Got an opinion to share? (opinionators.co.uk)

Member Name: drewboy

Product:	opinionators.co.uk
Date:	16/03/05 (116 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Simplicity of forum, Ease of navigation, Quality of Conversation

Disadvantages: Quiet of weekends, word association thread!

Are you someone that has views on how dooyoo works? Are you someone who likes to discuss the issues of dooyoo and try to understand the in’s and out’s of all the things that continue to baffle the vast majority of us? Are you someone who likes to talk about current affairs or any other random thing that pops into your head? Or are you just a nosey git who likes to know whats going on?

Well you should type www.opinionators.co.uk into your browser and check out the chat that goes on there.

What is it?
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Opinionators is a chat board set up by Andy.mack to cater for all of the above situations and is generally a very good place to hang around. I find myself logged into the site on a daily basis and sometimes, even find myself logging into it before I do ciao just to find out what has been said to make sure I won’t miss anything!

How does it work?
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The site has a very simple layout and after you get past the main page (which gives you links to all the main chatboards as well as ciao and dooyoo) you are faced with the board showing all the forums you can go into. If you don’t want to take the plunge and resister right away, you can browse through the forums at your leisure.

Then, if you want to register (and you should!), its simply a case of going into the registration section and filling in a few very simple details and you are off. You can of course choose your ‘ciao’ or ‘dooyoo’ name as since the membership is mostly made up of members of the two sites, it is likely to be available however this is not a pre-requisite so you can choose any name you wish.

The layout of the board as I said, is very simple but I find it very effective and user friendly because of this. There are three categories of forums all with three forums each, and that’s it. This does not for a second mean that your choice of what to talk about is limited, just that finding where to post correctly is like childsplay. First of all there is the section about opinionators itself where any announcements are made under ‘site information’, new members are given a warm welcome under ‘new members’ and the rules of the site (more later about that) are displayed under ‘forum guidelines’. Next we have ‘Opinion Sites’. In here there is a forum where you can discuss general stuff which affects writing for any opinion site in ‘opinion sites in general’, the forum where you can post anything about ciao and lastly a similar forum for everything dooyoo. The last category is aptly named ‘Everything Else’ and as it sounds, it where anything else you want to talk about it put. There is an ‘Entertainment’ bit where you can talk away about films, books and music, the ‘other stuff’ forum where you can basically talk about anything you like and mostly it covers topical current affairs. The last forum is ‘Lifestyle’ and this is where members can talk about how their diets are going, giving up smoking, healthy eating idea’s, and loads more stuff along the same lines.

So what’s good about it?
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For me, the ease of navigation and the simplicity of the layout is a major bonus. The site is there for people to talk about issues whether it be ciao, dooyoo, Bush or Blair or even Eastenders if it takes there fancy and I for one do not miss having any special features such as games etc however you can choose other colours schemes if you want. The advantage of this is that the pages load very quickly and you are only one or two clicks away from getting to the next topic or posting something on a totally different topic from what you are currently viewing. This keeps it doing what it is there for and not loosing its way in trying to do too much that isn’t really needed. When you have registered, you will find that each of the forums are flagged depending on whether or not you have viewed them. If you have read everything in the forum, a white flag will show and if not, an orange one will be in its place. This is SUCH a simple way of telling what you have and have not read and again, because there is a limited number of forums in there, makes it very easy to tell exactly where to go to see stuff you have yet to read.

The quality of discussion on the site can, and has, been of the highest quality with a very broad range of members from both ciao and dooyoo regularly posting their views on a very wide ranging amount of topics.

The rules on the site are very simple and straightforward and revolve around two basic ideals. The first, is that there is to be no naming and shaming. What this means is that if you have a problem on one of the opinion sites and feel like venting your frustration, you are not allowed to just come in here and start shouting about ‘s/he did this or that’ however you are able to talk about the issue at hand in a general manner. To me, this is better as it means that if the issue is talked about, a better understanding of what has caused it to happen can be reached without anyone who may not have a voice on the site is being unfairly discussed in what they would most likely deem an unfair way. It helps to keep the site friendly and cuts down on too much confrontation happening. This leads on to the second main rule which is that there are to be no personal attacks on other members, be them of opinionators or ciao/dooyoo. Again, I think this is good as it stops the same kind of confrontation that naming and shaming can bring and also any major bad feeling. Of course this is not always stuck to but the staff on the site (of which I am one of them) will do their best to either edit any posts that break these rules. Things can be missed however (we are only human!) but if you feel that something has been posted that you don’t like or believe should be changed/removed, anyone if more than welcome to send a private message to one of the moderators and we will do our best to resolve the situation. I can honestly say that this really doesn’t happen very often at all as on the whole, the members do respect each other and things move along very well.

So what’s not so good?
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Not very much to be honest. Sometimes the site can be a bit quiet, but this is mostly at the weekends. Usually you will at least find a couple of other people online talking about things but there are periods when nothing much is happening. At this point though, it can be interesting looking back at what has been talked about in the past that you maybe missed as you may find that you could add to that topic something that hasn’t been said or even learn something that you didn’t know about before.

There are some very strong characters on the site and while that isn’t a bad thing in itself – far from it, some people who are new to this kind of board may find that a bit daunting at first however I would urge anyone who finds themselves in that position to stick with it as they will soon learn when to take certain types of posts in the joking manner to which they were meant!

The word association thread! This is more of a personal one to be honest. Housed in the ‘other stuff’ forum, it really annoys me when the orange flag comes up and I think ‘oh, wonder what’s being said?’ and I click into it only to find that’s the only update!! I know a lot of people like that, but it just bores me to be honest. Hopefully my suggestion of getting its own forum running will someday take off, but until then, it just bugs me!



So, there you go. All in all, it’s a thoroughly decent place to hang around and I really hope that after reading this you will hop on over and give it a go as it can be a lot of fun and a nice distraction for you when you are a bit ‘reviewed’ out! I’ll give it four stars at the moment as it can be quiet at the weekends but hopefully after this I will be able to update when ya’all come over and join in the opinionating!


Happy chatting,

drew

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