I was surprised to read this article at AppleInsider stating that Apple is dismantling their forum staff. Not that the discussion areas are going away, mind you, but that the people who Apple counts on to moderate the boards are being relieved of their duty.
The reasoning behind the change is that the Apple discussion boards are increasingly becoming a place for “everything from rudeness to instructions on pirating music and software.” I have to admit, I’ve seen some posts on the discussion boards that made me grind my teeth because of their inappropriateness, hostile attitude, or flat-out stupidity.
Welcome to the INTARWEB1!!!.
Frankly, I haven’t seen a discussion board that hasn’t eventually degenerated into an immature shouting match between blowhard factions. Hiding behind the anonymity of a computer screen seems to give a significant number of people the lack of judgement and the false sense of bravado required to turn something that has enormous potential as a helpful tool into a breeding ground for idiocy. Obviously, Apple’s discussion boards are no exception.
But I’m not condemning the discussion boards. Frankly, if you can sort the signal from the noise, they’re very helpful. In fact, when I encounter a problem, the discussion area is the first place I go because it’s almost certain that someone has dealt with the issue before me, and I’m not one to reinvent the wheel.
If troubleshooting is my primary use for the discussion forums, why not just use the Apple knowledge base instead? Because it blows, that’s why. I expect, for instance, to be able to enter specific error messages into the search field and get an explanation from the knowledge base, and that almost never happens. Although there is no indication that the discussion area is going away, I would hate to see that happen because the knowledge base is utterly incapable of picking up what would be lost in the discussion areas’ absence. As a repository for user-shared knowledge, the discussion area is invaluable and needs to stay around. If Apple decides that it needs to be more tightly controlled or more aggressively managed, all the better. I prefer signal over noise, and if Apple’s intent is to improve the signal, count me in.
My .Mac Web Gallery
Loading ...
July 31st, 2006 at 4:55 pm
From the sounds of it, it was probably a management problem to begin with. I have a feeling that the moderation staff was very small. The forums just got too large for them to police effectively.
I use the boards all the time as well. It seems like the pro boards have most of the signal (I.E. Logic, Final Cut, Server, ARD, etc). Where I see the most crap is in the general Mac OS X and belive it or not the iMac boards (I must admit I don’t read too many of the other hardware boards - I can only imagine what is talked about in the iPod boards).
It seems like some of the boards could be radically cleaned up if you had to put in your system serial number in order to get an account to post (not to read - that would always be there). That would, at least, limit the posters to people that actually own hardware (for the most part).
I also find that far too many people post to the boards expecting an answer from Apple. The majority of these posts are the most belligerant. They are just ignorant as to who is on the boards and what they are for. I wish I had a dollar for every post that said - Volunteers answer your questions here. You won’t get any answers from Apple. If you don’t change your tone, you won’t get any answers from the volunteers either.
July 31st, 2006 at 7:21 pm
The ones that really annoy me most are the ones that end with, “Apple, are you listening?” Grrrr!
But I think you’re right. The discussion forums put Apple in a sort of catch-22. If they don’t provide them, customers lose a valuable source of information about all kinds of different facets of the platform, and Apple will be inevitably accused of trying to prevent people from posting product problems. If they do provide the forums, some significant number of users expect it to be a place where Apple directly responds to their questions and complaints, which is probably too impractical to happen, and the echo chamber effect that greatly exaggerates problems continues to exist.
I wonder if Apple already has a plan in place for a forum revision.
August 1st, 2006 at 10:27 am
A revision would be interesting. We’ll have to wait and see. I suppose they could set up some sort of Karma system that allowed users with enough karma to lock belligerant users out.
And I am absolutely with you on the ‘are you listening’ posts. I want to scream back ‘NO THEY ARE NOT! AND NEITHER IS ANYONE ELSE!’