State of the forum

[CleverCowboy]

Originally Posted by Paulina

I’ll be honest, a forum like this existing today is a rarity. And I really don’t know how it can compete for attention spans and focus of today’s phone user base especially younger users (Gen-Z, Gen-Alpha). Most internet users today have short attention spans and don’t want to actually read or discuss anything on a deeper level. If your posts aren’t less than five sentences the users will just close their tab and move on to the next shortly gratifying piece of entertainment.

100% correct. I see this is real life everywhere. Go into any waiting room and everybody is looking at their phone. Short attention spans and lack of depth equals minds that can easily be influenced and controlled. Try to start a real conversation and you get funny looks, and that includes family, especially the younger family members. Maybe the younger set are afraid of saying anything against the approved narrative or utter a banned word and be canceled.

Because of this and other reasons, I have pretty much zero social media participation. I have an FB account like everybody but rarely go on. I have an IG account and I only follow Alizee and a few other accounts associated with Alizee.

The chat box on this site used to be used often up to 2018. The admin at that time liked to small talk and he drew an audience. The problem was that we were hurting for new threads and posts and some of the chats could have made great threads. Scruffy and I started encouraging members to post instead and we had some success at the expense of the admin. He got mad about it and left the forum.

We've had some threads on giving the forum a makeover, and one of the topics was the need for a chat box because removing it altogether was a thought. The younger members liked the chat feature. In fact, some suggested moving the site to Discord and one created a channel already. I have never been on Discord or plan to. Chatting takes your full attention to participate and would be a nightmare to moderate. Plus there was only so much going on in Alizee's life at that time to talk about, so either there would be little to no chatting or members would find something to argue about.

This forum is full of great threads and well thought out posts. I spent a LOT of time reading through the history and got to "know" members that I never directly interacted with since they left before I joined. Since I've joined, many of the members that are still here or have come and gone I would consider as friends. It's pretty crazy to think about that, but that is the power of forums and the written word. On FB, the meaning of "friends" mean little. A few of my FB friends have THOUSANDS of friends. How is that even possible? It takes time to make a friend and more time to keep a friend.

I really would like to see this forum keep going. Shutting it down would be like closing a chapter in my life that I don't want to finish.

[Scruffydog777]

The guy with the image of Alizee with butterfly wings tattooed on his back went by the name Roman. He was from California. I met up with him and RMJ in Paris when the concert at the Rex was cancelled. Roman seemed to drift away after that. RMJ was probably one of the most hard core fans, at least in terms of how many times he was able to see her.

I went to a few Les Enfoires shows that RMJ also attended. The advantage of having those shows in the winter was many people had large bags with them to carry their winter clothing which they'd shed once they got inside. This allowed RMJ to conceal a rather large camera with which he'd get some great photos' during the shows. In fact, I think Wikipedia used one of his photos' on their Alizée page.

RMJ was around for several more years. He had his own web page that is still out there but it looks like the last post was in 2017. (https://www.alizeeart.com/). He was active on FB too for a while but I doubt if he still is.

[Paulina]

Originally Posted by Scruffydog777

The guy with the image of Alizee with butterfly wings tattooed on his back went by the name Roman. He was from California. I met up with him and RMJ in Paris when the concert at the Rex was cancelled. Roman seemed to drift away after that. RMJ was probably one of the most hard core fans, at least in terms of how many times he was able to see her.

I went to a few Les Enfoires shows that RMJ also attended. The advantage of having those shows in the winter was many people had large bags with them to carry their winter clothing which they'd shed once they got inside. This allowed RMJ to conceal a rather large camera with which he'd get some great photos' during the shows. In fact, I think Wikipedia used one of his photos' on their Alizée page.

RMJ was around for several more years. He had his own web page that is still out there but it looks like the last post was in 2017. (https://www.alizeeart.com/). He was active on FB too for a while but I doubt if he still is.

I remember on the other Alizée Forum RMJ once said If Alizée no longer existed he would stop existing as well. I hope nothing bad happened to him. It’s kind of strange he stopped updating at 2017 considering he followed almost everything Alizée did. I now remember Roman, I think I shot him a message on MySpace years ago asking if he was still involved with the Alizée fandom and he said that he was moving on. There was a female German user on the other Alizée forum who had her own site like RMJ. I can’t remember her name but she seemed pretty up to date on news concerning Alizée TV appearances and etc.

[CleverCowboy]

Originally Posted by Paulina

There was a female German user on the other Alizée forum who had her own site like RMJ. I can’t remember her name but she seemed pretty up to date on news concerning Alizée TV appearances and etc.

That would be Jenny, I believe. I sent her a PM back in 2019 or around there asking her if she can share her library of videos she took while at Les Enfoires (she did).

