I heard GFY was under new ownership. Used to post here from time to time, but haven't since this place went properly downhill. Figured if there were new people in charge, it might be worth giving a little advice on how to 'fix' Go Fuck Yourself and make it a better place for the adult business.
Here are some really key things that I think made people frequent GFY less often.
Restructure Boards
Currently, Fucking Around & Program Discussion has around 80% of all posts, ever, on GFY. There are close to 1 million threads here - that's a lot! This section should be devoted exclusively to discussions about adult entertainment, affiliate marketing, business news, legal stuff and whatever else. Basically, stuff related to our industry. New models? Sure. Mindgeek got purchased by a multinational? Absolutely. Advice on how to deal with a tricky situation? You bet! Affiliate program recommendations, calling out other people (with evidence) and whatever else should be allowed (Paxum bashing included). This should be broad.
What shouldn't be here? Politics, conspiracy theories, general global news (unrelated to porn) and whatever else. When I come to Fucking Around & Program Discussion, I want to talk about the ADULT INDUSTRY. I don't want to see dumb threads that no one cares about and people just pad their post counts with for signature spam. Let's do this properly: here's a breakdown of the 'new' forum based on these rules, from how FA&PD currently looks:
Green is welcome, red is not. I'm not saying that the red threads need to go off of GFY - they just need their own section. I'm here on a forum about the porn business because that's what I care about discussing. If I wanted to talk politics or conspiracy theories, I'd go to Reddit, or Infowars, or whatever. GFY is NEVER going to become a premiere place to talk about these topics! Look at the sheer amount of dumb politics and conspiracy garbage that's here, man. Not only is it
completely unrelated to pornography, it's factually incorrect nonsense! It brings
zero value to the forum: literally none.
There is no difference between your typical wehateporn thread and some spammer coming here to put up a garbage word salad post about Viagra and linking to a website for 'SEO'. Don't mix these two types of threads. It's like me going to a blog about sexy Asian chicks and between each broad, there's 3-4 pictures of trains, or the milky way, or whatever. Okay, rant over: there needs to be a new forum where the shit threads go, so THIS area can be devoted entirely to discussing business.
User blocks affect board indexes
This one is simple: if I block someone, it should apply to archive pages. I only have a few people blocked here, but when they make new threads, I see them in the listings - this shouldn't happen. They don't appear anywhere on the site for me. Small change, big impact: also make it easier for users to block one another. Right next to 'report post' should be 'block this user'. I have to jump through hoops in order to do this, which sucks.
Ease up on 'freeloading' business posts
I appreciate that GFY has to retain some value from advertising, but allow people to be more free in what they post with regard to advertising. Keep the sell/buy forums, but if someone posts something here that might've gotten them warned in the past, let it go. Egregious cases can be moved to the other forums, but let people network. The adult industry isn't as profitable as it once was, so the allure and ease of getting cash has shifted heavily in the last 10 years. I remember there were some pretty strict posting conditions here - those should be dropped somewhat.
This can obviously be refined and changed over the months and years. I just feel like it'd be nicer if business posts were supported, rather than frowned upon.
Work toward limiting +1 posts
There's a big problem of some people posting here and just writing a few words that mean absolutely nothing. I'm presuming this is done just to raise post counts for whatever reason. This should be heavily discouraged - I don't have a solution here, but it's the same issue with the threads in general. The great thing about portals like Reddit is that constructive comments go to the top, whereas spam goes to the bottom - I don't have to see it, since it only takes a few people to make the trash go away. This isn't the case on GFY, where entire threads can be filled with sig spammers and other bullshit that doesn't add to the conversation.
Okay, those are my thoughts on the current issues that GFY has. There are probably more, but these are the main ones. The first one is the most important.
DO NOT MIX BUSINESS WITH CONSPIRACY THEORIES AND POLITICS. There are like, 10 people here who want that: those guys aren't going to make GFY a good community again.