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I would just like to say at this point that this has been a problem on the Aus forums for several years now. The Mods do read other forums and attempts have been made to bring the Barbie back in line with other chatty forums like the Maple Leaf. It has even been suggested by Mods over the years that the main offenders in the barbie should be banned in the interests of saving the forum. I do not speak for the Mods now, I don't now the current feeling between them and the Barbie, or any other forum, but I know that on the occasions a few years back when I suggested naming, shaming and banning, it was considered unnecessary and the general view was that the forum would sort itself out and I should leave well alone. I resigned (not because of that) and now rarely post unless it is directly to do with visas.

(Note this is not in any way a criticism of moderators or admin, it is just an explanation in answer to the quoted posts).

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G'day.
I'm still in the USA - citizen now - and as each year passes my Oz life seems further away than ever.
I do miss the banter and friendship of old times, but rarely come here due to family-related time pressures. And, to be honest, FaceAche is easier to navigate so find myself spending more time on there than I should.
Hoo roo (for now)

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Fair point, but there are a couple of people on here guilty of both. TIO posts at least start out knowing it'll end in a row :lol:.

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Still here Alf - just

Same old. Finished my MBA a while back and still working in mining electrical project engineering - with things really picking up in the industry and we are looking at a few good years ahead. Also trying to turn a, challenging, teenage boy into a man. We're on track but, boy, it's hard work! All good at the moment really

Hope everything is well with you

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Yep . . . some posters whinging loudly in this thread, far from being helplessly above the fray - actually have long histories of being happy to instigate, engage in, and stir up "crap." :lol:;):rofl:

More to the point . . . I was a lurker for about 10 years before joining. The site is still almost exactly as it was a dozen years ago when I first started lurking. There have been no new major offerings added to it, few innovations, and little added to stay up with the competition. So, little out there to entice new regulars who are now getting a lot of their information elsewhere, and increasingly little to keep people around once they have figured out where to get the Man U game, how much electricity is going to cost, and what is the best neigbourhood for xyz.

The Australia forum is not the only one failing to attract new members, it seems almost across the board.

The times the past few years when it seemed this site was turning into a left-wing political blog with just some expat-issue seasoning - well, that may drive off a lot of people, but at least that's an evolution and a direction and opens the site up to new types of people. I am not sure what the future of this site holds, as is.

It may feel good and gratifying to point fingers and say "it's all the fault of [name of poster x that poster y doesn't like]," but the Australia forum has never been rainbows and unicorns - there are stickies telling people to start playing nice, dating back to the start of the decade - and I remember a year or two ago when it was all supposedly the site redesign's fault and the very minor changes that went along with that. There's only so many times you can answer what the market for police officers is like in Adelaide, which is better Sydney v Melbourne, and yes if you want the points you need to take IELTS even if you are British, before people's enthusiasm starts to wane.

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Case in point. The many posts by members giving their identical reasons why they don't post anymore are all dismissed as whinging.

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True that :lol:

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Maybe you need to re-read? Far from dismissing, I was pointing out the hypocrisy.:lol:

I have no interest in stoushing with you tonight. I've said my piece and people will take from it what they will.

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Case in point. Posts by members giving their identical reasons why they don't post anymore are identified as whinging, and the authors of being hypocrites.

See, debating a point politely is easy :)

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A variety of many different reasons have been given, of which irritation with other posters is just one. Other reasons have included thread drift, busy with kids, unease with politics, and so on. Those people deserve to be heard, even if their opinion disagrees with yours.

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:)

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Ayup geeze, back in the mining game myself too, managed to introduce myself by telling the client that all their mechanical gear is built incorrectly haha. Hope you're well

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Well, you would think they'd read other forums, but there's no evidence of it. What is it that the Maple Leaf mods are doing right, then?

As for banning, I'm dead against it. Free speech is too important a quality to ban posters, when they can easily be put on Ignore Lists. (I have about a dozen on my List, and my blood pressure is much lower than it used to be!) As you'd expect, I'm not crazy about allowing fake identities - especially for mods - but I guess it's a hallowed custom by now. Sigh...

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What are you on about? Mods having fake identities? You would know this how?

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And i hope you can earn some good candy fixing it for 'em!

All well here

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It was touch and go whether they were going to sweep it under the carpet and get rid of me for a while :lol:. The money's not what it was, but 2 on, 2 off, splendid roster 👍👍

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Sounds good. I was recently looking at a gig with BHPIO at Port Hedland for their car-dumper upgrade. Really good rate, shit tons of hours and a 8/6 (days) roster with every weekend at home - and Qantas scheduled flights with plenty of QFF miles. Interesting and challenging project too. Unfortunately, it fell through at the last minute - I was gutted

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I still pop in sometimes.

Weirdly I probably see more people in person reguarly from BE 12 years ago now than I talk to BE peeps in cyberspace. Still keep up in person frequently with RobnHelen, Millsyandthetroop, Midaho, Johnsyweb, Thribble, LJJ, Mike-S, see Badgeisback, Wongstonn and furkew once in a blue moon, RobnHelen's daughter even now coaches my kids netball team.

