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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Feb 2010
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    WI
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    36
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    1,341

    Default Defibrillating the forum

    The forum here is basically wasting away. There are very few new threads and very few active members contributing interesting material. I see forums die all the time it would be a shame if GF shared the same fate. So lets try to discuss the problem here, feel free to contribute if you think I have missed anything.

    Main problem: fewer active members. This results in fewer long term members, less forum activity and less reason for members to keep returning. Basically member activity is the only real problem. There are a number of solutions, so I will just throw out as many as I can think of:

    Create relevant content, about gaming. News sections handled by a team would be a large benefit. Actually finding mods and giving them a set job other than being policy police. This is an issue in itself. Structure the forum so that the most relevant information is presented first in an easy to remember format.

    -----------------------

    Format

    So lets start with format, this is largely my opinion, Linux, Im sorry nothing personal but your layout bugs me for a few reasons, those reasons are varied but for starters let me give you an example:

    GF Central

    New Members
    Gaming News
    GF Game Reviews (sticky Q&A thread with link to person who handles requests)
    sub --- PC Reviews, Console reviews
    General Discussion

    Games (this section should address the main genres +1 general)

    General Gaming
    RPG
    FPS
    Strategy
    sub --- League of Legends, Starcraft
    Adventure/platformer
    Sports/Racing
    Others
    sub--- Fighters, sandbox, horror

    General Topics

    Serious debate and Discussion (pro life, right to bear arms type stuff can be a lot of fun but you need to keep it civil)
    Entertainmet
    sub --- music, tv, literature
    General PC
    Graphic (sticky request threads)
    Off Topic (spam threads no post count, lax rules)

    Forum Managment and Features

    Forum Discussion (sticky Q&A thread)
    Arcade
    Casino
    Contests and Point Sales
    Forum servers

    (hidden boards)

    This layout focuses on featuring the main focus of the forum, the gaming aspect as well as what are most likely the more active and updated boards. You want new content on top of the page and as much activity in plain sight as possible. This is part personal experience and taste, but should also largely be self evident as logical.

    --------------------

    Mods

    Mods, super mods and global mods should all drastically have different jobs. To make use of mods you have to form them into a support staff that understands their roles. In an ideal forum this is what you would look for:

    Mods:
    Mods move posts around so they are in the right place, they comment constructivly in new threads to show interest in what the members have to say. ANd most importantly they are always trying to generate hot threads that will generate a lot of discussion. You also want knowledgeable people coving each topic, but they have to be able to converse in a non biased manner about aspects in their fields.

    What you do not want them doing: Handling forum rules, warnings, bans, or deleting threads or closing them. You are going to have more mods (hopefully) on a good staff than anything else. And they are there to help to forum stay active and report problems to their team leader. You do not want to discourage anyone from posting unless absolutely necessary. One way to discourage people is by giving mods to much power. Your forum should have as welcoming a feel as possible, to many people with the power to offend others (even if they are justified by the forum rules) has the opposite effect.

    Super Mods:
    These guys should be put in charge of sections of the forum, boards or even entire categories. They should have direct control of who the mods are, because these are not rule enforcers, these are forum activity providers. Super mods are the glue that holds many forums together, they should be the most active contributors in the community and should generally be as well liked as possible.

    What they should not be doing: All the things Mods should not be doing. But they should be in charge of alerting global mods of actions that need to be taken regarding members. They should simply record and present evidence, and never scold posters or close threads. These guys are the customer service providers, sure they get to hire the mods, but they have to make sure the mods are active and fill in for the ones that are not, or replace them.

    Global mods:
    These guys should be handling all your warnings, infractions, bans, closed threads and disputes. Thats all they are needed to do. And you want as few as you can manage while always having someone available. Ideally they should even have a separate email setup that they get notified by phone when something important needs to be done. They have a lot of power in regaurd to the forum, and its inevitable that they might not be the most popular, but that's the trade for authority. You only need a few but they have to be active.

    Have a bunch of inactive members on your staff and don't want to upset them? Create an honorary title for them as a place holder to make sure they know they are still welcome to come back, but dont let inactive accounts sit with significant status. You want to see where you need more staff clearly and unused accounts eventually present more and more of a security threat if an email gets hacked or they used the same passwords for everything and a game account gets hacked.

