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Casey Sager
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 738
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| Posted: 16 September 2019 at 6:48pm | IP Logged | 1
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What I find particularly annoying is there are several members of that group who prefer to be willfully ignorant as opposed to getting real answers instead of wild speculations, directly from the source.
This place is so strict ::eyeroll :: a real email address? Don't act like a jackanape?
Man, the hoops you make us jump through to sign up and be members.
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Tim O Neill
Byrne Robotics Security
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 10940
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| Posted: 16 September 2019 at 8:46pm | IP Logged | 2
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I agree that much of what has been brought up is valid, but there is more going
on here than just internet trends and email addresses (although I do agree that
the gmail rule needs to change ASAP). JB is a public figure, and legendary
celebrity in the comic book world. People react in different ways to public
figures when they interact directly with them.
In person, we get starstruck and are overly complimentary. On the internet,
we've all seen people become the worst trolls, regardless of the venue. It's all
tied to that public figure element that can be elusive to identify and difficult to
explain.
A Facebook page is safer, and they can make rude remarks and not be called
on it. Or on the other side of this, they can gush about the work and not be
seen as a kiss ass.
JB has given an accessibility that is rare in any form of the arts, and I am
grateful he continues here
I would also like to speak in defense of message boards - they are better for
long form text and more in depth comments. And while Facebook maps your
face and mines your data, we really don't give a shit about your browsing
habits - and I mean that in the nicest possible way! :-)
The JBF also remains free of charge and free of advertising. Add new, free X-Men stories, and it's a pretty sweet deal.
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Nathan Greno
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 20 April 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 9154
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| Posted: 16 September 2019 at 9:01pm | IP Logged | 3
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I enjoy chatting with fellow fans — I visit and post here and there. Different vibes. Both are fun.
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Scott Barnett
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 14 December 2018
Location: United States
Posts: 263
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| Posted: 16 September 2019 at 9:58pm | IP Logged | 4
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I agree with Nathan.
I've been a member of the Byrne Victims group for quite a while. I can't speak for other groups (and I know there are others), but the creator/admin of BV does a good job of policing rude behavior.
And when people go there inquiring about ELSEWHEN, he always points them to this forum.
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Koroush Ghazi
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 25 October 2009
Location: Australia
Posts: 1681
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| Posted: 16 September 2019 at 10:14pm | IP Logged | 5
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I've been running a reasonably popular website since 2004 I'm very familiar with the numbers game. Some (lengthy) notes/thoughts from me.
I'd say that most fans are not aware of this forum and/or that it is actually the real John Byrne here. I've related this tale before, but when I started searching for John Byrne-related material back in 2009, I saw Byrnerobotics in the Google search results and passed it by initially, only coming back to it when other avenues failed to yield any better results. There's nothing to connect JB with "robotics" in my mind, and even if you arrive at the front page of this site, the one with all of the comic book covers, it seems to be a fan site.
Again, there's nothing to indicate that this is actually a site owned by JB as opposed to about JB. I suspect that people can't believe it's possible to interact with the real John Byrne so freely and easily on the web!
Forums are indeed dying off. Forums involve actual discussion, and elaboration of argument. People don't like genuine discussion, much less elaborating their thoughts; people generally prefer brief statements putting forward their opinion ("Trump is the best president ever!"), and they want it to go unchallenged.
Most people use mobile devices to browse the web these days, and these are not really designed to view and post on forums easily. The Twitter and Facebook apps on the other hand are mobile-centric and also conducive to the style mentioned in the point above (i.e., a short sentence or two). JBF, even on a full-screen device, is harder to read and trickier to post on than, say, Twitter.
Data on numbers of visitors is difficult to get independently, and is not comparable to Facebook or Twitter followers. For example, my site, at its peak, reached over 3 million unique visitors a year and was within the top 5,000 websites globally (out of billions of sites). But that doesn't mean I had 3 million followers, it just means that over 3 million uniquely identified systems connected to my site over a year. They could be visiting every day, or just once a year. Similarly, if a Facebook page has, say, 20,000 followers, that doesn't mean that some or many of those 20,000 people have visited more than once.
A major source of independent web traffic estimation and relative rankings come from Alexa (owned by Amazon.com), e.g. the JBF ranking and traffic chart - this is an estimate based on a range of inputs. Keep in mind it's also relative, meaning that a site's ranking may be falling on Alexa simply because other sites are becoming more popular, not because this site actually has less traffic.
Again, only the webmaster here can actually see the daily visitor stats in the server analytics package, or Google analytics if you've signed up for it. This includes data on the sources of traffic (e.g., which links on other sites they've clicked to come here, what web search terms result in traffic leading here, etc.) That should help explain who is coming here and why.
