Moving To A New Forum

[Guybrush]

Thanks for the support for the idea, dj

Originally Posted by Freebase Dali

I don't think it's a bad idea, however I just think you should have something in place and presentable before the membership part of it comes in. We're talking SEO and everything. The less pressure you have to put on the core membership, the better, specifically when this site is fulfilling their needs right now.

I get what you're saying. But then one person would have to fund it, develop it and when all that's done, try to sell the idea to the members here. It would be one guy trying to get all the members here to move to his site.

I don't propose the communal approach simply because it's less labour for each person involved. I also think it would make more people feel invested in it. And the fact that it had more people from the community involved would probably make it a lot easier to sell to the rest of MB as well.

A sort of compromise could be if one person fixed some place where the site could be developed, then a few people could join in on development. When it was all done, a working version of the site could be presented to the rest of MB.

Originally Posted by TheBig3

Best one I've seen only had +1 options. No negatives.

edit: Also, I'd move.

Yes, I also think the best versions of these basically have a positive reinforcement by some kinda +1 option, but no negatives.

[djchameleon]

Tore, I get what you are saying but I just don't agree with it.

[Trollheart]

I would in fact rather oddly perhaps agree with both of you. I write because I like to write, but also in the hope that people are reading what I'm writing. It's quite true what tore says: if you were to write and not know people were reading then you may as well be writing offline. It's one of the reasons I stopped maintaining a sort of mirrored journal on another site. I got one single comment, and all it said was "very good". If you don't feel people are appreciative of what you write then it's hard to keep putting in the effort. It's one of the reasons why I never started up my own blog outside of this site, because the chances anyone would a) find it and b) comment on it were and are pretty minimal.

However, I would not stop writing here just because people are not commenting. I learned long ago that you can judge the popularity or otherwise of your journal on views. Of course, that's not a perfect system, as out of say 1000 views 800 could be by one person or a few people, but it still shows that somone is reading. Comments are better of course because then you get to hear what people think of your writing, good or bad. This is why I am always happy to see a new comment in my journals, which is not that often.

But as tore says this isn't all just about journals, and I must admit the rating system that other site has is good. For each post you get points and your standing goes up, like I started as something like squire and ended (before I abandoned the thing) as God-like. It's pretty cool. Plus you get a running total on how far you have to go to get to the next level, like Experience Points in an RPG. You can also win awards for say Most Posted or Most Popular and those icons display against your username. It shouldn't of course be the reason why you write, or post, but it's a clever and enjoyable incentive.

It's a pity something like that couldn't be implemented here. But I'm still in general against a new site being setup. I think I've personally settled really well into this one and to me it would be like moving house, starting all over again even if some of my friends went with me. I also think it would be a huge amount of work, and what if it doesn't take off? I don't really have any problems with this forum so I'd have to say I'd be likely to stay here. I kind of owe this place, or the people in it, quite a lot.

[Urban Hat€monger ?]

You can debate the whys & wherefores as much as you like, the simple fact is unless one person decides to take this on and run with it it's never going to happen.

It all comes down to time & money and unless you're willing to put up those things it'll never happen. To be honest while this forum is still around I don't think people are going to cough up the cash for what is essentially just going to be a forum people already post on with a few extra bells & whistles attached to it.

Asking the forum about it is kind of pointless because you'll only get opinions, not help or cash.

[Guybrush]

Originally Posted by Urban Hat€monger ?

You can debate the whys & wherefores as much as you like, the simple fact is unless one person decides to take this on and run with it it's never going to happen.

It all comes down to time & money and unless you're willing to put up those things it'll never happen. To be honest while this forum is still around I don't think people are going to cough up the cash for what is essentially just going to be a forum people already post on with a few extra bells & whistles attached to it.

Asking the forum about it is kind of pointless because you'll only get opinions, not help or cash.

Actually, I don't think it's much of a cash problem. I mean, setting up a site like this is relatively cheap. A new site wouldn't have the same traffic as this one and thus not the same exact requirements. A site with bandwidth enough for the number of dedicated users we have here now is no prob. If you want it to run on vbulletin, that costs a bit and I don't know how much, but there are free alternatives. Funding the site, making the site, getting desired functionality, all that's basically fun and easily doable.

The problem would be getting people on board with the idea.

[Freebase Dali]

That's still not the whole problem. I help run another forum and one guy funds it, and I help fund other aspects of what we do, along with donations (that I had to implement a PC hardware giveaway with it just to get people to donate, and that's still busting).
We're a relatively small group of people that defected from a very large forum that eventually shut down after our exodus, and we've been running for over a year now with very little new membership. Our SEO is fine, but it's not good enough. We are VERY relaxed with our rules, and practically anything legal is not removed. We also have total control of every aspect of the forum, and are currently building a home-page/portal, just to put into perspective how much control we have.
Still, it gets stale, and all our efforts to keep it lively really only affect the people that are already there.