    While we are on the topic of growing staff, you should consider doing the same things with a news staff and a review staff. A news staff is more important and can be handled by a few members. A review staff is harder, because there is very little incentive for all that work when I could post my stuff to UTube and get a lot more views. Come back to reviews after your activity picks up.

    ------------------------

    Boosting content NOW:

    You need to refresh your threads and get active members working on posting as a group. Even if it is only a small group at first, they need to have a goal of keeping every thread on the first page less than a month old. Again this is where mods should come in. Hiring a new group of mods, or even lurking and finding old members that would be willing to help revamp your content. There are classic fallback threads you can always reuse like "favorite ____", but you also want each forum topic to have interesting topics from current event, like shooters should have a thread about Destiny, Titanfall, The latest COD, and the latest news should be turned into threads.

    Those are not threads that should happen on their own, you want mods who feel its their job to make sure potentially active threads are created.

    The News section should be featured up top, and you should have members watching gaming sites for upcoming games and exciting news. They should also know how to follow reference links back to the statements those gaming sites link, and format heir own news article rather than copying others.

    Its safe to say the forum needs a lot of work at this point. If you are preoccupied Linux you should form a core group you can trust with people you trust and review your goals for the forum, even if you dont take my advice as is, you should still have a few people that clearly understand what you want to do with the forum and can help. Because I swear if you sit on your ass I will open my own and poach your members.


    Edit:

    One last thing that I want to make sure I convey my feelings about. I tried to touch on it but if its not clear, the mood and tone of your forum. Writers learn that mood and tone are to separate issues, tone is the intent of the words by the writer, and mood is the emotions the readers feel towards the written work.

    These are important concepts in a community where you expressly communicate with writing. You have to be careful to craft a tone that can not evoke a negative mood in your members. And im going to be blunt, Im terrible at this mysef. But even though I take almost nothing seriously and often dont translate well, I have been deeply offended on forums like this. I have become an inactive member because I did not enjoy the mood of your forum in the past, but Im not purposely holding a grudge, I didn't even notice when I stopped posting.

    For this reason I strongly recommend you look long and hard at your command structure. Make sure your mods understand the mood you want to convey. Part of that is being nice to them. If you want a healthy and active forum you have to respect where your power comes from, consent. I can post on your forum of I can find another. Or make my own. Same as anyone else.

    Also Im not saying your forum was terribly unfriendly, or anything like that. I largely suspect the decline in activity is from evolving technology, creating easier ways to fulfill social needs and keep us informed in different ways. But I havent disregarded the potential of a forum like this either. Hell I played xbox with a group of friends I met on here and then got invited to go meet up with them in New York. I took the time to post this, so I hope you take the time to consider what the forum would be like if you fixed it up.


    *edit edit: revised my example in hopes that Linux adds an active debate area.
    Last edited by BobTD; 12-13-2013 at 06:46 PM.
    "Prediction: Zenimax Online is making an MMO set in the elder scrolls universe" -BobTD 8-25-2010 (search it on the forum)

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jan 2012
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    Ohio
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    31
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    Default

    I'd really like to see the forum get some new life. It's depressing to get on every day and see "no unread posts"


    Shout out to Eggs for the awesome signature

  3. #3
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    Default

    And Lynux could use more members like you on his team fixing the place up.

    (psst, this guy can help to)

    Edit: anyone who shows any interest in boosting activity should PM Linux with bothersomly cheerfull messages about fixing his forum.
    Last edited by BobTD; 12-12-2013 at 03:12 PM.
    "Prediction: Zenimax Online is making an MMO set in the elder scrolls universe" -BobTD 8-25-2010 (search it on the forum)

  4. #4
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    Default

    I'm not sure how I could help lol


    Shout out to Eggs for the awesome signature

  5. #5
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    Default

    You need to refresh your threads and get active members working on posting as a group. Even if it is only a small group at first, they need to have a goal of keeping every thread on the first page less than a month old. Again this is where mods should come in. Hiring a new group of mods, or even lurking and finding old members that would be willing to help revamp your content. There are classic fallback threads you can always reuse like "favorite ____", but you also want each forum topic to have interesting topics from current event, like shooters should have a thread about Destiny, Titanfall, The latest COD, and the latest news should be turned into threads.
    Simple stuff like choosing an area of the forum you like and updating it.
    "Prediction: Zenimax Online is making an MMO set in the elder scrolls universe" -BobTD 8-25-2010 (search it on the forum)

