A shame, hopefully this gets fixedin the off season.

@tex – I feel bad about your lost work. I hope we can sort this out.

@b0ardski – I read most of your Odin/Pegasus topic on the recent activity page ( http://splitboard.com/activity-2/ ) but I —like you— can’t read it as a thread. I have had a few posts which disappeared into the ether too. I can see them in my list of activity but not in the sub forum page.
FWIW the same thing happened to me on the old site too. You could see my post if you clicked on my profile but not on the subforum.

I’ve never had a problem with composing a post in a word processor then copy/pasting it. I don’t trust web-based applications for composition (unless it autosaves every 30 seconds or something).
To insert pics, I keep ” [ img ] xxxxx [ /img ] ” handy in my word processor (without the six spaces between brackets and letters) for copy/pasting; all I have to do is replace the “xxxxx” with the url of the pic and it’s good to go. It’s the same way I did it in the old forum too.

As far as lost topics. . .
I have half a dozen bookmarks with the old “viewtopic”-type URLs. I’ve found I can access most of them by taking the title and reworking a new URL. “viewtopic” becomes “topic/” all the random numbers and letters become the title where spaces and punctuation have been replaced with dashes.
For example, my old bookmark on @buell’s topic entitled “New Whippet Mod” . . .
http://splitboard.com/talk/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=9041&p=68482&hilit=whippet+mod#p68482
. . . becomes http://splitboard.com/talk/topic/new-whippet-mod/
“viewtopic” has been replaced with “topic/” followed by the title where dashes have replaced spaces.

Another tool to find old threads is to insert “site:splitboard.com” into DuckDuckGo searches (or Google or whatever). That limits the search to only hits in the SB.com domain. Most (but not all) engines find result URLs in the new, hyphenated format. It’s only a matter of time before the engine make another crawl and refresh their caches to give us usable results.

I hope that helps (but I could also see how that would make it worse if that’s exactly what you did).

Me and Tex had a good conversation around this. I agree with everything he said. There has been a lot of “oh do this to get around x”, and personally, it shouldn’t be that hard. I had bookmarked a lot of old trip reports, mostly for the pictures, and they are now gone, or broken. It’s a PITA to post a trip report here, and I used to do a few a year, and haven’t at all. I’m actually dreading putting up another. Either way, it should be EASY, not a work around. It is a bummer, I’ve met some of my best friends through this forum, and organized splitfests through it, but with the way the forum is now, I just don’t know if I can catch on to it.

Also, if snowsavage is having an issue posting a trip report, GET IT FIGURED OUT! That dude inspires the most stoke of anyone. Having 3 friggen threads for one trip report is crazy.

I generally agree. As I know others are, I am incredibly grateful for all the work that Chris and now Colin have put into this site over the years, including their efforts to improve the site. Many friendships and tech advances wouldn’t be today but for SB.com – which is extremely valuable. While I’ll still do my best to post worthwhile content, it worries me to see use declining (apparently) and people unable to post trip reports or frustration with posting or navigation. My sense is that there’s a lot less quality content coming from users now. Insofar as the new format deters use, it will ultimately come at the cost of the community. Again, not a knock on anyone, but some honest observations.

That’s how it slowly dies. Quote me.

It’s a culmination of many things that has caused site traffic to drop. I could list them, but we all know what they are. I used to go through phases of checking in every day, to every week. Lately, I feel like this place isn’t even on my list unless I’m REALLY bored.

It’s a shame, and I’d hate to see what was once a awesome resource for our community go away. I found out about split boarding from this place in ’05 and have been doing it ever since, with a ton of help from this site. I don’t post TR’s ever, but it’s just not my thing, I rarely read them either. I’m more here for the gear reviews and such.

It’s ironic that just as Splitboarding is starting to be more mainstream, the site that got so many people into our sport starts dying off.

What does everyone think the solution is?

What is the root cause of declining activity? Is the problem the new forum format? Are more people using social media and not interested in taking time to post here?

While I agree that the new format is not perfect and is lacking in areas (drill down searches, etc.), there are things that are improvements. Several of those things Hans listed above such as the ease of inserting video’s, standard formatting of images, and the ability at some point to upload and store images (which would prevent old threads from dying.)

I have not experienced the site locking up (other than when there was software issues and no one could get in) so I can not speak to that. I know a few members have experienced this. Is this a common problem with everyone?

As for @snowsavage ‘s TR, that is probably one of the coolest TR’s I’ve seen. I can only dream of embarking on a trip like that. However, I believe even the previous forum would have had issues with the length and number of images in that TR. I believe the current forum could have allowed it to be posted under 1 topic but it would have taken several posts to make it happen.

@cbalke, its the little annoyances. First, changing over to a new format is a bit annoying to relearn. Also, people’s login’s didn’t work, and a lot of people just say “fuck it” and didn’t get it renewed. The organization of the forum changed, which has been fixed, but that sucked. The new posts pissed a lot of people off (which has been resolved somehow, I personally didn’t use it). The flow of the window isn’t that good, lot of white space that would help it flow if you could extend it wider. Only half the width page is viewable! Also, little things like “Hey, this post didn’t work” is annoying! I thought I had got a grasp on trip reports and pop out images, and now I can’t post a trip report. Its just pretty frustrating in general to use. Another thing that was nice was “views” on a post. Knowing how much it is viewed helps know if it is actually a good post or not.

Also, compounded with a poor winter, the mainstream of splitboarding, and facebook, instagram, etc has lead to more decline if I was to guess.

The site really needs to be easy to use it. I personally don’t feel WE got anything out of the new format, except more pain. Few ideas: when putting in a picture, make a check box for “pop out enabled”, would be cool. 2) Extend the width of viewable screen wider. 3) Add in views to topics 4) stop posting content in the main site on the forum, leave that to us.

@cbalke, couple of things. I’ve been on here since 2011, and this forum site is responsible for me getting into splitting and meeting everyone, and basically was a key factor in shaping my life to where it is now. Crazy to think about. The ability to organize splitfests, read up on gear insights, exchange knowledge with other splitters, learn about other splitfests, get beta on routes, meet splitters all over the world, what a resource.

The people, and the knowledge they shared, that was the real value of the forum in my mind. But it only has to be frustrating once or twice, and then everyone stops coming to the forum.

I don’t agree that all of us just need to learn the new workarounds and we’ll all be happy. The new format sucks, in so many different ways. The big ads. Something with the ads causes my browser to lag. Once the browser hangs, I lose everything I was just typing. I’ve just given up contributing, and I was a pretty regular commentator before the switchover.

WTF, summersgone had to create everything in Notepad and paste it over? Why am I typing this in a gmail, then copying and pasting it over? Because the forum doesn’t work well, even for the most basic functions for which it was designed. I suspect it’s something with the ads.

Really, I so appreciate what the forum has given me and my crew over the years, but this new format makes it unusable in my mind. I hope you and Chris find value in what we are all saying.