Back then, she still was a fan of Alizee and loved her even though she had been inactive on this forum for a while prior. She got married and had kids and they became her priority.

I suspect that similar things happen to most fans of anybody, not just Alizee.

[Magnetic Lili]

We may tell ourselves that the website is outdated and does not encourage us to use it. It's all true. However, when we follow an artist, the most important thing will always be new content, and Alizee has given us very little of that in recent years. This forum is a real treasure for new Alizee fans, but the lack of new content can effectively kill even the greatest fascination. An example would be an Alizee fan from Finland who registered here about two years ago and seemed to have a real obsession with Alizee. I checked that the last time he logged in here was almost exactly a year ago.

So we see that without new content directly from Alizee, it will be difficult to increase traffic on the website, and we can't count on that, because she already leads a different life.

I think it is also important that users who visit us from time to time mark their presence in some way, just like Paulina did above.

Maybe we could make a list of users who would be able to help/replace Mr. Scruffy in the process of financially supporting the forum?

[Marshal Davout]

Originally Posted by Magnetic Lili

We may tell ourselves that the website is outdated and does not encourage us to use it. It's all true. However, when we follow an artist, the most important thing will always be new content, and Alizee has given us very little of that in recent years. This forum is a real treasure for new Alizee fans, but the lack of new content can effectively kill even the greatest fascination. An example would be an Alizee fan from Finland who registered here about two years ago and seemed to have a real obsession with Alizee. I checked that the last time he logged in here was almost exactly a year ago.

So we see that without new content directly from Alizee, it will be difficult to increase traffic on the website, and we can't count on that, because she already leads a different life.

I think it is also important that users who visit us from time to time mark their presence in some way, just like Paulina did above.

Maybe we could make a list of users who would be able to help/replace Mr. Scruffy in the process of financially supporting the forum?

I'd be willing to help financially to keep the Forum up as one of the users.
I went to the Home Page and the Donations section; but that uses Paypal and I don't utilize that at present, so I don't know if I would want to go there ! If there was someplace I could send a check or subsidize the forum some other way I would do that ( Hopefully for only part of the cost ! )

[Paulina]

Originally Posted by CleverCowboy

The chat box on this site used to be used often up to 2018. The admin at that time liked to small talk and he drew an audience. The problem was that we were hurting for new threads and posts and some of the chats could have made great threads. Scruffy and I started encouraging members to post instead and we had some success at the expense of the admin. He got mad about it and left the forum. We've had some threads on giving the forum a makeover, and one of the topics was the need for a chat box because removing it altogether was a thought. The younger members liked the chat feature. In fact, some suggested moving the site to Discord and one created a channel already. I have never been on Discord or plan to. Chatting takes your full attention to participate and would be a nightmare to moderate. Plus there was only so much going on in Alizee's life at that time to talk about, so either there would be little to no chatting or members would find something to argue about.

Here is my thoughts on chat rooms and chat boxes and Discord: They’re great for bringing people together for just shooting the shit but they don’t promote real in depth discussion about the main focus of whatever site they’re used on. You can post images and video links in Discord but you can’t search for them later like you can in a forum like this. I used to frequent a very popular anime forum back in the day. We had a chat box above the forum for people to use when they didn’t have real in depth discussions to talk about. It wasn’t so bad because these users still used the forum and made posts. In addition it wasn’t A TON of users using the chat box either. There are some chat rooms and Discord servers that have so many users that it’s like a bunch of feeder mice moving frantically in a box. So many people are talking at once you can’t keep track of any of the users or their comments. You just see a username and comment for a brief second and it’s immediately replaced by another in the next second. No coherent discussions can take place either.
I like the way the site and the forum looks however I can see some users probably wanting a more phone friendly layout. My only complaint is the lack of a video section with subtitled videos. There are A LOT of Alizée interviews out there and a lot have never been translated. As for users not making as many posts as in the past it’s understandable because Alizée really isn’t making music anymore and isn’t making as many TV appearances like she used to. I think the latest thing she has done is a small appearance on The Masked Singer. She does make posts on instagram almost daily so there is that.

Originally Posted by CleverCowboy

This forum is full of great threads and well thought out posts. I spent a LOT of time reading through the history and got to "know" members that I never directly interacted with since they left before I joined. Since I've joined, many of the members that are still here or have come and gone I would consider as friends. It's pretty crazy to think about that, but that is the power of forums and the written word. On FB, the meaning of "friends" mean little. A few of my FB friends have THOUSANDS of friends. How is that even possible? It takes time to make a friend and more time to keep a friend.

