The World news forum has been closed from today. Not only to new topics but also for replies to pre-existing ones.

 

It says here that "primarily it is no longer commercially viable for us to continue buying third party content for the World News forum.

 

Thaivisa management have decided the cost to maintain World News would be better spent on more Thailand related content, which is what the majority of people visit the website for."

 

Yet the entertainment news forum remains open. Is the third party content therein free? I doubt it.

 

Was that forum more popular than World News? Comparing the views and replies the average topic in each received, definitely not.

 

If money need to be saved, would it not have been better to have closed the little used Entertainment News rather than the far more popular, and so surely higher ad revenues creating, World News?

 

If ThaiVisa management no longer wanted to pay for World News content, why could the forum not have been left open for members to post free content and comments on same?

 

What "more Thai related content" will any money saved be spent on?

 

Will these questions be answered?

No, these questions will not be answered.

Hmmmm... same questions I asked last week and my thread was closed. Good luck on getting a definitive response. My guess is World News created the most headaches for the mods and owners.

2 hours ago, mikebike said:

Hmmmm... same questions I asked last week and my thread was closed. Good luck on getting a definitive response. My guess is World News created the most headaches for the mods and owners.

Perhaps so , but most trolls were not banned, kept repeating the same behaviour, thereby the overhead.

 

May I suggest the owner/s formally advise members if World News / Thai News forums are now closed, at a minimum would be an act of courtesy.

Like many forum users, I suspect, "World News" was not my only source of news, but a useful summary to go to to see what was going on in the (predominantly)  English speaking world.

 

It's demise is one less reason to come onto this forum, and will surely lead to a drop in the numbers reading TVF, which will hardly impress the advertisers.

With all the News channels available on t'Internet, incl Entertainment, political, sports etc, why would anyone use TV for their news feed. Great for having a banter with other members and finding out say DIY, Visa, Passport problems within Thailand etc, but never for World News. 

2 hours ago, KannikaP said:

With all the News channels available on t'Internet, incl Entertainment, political, sports etc, why would anyone use TV for their news feed. Great for having a banter with other members and finding out say DIY, Visa, Passport problems within Thailand etc, but never for World News. 

I doubt many, if any, used "World News as their News Feed. It did provide a useful summary, from which you could pick things which you could investigate further; and it provided a place for discussion and debate. That function has become a much less attractive prospect off late, partly as a result, in certain topics, of concerted efforts to drive views seen in certain quarters as "opposing an accepted interpretation" off the forum.

 

Anyway, by abandoning "World News" the forum has significantly diminished it's appeal, and I suspect over (a relatively short) time it's readership. A very foolish decision.

3 hours ago, KannikaP said:

With all the News channels available on t'Internet, incl Entertainment, political, sports etc, why would anyone use TV for their news feed. Great for having a banter with other members and finding out say DIY, Visa, Passport problems within Thailand etc, but never for World News. 

 

Agree that no one get's their news from TV, but it's where we all go to talk about it...

 

20 minutes ago, herfiehandbag said:

Anyway, by abandoning "World News" the forum has significantly diminished it's appeal, and I suspect over (a relatively short) time it's readership. A very foolish decision.

 

And that's the kicker - less appeal, less time spent here and therefore, less advertising revenue.

With the World News section closed I will visit this forums only if I'm after some specific information only other expats can answer. So from several visits a day I'll probably visit once or twice a month.

Only reason I visited today was to find out what happened to the World News section. Not the smartest decision TVF ever made.

I didn't realise I would miss you, World News, till you were gone. It was a place to have a debate about what was going on and about moral issues. Goodbye to many of the regular posters who I assume will go off into the ether.

That leaves only a few good things on this site like Diary of a farang in Issan and a few other things ....

 

Other than that there are lots of stories on domestic issues  with people complaining about their visas, tourism and pollution.. interesting for some but boring for me...

The removal of World News is  going to change the feel of this site. It is  free so I guess I can't complain..

4 minutes ago, Fat is a type of crazy said:

I didn't realise I would miss you, World News, till you were gone. It was a place to have a debate about what was going on and about moral issues. Goodbye to many of the regular posters who I assume will go off into the ether.

That leaves only a few good things on this site like Diary of a farang in Issan and a few other things ....

 

Other than that there are lots of stories on domestic issues  with people complaining about their visas, tourism and pollution.. interesting for some but boring for me...

The removal of World News is  going to change the feel of this site. It is  free so I guess I can't complain..

I sincerely hope a drastic drop in the amount of "traffic" makes them reconsider. I will log off now and have a look every now and then as a visitor to see if things have changed. Bye for now.