I miss the times on here around 2006 - 8.

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he he.
Hi mate! It has now been almost 5 years since I posted in anything like the quantity I did the 10 years prior...

not quite sure why AU and this forum has been the hot channel it always was. Most argumentative forum I have ever seen. And it seems from a distance that only about 5 posters contribute now. Best days were around 03-06, loads of people getting visas, pound still respectable and the wars peaked around 2010 then it all slowly declined from there.

I blame the pound and the house price rises. The people who can migrate wouldn't touch a forum like this now.

cheers

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As a long-ago emigrant Australian, I see it as a pity that this Barbie forum has wasted away. It would probably only take four or five of us to put it back on the track, with a bit of effort and if the mods would cooperate with us. What do you reckon?

I left Oz in 1963 to see the world, and made homes in several overseas places, as time went on. People often ask why I didn't find the country nice enough to return, but that wasn't a fair question. It's a fine place, and I enjoyed my first 23 years there. But circumstances just led me elsewhere. I even married an Aussie girl I met at a Greek Youth Hostel, but now we've both let our passports lapse. Our son stubbornly hangs onto his passport, but lives with his family in Norway, thanks to his British passport. Go figure, eh?

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Except for a few exceptions (Whirlpool springs to mind), Forums have withered in the face of the social media juggernaut. On Facebook alone, there are more migration groups than you can shake a stick at. Social media is changing - like it or not - how we interact with each other and old tech like forums are paying the price

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I agree, fb has monopolized most groups/forums. I do like the BE concept but fb groups seem to be plentiful.
I'm over your side of the continent at the moment visiting my son. Went to the aquarium in Hillary's yesterday and am currently sitting in Chipmonks entertaining 4 kids under 7. If only they sold Guinness and Valium cocktails I'd be happy.

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I assure you fake ids are certainly not allowed, mods included. If mods detect anyone with more than one username, the new account is deleted.

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Well, no disrespect, but if "Jersey Girl" isn't a fake identity, what is it? I don't imagine it's the name on your driving licence.

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Ah I see what you mean. IMO anyone revealing their real name needs their head examining. ;)

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Why on earth do you think that moderators should post under their actual name?

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If they want to be free to bad-mouth others on the threads, yes. But this thread is exploring why The Barbie went to the dogs, and one poster blamed the decline on too much back-biting. Now, nothing encourages back-biting and insults like the guarantee of anonymity - and we see that on a great many BE threads. Would the foul-mouthed yobs and "too-rights" be as bold if they signed their own names? Almost certainly not. So one of the things the mods could do to revive the fortunes of The Barbie is to discourage anonymity. That especially applies to the mods, whose exalted office requires them to chastise us peasants. For them to hide behind aliases is not really kosher, in my book. It's just too scaredy-cat by half.

I have examined my head, and I approve of that message.

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Back in the olde days when an ISP provided your portal to the dark, dastardly world of the WWW, I frequented AOL message boards. On AOL, your screen name was also your email address. Back then (I dunno, perhaps around 2000), no one really understood the ramifications of giving too much personal information online. One female member used her real name to post and wouldn't heed any advice to change it. Another member, to demonstrate the inherent dangers, was able to use that and the details she revealed about herself and her family, to send her (via personal message!!) her address, date of birth, full names and dates of birth of her children, the school they attended, the postal address of her workplace, and telephone numbers of all. Her name was changed straightaway.

That was back at the turn of the century!! God knows what someone intent on harm could achieve today. I'll keep my Dreaminess, thank you very much.

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Thats actually a good point Gordon, I can see where you are coming from, if it's good enough for people to be themselves, "For the most part" on Facebook, why not even more so on a Forum. Never thought about it before until you raised it. Forums of course have always been mostly anonymous. I just accepted it back in 1999 when I first joined them without giving it much thought.

So why are people themselves on Facebook and not on forums, the ignore function works on here as well as does blocking of PM's etc.

Must mean people act differently on Forums to Facebook eh ;) Probably that anonamity is one of the reasons why things get more heated on forums at times as well.


I doubt it would make a difference if Mods suddenly revealed themselves though, so it's probably a moot point.

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Once again, excellent food for thought from Gordon.

The other thing anonymity causes, is it becomes difficult to assign people credibility. We are fortunate in this forum to have senior managers and people who have doctorates in their field commenting on matters in their field, but they often get challenged and argued with - aggressively so - by people outside those fields or whose knowledge is limited to something they saw on TV a week ago. It can be hard to tell the difference unless you also are in that field. The same thing happens with people who have lived in Country X for 15 years vs people who took a week's holiday there or glanced through the Lonely Planet book. In my view, anonymity adds a lot of fuel to those food fights. In recent years - lacking other ways - posters have been assigning credibility based on political viewpoints and that doesn't help either.

