Shacknews LoL

Just posting to say that I personally loved the politcal threads in this chatty. The debate was good, we have a ton of educated and interested people here.. Shame to see it stop.

Not a fan. First thread I look for every day. I can get game news anywhere but political threads here are much more civil than anywhere else I’ve been. I simply won’t have a home to discuss politics anymore. But hey its your website. I’ll still come around just not as much.

Moderation Note - Ukraine

With the sad news coming out of Ukraine there are going to be posts shared here about war. These will invariably contain difficult and sensitive topics or images. This will be allowed under our current guideline regarding gore as it is newsworthy.

We have been using the format of one political post per day and that has worked well. We're going to do the same with any Ukraine news. The thread will also be marked Political so it can be filtered out if need be. If you scan the Chatty and you don't see a Ukraine post, feel free to create one. If multiple exist then the mods will merge them together. If you make a Ukraine post in the Morning Joe thread, don't be surprised to see it merged over to the current Ukraine thread.

Posting any disinformation will suspend posting privileges for an undetermined amount of time.

[deleted]

Some Chatty Statistics

I have seen a lot of threads lately containing suggestions for improving the Chatty and I wanted to provide some statistics about our commenting system.

Since late 2011, Chatty pageviews are down 85%. Back then, Chatty pageviews were almost 20% of the site's overall pageviews. in June 2018, Chatty represented 3.2% of pageviews. In June 2017, Chatty represented 9.29% of pageviews. In our most recent month, Chatty pageviews declined 17.93% year over year from June 2017. The Chatty was still our most viewed page on Shacknews.com last month with index.x and Cooking Ingredients and Recipes in Pokemon Quest right behind it.

It is entirely possible that the Chatty will be less than 3% of our overall pageviews by the end of the year. At the bottom of our overall site's traffic plunge in 2014, Chatty represented over 23% of the pageviews at Shacknews.com.

Two things are happening. Chatty is slowly bleeding away and our front page content is growing rapidly.

This is why I have focused our limited development resources on the front page of Shacknews.com. When we bought the site, the first thing I did was look at the Chatty. I saw a very engaged group of users that still use what is obviously an antiquated and limited commenting system. I also saw a group of people who didn't give up on Shacknews. It would have been very easy to scrap the Chatty and throw in Discus or Facebook comments, but I decided that we have to do right by our community and keep the Chatty going.

The main Chatty-specific design improvement you will see in the upcoming phase one of our redesign is that comments for articles will return to the bottom of articles. Phase two will focus intensely on empowering our community to express themselves like never before.

I believe that this community is a place worth fighting for, even if it continues to lose me money. The Chatty has seen better days, sure, but I believe that our plans to reinvigorate the community will work. I just ask that you give us some time to show you what we are working on before declaring this place dead. It is not dead, and the entire website is more alive than it's ever been.

[deleted]

I enjoy Shacknews and talking to you all. I have for like 25 years. There is really no other place on the internet I like being more than here in the chatty.

This place rocks. It’s the best.

Shack Staff posted a new article, <a target="_blank" href="/article/123804/the-shacknews-origin-story-as-told-by-shugamom">The Shacknews Origin Story, as told by sHugamom</a>

[deleted]

Greetings Shackers,

I have been gone for awhile, and there has been some of speculation about the nature of my absence. To be honest, I have been traveling a lot and keeping myself busy moving into a new home. I also have three upcoming events with Army of Techno, so I have been spending quite a bit of time preparing for those. I have still been responding to Shack messages, occasionally using the [LOL] script, and I have been working behind the scenes with our team on some great things for this fall and the future. Shacknews is now growing our year over year monthly unique visitors for the first time in 5 years. We had a great E3, and actually gained even more visitors in July over June 2015. This momentum carries on into August, but I don't want to bore you with the Front Page any longer.

Today I would like to announce something, and it is not that I am selling Shacknews.

MERCURY BETA

Mercury is a $5/month subscription service for an advertisement free Shacknews experience. Mercury is still in beta and will evolve over time. We plan to listen to continue to listen to community feedback on how to make Mercury better.

I want to thank everyone who has put up with our ads over the last 2 years. We needed them to keep us afloat. Mercury Beta will be another great way for Shack to stay alive and kicking for years to come. Thank you for making this community awesome, and I look forward to hearing back from you as we relaunch Mercury.

2 lines of code, 2 years.

You'reWelcome.txt

Asif