AI bait?

[hbelkins]

If the bot attacks are continuing on the forum, I have an idea.

With all the AI-written Facebook posts that are out there, maybe we should start baiting them and then see if any of our false narratives make in onto Americo Express or those other scourges of social media.

Of course, we'd have to post our bait in a publicly-accessible board and not in Fictional.

[Max Rockatansky]

If AI issues really become that bad maybe it will be time to throw the towel in a forum.

[JayhawkCO]

If AI issues really become that bad maybe it will be time to throw the towel in a forum.

As long as we get some notice. I have a lot of random things that I track on this forum that I really need to get the details saved somewhere offline.

[Max Rockatansky]

If AI issues really become that bad maybe it will be time to throw the towel in a forum.

As long as we get some notice. I have a lot of random things that I track on this forum that I really need to get the details saved somewhere offline.

I did that myself after the last round of AI issues.  Maybe I'm wrong but I feel like AI ranking the forum for good is an inevitability eventually.  Who knows when that will be, but it sure seems like this place is getting way harder to maintain.

[hotdogPi]

The forum is up over 95% of the time and probably over 99%. The bots aren't really causing any issues other than making it too much of a hassle to enable registration, and those are the pre-LLM type of spambot.

I strongly discourage getting rid of the forum, especially as I don't have Facebook.

[Max Rockatansky]

The forum is up over 95% of the time and probably over 99%. The bots aren't really causing any issues other than making it too much of a hassle to enable registration, and those are the pre-LLM type of spambot.

I strongly discourage getting rid of the forum, especially as I don't have Facebook.

Long term it still is probably an inevitability no matter what.  Yeah sure, forums like this are getting harder to maintain.  But the problem many of you aren't considering fully is that the amount of people who are on here is becoming less and less over time. 

I can think of at least two dozen mainstays in the road hobby who are no longer active on this forum.  I see almost all of them active in other places on the internet.

[kphoger]

But the problem many of you aren't considering fully is that the amount of people who are on here is becoming less and less over time. 

I can think of at least two dozen mainstays in the road hobby who are no longer active on this forum.  I see almost all of them active in other places on the internet.

Maybe more new people would be attracted to the site if we changed the domain name to viatology.com/forum.

[Max Rockatansky]

But the problem many of you aren't considering fully is that the amount of people who are on here is becoming less and less over time. 

I can think of at least two dozen mainstays in the road hobby who are no longer active on this forum.  I see almost all of them active in other places on the internet.

Maybe more new people would be attracted to the site if we changed the domain name to viatology.com/forum.

Just attach it to the Calrog app and it will go gangbusters.

[vdeane]

It would be unfortunate if this forum were to go; not everyone does Discord or wants to move all their roadgeeking activity to Facebook.  Especially since Facebook makes comprehensively keeping up with more than a couple groups a pain.  I'm a member of Northeast Roads, NYCRoads, Ontario Roads, Quebec Roads, Montreal Roads, and Road Meets, and even that feels like a lot, and I'm hesitant to add more (in fact, it used to be less, until Steve Anderson invited me to joint Montreal Roads multiple times).  And the RAM usage from just queuing up that is a large part of why I replaced my laptop.

[Max Rockatansky]

It would be unfortunate if this forum were to go; not everyone does Discord or wants to move all their roadgeeking activity to Facebook.  Especially since Facebook makes comprehensively keeping up with more than a couple groups a pain.  I'm a member of Northeast Roads, NYCRoads, Ontario Roads, Quebec Roads, Montreal Roads, and Road Meets, and even that feels like a lot, and I'm hesitant to add more (in fact, it used to be less, until Steve Anderson invited me to joint Montreal Roads multiple times).  And the RAM usage from just queuing up that is a large part of why I replaced my laptop.

Road Meets is probably the best group we have in the Gribblenation Facebook group portfolio.  West Coast Roads is the only other one we got that currently has a pulse.  I don't think most of the area specific groups we have really worked out.  Mountain West Roads was decent for a while but tapered off a lot the last couple years.