There was someone from Norway that I met on this forum back in 2008 and we are still friends today!
One of the ways of making friends online back in the day was using forums like this and then after figuring out the personality of the users you could try becoming friends with them on a messaging application like MSN messenger, AIM, YIM or IRC. I have friends that I made back in 2004 on other forums and we still amazingly talk to each other 19 years later. I have even met up with a few of them in person in real life. I don’t think a chat room application like discord can offer the same thing.
When I first started using FaceBook I was in high school and it was for adding people that you knew and were friends with in real life. People starting using it to add not just friends but acquaintances that they only met for a minute at an event or get-together as well. That’s why you’ll see some people that have over 2,000 friends, they don’t actually know all of these people they just add them because it makes their E-Penis look bigger. There were a couple people in my high school who would try to add EVERY single person at our school who had a facebook account. It was just to make them look more popular than they actually were. People used to say if you only had 50 friends on Facebook then you were a loser. It’s funny looking back, because at one point in time people who communicated a lot through the internet were considered geeks, losers and nerds. And now, the majority of the population is now primarily communicating through text and online outlets. It’s just now the discussions have gotten shorter and dumber due to a lot of forums closing down and getting absorbed into the alternatives like Reddit, Twitter, FaceBook and Discord.

[CleverCowboy]

Originally Posted by Paulina

I like the way the site and the forum looks however I can see some users probably wanting a more phone friendly layout. My only complaint is the lack of a video section with subtitled videos. There are A LOT of Alizée interviews out there and a lot have never been translated. As for users not making as many posts as in the past it’s understandable because Alizée really isn’t making music anymore and isn’t making as many TV appearances like she used to. I think the latest thing she has done is a small appearance on The Masked Singer. She does make posts on instagram almost daily so there is that.

There is a vBulletin phone app, but requires the forum be at least version 5. We are stuck on version 3.8.4. I am in 100% agreement we need something phone friendly. Today you can pretty much do everything on a handheld device so laptops will probably go the way of desktop computers, into the dustbin of history.

Personally, I still prefer a desktop with multiple hi-rez monitors. But I'm in IT, and IT folks need the extra computing horsepower and multiple monitors. Maybe the phone chips will advance to the point where it can serve as the main CPU for a workstation and support multiple external monitors. Just plug it into a docking station. But I am getting ahead of myself!

Edit:

Originally Posted by Noppo555

About the forum, I've been thinking the landing page should be completely reworked and new sections should be added, like photos, videos and magazines. I believe we could spread all the content through multiple Google drive accounts, so there's no cost in hosting the albums.

I have a simple design in mind that I could translate to Figma and maybe do myself.

Another thing - I believe there's free forum software other than vBulletin that we could migrate the forum to, so there's no licensing costs; it would all boil down to just hosting and storage costs, so I believe that's a better future proof solution than paying for such an old vBulletin version. This forum is not mobile friendly, which might deter zoomers from visiting and witnessing history.

It might take some searching, but we have had multiple detailed threads about revamping this site and exchanged ideas, etc. The landing page is, of course, where the most focus was. As it became more apparent that a whole new platform probably would not happen at that time, just changing the picture would be a big win. However, even that did not happen.

We thought of starting from scratch with a whole new site, but that would mean losing all the history and that idea was dropped. I still think our best bet would be to upgrade to vBulletin 5+ and let vBulletin host (prices are very reasonable). They will even convert an older vBulletin site to the new version and retain all its history for free, but they have to host.

They do not allow any 3rd party software, so we would lose our chat box and there would be only so much we could do with the landing page. But we cannot win them all.

[Marshal Davout]

I Freaked Out ! As last night I could not access Alizee America for some reason; maybe it was local or something; so I imagined all sorts of things ! I got "Server Unavailable" or "Server taking too long to answer" messages. But I could access all other websites ! So since I have become addicted to AA And Alizee; I would just like to reiterate I would see if I could come up with $25 a month to keep it up, if that is what it takes for as long as I am still kicking ! I would just need to know where I could send a check or do it some other way. [ How else am I going to date all of the French, EU, NATO, and other Girls all over the world in their Clumpy Shoes , when I make it to Europe and elsewhere if I do not have it ? Ha ! ]

[Noppo555]

Originally Posted by Magnetic Lili

Maybe we could make a list of users who would be able to help/replace Mr. Scruffy in the process of financially supporting the forum?

I could help a bit, since it would be a shame to see the forum go, even though I don't participate as much as other users.

About the forum, I've been thinking the landing page should be completely reworked and new sections should be added, like photos, videos and magazines. I believe we could spread all the content through multiple Google drive accounts, so there's no cost in hosting the albums.

I have a simple design in mind that I could translate to Figma and maybe do myself.

Another thing - I believe there's free forum software other than vBulletin that we could migrate the forum to, so there's no licensing costs; it would all boil down to just hosting and storage costs, so I believe that's a better future proof solution than paying for such an old vBulletin version. This forum is not mobile friendly, which might deter zoomers from visiting and witnessing history.