22 minutes ago, Fat is a type of crazy said:

<snip>

It is  free so I guess I can't complain..

 

Free because of the advertising revenue. This will surely fall when the traffic drops.

54 minutes ago, Phoenix Rising said:

With the World News section closed I will visit this forums only if I'm after some specific information only other expats can answer. So from several visits a day I'll probably visit once or twice a month.

Only reason I visited today was to find out what happened to the World News section. Not the smartest decision TVF ever made.

imo some very thin skinned people were involved. I'm sure they feel there will be less bashing of incompetent western countries which will allow more bashing of Thais of course (of which the racism inspires so many more clicks.. lol)

22 hours ago, 7by7 said:

Was that forum more popular than World News? Comparing the views and replies the average topic in each received, definitely not.

 

 

The "World News" was dominated by a small number of "super-posters" who drove new users away with their aggressive, overly-argumentative posts.

 

New users provide ad revenue. 100 posts a day regulars don't.

 

 

11 minutes ago, nkg said:

 

 

The "World News" was dominated by a small number of "super-posters" who drove new users away with their aggressive, overly-argumentative posts.

 

New users provide ad revenue. 100 posts a day regulars don't.

 

 

 

Are you saying that advertising revenue is determined by the number of members, not the number of daily visits?

 

If so, that would explain the Hotel California nature of Thai Visa. Even banned members are still listed as members!

 

Although 

suggests that the main revenue stream is from the total number of visits, regardless of how many individuals make those visits.

1 minute ago, 7by7 said:

 

Are you saying that advertising revenue is determined by the number of members, not the number of daily visits?

 

If so, that would explain the Hotel California nature of Thai Visa. Even banned members are still listed as members!

 

 

I was referring to the number of people participating in any given discussion. A topic with 1000 posts but only 15-20 contributors isn't making Thaivisa much money. This topic has one poster with 149 posts and another with 111 posts:

 

https://forum.thaivisa.com/topic/1205401-uk-had-one-or-two-brexit-teething-issues-on-fishing-minister-says/

 

 

 

 

 

 

3 minutes ago, nkg said:

 

 

I was referring to the number of people participating in any given discussion. A topic with 1000 posts but only 15-20 contributors isn't making Thaivisa much money. This topic has one poster with 149 posts and another with 111 posts:

 

https://forum.thaivisa.com/topic/1205401-uk-had-one-or-two-brexit-teething-issues-on-fishing-minister-says/

N.B. I edited my post with an addendum while you were typing.

 

260 posts out of  1000. Yes, many of those other posts were by the same people, too. But the topic had over 20,000 views! All of which generated advertising income.

2 minutes ago, 7by7 said:

N.B. I edited my post with an addendum while you were typing.

 

260 posts out of  1000. Yes, many of those other posts were by the same people, too. But the topic had over 20,000 views! All of which generated advertising income.

 

 

Neither of us know how the "views" figure is calculated, but it is in Thaivisa's interests for that figure to be large in order to attract advertisers.

 

On forums I have been involved with, the "view" figure is incremented by one if the page is refreshed, if a new post is made, if a different page is viewed within the same topic. One person who made 100 posts could easily be responsible for 2,000 "views".

 

If that one person has an adblocker, or never clicks the banner ads, those 2,000 views generate $0 of income. Thaivisa have the exact statistics telling them how much their "world news" views are worth - modern website analytics are incredibly detailed. If the total income was less than the fees that they paid to Reuters ......

 

8 minutes ago, nkg said:

If the total income was less than the fees that they paid to Reuters ......

Stop using Reuters...

10 minutes ago, herfiehandbag said:

20 minutes ago, nkg said:

If the total income was less than the fees that they paid to Reuters ......

Stop using Reuters...

 

Indeed.

 

As I asked in the OP: "If ThaiVisa management no longer wanted to pay for World News content, why could the forum not have been left open for members to post free content and comments on same?"

9 hours ago, simple1 said:

...May I suggest the owner/s formally advise members if World News / Thai News forums are now closed, at a minimum would be an act of courtesy.

I saw this formal announcement:

 

 

Just now, 7by7 said:

 

Indeed.

 

As I asked in the OP: "If ThaiVisa management no longer wanted to pay for World News content, why could the forum not have been left open for members to post free content and comments on same?"

There's more to this than meets the eye. Why can we not reply to posts currently running in World news? It would have cost TV nothing to allow those threads to continue to run until they died a natural death. Why isn't it open to members to start threads in World News? Again no cost to TV. Another matter, which may be related or not, is the freezing of the topics alerts running down the RHS of the page? Probably generated the most clicks from me.