Bottom line: If you want more people to come here, then a few changes could do the trick. May I suggest:
1. Putting a clear sub-heading such as "The Official John Byrne Forum" or similar on the main Byrnerobotics.com page, as well as on each forum page? Even a "John Byrne posts daily here!" sign would do wonders.
2. We live in a world where Twitter and Facebook reign supreme. I recently got back onto Twitter. I hate it, but it won't go away, and I prefer it over Fakebook. So I'd suggest, against all his better instincts, that JB open a Twitter account, and even if he posts just one tweet linking to this forum, it'll be enough. Why? Because on Twitter, JB will get a 'blue tick' next to his name, indicating it's the real John Byrne (hard to fake blue ticks).
Here's an example of how one well-known personality used this method: Karl Pilkington's Twitter Page
Perfect.
A few days ago, I linked to the latest Elsewhen thread, and it quickly got around 300 views and 5 clickthroughs to JBF, which is a good result given I only have 11 followers on Twitter right now (I mainly use Twitter to post nonsense and collect likes from Ricky Gervais ;)
A lot of people will trust you to be who you say you are on Twitter or Facebook because of the verified account status, and Google search results also strongly favour Facebook and Twitter. So a person searching for "John Byrne" would see your Twitter page as possibly the first or second result, it would likely even appear in that Google Knowledge Panel shown on the right side of the page. They click on it, see a link to JBF, and Robert's your father's brother, job done!
Would take you all of about 10 minutes to set up JB, and you needn't return there to post ever again.
And with that, this first chapter of my novel comes to a close :)
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James Woodcock
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 21 September 2007
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 7818
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| Posted: 16 September 2019 at 11:20pm | IP Logged | 6
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I had a Twitter account. It had a very strong password.
It got hacked by porn. Twice.
I closed it down.
The hackers resurrected it & I had to get Twitter to kill it.
Yeah, I’m not such a fan of Twitter
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Koroush Ghazi
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 25 October 2009
Location: Australia
Posts: 1681
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| Posted: 17 September 2019 at 3:55am | IP Logged | 7
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Password lists from leaked databases make "strong passwords" totally irrelevant. Your password could be X7sdahkj34ZX&^%SAj!!r3 but if it's stored in a database with weak encryption and leaked by a hacker, it's suddenly out there. Go check weleakinfo.com for more details.
The only thing that works is two factor authentication. A password combined with a code sent to a trusted device is extremely difficult - if not outright impossible - for anyone but the most gifted hackers to get through. And those sorts of hackers go for ultra-high profile targets, like the CEO of Twitter, or they are state-level actors.
Otherwise, if we operate on the basis that we shouldn't have accounts because they get hacked, then consider that it is far, far easier to get into a forum account than a 2FA-protected Twitter account. This forum doesn't even use https encryption; data in transit between you and the server can be fairly easily intercepted.
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James Woodcock
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 21 September 2007
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 7818
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| Posted: 17 September 2019 at 3:58am | IP Logged | 8
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I now use two factor protection on everything that would allow it.
The difference between Twitter and here was reach (ironically, the point if this thread). JBF has little reach, Twitter could have massive reach and clearly had a failed password protection somewhere along the way.
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Koroush Ghazi
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 25 October 2009
Location: Australia
Posts: 1681
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| Posted: 17 September 2019 at 4:26am | IP Logged | 9
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I don't want to labour the point, but that's unlikely. What probably happened is you reused a password that was leaked from one of your other accounts, and it was abused as part of a technique called credential stuffing.
Edited by Koroush Ghazi on 17 September 2019 at 4:27am
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Petter Myhr Ness
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 02 July 2009
Location: Norway
Posts: 3917
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| Posted: 17 September 2019 at 8:18am | IP Logged | 10
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(although I do agree that the gmail rule needs to change ASAP)..--
There's a gmail rule??
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Bill Collins
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 26 May 2005
Location: England
Posts: 11307
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| Posted: 17 September 2019 at 9:36am | IP Logged | 11
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Peter, you can`t sign up using a Gmail account.
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James Woodcock
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 21 September 2007
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 7818
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| Posted: 17 September 2019 at 10:16am | IP Logged | 12
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I don't want to labour the point, but that's unlikely. What probably happened is you reused a password that was leaked from one of your other accounts, and it was abused as part of a technique called credential stuffing.
------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------- Except I changed my password a couple of times and even killed the account - and they managed to resurrect it, despite another password change.
There was something else going on. But still, this diverges from the main point of this thread
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