Understand WHY gag updated the site

[orphan]

website traffic is declining. less traffic = less ad exposure = less $. declining traffic isn't going to attract financing. who wants to invest into a deappreciating website? i believe their plan is to increase traffic just enough (explained below) to secure another round of financing. they have to do something, otherwise they won't be able to pay their employees.

the spike in 2013 is attributed to the $1,000,000 in financing for their Spanish version. however, i sense most of it was dumped into marketing which explains the spike in users (or traffic however you want to look at it). the decline in traffic means users aren't returning. why aren't users returning? i'll leave that for you to interpret.

to prevent further desertion they made a functional change to disable negativity, and encourage positivity. (hearts) lol. the opinions of people that are still here (regarding the update) sheds no light on the opinions from the people that left. you can't ask them if they're no longer here to be asked. you can email them lol.

thus, that explains why the community wasn't polled prior to the changes. they're making changes based on their own research and speculation, because the community's opinion is biased.

sources:

https://web.archive.org/web/*/www.girlsaskguys.com

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GirlsAskGuys

[Watermelonoma]

Reddit can be quite cut throat where opinions and downvoting is concerned, yet its still one of the most popular sites on the net, and it doesn't even look as good as GaG. I think they misdiagnosed the problem. They are slowly turning GaG into facebook, which is unfortunate because the facebook model has been drifting out of favour for years now, which is why facebook has seen very significant decreases in activity as of late

www.forbes.com/.../#f127523411b6

That's what happens when you try to erect a "safe space"... you kill the atmosphere for contention and disagreement, and therefore kill the purpose of using it actively to communicate ones thoughts and feelings.

[orphan]

i agree..

i believe a lot of the discouragement is in the usability of the 'comments' themselves. they are confusing and blend together when enough individuals offer an opinion.. the whole "opinion owner" title instead of the users name is dumb too. i fiind myself scrolling up and down to remembers someones name

[orphan]

the stupid reply boxes sometimes appear below or above what your commenting, there is consistency. imagine how the first time users trying to make sense of it...

the buttons are gray on a white background, which hinders visibility. same goes for post separations, more faint gray lines... w/ buttons in the middle that say click for more... then new stuff appears and you're lost again.

there is absolutely no clarity in the flow, function or form of the one place where people "interact". leads me to believe the programmers aren't users of their own site.

[orphan]

there is no* consistency

[BelleGirl21]

Hmmmm makes sense but the changes they chose to make I think are going to have the opposite effect. And without the mentions working it's become particularly boring. If these things aren't changed soon I predict a further depreciation in traffic.

[orphan]

rush to get it out.. not enough QA.

desperation is a motherfucker.

[CHARismatic110]

My mentions were never not working after the update. The like and comment buttons are hella glitchy tho.

[archiz]

I agree with her

[orphan]

no one ever mentions me so i wouldn't know if they work or not.

lol

[BelleGirl21]

@CHARismatic110 mine haven't been working at all. The only way I know if someone mentioned me is if I go to my mentions page.

[CHARismatic110]

Oh that sucks. GaG has to fix these glitches asap!

[ScruffynateAK]

Oh wow I didn't even realize I wasn't getting my mentions

[BellePepper]

I agree. It's like they're trying to make the community nicer but only on a superficial level. As long as you have administrators promoting content that is misogynistic and hateful toward women nothing they do to the theme is going fix that. All the people I know who've left went away because they were tired of the toxic environment.

And it's not just the questions. We all know the MyTakes are even worse. They've been doing Editor of the Week for like... a month now and picked awesome editors like Stacyzee and justBannaz (sp?) but their first pick... He was completely unacceptable.

As long as the person making THOSE kind of decisions is in charge, GaG is going to keep struggling.

If I was going to change things, I would work on the xper system so it was more of a game because that's really the fun part at the beginning and I would restructure the advertisements. They should be less obtrusive and difficult and it shouldn't be a "reward" for the higher level users. Let's be honest. You're going to be active on the site longer as XPER 7+ than lvs 1-6. Why cut off part of your income like that? Plus, if the ads were less annoying people wouldn't mind leaving adblock off for them.

[orphan]

a big contributor to the problem is the user unfriendliness of the interface. color bombardment, chaotic flow in the response area, along with much filler that no one looks at... (the right column). there's no definitive borders, just gray lines w/ blue and pink everywhere. the entire response section has to be deciphered to realize who said what. it needs to be scraped and rebuilt.

the segregation of genders for responses is also silly, it just reinforces the wall y'all are trying to break down. should be up to the user how responses are sorted. chronological, mho/xp, or gender.

the xp system. the only practical use i see for it is promoting questions. it makes the entire site model unfair. the vets drown out the newbs since responses are sorted by xp titles, then mho-- causing the same people to appear on top. giving more exposure to those who don't need it.

coupled w/ the 'mod' ability to hide posts it becomes extremely biased towards long term users who have no incentive to stay.

