Reasons why I almost never visit this website anymore:
Failure to credit article authors on the home page, especially Tamia Nelson for her In the Same Boat Column, which in my opinion has always been the best feature of the website and the main reason why I visited it. Tamia contributed hundreds of useful, well-written articles over the years. Where are the links to those articles? I think it’s really disrespectful to not credit her on the home page or display links to her many other articles. Very shabby treatment of a loyal contributor.
Tolerance of despicable social behavior got tiresome over the years. It compared very unfavorably with other outdoor forums with its quantity of bullying, racism, sexism, homophobia, primitive political posts, and mean responses to large paddlers. Pnet became a crass place unbecoming of the sport of paddling and unwelcoming of diverse paddlers. Tolerating those behaviors amounts to sanctioning them.
And now a really unattractive site design. Yes, appearance does matter a great deal. The present design in singularly unappealing. What on earth are those ugly avatars in the forums?
Forums are now very inconvenient. No way am I going to read all the way to the bottom of 80 posts to see if there might be one interesting one, without being able to see post titles of subtopics as previously.
Bottom line: the site can’t achieve its goal of financial viability if it doesn’t draw in regular visitors with an attractive, convenient interface, foster a supportive and respectful community, and treat its major contributors respectfully. Without those elements it’s just another advertising site. I spend quite a bit of money on kayaks and paddling gear every year, but none of my purchases are inspired by Paddling.com for the above reasons.
not here that long but the old Pnet was old and stale. I have been on forums near 20 years and when I saw it I was shocked. I got use to it but it was really old old style. Yes I like few old things better but the new is better in many ways. If they brought it back most here probably wouldn’t like it as much as they did. I still can’t login on my android phone here.
@WaterBird said:
Reasons why I almost never visit this website anymore:
Failure to credit article authors on the home page, especially Tamia Nelson for her In the Same Boat Column, which in my opinion has always been the best feature of the website and the main reason why I visited it. Tamia contributed hundreds of useful, well-written articles over the years. Where are the links to those articles? I think it’s really disrespectful to not credit her on the home page or display links to her many other articles. Very shabby treatment of a loyal contributor.
@PJC said:
Kim, I’d bet it was a Wildfire.
And remember back when the old Pnet threads didn’t just disappear? Anyone else notice that? Remember that button where you could just contact the administrators?
But change just happens. No sense wallowing in nostalgia.
nope… It was bigger and red. You were in the Flashback… The Argosy would have been a even match for a Wild but it was a larger truck…
Here is a disadvantage of the new format… We of the diverging conversation have derailed the topic instead of hiding in our tangent room
@PJC said:
Kim, I’d bet it was a Wildfire…
nope… It was bigger and red. You were in the Flashback… The Argosy would have been a even match for a Wild but it was a larger truck…
Here is a disadvantage of the new format… We of the diverging conversation have derailed the topic instead of hiding in our tangent room
Reading about what sounds like a demo derby by canoe is much more fun.
My point is that Tamia is not credited on THE HOME PAGE.
When I look at the list of articles on the home page, it reminds me of the cover of a magazine, telling me at a glance what main features can be found within. In the genre of popular magazines, crediting authors on the cover page is quite unusual, so it hardly seems unusual to see it here as well. With a magazine, you can open it to the table of contents and see the authors’ names, and you can do exactly the same thing on this site with just a click.
Just checking in after a few months… interesting to see others posting about what I had been thinking…
.I lost interest after I logged in to the new forum a few times. It’s a clodhopper. It’s not user friendly and as has been noted here by others, with the fall off in traffic there isn’t much here to draw me back. The old site was not particularly great but it was much easier to navigate than this is.
Pnet in it’s current iteration is no longer a regular stop for me and I don’t see that changing.
Lot’s of nice white space though…
My point is that Tamia is not credited on THE HOME PAGE.
When I look at the list of articles on the home page, it reminds me of the cover of a magazine, telling me at a glance what main features can be found within. In the genre of popular magazines, crediting authors on the cover page is quite unusual, so it hardly seems unusual to see it here as well. With a magazine, you can open it to the table of contents and see the authors’ names, and you can do exactly the same thing on this site with just a click.
Your analogy might hold if the author were unimportant, but these authors are not unimportant. Tamia and Farwell have written more than 900 In the Same Boat articles. Those are no longer to be found at this website. They may be here somewhere, but they can’t be located. The column no longer appears under the name “In the Same Boat” on the home page. If you land on it by clicking on all of the articles on the home page, you will discover the name of the author. But you will find no links to the other 900 articles. One of the attractions of In the Same Boat is that the articles contain links to many other related articles that always grabbed my curiosity.
In the Same Boat was my main motive for visiting the website and subscribing to the newsletter. I think the site owners underestimate the draw of this column for readers.
These are professional outdoor writers who make a living by their writing. This kind of shabby treatment could well have an impact on them professionally.
It’s clear what’s happened. This site has moved to a focus on advertising and needs of advertisers while ignoring reader needs and disrespecting longtime contributors who were the main attraction of the site for many years. I’m not interested in advertising. If I want to buy something I’ll google it. If I want to read In the Same Boat I’ll google that too and read it somewhere other than Paddling.com, which leaves no further reason to come here.
@WaterBird said:
Reasons why I almost never visit this website anymore:
Tolerance of despicable social behavior got tiresome over the years. It compared very unfavorably with other outdoor forums with its quantity of bullying, racism, sexism, homophobia, primitive political posts, and mean responses to large paddlers. Pnet became a crass place unbecoming of the sport of paddling and unwelcoming of diverse paddlers. Tolerating those behaviors amounts to sanctioning them.
That did it for me and for several other folks I know.
Reasons why I almost never visit this website anymore:
Tolerance of despicable social behavior…
That did it for me and for several other folks I know.
While I’ve only been here for a bit over two years, I’ve never come across anything offensive in the paddling related threads. For me, it’s been a great learning experience and I’ve been helped and encouraged by many kind and generous paddlers.
I do recall there was a separate thread (B&B) at the bottom of the old Pnet page which was the hangout for those who wanted to talk about other topics. In order to read that thread, you had to page down and make a conscious choice to enter. That thread’s long gone from Pnet/com.
I have been lurking for a bit, and now I can see why very few of the old timers are not here any more.
When I finally logged on and tried to get to the “message boards”, it put me to “community”. Then when I tried from there I ended up with some advertising.
There are only a hand full of posters and of those, there are only three or four that were long (10 years or more) on the good old P-net
