how to improve soompi

[Guest GooNiEGooGoo]

>> Although there are more features to lag the computer (lol), the feel of the site is still intact with the original look AND it's still pleasant to the eye IMO. I say, change so it looks like the fast Windows 95 GUI. lul.

>> Logging in issues after the upgrade. This set me off the site for a long while. So maybe send those emails that say, "Soompi misses you...blah blah balh".

>> Chatroom threads are spawning pools of hate if a session gets out of hand. Once something goes on in the chat, it may get posted on the forum, which is bad for the forum viewers. Lock'em threads. Or if someone creates a channel somewhere, state how to get there and lock'em.

>> It COULD be the economy. People buying less, therefore, sharing less. People feeling more depressed. Life is a mess.

//Positives//////////////

>> People are still holding meets. I went to one and the turn out was much more than I expected. And I'm talking about way more than the posters in the thread. But none of us talked about kpop.

>> I still visit the site because I like to see what's up in the community. Anything new, anything I can go to, whatever. But not the forum for the lolz.

>> The Steam gaming group. I have to catch up with them foos. Thread should be pinned.

[Guest simple20]

Overall, I think most of the old soompiers have grown. The 20+ forum is rarely active, but it is the most interesting forum that I've been too. There are a lot of controversial topics as such "What are your views on God" and I'm very surprised that the thread isn't closed yet. In general forum, the God thread has been closed because too many opinions have become "right" vs wrong. And again, we do have a lot of mature topics that young people don't understand or the jokes that are going around.

I guess I'm only here because it's summer.. I think when school begins again, I won't be here as much as I will be during the summer. I also think a lot of us are still listening to Korean music, but we have grown out of the Kpop industry and moved on. Oh yeah, about the KPOP section.... it's just not that fun as it used to be anymore. I looked back in the old topics and there were of different topics, but now they're all the same. Probably because the new generation is taking over and the old generation is moving on.

[Guest colloquy]

whoever flocks to akp isn't worth having here though

my blood pressure like almost always squares whenever i decide to read a news article there

Allkpop is simply the biggest example. My point is that there is a lot more competition then there used to be when it comes to Kpop sites.

Personally, I think the upgrade was unnecessary and came way too quickly after the last one. Some of the productivity seems to be infringed upon the apparent desire for soompi to become some kind of social networking and all purpose Kpop site.

[Guest ninjastar]

Well for me, I just come to soompi now for pictures, skipping all the discussion. It may be because of lack of time to read through everything, but also probably a lack of interest in the things being discussed. (always been a lurker)

One way to have the appearance of having a very active forum would be to merge the forums that aren't very active. You really don't need separate forums for sports, anime and manga, humor, cars, etc where the same topics are always on the first page. Just move all those forums into one Miscellaneous general discussion. For example, Neogaf, the largest gaming forum: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/  

Maybe this format will finally get rid of the same 2 year old topics that have been on the first page of the general discussion forum.

[Guest i KITTY x3 =)*]

for me, it's most definitely the layout and all the unnecessary cafe/profile crap.. like someone said, i want my page to load quickly, post, and get out. the time it takes soompi to load a page gets longer with every upgrade :| also, sometimes the bottom forum jump scrolldown box doesn't work so i have to go back to the main forum page to visit another section

but if i had to vote on one thing, it would be the upgrades and changes in layout~

[Guest doremii*]

I think only the kpop sections are dying. The other sections (health, beauty etc) seem to be doing fine.

as for the kpop sections, I think it's due to these reasons:

1)competition from other kpop sites (allkpop etc)

2)growth of individual forums for kpop artists? I know snsd, 2pm, etc have their own forums that are pretty big

3)the kpop sections are wayyy too heavily moderated tbh a lot of the times I don't wanna post because I'm afraid of saying something wrong and getting a warning/banned. Other sites are less strict so ppl might opt to post on those sites instead.

4) the new layout. I don't mind it that much but a lot of ppl don't like change

i feel like the major age group that dominated the forum before is just growing out of it

like when i first joined the majority of people were 13-14 years old and nowadays i don't

really see anymore of those users online?

hmm I disagree. I also got into kpop when I was around 13 years old, but when people grow out of it, there are also younger people who discover it. Just like when we first discovered kpop, there were also kpop fans older than us who were starting to move on.

[Guest EHNerJI]

Well, for me, after the whole 'cafe' thing happened,

I stopped logging on as much.

When I would come on Soompi, it wasn't strictly to post in the forums.

