Are you opinionated? (opinionators.co.uk)

Member Name: The Duke

Product:	opinionators.co.uk
Date:	28/07/04 (85 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy to use, Plenty to talk about, Owner asks for feedback

Disadvantages: Needs more active members

I liked ChatterWeb. I liked ChatterWeb a lot. It was a fun message board where you could talk about lots of things, but mainly around the opinion sites. It was populated by intelligent people who spoke their minds and offered up ideas on all sorts of things. Sadly, though, it seems that nothing lasts forever and in the four years I've been writing consumer opinions, I've seen quite a few message boards bite the dust for all manner of different reasons, and ChatterWeb was no different.

I was a member of CiaoZone for a very brief period of time, but the site owner had gone AWOL and it was impossible to take the site forward without his influence, so the members looked elsewhere. CiaoZone is still there, somewhere, but a hacking crew has hijacked its front page effectively rendering it invisible and I doubt anyone's been near it in weeks. From CiaoZone, two new message boards appeared: Ciao Just Chatting and Opinionators. These boards are very different in the way they operate, but Opinionators seems to take the late, great ChatterWeb as its role model.

As such, at first glance, Opinionators.co.uk (Optors from now on) does resemble ChatterWeb which is no bad thing. There are seven forums spread over three distinct areas ? Opinionators, Opinion Sites and Everything Else which gives you a rough idea what the site's about. It's not too cluttered and if you've used a message board before, you'll instantly know how everything works. If you haven't been near a message board, there is an excellent FAQ and people are always willing to answer any queries.

Signing up to Optors is extremely simple. You use the obligatory username, password and email address combination as is the norm for sites like this, and entrance to the site means you can further customise your profile with signatures, avatars (small pictures) and other details. All of this is voluntary though, so give away as much or as little as you feel comfortable
with.

You don't have to sign up to browse the boards though, so if you like the sound of Optors and want to take a peek first, then you can. I like the fact that it's not "hidden" as people are always free to look and join in if they choose and the board can never develop a reputation. I've been involved with message boards before that only members could see, and that raised all kinds of problems, especially when the board had nothing at all to hide.

Before CiaoZone became deserted, many people had listed what they thought were its main failings and the Optors owner, your very own Andy.mack, has obviously been paying attention and not slacking off because Optors does address these failings. For example, there are several 'themes' available meaning that the board can adopt a number of different colours schemes (orange, blue, red and green if I recall correctly). From talking to Andy, he seems to be very interested in feedback from people and some requests and suggestions have already been added, so if any of the colour schemes are not to your liking, then you can suggest another!

Technically, the site is brilliant. It uses the phpBB system which is stable, easy to use and well supported so that in the future, useful features can be easily integrated into the site. It works well in the two browsers I've tested it on ? Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox.

The three busiest forums are the ones relating to Ciao, Dooyoo and opinion sites in general and half of all the posts on Optors are within these three forums. Some of the topics that have been discussed here would be "What do you do when you spot abuse on an opinion site?" (Opinion Sites in General), "Should we be made to leave comments?" (Ciao forum) and "Could the Crown awards be fairer?" (Dooyoo forum). Of course these have probably been debated before and will be raised again later, but it's always interestin
g seeing people's take on various matters regarding the sites at the time each topic is raised.

Not everyone wants to talk about opinion sites all the time and there's space on Optors for practically anything you wish to discuss. The opinion sites are what everything else revolves around, after all it's the one common link we all have, but examples of other subjects that have been discussed include which bands you've seen live, some politics (mainly Dubya and stuff related to him), interesting websites found by members and current affairs. There are members who have joined that don't go anywhere near the threads about opinion sites, so don't let that put you off for one second!

There is a chatroom attached to the site and it's accessible via a number of different ways, depending on your levels of nerd-ness. The easiest way is through the attached Java enabled web page, although I think some members have had problems. You can, though, connect through an IRC program such as Trillian or mIRC if you so desire. Sadly, the chatroom is hardly used for some reason, but could be excellent if more people used it. Again, if you are having problems with any aspect of the site, feel free to ask questions because most members are willing to lend a hand.

The site is still in its infancy, and Andy is always looking for ways to improve the site and attract more people. He has a few ideas up his sleeve which I think will prove to be very interesting indeed, and everyone associated with the site encourages people to get involved as much as possible. This is refreshing and while all the message boards I've been a part of have been friendly and welcoming, this is the first where I have felt really encouraged to step forward with ideas about the boards themselves. I also think that Andy is currently looking for a few people to help with the running of the site, so if you fancy a bash at it, let him know!

It's a good
system ? Optors is like the best bits of CZ without all the useless stuff bolted on and Andy's own personal take on ChatterWeb all rolled into one. It doesn't have needless bells and whistles and concentrates on the important stuff i.e. somewhere for opinion site members to swap ideas on all sorts of things. Andy's put a lot of thought into the site and it deserves to grow.

At the moment, there are just short of sixty members of Optors, and at times that means the site can be quite slow, but there's usually something new to read even if you only pop on once a day, and of course, the more members that join, the busier it will become. The busier it becomes, then the better it will be!

Overall, I like the site a lot. There are one or two disadvantages ? the slow periods, for example, or the idiot member who won't listen to anyone else, but these are minor niggles that can be solved with the addition of a few more members. If you're interested, come along and have a browse. If you like what you see, sign up and join in the fun.

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