[orphan]

coupled w/ the 'mod' ability to hide posts it becomes extremely biased towards long term users giving the news no incentive to stay.*

and no edit.

[orphan]

*newbs

[BellePepper]

I agree about the Girls vs. Boys thing, but I think it's part of the gimmick of the site so I accept it. It also reveals interesting trends in gender differences and perceptions that might get lost. I also like the feed in the right. I catch lots of posts from there that I would have otherwise missed.

I also don't like how the answers are sorted. It benefits me, but I don't think it's fair to new people.

Moderators have a strict list of things we are and aren't allowed to hide for specific reasons and there are consequences for when we don't follow those guidelines.

[orphan]

the mods shouldn't be allowed to hide stuff until its flagged by the community. say at least 50% of the Question's viewers need to flag it, with a min threshold of 5 people. then its on the table for u guys to decide.

with only 3 max questions a day its still a difficult system to spam.

[BellePepper]

I flag a lot of things I hope the community doesn't have to see though. Like the guy asking teenagers to sext him, the dude posting his dick pics, the racebaiter asking why black girls are so ugly and stupid, or the guy who keeps posting his picture asking if he'd be a good model over and over and over again.

We also have more familiarity with the rules that we don't expect of regular users. If we had to wait for multiple people to flag things before we can do anything about a post nothing would never get taken down and there would be no use to have moderators. We know that the site DOES in fact need moderators since we have so many.

And real spammers usually spam comments, not questions.

[orphan]

if u have that many mods then should 3-4 who flag something before its hidden. it shouldn't up to one person. humans aren't perfect. especially when its just one.

needs some checks n balances before any action is executed.

[BellePepper]

I'm usually the only one on who can hide things at certain times of day or someone else may not even see what I saw.

The admins look over what we hide before it's removed and keep track of our success rate. That's our check and balance system.

[orphan]

it shouldn't be up to one person to hide stuff, regardless of authoritive status. its a shallow system. its compensation to protect the users from "inappropriate content". its silly if theyre on the cesspool of the web to begin wtih.

the people should have say first and foremost.

[orphan]

its like y'all paranoid the entire site is gonna band together to keep a dick pic bumped to the to of the feed... with zero flags.

[BellePepper]

It's not up to one person. It's up to 75. Just because we're on the internet doesn't mean people shouldn't follow the rules.

People do have a say. They can agree to follow the rules and join the site or they can disagree and not join the site.

[BellePepper]

We've already covered that GaG does need the moderators otherwise they wouldn't have them and they wouldn't have continued to increase the number of moderators.

[orphan]

you and your tangential points. we both know that the rules are oppressive.

anyways at the end of the day, thered be more traffic with no mods. ill leave it at that for now.

[BellePepper]

If you don't like the rules then you don't have to participate in the site. They're not heavily imposed and they're not hard to follow.

If there were no mods and no rules, there would be fewer people on the site. There would be so many nudes, GaG would lose it's advertisers and it's -18 rating. People would just insult and solicit for sexts, drugs, etc... GaG would not be GaG.

[orphan]

false. i know that for a fact. wasn't the case on my site over 15 years. restrictions is what sent people away. same goes for the most of the big internet with exception of fb.

most importantly, lets see if they can create an interface which doesn't confuse newbies. thats the result of programmers assuming they know what users want without being a user themselves.

the "web designers" need to get on here n use the site like everyone else (yes that means interacting) to see first hand how overwhelming this place is when used often. at least the mobile version is a little better than the desktop version.

but im done consulting for free. ttyl

[BellePepper]

The fact that we exist and continue to exist proves my point. Maybe your community was different.

I would also like to see the administrators using the site more often but I understand why we don't see them around. It would be nice to know they're seeing what we're seeing though.

[Mesonfielde]

You know why they're losing users?

BECAUSE THEY FILL EVERY SINGLE NOOK AND CRANNY WITH OBNOXIOUS POP-UP ADS, then add HIDEOUS HEART ICONS AND UNREADABLE FONT. I personally just don't notice these ads because I'm above the given XPER level! The ads aren't even interesting, by the way. It's literally garbage like "how to find a hot Russian mail order bride".

Of course people don't stay! Most of the questions are unanswered, many unanswered questions are terrible, and many active questions are either inane or repetitive.

Maybe if they used an advertisment model that makes the site USABLE ON ANDROID PHONES without the adverts taking up so much memory that your keyboard is literally murdered by the OS each time you want to write an opinion (oh wait, they should just finish the app they've been working on for supposedly 2 years now at least), then MAYBE they'd get more revenue.

Also I'm ranting because I'm still ticked off with the hideous font change AND the lack of dislike. This won't fix anything! This will just make currently existing users quit instead. It won't fix the problems.

- It won't fix the fact that most questions are unanswered (or low answer count)
- It also won't fix that advertisments and obnoxious pop-ups literally make the site unusable

But instead it'll just make the site unusable, and essentially a worse version of Yahoo Answers.

