Mankz's leaving thread has given me some an idea to get the BT community back to it's former glory...just putting an idea out there to see what you guys think... What if there was another section opened on the site for user generated content - modding guides and user made articles / reviews ETC. This would bring back the modding aspect of this site that has been going downhill and missing for so long. It would also bring back some form of community, as people would go back to discussing ideas and articles that are raised in said section. As much as we already have news articles and a few other articles on the site, we seem to have a lot less since the dennis takeover / CPC merge. Maybe as an incentive have dennis create a prize for the best user article / reveiw of the month. Let me know what you think. If I'm not 100% clear on what I mean let me know - I'm not particulary with the plot today so may be a little incoherant...
Although I agree with what your saying Brooky I doubt Dennis is going to go for it sorry as it is to say there running a business for "profit" and it would undermine there sections if we started reviewing say rival products (ie company's paying to get the stuff review etc) I think maybe if we had a homepage for the forum which had hot topics, reviews, top discussions of the week, BF3 game nights etc on it that might work? Then if it was isolated from Dennis and controlled by say a few of the long-term members/ Moderators. Obviously we can't undermine the rest of the site so I think keeping it to member produced articles and not product reviews would keep both sides happy. On the subject of members who are not being "constructive" maybe we could have member of the week to encourage people to be more helpful. I think I am just repeating what your saying and I agree its time the members took back there forum.
It's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure Dennis Publishing will agree to having a section devoted to community-generated content. Recently, mnpctech posted a thread in the 'Modding' section in which he reviewed a PC case. The thread was closed with an explanation that Bit-tech does not support third party reviews. On the other hand, another member posted a semi review of Epic's Mayhem Aurora Coolant, along with a plug for the Epic web page, in this thread. I don't see any objections in the thread, so perhaps Bit-tech isn't necessarily opposed to third party content.
Whilst I wasn't aware that the thread mentioned was closed, I believe the reason was that the review was hosted externally on another site (competitor) so that in a way is understandable. The site has had a tradition of user generated content, within the forum and some articles published on the main site, therefore I don't imagine that would be a barrier - administration and error checking/validation may be an issue. I would encourage the user community to post reviews within the forum structure, some may even make it to the main site - who knows.