The best Facebook group I admin by far is Old Highway 101.  That isn't really a traditional road fan page but more or less kind of analogous to some of the older US 66 history groups before they became normalized.  I tend to find most of the best road groups on Facebook have a history-oriented slant.  California's Historic Highways, Freeways of Los Angeles and the Lincoln Highway stuff are among my favorites.  Come to think of it I find it kind of odd that historic road images aren't a thing here.  They are super prevalent on Facebook.

FreewayJim and Roadgeekery are the biggest catch all Facebook road groups.  I'm present in those two mostly to share things we work on from Gribblenation.  Both seem to be an approachable gateway into the hobby in a way that I don't think the forum can replicate anymore.  Both are fairly tame in terms of there not being much drama. 

The worst Facebook road group is "That is totally not MUTCD compliant.  That group is pure poison and infected with NUMTOTs and safety theater nerds.

Facebook does have a lot of road pages with a presence on the platform (AAroads being one of many).  Our Facebook page definitely drives by far the most visitor traffic to Gribblenation.org and is a big factor as to why our site has grown so much since 2016.   We have a little over 18,000 Facebook followers at present moment. 

The biggest issue with Facebook pages is that the algorithm tends to favor pages with maximized engagement.  That means we have to keep up on making sure something is scheduled to be posted pretty much every day.  It also means it is in our interest to share posts and reply to people as much as possible.  It definitely is not the platform for those who don't keep up with things regularly. 

the Gribblenation Instagram account tends to do okay, but given we tend to slant more as a history page, and I don't think what we do fits the platform all that well.  Twitter was a total dud and Adam deleted the account a while back.  We have a decent podcast presence but at most that is getting a couple hundred listeners on the best performing shows.   If I ever become handy with dashcam video I might try to open up a YouTube page, but I'm not committing myself to that anytime soon. 

[kphoger]

If this forum bit the dust, then I'd simply be out.  I have zero interest to engage in any other online environment.

[CoreySamson]

I personally don't like Facebook for road discussion because the way it is structured is not very conducive at all to back and forth conversation, especially involving three or more parties. I especially don't like how in comment chains many comments are hidden that make it extremely difficult to follow conversations. It's also very difficult to interact with multiple people in Facebook comments at the same time, which is much easier to accomplish here.

[Max Rockatansky]

I don't seem to have problems conserving about topics on Facebook.  In fact I find it is way easier to confine a back and forth exchange when it is limited to two people.  On forum certain replies tend to get buried under quote pyramids.

[Rothman]

I personally don't like Facebook for road discussion because the way it is structured is not very conducive at all to back and forth conversation, especially involving three or more parties. I especially don't like how in comment chains many comments are hidden that make it extremely difficult to follow conversations. It's also very difficult to interact with multiple people in Facebook comments at the same time, which is much easier to accomplish here.

I agree with this.  I find Facebook to be a robust address book and newsletter and little else.

[Roadgeekteen]

I know I haven't been active lately but this forum has been so important to be these past 8 years and I really don't want it to die and would even be willing to become a moderator to save it.

[formulanone]

I know I haven't been active lately but this forum has been so important to be these past 8 years and I really don't want it to die and would even be willing to become a moderator to save it.

Moderation isn't scarce, it's the Administrative side of a forum which takes many hours of time to create and maintain, even after expenses are figured in.

I don't enjoy the Facebook side of roadgeekery, to be honest. It's not really a user base issue, to be honest; much of it is civilized. If something important occurs, there isn't any way to control information in any way other letting it flood and then slowly drain out. Take the Key Bridge disaster, for example...for the next week, 90% of all the posts were about that, because everyone thought they were the first to report on it or thought they were adding something new (they were not) when generally new information occurs at a near-glacial pace after the first 24-48 hours.

FB's structure of promoting most-popular posts, makes it difficult to find information once it is no longer "fresh". Things get lost once engagement drops off. You can search somewhat but you're far better off just headed for a search engine and hopefully there's some websites dedicated to it. There's also a handful of quick repliers to each post which adds nothing of substance..."I remember that." and "I drove it once." doesn't really stir meaningful discussion nor conversation.

Sometimes it's fun, sometimes it's not, that's a pretty good way to prevent addiction, I suppose.

[Max Rockatansky]

I know I haven't been active lately but this forum has been so important to be these past 8 years and I really don't want it to die and would even be willing to become a moderator to save it.

