Defibrillating the forum

[BobTD]

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.