Bughouse remains under students' radar, Student run discussion forum lacking student support Options

[Eru Iluvatar]

Reprinted from The Independent, v22 i16

Bughouse remains under students’ radar
Student run discussion forum lacking student support

By Jessica Moen
Senior Staff Writer

Many students here know about Facebook.com and MySpace.com as ways to talk to fellow NEIU students, but not a lot of students have heard of Bughouse. “Bughouse? What is that??” you might be thinking. Well, Bughouse is actually a NEIU message board that is only accessible to NEIU students. It has forums to post your comments and you can even have your own blog! The web site is www.bughouse.neiu.edu. Now, how many of you knew about this site before I told you? Herein lies the problem: this site is probably the best way to communicate with NEIU students, yet hardly anyone knows about it.

There are simply not enough advertisements for this site. Once in a while there are advertisements for it on the tables in the cafeteria, and if you go to the NEIU web site, you can find a link if you search hard enough. You cannot join the forum unless you are a current student here and have an NEIU email address, so if they are not going to advertise the site here at school, how is anyone else going to know about it?
The site has been up for several years now and has almost 500 members on it, which seems like a lot, but considering how many students are in the school (slight more than 500!), this is a sad number. There are probably more than 500 people sitting in the cafeteria as you read this. Given that this is a free site, the school might want to use the site to advertise for clubs and events going on, which might make them their money back. They could easily advertise on the site. Student goes to site, student reads an ad, student likes the ad, student answers the ad, and the school makes money. Get the idea?

Perhaps it’s not the school’s job to advertise the site and it should be left up to the students because they are the ones using the site. This could easily be done by simple word of mouth. “Hey, have you heard of Bughouse? No? Well, this is what it is…” Also, you can view some of the Independent’s articles in Bughouse.
If you are shy, then a quick email will also do the trick. It really doesn’t take much to get a few fliers and post them up around campus—maybe even stick those annoying little cards on people’s cars. If the school will approve of fliers for used cars, they should have no objection to a school related flier.

So basically, Bughouse is not doing anyone any good if no one knows about it. As fun as it is to talk to yourself for a while, it is much more fun to talk to lots of different people. So let’s do more to advertise this site and get the message out. If NEIU students aren’t going to visit it, who else will?

[My Name Is Greg]

Maybe if BugHouse had a better and more marketable name. Bug House sounds like some sort of experiment by the biology club or something.

What BugHouse ought to do is consult the marketing club to come up with a new brand name, logo, and advertising campaign.

Or we can have a brainstorm here.

[Bugspray]

How about Hyper Global Mega Net, Homer Simpson's online site?

[trocks]

Bughouse refersw to Bughouse Square, still a park in Chicago near the Newberry Library.

You have heard people talk about getting on or off their soap box when it comes to talking politics, back at the turn of the last centruy people would come to Bughouse Square, get on a soap box and rant or debate about issues of the day.

So really Bughouse refers to that open exchange of ideas, getting on our, now virtual, soap boxes and ranting about every subject under the sun.

Bughouse may not convey our message stragity or be good marketing exactly, but if one is a student of history, the name is very appropreate.

[jbhalper]

Yeah, i like the name Bughouse for those reasons. It's got some meaning, and one particular to Chicago, as well.

I don't think that's a serious problem either, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't keep brainstorming.

What about user-designed ad materials? Posters, fliers, table-top stands, etc, etc.

[My Name Is Greg]

What we need is flyers with scandily clad women on them. Call me sexist or whatever but lets face it, thats the easiesy way to draw attention to anything.

[kastigar]

I think some improvements could be made. As one of the original members of Bughouse I, and one of the earliest members of Bughouse II, I can (and will!) make a couple of suggestions and comments.

Greg was right on with his two comments/suggestions in another thread.

I think Bughouse needs to be re-named, “re-branded” if you will, in terms the marketing peepul will understand. I’m will aware of the historical significance of the name, I’m familiar with “Bughouse Square” (there are still debates held there!) and I’ll acknowledge it was a good start. But how many other college-age students realize the significance, other than a factoid from the history books? Is the name relevant?

I have no suggestion for another name, but it needs to be ( a ) intellectual enough to appeal to a college-level person, and ( b ) fun enough so as appear as a social phenomena worthwhile participating in.

Next, it need to be promoted more, and promoted better.

On these two points, I suspect the Marketing Club might be a valuable resource. I’m totally unfamiliar with this club, I’m not a member and I don’t know anyone who is. But if their name is significant of what they do this might be an excellent club (or class) project. We need some expertise in this area, not just activists and computer-geeks. We need all three – activists, geeks – and marketers to get things rolling.

We need to appreciate the stumbling block that registration incurs. There’s not much we can do about it, but we need to appreciate that it exists.