 

"Something's rotten in the State of Denmark".

3 hours ago, 7by7 said:

 

Indeed.

 

As I asked in the OP: "If ThaiVisa management no longer wanted to pay for World News content, why could the forum not have been left open for members to post free content and comments on same?"

 

Because that would be way too democratic. World News was a tightly controlled ecosystem with nothing more than a trickle of Reuters to drive a very selective narrative.  They could easily just add a section for politics and let users make threads like any normal site on the planet does. 

13 minutes ago, Cryingdick said:

 

Because that would be way too democratic. World News was a tightly controlled ecosystem with nothing more than a trickle of Reuters to drive a very selective narrative.  They could easily just add a section for politics and let users make threads like any normal site on the planet does. 

 

sadly I have to concur.

stories on the world news forum were too narrowly selected to be of real interest, and some international stories of high interest were not published or way too late for some reason and others had some "spin" put on them.

to be fair, that's nowadays true for nearly all news outlets around the world. when I was a young account executive, Reuters used to be one of my best go-to news sources for unbiased stories and accurate facts, and they seemed up to date about everything that happened in the world. then they have been sold at some point and things started to go downhill. Today, news in Reuters, CNN, BBC are all the same with the same bias and the same blind areas about which Western people are not informed about.

 

still, even if I won't miss its content, the closure of the world news forum is sad, because now of course, it won't be possible to explain here other perspectives and other interpretations for world news.

 

It would be helpful to have ThaiVisa comment.

My  feeling is that this relates to the compensation agreements being made by search engines like Google and Facebook with news media content creators. The news writers and providers have a right to be compensated for their work. Many people  assume that they should work for free  and that they get their income from the air, or as they say now, the "cloud".  With the reduced number of  foreign english language news readers  at the website, it may not have made economic sense to continue.

5 hours ago, tgw said:

 

sadly I have to concur.

stories on the world news forum were too narrowly selected to be of real interest, and some international stories of high interest were not published or way too late for some reason and others had some "spin" put on them.

to be fair, that's nowadays true for nearly all news outlets around the world. when I was a young account executive, Reuters used to be one of my best go-to news sources for unbiased stories and accurate facts, and they seemed up to date about everything that happened in the world. then they have been sold at some point and things started to go downhill. Today, news in Reuters, CNN, BBC are all the same with the same bias and the same blind areas about which Western people are not informed about.

 

still, even if I won't miss its content, the closure of the world news forum is sad, because now of course, it won't be possible to explain here other perspectives and other interpretations for world news.

 

No! Reuters is as neutral as it can get.  

Reuters - Media Bias Fact Check

4 hours ago, Patong2021 said:

It would be helpful to have ThaiVisa comment.

My  feeling is that this relates to the compensation agreements being made by search engines like Google and Facebook with news media content creators. The news writers and providers have a right to be compensated for their work. Many people  assume that they should work for free  and that they get their income from the air, or as they say now, the "cloud".  With the reduced number of  foreign english language news readers  at the website, it may not have made economic sense to continue.

Interesting theory but not sure a private business really should be expected to reveal such internal details. We got a general reason which people can take as credible or not, but at the end of the end, that forum is kaput. It's in the category of things we can't change. Just accept. 

1 hour ago, Jingthing said:

No! Reuters is as neutral as it can get.  

Reuters - Media Bias Fact Check

 

Who checks the Media Bias checkers?

 

Dems would rate CNN as unbiased, as Repubs would rate Fox as unbiased.  They'd both be wrong, of course- as would the organizations they put in front of us posing as unbiased arbiters. 

 

What's the bias of this particular bias checker?

 

12 hours ago, 7by7 said:

 

Free because of the advertising revenue. This will surely fall when the traffic drops.

 

 

Yeah right because gawd knows folks flock to Thai Visa for World News ????

 

No...This is the classic sky is falling forum whine when someone doesn't get their way...

Suddenly it is .....doesn't the forum know it will fold without "me" or the "Feature I want"

 

1- This is a THAILAND Forum it should be Thai specific

 

2- Folks looking for "world" news have many forums to choose from as well as news websites

 

3- World News on Thai Visa has over the years just become a giant soapbox for the usual suspects to blame/whine/cry

over this & that in countries they usually no longer live in

 

Good Idea to shut it down Thai Visa ???? Agree 101%

 

On 4/1/2021 at 3:54 PM, mikebike said:

Hmmmm... same questions I asked last week and my thread was closed. Good luck on getting a definitive response. My guess is World News created the most headaches for the mods and owners.

World News did not create the most headaches for mods.  The news of the decision to discontinue World News section was met with sadness by the Mods and Admin.