I can't help but notice that there isn't much 'traffic' on here lately, i know a lot of people now avoid it because of certain posters, which i alluded to in a previous thread a couple of months back.
But when i log on to the VT all i see are the newshound report threads and the game on threads, with usually very little, if any, contributions.
I'm sure a lot of people are like me, and if they don't see anything that takes their interest they just go onto another forum or offline altogether, so what i am asking is, is there anyway the game and match report threads could be merged into one thread or have it's own sub-forum?
Maybe the discussion threads might pick up again and encourage more people to hang around rather than just see the same threads and decide not to bother?

It's not a criticism, just a frustration really, the matchreports usually have no contributors and the match threads, very few, seems a shame if it as to stay that way, as the VT used to be a good place to discuss allsorts, now it just seems to be links to other stuff.

As interest in rugby league decreases (which at the moment is in freefall) so does the need for the remaining fans to post on forums. It has nothing to do with trolls. 5 years ago this board had ten times the number of trolls. Its just the apathy towards rugby league in general. No one cares about it anymore

Regards

King James

I look sometimes but nowhere near as much as I used to.
I'm fed up of the minority of posters who turn every thread into a discussion about their personal crusade, regularly derailing threads.
The 'faux personas' are also irritating.
And I won't log on if my kids can see - for all the AUP a name like "Fantastic Mr Cat" is somehow deemed appropriate.
Some of the individual club boards can be interesting.

Think it's just natural progression to be fair. Forums are old fashioned now, everyone has facebook and twitter these days. Club fan pages and banter pages on FB are booming.

Its nothing to do with decline in popularity of League. There's not a lot of evidence of this anyway. its more to do with the rise of social media, facebook in particular has several thriving fans groups. for example i believe the Hull FC group has just welcomed its 5000th member this weekend, including many who used to post on here. also facebook enables easy posting of pics and videos along with all the usual comments. Its a bit embarrassing when this forum seems to pretend that youtube, facebook and twitter don't exist and actively stop links. i know there are copyright issues and other stuff, but i'm afraid its simply put people off and onto more user friendly sites. there's no use pretending its not happening because it is. another factor to add into the mix is that its not just the VT. a lot of clubs have their own independent forums which are much more popular - saints, hull kr and cas to name three.

as a long time member of this forum and the sub forums community (remember the newsgroups?) that eventually became this one in 2003 i will still post as long as there is a forum. the trolls don't bother me, i'm quite entertained by that stuff and you can always ignore them. however i believe within 3 years this forum will cease to exist or attract so few posters it won't be worthwhile. sad but it's probably progress

Just cant be doing with all the negativity on subjects that really don't bloody matter, seems like some people have just gotta find something to complain about...

You think this is poor: try The Shed (nee Scarlet Turkey).
I am forcing myself to post and not move off to the alternative site.

Too many forced opinions from a VT minority puts people off, you can also add the spelling and grammar checkers as well. Sometimes if you post actual facts it gets frowned upon and people by pass it to there own agenda. Creating a new topic is always subject to derailment, criticism and "superior knowledge" of subject matters if not written with clarity.

This - I would be genuinely interested to get a discussion going about how people felt about Magic weekend on here, but won't bother putting a topic on, because of these reasons.

Too many posters have just become a persona, whose sole aim is self promotion of the persona they have adopted... it's bizarre and quite sad tbh.

Agree with both of the previous, in years past, there would have been a thread a few pages long discussing the magic weekend, standout players, most exciting teams, best supporters, not to mention discussions about the games.
This time, there have been a few posts on the Game on: threads but little else. but you could always guarantee that one of the said "characters" will post some usual dribble!
Sad times really

Yep, can't disagree with any of that. Used to be a great place to post but the welcome 'morons' have pretty
much killed this forum, shame.

It is the case that you have to have a certain amount of intestinal fortitude to post in here - because even an earnestly expressed personal opinion will be mocked and derided by a clique of ever present smarts. That said, there are still some very knowledgeable and well-informed posters in here, so it's still worth the effort.

Its not half as bad as the Sin bin though

Seriously

What has happened on there? Its like a David Icke forum

Regarding the OP

I agree, the whole forum seems very dead these days.

I am tired of British people complaining about the VT when they don't try to make it work.

I recently started a thread on franchising which now has 90 replies and over 4600 views. It is the most popular of the page 1 threads at the moment.

Instead of complaining, British fans should follow my example and try to be creative like me, and work harder at bringing up new ideas expressed in clear grammatical English. If achieved then there would be more traffic on this forum.

yes, you really are the Johnathan Thurston of Thread starting, a real creative force

All forums on all subjects are slowly dying - replaced by facebook groups and twitter.
Online newspaper comment sections are also popular.

"I recently started a thread on franchising which now has 90 replies and over 4600 views. It is the most popular of the page 1 threads at the moment.

it has also attracted a lot of fly comments: JC I was around when Maurice tried this and remember the Feattherstone reaction: very obviuos at an Oldham/Salford match. Count the different posters: not many.

Despite what you may thinkt, being consistently contentious can put people off.

These posts just make the VT look a mess and more of a billboard than a community dicussion board. I think the admins need to take note of this idea and put these posts in a sub-forum alongside League Marketplace, League Games station, League Links Central & Main news.

I think some earlier posts in this thread highlight the real issue, RLFans is dying a slow and painful death. The rise of club dedicated forums and social media groups is where a lot of the activity is nowadays. I think it is a great shame since the true spirit of RLFans is interacting with fans from other clubs, especially discussing your forthcoming or just completed match against each other.

I am a follower of the Wakefield group on Facebook and occasionally post there. However I find the lack of moderators means the quality of posts and some of the language is quite offensive in my mind. There are a lot of kids signed up to it and even as an adult I can be offended.

Anyway, enough of my cotton wool sheltered life. There are now a few club forums on here which remain active but look at how quiet the Cas and Widnes threads have gone because they all use their own forum.

I feel we are watching the end of a little era and for me it has a tinge of sadness.

Its a shame really, I've been here since 2002 when I was 16 - now as I approach my 30th Birthday I realise I must have spent days of my life just reading through these forums. I reckon it could be revived with a bit of tweaking (direct pictures etc) but sadly pretty dead these days.

Well, I still like the V.T.

I much prefer it to the parochial club boards with the cliques & uber- partisan supporters, at least you can get the odd measured debate.

The “Fakebook” forums are just littered with bad language & terrible grammar, it’s just like a dumbed down version of this.

It’s a shame some posters have been hounded-out, I particularly enjoyed Williams attendance thread.

Oh well, I could always join the Total R.L. Board, if the V.T. goes the same way as the Sin Bin.

To be fair, it's not the entire Sin Bin - just one thread that has become the personal blog of a moderator, and is overseen with ruthless North Korean discipline; it does however appear to have caused the whole thing to wither away.

Apart from the interesting astronomy thread, there are two blog like threads but neither are mods on there (afaik). But it has become very very introspective.

Good post.
It's very sad, RLfans has been a part of my life for nearly 15 years now and i used to spend hours trawling through the boards and reading stuff, now i find myself spending no more than 20 minutes browsing all the decent threads.
i agree about the facebook groups too, i am in a couple of the Giants ones and to be honest they aren't really that good at discussions, more arguments than anything and the moderating is non existent.