Bughouse I was totally anonymous. It engendered some riotous discussion, but brought about it’s downfall too. Bughouse II requires NEIU registration. Making it painless to administer requires verification via the NEIU email system and address, a perfectly acceptable process.

However, many or most students today enrolled in Northeastern with a primary email address and some gateway to the internet already. When I first enrolled, NEIU was my only access to the internet! This was before WWW, and all we had was gopher, pine, and unix. It was NEIU, or nothin’. That’s no longer true for new and current students. Northeastern recently discontinued one of the two dial-up numbers because of the fading use.

As a result, somebody with AOL, Earthlink, Netzero, SBS, and so forth are pretty much clueless, and not interested in, another email address and ISP account. The process of initializing the account, logging in the first time, checking email for the account verification requires a lot of effort.

I’m not sure what we can do about this, however. I think some sort of NEIU affiliation is necessary before Bughouse-access is granted. Anonymity can still be maintained and guaranteed with the sole exception of request by the NEIU authorities that host this anyway. This is not a serious impediment, but the technical process of logging in is a stumbling block.

Maybe on Career Day we could set up a table with a computer or two, encourage subscription and grant immediate verification upon showing the Student ID card or something. This, of course, could only be done once each semester and would require added work for somebody.

Or maybe we could sweet-talk the Student Services desk in the Student Union into accepting applications and verifying them.

I don’t know the answer to this one, but I do know that it’s a stumbling block to most people who are used to using a different ISP source to the internet.

[My Name Is Greg]

I have some experiene in running a school-based forum, as I did so for my high school for a few years. What we did was we instituted a system where a student ID # was required during signup, and you can use any e-mail you want. All registrations were then approved by hand by checking the ID # the student entered in the school database.

It took one or two days, but if an information system is designed to either automate this or there are enough people with the right access on staff the process would be relativley painless.

For example, lets say we have access to the school database of every student who is active at NEIU. What we can do is pull just the student id # and birthday, so that all information remains anonymous, and as long as the student can type in their student ID # and birthday at signup we will know that they are an active student and they could sign up. This could be automated and no one can just guess a student ID # to register, since the birthday would also have to match.

This post has been edited by My Name Is Greg: Mar 1 2006, 08:52 AM

[tintin]

University Day (today) has a poster session on "Creating Community" -- if we don't have a poster already, it's probably too late now. But sometimes I wonder whether the ad campaign is aggressive enough. When Bughouse was revived a few years ago, I put signs in all the cafeteria standees, and signs all around campus. Little card standees in the labs and public computers, and bookmarks in the bookstore and by the cafeteria checkout. I talked to the clubs at club-table day.

When Bughouse was really hot was back in 2000 (Bughouse 1) I offered to give a presentation at University Day, whose theme that year was perfect: something like "Creating Community at a Commuter University." I did get a venue -- on as the third floor of the library. Ouch! Everything else took place over in the Student Union. I had two people show.

I feel like Cameron and I got this Bughouse thing off the ground (for free, I might add), and it's not taking flight like it might. We have a few paid moderators (not very highly paid, granted). They have good ideas and skills. I'd like to see more publicity (and there are plenty of opportunities). You know that after a certain unt of pushing it will be self-propelled. That happened in 2 months in 2000, it was a wild animal running amuk, and it was interesting (in a way) to watch.

Now it is domestemcated, much more useful and I guess only mildly offensive at most. I have been promised by the admin that bughouse will be linked to the new web page, wo that will help. In the meantime, we do have a little budget (thank you donor -- you know who your are) for copies and such. It doesn't cost much anyway, I did it before without breaking my bank account.

As for a new name, whatever you decide. I thought bughouse had a nice simple ring to it, just a little edgy, and with a good history (in addition to Washington Square there was a weekly open mike "Bughouse Square" in the NEIU cafeteria (complete with checkered table cloths) for a few years in the early 70s, back when the cafeteria was where the bookstore is now). Josh came up with a nice logo.

But hey! I'm stepping back. I'm busy enough as new chair of my dept.


tintin

[Gilgamesh]

I'm on my way to the event now, for those who haven't seen yet I have posters up through out much of the campus. I hope they are engaging, even if a bit weird.

I came, I saw, I left.

Given that I had just found out about the event around 11:00 this morning I wasn't expecting to have much in terms of things to present, everyone there has poster boards and tables set up, something I'm not able to do with a couple hours notice. So bughouse isn't to be seen. Maybe this was oversight on my part, but this was the first time I have heard of this event, and the second mention I've heard of U. day at all. The first time I heard it mentioned was as someone told me their teacher said while laughing that they had to make a presentation during the class session and that thus the class would meet (for extra credit) at U. day. The way I was told this was followed by lots of laughter by students and teacher alike.

When I did hear about it this morning I tried to find any information regarding this event or anything else about U. day on the NEIU webpage (made much more useful with the intergrated google search on the new one) and didn't find anything.

Sorry.