Kind of a contradiction there don't you think?  You and many aren't active but yet expect someone to forever provide a free service.  There comes a tipping point in those scenarios usually. 

Besides the problem isn't moderation but rather maintenance.  Those maintenance things take time, money and in this last round with AI issue apparently programming knowledge not many possess

[Max Rockatansky]

I know I haven't been active lately but this forum has been so important to be these past 8 years and I really don't want it to die and would even be willing to become a moderator to save it.

Moderation isn't scarce, it's the Administrative side of a forum which takes many hours of time to create and maintain, even after expenses are figured in.

I don't enjoy the Facebook side of roadgeekery, to be honest. It's not really a user base issue, to be honest; much of it is civilized. If something important occurs, there isn't any way to control information in any way other letting it flood and then slowly drain out. Take the Key Bridge disaster, for example...for the next week, 90% of all the posts were about that, because everyone thought they were the first to report on it or thought they were adding something new (they were not) when generally new information occurs at a near-glacial pace after the first 24-48 hours.

FB's structure of promoting most-popular posts, makes it difficult to find information once it is no longer "fresh". Things get lost once engagement drops off. You can search somewhat but you're far better off just headed for a search engine and hopefully there's some websites dedicated to it. There's also a handful of quick repliers to each post which adds nothing of substance..."I remember that." and "I drove it once." doesn't really stir meaningful discussion nor conversation.

Sometimes it's fun, sometimes it's not, that's a pretty good way to prevent addiction, I suppose.

Search for "Posts You've Viewed" and you'll find what you're looking fairly easily.  I'm finding Facebook to be just as easy if not easier to filter searches on than the current version of the forum. 

I use Facebook searches with regularity to search for vintage highway images for the blogs I write on GN.  For something like Zayante Road I came up with half a dozen hits.  The amount of viable hits you get for something like a numbered highway can sometimes be in the hundreds.

[vdeane]

I find checking Facebook groups to be a royal pain.  The old way was much better, back when they had the new posts and posts with new comments separated out (with everything else under an "older" heading), and the small left sidebar that had all your groups, allowing you to click through each one at a time.  They even had an indicator of how many posts there were with new activity so I could skip the ones that don't have anything new!  Then Facebook took all that away, because ruining the platform is apparently Mark Zuckerberg's mission in life, and my engagement has since dropped off by a lot.  Now I have to queue up each group in a separate browser tab, scroll down until the post dates all appear to be older, and cross my fingers that there's nothing I want to see buried further down.  That catches most new posts, but new comments on existing posts are virtually impossible to proactively check for in any time-efficient manner that I know of.  Honestly, if it weren't for the content that's not here (mostly Canadian), road meet RSVPs, maintaining my site's page, and following friends/pages, I'd have given up on the platform years ago.

[kphoger]

The old way was much better ... because ruining the platform is apparently Mark Zuckerberg's mission in life

Call me cynical, but I don't see how our easily searching for old content is of any value to Facebook.  Their goal is to get us to spend as much time on the platform as possible, so making it harder for us to do our digging only serves to achieve that goal.

[vdeane]

The old way was much better ... because ruining the platform is apparently Mark Zuckerberg's mission in life

Call me cynical, but I don't see how our easily searching for old content is of any value to Facebook.  Their goal is to get us to spend as much time on the platform as possible, so making it harder for us to do our digging only serves to achieve that goal.

I wasn't talking about searching, even.  In fact, Facebook loves shoving days-old posts with nothing new in front of me in the default feed while burying newer stuff or never showing it at all.  And I already mentioned how checking groups is a pain.  Compare to this forum: open tabs for the forums showing new posts, then tabs by middle clicking the "new" icons for threads I'm interested in.  Easy peasy.  All of this has honestly been causing my time on Facebook to plummet, since if they're going to make it hard, I may as well skim for the best and ignore the rest.

[Max Rockatansky]

Some of the Facebook road group posts can be very low quality.  Memes like #buceesjim didn't spawn for no particular reason.

But let's not kid ourselves and pretend everything here is quality content.  We aren't too far removed from the P13 and MMM era.