Opinionators.co.uk

Author's product rating:   

Quality of Discussions

Good

Advantages:	The most user friendly opinion site related message board
Disadvantages:	A rather lurid home page, some over heated discussions

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Ever since I started review writing, more than four years ago, there has always been somewhere away from the consumer reviews sites where people can go to chat about either the sites themselves or anything that takes their fancy. These sites have been a chance to get away from review writing, reading and rating and foster a sense of community, long before Ciao ever had guest books. They've always been a little like going down the pub after work, in that you can relax a little and get to know those people you've been interacting with on a daily basis that little bit better.

Back then, in 2001, there was only one place to go. The Opinionated Community, or OpCom as it was better known, was mostly run for Dooyoo members, as Ciao members were generally interacting at the Grope at this stage. Comprising of a message board and an attached chat room, it was very much the template for all future sites of this kind, with a large and friendly membership that comprised of people who liked a debate, but weren't so keen on slinging insults at each other.

With OpCom slowly dying, ChuckleWeb and then ChatterWeb provided an antidote. Not quite as calm and not generally as open to vocal debate as OpCom was, it still proved to be a popular diversion for many. After ChatterWeb folded, there was the short-lived CiaoZone, which suffered from a lack of interest from the owner. There was then a sudden glut of opinion site related message boards, with Opinionators, Vox Populi Ciao and CiaoChatting appearing at a fairly similar time. CiaoChatting is gone now, but the other two remain along with Rachel's Forum, which took up the slack on the fluffier side of things once CiaoChatting had gone. As with OpCom, I have always preferred a more serious message board which currently leaves Opinionators, at www.opinionators.co.uk, as my message board of choice.

Looking beyond the unnecessarily bright blue home page, which makes it difficult to log on to the site at work without being caught; this appears to be the ideal opinion related message board. It doesn't have the proliferation of forums and categories that Vox Populi Ciao and Rachel's Forum seem to struggle under the weight of, nor does it have a tendency towards fluffy topics and away from the issues that CiaoChatting used to have. In addition, it doesn't have the added distraction of an arcade, making it perhaps the most serious in purpose of any of the opinion site related message boards.

What you get when you get past the rather lurid homepage is one of the better organised and easiest to navigate message boards around. There are three sections, split into ten forums and the section groupings are the most obvious ones. There is one for board business, featuring the almost traditional welcoming forum as well as one for board news and one for the rules. There is the opinion site section, with a forum each for Ciao, one for Dooyoo, one for more general opinion site discussion and the unique "Opinion Sites 101", giving members advice on how to do things on the opinion sites, not necessarily relating to the writing itself. Finally, the "Everything Else" section, covering entertainment such as books, music and films; lifestyle issues, mostly dieting and quitting smoking and an "Other Stuff" forum, which has covered topics from football to politics and pretty much everything else in between.

No matter what your prior involvement with message boards, it's likely that you'll find something you're happy to chat about at Opinionators. For those who wish to restrict their discussion to opinion site business, this is possible, with crowns and diamonds predictably up for debate alongside rating and cashing in issues, particularly at the time of writing with both Dooyoo and Ciao having issues with payment. It is perfect for newcomers to either site, as there are a number of long term members of both sites on the board who are willing to answer any questions.

For those who wish to debate serious issues, these are available as well. The current situation in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina has had time devoted to it of late, as have vivisection and Child Trust Funds. For those who hang around on other websites, eBay news is frequently featured and updates on survey sites that might be of interest are posted. For those who prefer the more "fluffy" sides of conversation, you'll be happy to discover that you can chat about your favourite films, musicians or football team, although there is a strong Liverpool FC bias to the football discussions.

There's no requirement to register to read posts, but you will need to if you have something to contribute. But this is simplicity itself and achieved by selecting a user name, which doesn't have to be the same as your Ciao name, but it would make you more recognisable if you use the same name, a password and providing your E-Mail address and you're done. An acknowledgement E-Mail later and you're ready to use the full range of the board. In truth, there's not much more to it than reading and posting messages, which is why such places are called message boards after all. But being a member does give you the option to send and receive private messages and change the colour of the board. Possibly best of all is that there is no requirement to be invited to join the board as there is with some - it's open to anyone, as long as they act within the site rules.