I liked to talk to other people by posting comments on their profile,

but this cafe thing made it more difficult.

I had to follow people to write to them?

I thought the cafe was supposed to make interaction easier, but it really didn't o . o;

But yeah, other than that, I think it was me growing up & having less spare time v_v;

[Photogeek]

Now that I give it a little more thought, I used to come here because it was something new to me... It provided me a new way of learning things...

But things have gotten a bit repetitive... The constant upgrades (which makes us Soompi Users have to get used to them and their bugs).

I think the Simpler it is to use the better (it doesn't always mean that making it more techy is better).

Maybe if we grow in the areas that used to be popular before such as the fanfic area (the first reason I joined soompi) and the beauty section (although I never checked it much, it was pretty popular).

[Guest 한스 ㅋㅋ]

maybe its just me but I do not see this forum dying.

ok maybe its gone a bit quieter. but i wouldnt call it dying... theres still a lot of ppl here lolz

[Photogeek]

maybe its just me but I do not see this forum dying.

ok maybe its gone a bit quieter. but i wouldnt call it dying... theres still a lot of ppl here lolz

The thing that I feel is that people aren't replying as much, and if they are, they are replying either irrelevant stuff or really short answers. In other words, it's becoming as I said repetitive...

[Tiggie]

Kinda agree the new update made soompi much more slower for me. I miss the old soompi, the green layout where it was so much more private I hate how soompi is trying to be like twitter or something. Also the reason why I joined soompi was because of the fanfics like someone said it used to be THE place to go for fanfics. Now it takes me days to find a good fanfic from the completed fanfic forum since the new one is filled with cliche story lines and gasoos. What happened to the artwork section too? They were so many talented artists on soompi! I'm sure they're still here but I mean come out and revive that forum!! The korean music forum used to be my second fav forum on soompi but now it's like a new group is debuting every day and before members who liked the same group used to be like a family =(

I really miss that and it's not something soompi can change I think it's kpop in general >_>

Sorry for the rant. I love soompi and it's like my second home and these past months it did feel like it changed a lot and maybe it's because of the new generation coming into soompi? Plus I'm getting older and hardly having time to log on ( when I do it's lagging) but I'm sure things will straighten themselves out.

[Photogeek]

Kinda agree the new update made soompi much more slower for me. I miss the old soompi, the green layout where it was so much more private I hate how soompi is trying to be like twitter or something. Also the reason why I joined soompi was because of the fanfics like someone said it used to be THE place to go for fanfics. Now it takes me days to find a good fanfic from the completed fanfic forum since the new one is filled with cliche story lines and gasoos. What happened to the artwork section too? They were so many talented artists on soompi! I'm sure they're still here but I mean  come out and revive that forum!! The korean music forum used to be my second fav forum on soompi but now it's like a new group is debuting every day and before members who liked the same group used to be like a family =(

I really miss that and it's not something soompi can change I think it's kpop in general >_>

Sorry for the rant. I love soompi and it's like my second home and these past months it did feel like it changed a lot and maybe it's because of the new generation coming into soompi? Plus I'm getting older and hardly having time to log on ( when I do it's lagging) but I'm sure things will straighten themselves out.

I do agree that finding a good fanfic now these days is hard. Not trying to offend current writers, but I hold the believe that if their writing isn't the best, then they shouldn't write until they fully edit their work... (and that's why I stay away from writing something lol) That's the main reason I stopped reading fanfics from here... They have gotten too boring because they are all the same stories with different names.

The same with the artwork section. I tried replying to that section as much as I could but it began to die on me... so I stopped replying and looked at other forums...

I know we can revive all these forums, but we need to improve the content or the way the community replies and looks at the content.

[Guest milkbunny]

i use soompi less

because people are too mean

for example

they leave comments like

"the point of this thread is..."

"there's another thread like this"

"no offense..." and they leave something offensive

and crazy fan girls.....and its a clinque on soompi

im tired of...soompi is cool and all but sometimess i don't feel like posting

a thread if some stupiddd b-word chick/dude is going to constantly bash on mee :/

so im usually in my the beauty threads because its interesting :]

[Guest dreamskye.]

I have to agree w/ comments on fanfics. I used to love coming here and reading fanfics and even posting my own. But I soon discovered that it was becoming more of a popularity contest between authors and readers than really on the quality of the writing. People fought over who could get more replies and views and constantly berated "silent readers". It didn't take long for this kind of attitude to get to me and I stopped posting here all together. I still occasionally come and read but I tend to go for authors I know.

