User blog:Danielboone6702/The Old MBs and New MBs.

The Old MBs
The MBs have changed drastically over the past few years. There's been changes in spam levels, friendliness, moderation, standards for posts and topics, and countless other aspects. Back then, the MBs were small and semi-active, but felt more personal, and more special. Now the MBs are large and busy, but feel more faded and dull. What happened?

I believe that there was one key driving force that changed the very spirit of the MBs, and resulted in the transition from the Old MBs to our current one. Its size. Since 2009, the MBs had been growing at a very rapid pace, after reaching an all-time low. This quick growth changed the MBs on a very fundamental level. Instead of being one of a few, users were now one of many. Friendships weren't as special anymore, so users weren't as nice to each other.

The current MBs
It was not a major problem until 2011, when the moderation team, used to managing a small MB for years, couldn't effectively deal with such a large and different MB. Spam reached record-high levels, and piled up to hundreds of pages in the MB Forum alone. Moderation was very slow, and sometimes a post wouldn't get up for 3 days! At times, you couldn't even be sure whether your post was rejected or not! And the moderators were not very active in TTTM, so many questions went unanswered.

Eventually, in 2012, the new mod team was created, with different priorities than the previous one. They removed a large amount of spam, decreased moderation time several-fold, and let more topics through, and were much more responsive to users. However, this shift in priorities created issues of its own.

Back in 2009, the MB Forum only had 2 pages of topics, and there was almost no competition for the first page of the forum. Now, topics compete fiercely just to stay on the first 3 pages from day to day. Sometimes this competition can reach the point where users will start to call certain topics spam, even if they are relevant, legitimate topics.

The New MBs
However, the transition to the New MBs still isn't done! 2012 has been a very turbulent year because of several major changes to support a larger MB. This has even extended to the moderator team and various MB policies. However, the technical structure of the MBs has not yet been changed. But when the update comes, the New MBs will suddenly click into place!

The new ranking system will cut down on spam, and promote high-quality posts, so that we won't only have more posts on the MBs, we'll have more high-quality posts! We'll be able to pick our favorite topics and pin them, so we won't have to jump from page to page to find the best topics, even in the largest, busiest forums! There'll be a better search function and My Posts section, so we can find important posts across the MBs with ease! Who knows what else LEGO might have in store for the MBs?

2012 has been a pretty bad year for almost all of us, but it won't be like this too much longer! Soon, we'll be the very first users on the New MBs! We'll see a momentous turning point in MB history! The MBs have never had a major update since 2005, and we'll get to see it!