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Topic: Bye. (Read 33221 times)

Re: Bye.

Reply #25 –
Yes that's  true, I wonder why

Possible

We post too many posts which make "sense" only to ourselves - an example of that would be the continual rjh feud
Our threads are not sufficiently interesting
Our threads are too long-lived and are difficult to join in (*)
We do not have enough new starts
Or
Other posters do not actually realise they can and that they are welcome to post here

(*) I have had this problem I must admit, trying to get enough of the thrust of a discussion which has gone on forever, to make an original input --- it's  off-putting.

Re: Bye.

Reply #26 –
One possible way we could breathe some life into what we post would be to concentrate on topical news stories, rather than purely generic threads that could include anything and everything.

For example, discussion of the recent sting over the sale of radioactive material could be a thread in its own right rather than being absorbed into another.

Any thoughts on that, if we all did it for a bit it might produce some interesting discussion ok be.?

Also a moratorium on how wicked American gun toting corporate republicans are would help; there's  too much of that going on.

Re: Bye.

Reply #27 –
I was about to suggest lightening up on Americans. Think about it: Right now before I open DnD, I know that I can count on half a dozen posts that indicate anything said by an American is probably wrong because we're all hopelessly ignorant untraveled boobs. Why would any other Americans want to post here, given that kind of reception?

Look, I'll spell it right out: I've been on the point of leaving any number of times because I felt that my opinion is less than welcome, seeing that I'm an American.

So--- rail on evil American gun-makers? Be my guest. But don't forget about the evil gun-makers from your part of the world too. Otherwise people like me might think DnD is a Eurocentric xenophobic place that's best avoided.
What would happen if a large asteroid slammed into the Earth?
According to several tests involving a watermelon and a large hammer, it would be really bad!

Re: Bye.

Reply #28 –
I don't realize why should be TT92's post a reason to limit or condition other members posting content and even less understand how imposing posting taboo subjects would attract more posters.

It's not pleasant to our American posters to see critics to the USA? well, it's not pleasant to Muslims to see critics to their religion as well and so on and so on.

We can certainly try more diversity at our threads, more short and specific content instead the usual "classic" epic themes, something more "easy and light" but even so that's not a guarantee that it would attract more posters.

Discussing at the neighborhood level will not attract more posters.

We can't ever beat Facebook and alike and that's what the world idiotic population desires. Tweeting it's not compatible with DnD genesis.

That said, Rjhowie you be more kind with the "ex colonists", when they arrive by the thousands you can fight them again. :)
A matter of attitude.

Re: Bye.

Reply #29 –
I suppose you might say things can seem a bit antagonistic now and then, but doesn't that apply to any perspective?

Re: Bye.

Reply #30 –
Quote from: mjmsprt40 on
I was about to suggest lightening up on Americans.

That might make a certain someone mute.
But it is getting a bit old seeing it in so many posts. Guess some folk have nothing original to come up with.
The start and end to every story is the same. But what comes in between you have yourself to blame.
 

Re: Bye.

Reply #31 –
Quote from: Frenzie on

I suppose you might say things can seem a bit antagonistic now and then, but doesn't that apply to any perspective?

Yes some sort of arguing/teasing/even antagonism is rather essential for a forum to be interesting, but I think we need to cut back a bit to get more people to be rude to (just joking).

How about letting this particular discussion ride for this weekend to see if others have ideas and then start a few more topical threads to see what happened, maybe a couple each? Any agreement on that?

Re: Bye.

Reply #32 –
Quote from: string on
then start a few more topical threads to see what happened, maybe a couple each? Any agreement on that?

I'm not sure what is your undertanding of a "topical" thread...

We had threads based on books, documentaries, architecture, music, football and, certainly, many other topics. I find those threads to be "topical ones" unlike philosophy, religion, science and other very open subjects. All those threads either finished soon or needs a gigantical posting effort from the OP to keep it running.

To me, the place DnD fulfills in the internet world is to be the remainder from the times people used to think about the world, as well a mirror of human nature and diversity.
Course we'll slowly die in agony... it's our fate, we can't fight it. :)
A matter of attitude.

Re: Bye.

Reply #33 –
After posting the above, I went to look to our statistics.

Total Members:
    1340
Total Posts:
    45270
Total Topics:
    667
Average registrations per day:
    11.00
Average posts per day:
    68.04

This is not so bad.
A matter of attitude.

Re: Bye.

Reply #34 –
Quote from: Belfrager on

After posting the above, I went to look to our statistics.