  6. #6
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    Default

    I agree with a lot of what you said, but you don't have to be a mod to post new topics. I've been apart of a lot of forums and very rarely do the mods create the majority of threads. It's hard for a few people to keep up on EVERY game coming out and new stuff about it; especially if what they're posting they're not even interested in. It's the community as a whole that keeps up current news about games, if each person creates threads as they find news about their favorite games then the forum would be a lot more active. People shouldn't feel like they need a special label just to create threads. A mod or non-mod can create as many threads as they like; their isn't a limit. Every member should feel they can contribute to the forum as much as they can or would like to.

    IMO, the forum mainly needs active posters. New threads about current hot trends is what brings people to the forum. People search for something on google and click links to read about games they want to get. The more threads we have about new games, the easier people searching in google or bing can find us.

    There are some smaller things as well, definitely still a lot of bugs that haven't been fixed since the vB upgrade. As you said, the layout could be changed, it's been the same since I've joined 5 or 6 years ago. The main thing is just activity though, the more active our current members are, the more likely that new members will join and start posting as well.
    Last edited by Trunks; 12-10-2013 at 09:29 PM.

  7. #7
    Join Date
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    Eta Carinae
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    Default

    Thank you for your suggestions! I actually like the forum layout you posted so if no one has any objections, I may actually change things around to what you suggested and give it a try by the new year (although I may make a few modifications myself).

    I agree with Trunks as well, that we need more active members. I think the whole mod idea that you have is great, but I don't think mods should be 'activity providers' - they are there to enforce rules. All mods are regular members as well, and as trunks stated, anyone can post new threads and posts.

    Thank you for your suggestions. We'll have to figure out where threads created in current boards will end up (those in the boards that may get removed e.g. consoles and pc).

    Let's see what we can do for 2014.

    +rep
    Do not PM me regarding your problems or suggestions for the board unless you are offering me money. I will Ignore your posts and if you bother me too much, you will be banned.

    ►Easy Programming | My Youtube
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  8. #8
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    Default

    I've found myself coming back to this place, I would not mind at all posting in threads, and I can try to post a new thread a day or something.
    I'd love to see this place come back. I miss it

    ---------- Post added at 12:06 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:06 AM ----------

    I've found myself coming back to this place, I would not mind at all posting in threads, and I can try to post a new thread a day or something.
    I'd love to see this place come back. I miss it
    Samus-Fan :: Graphic Store ¦ Samus Graphics :: Graphics and Blog

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  9. #9
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    I'm ready to help guys I'm dedicated and what about a section just for computer help I know my computer stuff pretty well and would watch over the forum I know it would bring in some people and I would like to apply for a mod.
    Last edited by Imperial_Kade; 12-11-2013 at 08:19 AM.

    Send me FR on Steam
    Imperial_Kade

  10. #10
    Join Date
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    Default

    I have to say, I'm a big fan of the idea of bringing more life in to this forum. I've joined since the glory days have past but what remains is still really good. I've looked at a lot of forum communities and this is the only one that isn't filled with jerks. It's a small community but those that remain are good. I'd be happy to help out. My general forum lurking grounds are League of Legends, Neverwinter topics, and Computer Support.

    A thought that might help generate a bigger community. More team oriented forums. We're all gamers here and many of us play the same games but how many of us actually interact with each other in game? It might start helping the forum be noticed in games. I realize it wouldn't apply to every game but say a "Gamers-Forum" guild on Neverwinter (Maybe a different MMO? I don't think many on here besides me play much Neverwinter). Make every instance of it in game a team that is friendly, helpful and about the person not necessarily skill level.

    If this idea is considered a good one I'll gladly kick one off on Neverwinter provided there are other members on there to get it started and start spreading the word. You have to have 5 to initiate a guild. I would need 3 more.
    Last edited by Ziek88; 12-11-2013 at 10:50 AM.


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