were that "kinky people like us signed up so that they could send and receive PM's" or "kinky people like us signed up so they would feel less like 'lurkers'" and then neither group ever posted anything besides occasionally an "introduction thread."

So -- one has to go all the way to page 426 of 601 to find members with TWO posts, which means that more than 2/3 of the members here are anything BUT active!

Now for the really depressing news: as I mentioned in another thread today, nobody is really quite sure what happened, but about two years ago the site administrator had to make some changes with the forum itself -- forum software and (as I recall) a new forum hosting site. That caused a few minor hiccups for a large part of ONE DAY while the "old" forum posts were migrated to the new website, and apparently (I'm REALLY guessing here)it also caused bigger hiccups with people who didn't read the "CAN'T LOGIN? READ HERE" thread at the top of each forum.

As I recall, since it's been two years, before the migration, all members were warned that they'd need to update their member records and make sure they had a valid e-mail address on file so that they could do a "password reset" on the brand-new forum. If they didn't, they'd have to contact the site admin to get their password reset.

The big day came, the new forum was up and running, a few people posted things like "hooray, it works!" and "hey, I still have all my PM's -- and got a bigger in-box -- YAY!" and then...then....

I don't get it. It's like the internet equivalent of the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island. All we're missing is sound effects of crickets, wind, and/or a lone crow cawing in the distance.

As mentioned, I used to check this site a few times a day and see a dozen new posts EACH TIME! Now, it's kind of spooky, eerie, and creepy to log on and see NO new posts in the previous 24 hours. As I said above, nobody is really sure exactly WHAT happened to cause it, nor how to fix it, but the forum really IS a ghost of its former self.

But it's NOT because every post needs to be "approved."

[Closed_doors]

Thanks for taking the time to reply. I do apologise as there was an issue with the internet connection, and this forum was just one place I wrote to. The replies made me feel the lag was at my end, which proved correct. Issue solved now and again, sincere apologies.

I can relate to the spam, and really sympathise with the times when a change causes the loss of many people. I've seen it before.

I guess I must rate a good flogging (I have a riding crop if no one else does) for disregarding my own best advice. "Don't make fast judgements." is one I am known to say. "Forums are like life, they have peaks and troughs." Standing in the trough saying, 'I thought the view would be better' isn't being fair to the 'whole'.

Far from being deterred, I am encouraged to become more active. I am still reading past threads to try to get a 'feel', so to speak, for the people and personalities here. As I have always suspected, the more intelligent, the more outrageous the fantasy. The feel I get most here is a sense that only a few ever get to indulge to the further edges of their dreams, the rest seek someone to share this with.
I know what that's like. I became adept at self-bondage due to an uninterested ex-spouse. Which developed into a total disinterest in me which is why she's an Ex. But that's not a new tune here. What can I say. Be upfront and 100% honest. If you like being dipped in treacle and flogged with wet spaghetti, tell him/her. Don't just come out and say it. Begin with something simple, like 'what matters most in a relationship'. Build into a discussion and add subject when appropriate. Remember, You can't change people. Yes, people can change, but that's an internal influence.
But you know what matters most? Trust. With out this, you have nothing, zilch, nada, zero.. give up flogging that dead horse. Re-bait the hook and go fishing again. The next 'catch' might be the one. I spent 20 years trying to breathe life back into my previous relationship, about 19.5 years too many. Should have trusted my gut feelings, but oh no. I believed I could resurrect it. More the fool me.

Anyhow, you folks do what you like. I for-sure-as-hell do. (Carmen will say, "that should read, WE for-su.......) lol

We have matching days off tomorrow. I visualise, a day of rope marks on the skin, sweat dripping from under clingfilm, chains clinking, muffled pleas of mercy from behind a gag, the faint hum of eccentrically off-set motor driven devices of immeasurable pleasure, ah.. life is good. I should read some of the other people's posts about their adventures, to get a feel for a style you good folks enjoy reading. Might attempt one of my own then.

Cheers,

[stephanie_cd]

Glad that I could answer and/or explain your questions and concerns!

Far from being deterred, I am encouraged to become more active. I am still reading past threads to try to get a 'feel', so to speak, for the people and personalities here. As I have always suspected, the more intelligent, the more outrageous the fantasy. The feel I get most here is a sense that only a few ever get to indulge to the further edges of their dreams, the rest seek someone to share this with.

I know what that's like. I became adept at self-bondage due to an uninterested ex-spouse. Which developed into a total disinterest in me which is why she's an Ex. But that's not a new tune here. What can I say. Be upfront and 100% honest. If you like being dipped in treacle and flogged with wet spaghetti, tell him/her. Don't just come out and say it. Begin with something simple, like 'what matters most in a relationship'. Build into a discussion and add subject when appropriate. Remember, You can't change people. Yes, people can change, but that's an internal influence.

