Rage Online Blog

Forum wars

If it's not one thing it's another in this crazy world of OUFC fandom. Yesterday, the main forum that Oxford supporters post on, Oxfordshire Forums (formerly ThisIsUnited, or TIU), hosted by the Oxford Mail's parent company Newsquest, announced that TIU would be closing and would be replaced by a new forum using the Oxford Mail template.

This in itself wouldn't be such a bad thing - the old forum powered by Snitz was a bit clunky and the navigation wasn't brilliant and maybe it's time for a change. The reason given for the switch was that Newsquest's IT department no longer supported the Snitz platform, so that if the forum crashed, which happened occasionally, it would be terminal. The problem, though, is that the new board's format is a) significantly different to the TIU forum, and b) one third of the screen is given over to very intrusive adverts that make the new format almost unusable, with the administrators adamant that the ads have to stay.

There is, inevitably, an outraged uproar from the users of the forum. Some have signed up for the new forum, but it's unlikely that many will be regular users of it, especially those who post from work, where the new-look advert-heavy screen will render it work-unfriendly. It has also caused people to look for an alternative forum, with two boards immediately setting themselves up as frontrunners. These were the long-established (and obviously my favourite) Rage Online forum, and the dormant but recently revived Yellows forum. The latter board, because it replicated the various sections found on TIU, will probably prevail, but because the Rage Online board already had a core of regular users, enlivened by some new posters from TIU, it will continue to thrive. TIU and Rage Online had different characters as well as different looks, and there is certainly room for more than one OUFC forum to thrive.

In addition, there are some other extant United message boards that don't generate a lot of traffic, but have their place in the OUFC scheme of things. Foremost among them is probably the Oxford United official message board, which suffers greatly from having to follow the template laid down by Football League Interactive, the host of all the Football League websites. Another board, which looks pretty similar to the Rage Online forum because it uses the same phpBB platform is the one hosted by the Oxford United supporters trust OxVox. This is a quiet, friendly forum, but possibly suffers from the perception that it is Trust focused. There is also a little-used forum on the Oxford United Mad site, and the rather corporate BBC 606 Oxford United forum, neither of which are likely to pose much threat to existing specialised United message boards.

At least it gives us something to discuss during the close season, if only we can find a discussion board to post on.

Labels: forums, official site, OxVox, Rage Online, TIU, Yellows