Your biggest challenge is going to be getting new membership on a frequent basis. And there can only be so much word of mouth before that ceases to be feasible. That's very hit-or-miss to begin with.
I think your goal is admirable, however your execution of it is going to be missing the mark. You would be providing the same exact thing as we have here, but with bells and whistles, at the expense of a big driver of success, which is new membership. If you're not offering something significantly better that people can't live without, then you're competing in a failing battle against places that don't even need the bells and whistles to succeed, like this place.
Sure, you can eventually outshine this place if you have a great membership, good marketing, great SEO, and relevance... but if you think getting (and let's be realistic by saying SOME) people here on board with the idea is the problem, you have not thought this out, and this should be a cause for concern with anyone electing to devote the sort of time and energy to a venture that, in all likelihood, would fail without the kind of foresight that needs to go into this sort of thing.

I think you need to have a well-drawn, effective plan before you recruit people to support it. Not the other way around.

[Stephen]

One thing I would like to see would be some sort of cohesive, searchable IMDB style music resource. Something like you look up a band, click on the bass player to see what else they have done, click on their producer or lable and just trace down leads that way through the band's legacy. I imagine that is way beyond the scope of any forum software though and probably a decade worth of dedicated research and writing on the part of users and admin.

[Guybrush]

Freebase -buy a domain, rent some server space, set up a forum and figure out what else we want on there. How much more well drawn should a plan be?

I own a few domains and one of them is a community site with a forum that has now died out (site dedicated to Canterbury), but I still pay for it just to keep my intellectual property. It's not expensive. I have experience with most of this in some way or another and I still think of the technicalities of it as the simple bit. Making a site loaded with customizable functionality is cheap and simple for anyone with a bit of know-how. But getting members is difficult. Forums have been going out of style, especially now that people get their discussion fixes over facebook and the like. Starting a new forum site with a community from scratch is extremely difficult.

So getting site up, easy. Getting members there, difficult. Having failed to attract people to my Canterbury community site, I personally wouldn't want to set up another site until I knew it was going to attract people. Even if it's simple and fun to do, it still takes a lot of time and if at the end noone's interested, then much of it is a waste of effort. That's just how I feel. Plus, what I suggested is that the community work and invest together on making a new site work so then it goes without saying that the technical details would be worked out over time in the community.

[Freebase Dali]

Originally Posted by tore

Freebase -buy a domain, rent some server space, set up a forum and figure out what else we want on there. How much more well drawn should a plan be?

I own a few domains and one of them is a community site with a forum that has now died out (site dedicated to Canterbury), but I still pay for it just to keep my intellectual property. It's not expensive. I have experience with most of this in some way or another and I still think of the technicalities of it as the simple bit. Making a site loaded with customizable functionality is cheap and simple for anyone with a bit of know-how. But getting members is difficult. Forums have been going out of style, especially now that people get their discussion fixes over facebook and the like. Starting a new forum site with a community from scratch is extremely difficult.

So getting site up, easy. Getting members there, difficult. Having failed to attract people to my Canterbury community site, I personally wouldn't want to set up another site until I knew it was going to attract people. Even if it's simple and fun to do, it still takes a lot of time and if at the end noone's interested, then much of it is a waste of effort. That's just how I feel. Plus, what I suggested is that the community work and invest together on making a new site work so then it goes without saying that the technical details would be worked out over time in the community.

It seems you're still missing the most important question, which is "why" getting members is difficult. Truly, you understand that recruiting a select few people from another forum is not the solution. I know this from experience, and I'm sure you do too. You also know that funding and running a forum is not the issue, so counting that as a positive isn't necessarily a selling point, because practically anyone with a monthly allowance from their folks and a bit of technological know-how can run a forum from the ground up. No forum can exist without someone to fund, develope and run it. This is a given.

What you need to be asking yourself is whether you have a game plan that is highly likely to succeed, and the core membership to devote their time and energy into sustaining it through the years it takes to nurture and build upon that idea so that it bears real fruit.
All I'm saying is that if you are putting all your eggs in a basket that's made out of some people here helping out in your forum, that's not a very wise strategy. I'm saying that if you want to make people want to be a part of your venture, you have to offer something of more substance than what you currently have (or speculate that you will have), especially when the people you're trying to recruit are not dissuaded from their current membership and efforts, which should be obvious, since they have not moved on from it by its limitations alone.

I'm saying, understand your potential membership. Put yourself in their shoes, then formulate a plan based on that. Simply convincing yourself that it would be better is not the way. You need to convince EVERYONE. And you do this by having everything in place, where people can simply begin using it, not spending years of time and effort to build it themselves.

People don't go to Google and type in "How do I spend years building and developing a music forum so that I can participate in a music forum that I like"
They just type "music forum".
And they do that until they find a place they like.

You can't rely on a few people to make that happen for you. You have to have the framework in place, and you have to sell it effectively.

[Scarlett O'Hara]

I would totally support it if people are into the idea. You'll have to be mod over at the new one Tore.