But you know what matters most? Trust. With out this, you have nothing, zilch, nada, zero.. give up flogging that dead horse. Re-bait the hook and go fishing again. The next 'catch' might be the one. I spent 20 years trying to breathe life back into my previous relationship, about 19.5 years too many. Should have trusted my gut feelings, but oh no. I believed I could resurrect it. More the fool me.

Your experiences mirror mine in many ways, and sound quite familiar to those of us who have been here a while.

A LOT of people with REALLY kinky dreams and vanilla partners seem resigned to the situation they're in. "Everything else in the relationship is pretty good," they think, "so why should I rock the boat?"

That has led to a LOT of us who end up indulging in self-bondage when the spouse is away as a sort of compromise. It's certainly more fun than no bondage at all, but sometimes (as in my own situation years ago) I can't help but wonder if the "lying by omission" is healthy for the relationship.

Hopefully everybody can either get out of that "gray area" one way or the other, whether it's by finding the right partner or by having a partner who is at least understanding and accepting of our kinks, even if they don't want to participate!

[d3vious.g3nius]

The way I see it, and this may be wrong, is that we lost the Bound Forum "community". There were several "groups" of people that actually spent time "here" interacting and getting to know one another. Providing conversation, banter and a sort of online friendship. Also, some heated moments as well For whatever reason that dissipated. I think it was happening, maybe, slightly before the forum software change, but that surely contributed to it.

Now, new members don't seem interested in getting to know one another, or the remaining "survivors", hehe! Mostly new members want to get there freak on with "where-do-I-buy-this", sure to fail "find-a-friend" posts or self bondage dares. It's all sort of self centered and usually they do not post much beyond themselves. And typically once they get what they want, it's kind of done! Every now and then there is a spark that carries for a little bit between posters but not on the same level as it once was.

As an example:

Recently I replied to tiedup4u123, as did steph, on her thread about whether she's just vanilla or not. See, we have had interaction in the past along with several others, in an open and on going post history that spanned a week or two or maybe even more. So... I kind of "know" her. And this was probably years(2 or more) ago. This takes time and effort. And I simply don't see new members joining looking for that.

I don't think I've nailed it completely, but this is how it feels to me. I simply don't post much because well, I lost all my friends here! So I do other things in RL. Post on other forums, gaming related, motocross/supercross related etc etc.

Sad really, some fun damn times were had with some great characters here.

[Franzia]

http://boundforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=85847

The link is an old thread, started by Restricted some months before the forum change. It wasn't about a slowdown exactly- in a nostalgic mood he was wondering what became of the women that were here in the old days. It may not mean anything but this was something noticed right about the time of the change. I wonder if the change was only part of the problem- could it be that Feline, Phoebe, Amy, Masochic and others added some spark that kept things really popping? Of course MsBehavin drops by sometimes, but perhaps the forum just needs a couple more active women? And d3vious.g3nius- you missed the really wild times and the RP threads! But you are correct- it just doesn't seem as fun as it used to be.

[d3vious.g3nius]

Oh no Franzia, my join date is misleading I have issues what can I say, hehe! Have no clue about RP threads what were those? Maybe I'm just missing the reference?

[Closed_doors]

Having been associated with many forums over the years, all I can say is this.

Forums have a shelf life.
How far in the future that 'best-by date' is depends on the CURRENT members making it so.
This is done with stimulating conversation, intelligent threads (add in a little titillation here to spice things up) and a huge amount of tolerance for views different than thy own.

In fact, no one but us can make it great.

But saying that, from what I have seen so far, the more active members here are a good crew. The topics are diverse and in most cases, a pleasure to read and discuss.

[Franzia]

Hopefully you are right, Mike. And d_g, I was referring to some of the old role playing threads like these:

http://boundforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=93598

http://boundforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=98289

[thisis]

hey...

it used to be pretty active here but it looks dead right now.

Can admin have more events or initiatives to get traffic?

[Closed_doors]

Can admin have more events or initiatives to get traffic?

I believe 'admin' is here to .. administrate, not generate although they do a great job on both.

It's us, the forum membership where the responsibility lies with regards to sparking interest and debate.

I put up a dare on the SB topic but no one so far has tried it out, or if they have, posted no details.

To me, bondage is about being outside your 'comfort' level. Carmen and I both like having our limits pushed. People have their favourite 'bondage' equipment and tend to use this almost exclusively. Being bound means control is surrendered. I get turned on reading about how everyone uses their favourite equipment because its not MY equipment. The surrendering control situation becomes more intense when other's equipment is used on me because its not my equipment. Tied/wrapped/bound/chained.. etc in unfamiliar positions or situations with unfamiliar equipment and toys used really enhances the experience for us. It takes you outside your comfort zone and gets emotions churning that you don't usually get to experience. Fear, doubt, apprehension, anticipation and desire all come to reside in your mind and that my friends is what bondage is all about, expanding one's horizons.

Play safe, play often, but play.