For those new to message boards, you'll find everything easy to use. Finding and reading threads is no more complicated than finding something on Ciao, as all you need to do is select what you want to read and click on it. Posting a reply is just like writing a comment on Ciao, which you can do by simply writing into a "Quick Reply" box at the bottom of each thread or, if you want to get a little fancier and use italics and the like, by pressing the "reply" button and writing in the space provided. It only gets a little more complicated when you start adding avatars (little pictures that appear by your name) and signatures, but these can all be done through you member profile and are, again, no more difficult than the corresponding actions on Ciao.

One of the real wonders of Opinionators over the other Ciao related message boards at the moment is how simple it all is. Unlike the other boards out there, there aren't too many forums to bundle your way through to find things and no side distractions like arcades or murder mystery or "Big Brother" style games. The Moderators ensure that everything is in the relevant place and where you would expect to find it. It's not perfect, but with only ten forums, it's a much lighter site and far easier to navigate that either of the other similar sites around at present.

There are also relatively few cosmetic changes so the board doesn't look different from one day to the next, as frequently happened with CiaoChatting. However, the site owner does have enough technical knowledge that if members suggest improvements to the board, such as the recent addition of a "Quick Reply" box and a Make Poverty History banner, these can be added easily. Generally speaking, any good suggestions will be implemented as soon as the site owner has time to do so. However, with the site owner also having been a member of the old Opinionated Community, he knows what he wants to see in a message board and this means that the board is just that and no more - a board for messaging.

There are no extra bits on to take people away from messaging or distract them in other ways as some other message boards have. It's a place for serious (and not so serious) discussion and interaction, not a place to play games, read poetry or get lost in a forest of forums or complete fluffiness. This is a board for people who are members of consumer review sites for the consumer review side of things, rather than for the community side of things. That's not to say that the board does not provide a welcoming community to be a part of, it's just that it prefers to keep the community and the opinionating side of things separate, so as to not dilute the impact of the reviews themselves.

Possibly best of all and again unlike some other boards I have been involved with in the past, it's a very stable board. Although I suspect this may be due to the board architecture being taken pretty much as a whole from a site providing them professionally, it's still impressive. Site downtime is very rare, and I've only seen it suffering from bandwidth problems once in a year, remarkably for what is essentially an amateur site. Being virtually entirely text, it's a board that loads very quickly and it's compatible with all the major browsers, so no matter what your personal PC and browser set up, you'll be able to enjoy Opinionators as much as the rest of us.

However, whilst it is a very good board, it's not perfect. The atmosphere on the board is generally pretty genial, although you can get some heated discussions at times. But that's only natural when certain subjects are discussed. I'd say that there is more of a problem with people taking threads off topic than there are arguments on the board and there have been occasions when flippant responses to serious questions have caused some offence. It's noticeable that even the few arguments there were on the boards have declined in recent times.

If you're a member of the sites more for the community sides of things than for the review writing sides, you may not quite find Opinionators to your taste. The board does count a large number of long standing opinion writers among its members, people who remember how Ciao and Dooyoo once were, before they tried to add a community to a review writing site and before that community came more to the forefront as has happened on Ciao. It's also a site where the members are not blind to the failings of either site and will openly criticise aspects that we feel could be improved. That said, the site is not anti-Ciao, anti-community or anti- any of the other message boards, as it has been accused of being, merely a group of individuals who know what they would like to see from a review writing site and not afraid to disagree with aspects it is less keen on.

Whilst it may not suit everyone, I do think that Opinionators could be close to the ideal message board. There are plenty of things to talk about and with more than two hundred members, plenty of people to talk about them with. By and large it's a good natured board and it's easy to navigate, which certainly isn't true of some boards. There's no pressure to join or to post constantly once you do. Like that pub after work on the Friday, how often you're there and how long you stay is entirely up to you, but it's likely to be a decent, relaxed time away from the daily grind when you stop by.

In short, if you are looking for a message board to have a general chat or ask questions about Ciao or Dooyoo, you won't find better than Opinionators. In fact, if you're looking for a friendly and welcoming message board where you can just chat generally, you'll be made welcome. There's such a wide range of members from both opinion sites, covering pretty much the whole of the social demographic as well as the opinion site one, that you'll fit in and feel at home right away, without needing to await an invitation to join from the site owner or needing to agree with everything the site owner says for the welcome you first felt to continue.

Generally, you can judge how good something is by the number of times ideas are "borrowed" from it. On this basis, it would seem that Opinionators is the best around.