Total Members:
    1340
Total Posts:
    45270
Total Topics:
    667
Average registrations per day:
    11.00
Average posts per day:
    68.04

This is not so bad.


This is where numbers and statistics get mighty strange. Go back over the membership count. 1340. OK, how many of those members have actually posted anything? Take a good look and you find that most have posted nothing. Zilch. Zero. Nada. There's really only a handful of active members. So the question becomes, how do we get more ACTIVE members?
What would happen if a large asteroid slammed into the Earth?
According to several tests involving a watermelon and a large hammer, it would be really bad!

Re: Bye.

Reply #35 –
Quote from: mjmsprt40 on
So the question becomes, how do we get more ACTIVE members?

Most people are passive. Each time I access the forum, there's me (and Luxor :) ) and more eight or nine guests. Who are those guests? people reading and not posting I suppose.

People have been indoctrinated not to act but to watch the world as mere spectators. This way they don't make revolutions.
A matter of attitude.

Re: Bye.

Reply #36 –
Quote from: Belfrager on

Quote from: string on
then start a few more topical threads to see what happened, maybe a couple each? Any agreement on that?

I'm not sure what is your undertanding of a "topical" thread...

We had threads based on books, documentaries, architecture, music, football and, certainly, many other topics. I find those threads to be "topical ones" unlike philosophy, religion, science and other very open subjects. All those threads either finished soon or needs a gigantical posting effort from the OP to keep it running.

To me, the place DnD fulfills in the internet world is to be the remainder from the times people used to think about the world, as well a mirror of human nature and diversity.
Course we'll slowly die in agony... it's our fate, we can't fight it. :)


By topical I mean something in the public eye at that moment. That does not mean that I think that more esoteric threads are not worthwhile, but merely that our membership is not healthy and so clearly our present posting/ online presence is not good enough. So I try to do something about it. All ideas are welcome of course.

Re: Bye.

Reply #37 –
Quote from: Belfrager on
Who are those guests?

Probably members that aren't logged in.

Quote from: string on
I used the term "critical mass" earlier and it's sort of appropriate, one needs enough people interested in a particular subject in order to keep it alive.

For example a hot topic in the UK at the moment is the new leader of the Labour Party. I can't imagine more than 3 or our number in discussing such a topic. It's  the same with discussing Trump in the US context 3 or 4 Americans would be interested but not that many others. If I post about football/ soccer; again not so many. The old subjects of religion, terrorists, guns and even good have been cover ed d so much that we could probably write each other's posts!

As far as interested in Euro topics, I am. I'd rather read your opinion of a story than just an article on the subject. Might have to do with my opinion of media. But I don't really have much to contribute on such subjects. And on some other well covered topics you're right; we all know each others opinions.

As for anti-Americanism...
Quote from: Belfrager on
It's not pleasant to our American posters to see critics to the USA? well, it's not pleasant to Muslims to see critics to their religion as well and so on and so on.

I have to agree with this. There's no reason to get butt hurt over rj. If my last exchange with him is any indication he simply repeats the same rhetoric. If he becomes detrimental to the community we should cut him loose. As you should me or anyone else. But there hasn't been any attempt, yet, to stop his spamming by the administration so I'm willing to let it ride.

As for membership increases. Content will help but we have to look at what we offer... Which isn't anything different than a million other forums. We don't have the community features like what MyOpera had. But a look at where our 'sister' forum went shows the mess to be had there. We may need to look at evolving to attract more members tho. I've mentioned keyword advertising before, I think. with effort to advertise during topical discussions we could boost membership from interested parties simply by exposure. That exposure also opens us up to more spam and unwanted attention. As well as needing to establish a revenue source.

**(One feature I think would help the most are blogs)
***(Another suggestion is taking on more in the 'Pings' section. Nothing competing but surely we can house more upstart apps or such)

Re: Bye.

Reply #38 –
Blogs ---- I can't imagine any account of my life would interest anyone.

Let's  see

Woke up to find a Ninja poised above me, broke his neck and took him down to the cop shop
Composed a new poem for the opening of the Russian Parliament
Checked on the results of my time travel experiment that I shall make tomorrow
Had Breakfast (coconuts on toast)

My life is much too boring!

Re: Bye.

Reply #39 –
ensbb3 - I don't know the term keyboard  advertising ... What is it?

Re: Bye.

Reply #40 –
Quote from: string on
My life is much too boring!