I also used to be crazy about the artwork forum. Everyone used to be really supportive and nice to each other. but after a few competitions and being wrongly accused of "cheating" during a contest and having random people call me names, i rarely go there anymore. and i can say that i barely see any of the old artists that used to post frequently there. People have become...i don't want to say meaner, but less nice. It's no longer a place where i want to avidly display each work i do.

i still dearly love soompi <3 but the forum definitely has changed from what it was when i first joined

[kissez*]

Five bucks says it's because of the forum upgrade.

Could we open a poll?

[Guest hannieoon]

I feel like not many people use soompie anymore. The topics aren't as interesting anymore... maybe it's because I've kind of lost interest too. All these new updates confuse the heck out of me. I'm trying to get used to the new layout. BLah.... hopefully it'll pick up around here!

[Guest IntangiblyYours]

I've also noticed the number of active users going from, say, 25 to 1500. I personally find it hard to believe that with all the people registered on here that it could ever go below 500 even, so perhaps the upgrade messed with the counter?

I've been here for less than a year, but I've really enjoyed it. I agree the page loading takes awhile, but I guess that's the price to pay for a nicer look. I'm liking the colors. Not a lot of new, interesting topics I think, but that could be because of summer and everyone being busy.

Personally, I don't think it's AllKPop (I think I saw this mentioned earlier). I visited it for the first time a few minutes ago, and I definitely prefer the forum here. Plus, I like seeing the familiar faces (or rather, usernames).

[Guest DOVAHKIIN]

Just as I thought things would turn out to be. SMH

[Guest vip_gd]

oh another thing..I agree with the people above, I barely ever go into the kceleb photo section anymore because it's all these "official and couple threads" -___- , I used to love visiting the k-celeb photo section for news/event photos but now it's dominated by official singer threads..so I just go to allkpop instead..lol.

yeahh, I don't remember the k-celeb section being bombarded with all these official and couple threads.

well, the reason I'm on soompi less is because,

- I'm not really digging the new layout and upgrades. I appreciate what soompi has to offer but I just really dislike it ಠ________ಠ I only like the embedding feature ..

- most of my friends, favorite fanfic writers and peeps on soompi are all gone T_T

- kpop has gone downhill for me. everything sounds so chitty chitty

- i've grown i guess .. i don't feel like posting anymore .. but i do post now and then

I'm still in soompi only because of my biases. I miss 07-08, those were my best years on soompi .. plus kpop

btw, i was fine when soompi stuck to this layout for our profiles ..

so much easier and simple to use

[Guest knockblock]

This all has me torn. Some of the things I can say has already been said (Like one, the new layout and how it tests your patience. I'm disliking that my server has to be "not responding" for a bit before I can get active on the forums). I expressed to a mod in private some time ago about the changes I notice. Which I'll share in a bit. This place has slowly changed over the past few years.

Soompi has a role in my life. I see that other members feel that way for them too. The people who are expressing it are making it known. I've been around here for as long as the joined date indicator shows. I admit I'm proud to have been a forum member of Soompi throughout the years. Through the years I've witnessed things around the forums and see how things evolve over time. After all these years, I feel like I've been part of a place that I can say is special and makes me feel special.

Now, if there is something I'll add to the things others have said, it would be about in the general discussion section. I was saying that I expressed to a mod about how the forums evolved. What I told the mod I spoke to is what I'm about to say. I remember back in 2006 and until somewhere in 2007 there used to be deeper discussions in topics in the general discussion section. The general discussion section is one of the most active sections around the forums. It used to be very lively. One thread I can remember in particular back in the day was a topic asking if America will ever fall one day. That is one example I feel is a type of thread that invites deep discussion. When the forums have more threads with deeper discussions then maybe things could be more fun. Now there are too many "what did you do today?" or "how are you feeling right now?" type of threads. They get redundant and aren't compelling. Because of that, it makes topics in the forums uninspiring to take part of. Threads get boring when they reach so many pages and when they aren't compelling. Especially if they don't make you want to see it through to the end. The forums aren't inspiring to be active in when there are too many threads with such quality. I would like it if there were more good quality threads around the general discussion section on the forums like it was back 4 years ago. In 2006 I thought there were some of the best times in Soompi. I hope one day it can get back to that level.

Other stuff I can say but maybe later.

I respect everything the people who lead Soompi has done for the place. But there are things I find that are making it hard.