Moving To A New Forum

[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.

[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.

[Guybrush]

I can tell from the responses here that the time is not right for stuff like this. I think Freebase and Lateralus concerns about site rankings are very legitimate. Let's say we did it and it worked, then the reasons why it did so would be because so many made the move that the community would live on healthily for years in the new place. It could only do so if it was large enough, that is if enough people moved. I think if everyone wasn't in on it and made the move, then it wouldn't be worth doing. Well, that's an exaggeration - I'm sure there's some people with 15 posts that we could do without - but roughly the whole of what we think of as the community should make the move.

And if that can't currently happen, then this is not a good idea at present. However, I hope that if this site was to come down, Yac or the admin would let us know well beforehand so that we could get something like this underway so we don't suddenly lose our home.

[Freebase Dali]

Originally Posted by tore

I can tell from the responses here that the time is not right for stuff like this. I think Freebase and Lateralus concerns about site rankings are very legitimate. Let's say we did it and it worked, then the reasons why it did so would be because so many made the move that the community would live on healthily for years in the new place. It could only do so if it was large enough, that is if enough people moved. I think if everyone wasn't in on it and made the move, then it wouldn't be worth doing. Well, that's an exaggeration - I'm sure there's some people with 15 posts that we could do without - but roughly the whole of what we think of as the community should make the move.

And if that can't currently happen, then this is not a good idea at present. However, I hope that if this site was to come down, Yac or the admin would let us know well beforehand so that we could get something like this underway so we don't suddenly lose our home.

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.

[TheBig3]

Originally Posted by Burning Down

Reputation systems generally end up becoming a popularity contest though. But I understand what you're saying there.

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

edit: Also, I'd move.

[djchameleon]

I think that are quite a few people that would move or at the very least post in both places for a while until it get's the footing that it needs.

[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.

[Arya Stark]

I don't understand. A completely new Music Forum? Or any forum in general?

[Guybrush]

Originally Posted by Arya Stark

I don't understand. A completely new Music Forum? Or any forum in general?

Perhaps you should read the first post and see if that explains things?

[TheBig3]