Did DC get rid of their message boards to stop criticism?

[superduperman]

For those who remember, DC used to have a message board system much like this one where fans could make their own threads and comment on various topics. Not long after the New52 reboot, however, this thread was gotten rid of. At the time I kind of wondered if this wasn't because they wanted to stop all the complaining about all the continuity problems that were going on at that time. Does anyone know anything about why it went away?

[Michael P]

I think it was more that the boards were an intellectual and emotional cesspool.

[Jabare]

its been gone for a few years now but it was on its way out anyway.

There was little to no moderation, the layout and structure was from the 90s. It was just a very substandard message board that had been neglected.

Only DC really knows why at the end of the day, but with the rise of social media and existence of other much better and more popular message boards like CBR the old dc message boards seemed all but obsolete.

[Den]

It was indeed a cesspool. I believe wanting to curb critics of the Nu52 may have been part of it, but the darn thing had no real moderation or supervision and was neither constructive nor pleasant imo.

[colonyofcells]

I remember the old dc forums where you could say anything altho they did delete posts they did not like but they rarely banned anybody. I got banned once in the old dc forums more than 10 years ago but I returned after the ban was lifted. I realized the old dc forums was sort of unique after I noticed it was easier to get banned in other forums. At first, I thought maybe the old dc forums just had more males that was why most males could say anything there. I remember the old dc forums as a fun place to be in and I was there for about 10 years.

[JasonTodd428]

That forum had little to no moderation at the time I was lurking there toward the end of it's existence and because of that things had gotten out of control IMHO. You could indeed say ANYTHING you wanted to there but some of what I saw there was blatant trolling and/or flaming of various posters that frankly someone in charge needed to put to an end. It was indeed a cesspool and because of that honestly I don't really care if they also wanted to somehow silence detractors of the N52. Something had to be done and if no one had the balls to actually moderate it then it was better to just close it.

[upgrayedd]

I was there too. The one thing I miss about it was the size of the community. Here it is pretty much the same people all the time.

[MajorHoy]

Facebook rules when it comes to things like that, I guess.

(Though I don't normally go on Facebook myself.)

[Godlike13]

I think they just didn't think it was worth the time, and instead choose to incorporate the popular social media outlets. They pretty much just threw it together and left it to its own devices anyway.

[Buried Alien]

I think it was more that the boards were an intellectual and emotional cesspool.

They were also technologically outdated and poorly maintained.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

[Ascended]

I have no idea why they shut down the boards, but I doubt they did it to silence detractors of the reboot. I mean, hell, that place was always negative and if DC had really given a damn in the first place they'd have shut the boards down during the HEAT/Kyle flame wars, or during Cry For Justice, or any number of other eras where the entire forum was burning.

Anyone remember the upgrade the forums got shortly before they were shut down? Always found it suspect that someone got paid to upgrade the forums and a few months later they were gone completely.

[superduperman]

I asked this because most other companies still have forums. Whether or not they still get used all the much, I don't know. But it just seemed odd that DC was the one company that doesn't anymore. Considering all the complaining people did about continuity problems (for years even before the New52, I became a member around 2006) I just kind of wondered if it played a role in the decision to shut it down. But, yeah, a lot of the topics went very off topic. I remember one when I first joined about the Iraq war. Which had nothing to do with comics, of course. It had literally hundreds of pages and it was just a bunch of people attacking each other over the war. I can understand the desire to just wash their hands of the whole thing.

[MajorHoy]

I asked this because most other companies still have forums. Whether or not they still get used all the much, I don't know. But it just seemed odd that DC was the one company that doesn't anymore.

I believe Dark Horse did away with their own forum recently. Does Marvel still have its own?

[BohemiaDrinker]

I have no idea why they shut down the boards, but I doubt they did it to silence detractors of the reboot.

The HEAT days were still "early internet". No one really knew how to deal with it. There are probably a lot of reasons for shutting down the DC boards, but the constant criticism - that, if nothing else, was at least disruptive to creators, was most surely one of those. At that point in time, you could also make comments in the DC Comics site using a nickname; and at the same time that the boards were shut down, so was this comment system, then replaced by Facebook integrated comments; using FB comments is a known way to weed out trolls - many people can yell "BARRY ALLEN SUX! KILL JORDON! BRING BACK THE REAL DCU", but very few will do so if it's visible to their whole family and network of friends.

The board was probably going away anyway; it was outdated as hell and there was no point in updating it without renewing the fans that posted there - which is out of DC's hands - but the constant negativity was undoubtedly a factor.

[hammergiant]

I believe it was absolutely to shut down criticism of the Nu52. The DCMB were a tough place. Creators like Gail Simone and Geoff Johns used to post and interact with fans, but having to constantly defend themselves from critics drove them away. The Wonder Woman board was the worst, where people would post hateful things if an artist drew WW's breastplate a little different from what they envisioned. God help them if the boots didn't precisely conform.

The company was getting it from every direction, because pre-reboot, DC was not in a great place. Still, they had to know the reboot would unleash a tidal wave of criticism on the boards, after all, it was full of passionate readers who had devoted years and much money to a continuity which was about to be shelved.

It was a wild place, but as others said, the community was much larger and diverse. I do miss that.