Yeah, I'm pissed.

[TheDevilInside]

How did you find out about all of this?

I think the contrary will happen. I think my disabling "negativity" (or simply a freedom to express our feelings in a miniscule Kind of way), they're even gonna lose more members.

And i think the reason why users aren't returning are the Constant fixing of things that aren't broken. And the ever increasing price of the amazon gift codes... People are disappointed in gag. Not to mention at some point in last year, there was a Spike of misogynistic users. These kinds of users are very toxic to the site. Makes it very unpleasant. Letting these people roam around for long means a decline in traffic, so my logic says. Especially female users. Who would want to constantly hear how shitty members of your sex (including you) are, every time you log in to gag?

[orphan]

i have my own "social website" which was once quite big back in the day. iv'e dealt w/ the similar problems, so i kinda know where to look.

returning users come here to socialize. people definitely don't come here for amazon gift cards. i read where it was a little easier to achieve XP back in the day , and possibly people exploited the system. tbh, they don't need to give away anything. the XP model does serve the purpose of establishing a hierarchy, which is good and bad. every question i look at guess who i see first? missnowhere (don't take this personal, it's not ur fault lol)

the responses are ordered by XP, XP is accumulated by time spent here. w/ that understanding, if missnowhere continues to be a regular user, guess who's always going to be on top? missnowhere. in theory no one can ever catch or surpass her.. if someone does, it'll be the person who's always right below her. the model makes it difficult for new users to be 'heard' and appreciated.

[orphan]

after all the people w/ a lot of XP are displayed on top (the ones w/ titles -- editor guru etc), then it's ordered by MHO % ... so whomever was once on top, won't be if missnowhere decides to respond.

the predetermined order of responses also causes confusion because you don't know where to look for the new posts unless they're at the top in the "new" posts area. say you want to look at them again.. come back, they're filed away in their order somewhere down the line. the user friendliness of this site is what's really sending people away. (read my response below to the guy, i touch on that)

[hellionthesage]

Reasonable, but I doubt it would benefit them in the long run. 20/80 split, 20% of users comprise 80% of the "traffick" so to speak, so by not consulting them they are actually going to lose more people rather then get more (its why promotionals don't work, those who are loyal customers are always their the rest simply, for lack of a better term "dabble")

[springocelot]

good thing i joined GaG during the "good" years when there was consistency, flow, and more lively dialouge. i believe the big drop in 2015 was when they took away features that made GaG "good"

[orphan]

what were those features?

[springocelot]

The biggest one i believe was removing comments to comment from the live feed. This happened before the big drop in traffic in 2015 per the chart. Since then I've noticed the average number of opinions users get per question go down. Seeing comments to comments pushed up opinions that otherwise would not have been read and facilitated interesting dialogue in the threads.

Categories were more streamlined
Up/Down vote buttons more visible
MyTakes weren't a focal point when you open the home page

I could go on, but those were some things I noticed.

[orphan]

yea i was just looking at the older layouts (archive. org). definitely more streamlined back then... whenever they decided to implement the "infinite scroll" and force advertising... or forcing you to see the sign up window w/o touching anything.

even signing is tedious.

"ok i want to sign in" *click*

"no i dont wanna sign up i have an account" *click*

"no i dont wanna sign on through facebook i have an account" *click*

"finally... i can sign in"

[orphan]

i think you can see the desperation behind their actions there...

[ConsultantIsBack]

I think it's too help modify the culture where the bitches that dominant gag don't push newer users away as much.

[orphan]

this is how conspiracies start.

[orphan]

disregard that, misinterpreted your comment. o. O i agree.

[ConsultantIsBack]

That's really clever to include the web traffic info graphic. Good stuff man

[BelleGirl21]

But I like pushing people away...

[ConsultantIsBack]

@BelleGirl21 lol u are so not who I am referring to. I'm not really taking specifically about anyone. You just see actual normal people join the site and then quickly leave bc of getting harassed about being attractive, etc.

[BelleGirl21]

I know lol

It's so easy to make you feel guilty... must be a softie under that tough exterior 😉

[orphan]

precisely.

[orphan]

@bellegirl21

he's referring to the argumentative women around here... the piranhas

[orphan]

which would be brigs, belle, and gravey. not an easy debate.. they'll send most outta here feeling stupid.

[BelleGirl21]

Heyyyyy my mentions are working! Yay!

[ConsultantIsBack]

@BelleGirl21 haha ya my mentions were having issues on my phone earlier too. yah i feel guilty lol im a softie.

[archiz]

lol makes sense :P
why are you thinking about it though?

[orphan]

because people are whining n heartbroken. my fellow gaggers deserve closure.

[douride2]

So I was right GAG traffic is dropping way off over the last year.

[jacquesvol]

Partly silencing negative opinions?