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Someone intent on harm to strangers, these days, would probably harass random names in the International White Pages. Check those out some time, for a collection of vulnerable names! I really can't see too many fake Nigerian princes perusing the pages of BE for victims of their scams; what do you reckon?

As for the moderators, my concern is censorship. I strongly dislike censorship of any sort, and especially when the censors hide their identities. Mods have the power to remove words from posts and indeed to remove whole posts without justifying their actions, and they exercise that power with minimal restraint or oversight, as far as we can tell. I realise BE never set out to be a beacon of free speech, and has no overt commitment to it, and it has its hallowed tradition of all-powerful and anonymous moddies. Nevertheless... Nevertheless...

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Its not censorship. Its common sense.
Me personally - believe it or not I am a fairly private person. I have privacy controls in place on facebook to protect myself, my family and my friends. If I had to use my real name on here, which is the open internet, accessible by every weirdo and ex-husband on the planet, I would never ever have joined. I post a lot about disasters and severe weather events; I post carefully as it would not take much searching to link me to my workplace, but that small step of anonymity is what enables me topost such info.

Speaking for others - here are some examples from my mod days:
poster wants info on divorce,clearly does not want husband to be able to track them via google
poster wishes to get opinions on suburbs in a different Aussie city but does not want RL friends to know they may move so cannot use facebook for it
poster wants info on tricky medical/character issues for visa (nothing illegal) - posting under their real name makes it instantly visible to case officers (who definitely do browse the forums)
poster wants to let off steam about visiting relatives
poster wants to scream about their life in general
poster wishes to suss out opinion on prospective new employer
poster wants to let off steam about current employer
poster just wants to reach out to people for support but doesn't want to reveal their name because they are ashamed, shy,whatever

Now you have read the Barbie enough over the years Gordon to know that it is crammed full of people in those categories. People who do not want to use their real names for whatever reason. And why should they? One of the things that I dislike about Aus is the fact that everyone thinks they have the right to know your business. Being able to let off steam and know that you are able to post freely while only revealing your true identity when you wish, to who you wish. Many people over the years have said that a reason for using BE was because they did not have to use their names. Other forums are the same, do a bt of browsing and you wil find many other forums where anonymity works as well as it does here.
And Mods have just as much right to anonymity as posters; they still post their own stuff, as well as moderating.

A final, genuine, example of why anonymity is good. A few years back I was part of a large group of BE posters who met regularly in real life. They all knew I was a Mod but they respected the idea that BE was a separate life and forum issues did not spill over into the real world. All except one. He made a pain of himself on the forum in general, he used to abuse posters, post bad language, break every rule going. With my mods hat on, and after consulting the (then) Admin, I banned him. I had to for the sake of the forum. Instantly he turned from friend to foe and sent my personal mobile a string of abuse, Abuse which continued in person. Now if someone claiming they were a friend can do tht, imagine how much worse it could get,especially these days, when its easier to find family etc.

Remove anonymity and I am first out the door, for good this time, and will advise others to follow. That really would be the death knell of the Aus forum.
:getcoat:

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Not knowing what Chipmunks is I just had a Google - thank f**K I'm done with those places!

I've been on here since 2003 (!) - a time way before smartphones, tablets and social media. Forums were one of the main ways to interact online - and despite a few tweaks over the years, BE today is basically as it was then. Now, there are a huge variety of ways to interact and disseminate information - too many IMO. To think that BE could stay the same and prosper and grow in the face of this reality is insane. BE is clunky compared to FB and Twitter. It's a pain to post pictures and videos on here - not so on Instagram - the complete opposite in fact. etc

There it is basically

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I can quite honestly say it never ever occurred to me back in 2004 when I registered with BE to use my real name. Am I a dubious character because Moneypenny20 isn't on my birth certificate or driving licence? Of course not.

Just because some people chose to use a real name (whether theirs or not) doesn't make them more honest, what complete bull.

People's usernames has diddly squat to do with how a forum operates unless it's for the better, allowing people the freedom to say what they need to without some psycho searching them out in real life.

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Ah well, I'm not going to argue with an aggressive Super Moderator with discretionary power to censor me for not toeing the official line. Not worth it. Good luck with the thread.

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You're taking this all very seriously, Gordon.

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Gordon probably is a pseudonym. He's really Gary Johnson and lives in Leeds.

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Look in every now and again but don't normally post. I must say that it is good to see so many of the old crowd posting once again.

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How is me stating my opinion aggressive but you calling us names not? Why on earth do you think I would use my supposed discretionary powers to censor a poster just because they have a differing opinion to mine? :confused:

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I like the idea of Facebook keeping people honest via less hiding.
I find though more and more peole are leaving FB in droves or keeping off it apart from emergencies or to use it to keep up to date with old friends or monitoring notifications from closed groups. I've noticed also more and more people who do not have accounts at all and they often seem to have very healthy attitudes to life.
All the Dads I know have not posted in 3 years or so. A definite flight.
Prefer forums as you can get better discourse and advise on say that fishing rod or new ski.