I don't blog either. It is the most requested feature from members that I see tho.
Quote from: string on
I don't know the term keyboard keyword advertising ... What is it?

I'll prepare a little better pitch and links later... But essentially you can bid on keywords from Google. If that keyword is typed your link will be favored towards the top. I have a lady that does internet marketing stuff for me. I'll get her take so I have more details for ya. She's really good and has paid applications to do the research where I'd have to use the free versions.  

Re: Bye.

Reply #42 –
Quote from: ensbb3 on

Pretty inclusive, but not overwhelming. http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/seo-site-keyword-optimize-ht


Thank you.

There could well be things that could be done, hopefully without overburden the feel of the forum.

I think it would be worthwhile collecting ideas for such things (in a dedicated topic and choose good suggestions for implementation. It depends on Frenzie's say so though and the effort involved. I'm  loathe to give him more workload on this sort of thing. So awaiting his comment.

An example could be to have a second line of text in brackets after each group of threads (I forget the classification word which is used), under DnD Central for example which is a nice title but does not help the advertising aspect. So something like
DnD Central
( Discussions on politics, Sport, Food, etc etc.............)

It could get cumberson if we had too much but might help.

Re: Bye.

Reply #43 –
Quote from: ensbb3 on
Probably members that aren't logged in.

Some of them are also things like search engine crawlers and spambots.

Quote from: string on
It depends on Frenzie's say so though and the effort involved. I'm  loathe to give him more workload on this sort of thing. So awaiting his comment.

One of the problems there is that trying to SEO-optimize the content of a forum is inherently silly. Insofar as SEO-optimizing the forum isn't silly I think the Simple Machines default is pretty decent already.

Re: Bye.

Reply #44 –
Why silly?
I can guess what the answer might be, but I'd like to understand better.

Re: Bye.

Reply #45 –
SEO is something that basically only works on carefully crafted content that you control pretty much from A-Z. That means that on my personal blog I could forgo sillier posts, or at least make the effort to put in a more descriptive or more search-engine friendly title (e.g. "Wacom CTH-680S review") or try to throw in a few more relevant keywords in some way, but on a free forum that's practically impossible unless the moderators also very much become editors. Moreover, besides the added and undesired extra workload the members may not appreciate such extensive meddling with their posts. And that's just for the OP.

tl;dr Search engines try to focus primarily on the content these days, and secondarily on things like titles and metadata. As such about all you can do is to make sure the search engine knows where the content is, but unless you control the content there's little you can do.

We are the #1 result for specific searches like "Otter browser forum", btw. It's not a completely lost cause; I just doubt that doing much better is a realistic possibility.

Re: Bye.

Reply #46 –
Well how about this idea.

If we had two lines for thread / topic titles, we could ask those who raise them to put their chosen key words on the second line.

So for example in the topic I just started, on F1 Racing, one (I) could add a second line
Formula 1 racing electric drive technomoby development .... And so on, raising the profile of that topic and thus also DnD.

Given a request to do so I'm  pretty sure people would join in. Mods could add things if they felt like it.

Any comments on this anyone?

Re: Bye.

Reply #47 –
I stand by my vision of rjhowie being the one turning the lights off. New place, same scenario.

The "criticism" of the US on this forum is beyond stupid. My own well-reasoned insights into American foibles are of course the exception.

Re: Bye.

Reply #48 –
Lol, nice.

The first step seems to be for some members to take it upon themselves to provide content and avenues for conversation. Bloggish OPs with plenty of room for opinions welcomed perhaps. Off topic is a bit of a staple in this group but with a fair amount of tact I'm sure it can be minimized for certain topics. If someone drifts too far into rantville the original poster can report the post and ask it to be removed, hopefully before it causes too much drift. Following something along these lines long enough will provide answers to what is possible and how to handle things fairly. No one giving serious effort to provide content deserves to have their efforts train wrecked even if I appreciate the lax attitude of the forum.

Re: Bye.

Reply #49 –
Quote from: jax on
I stand by my vision of rjhowie being the one turning the lights off. New place, same scenario.

The "criticism" of the US on this forum is beyond stupid. My own well-reasoned insights into American foibles are of course the exception.

I entirely disagree with that and I will not align with any solution that passes by member's censorship.

There's millions of people always criticizing the US and they are not here. The criticism on the USA  is not the reason of our concerns about the number of members and I will never accept a witch hunt against those who helped to build this forum.

Rjhowie is an asset so much valid for this forum as any of you and that includes me. And I'm not suspect of any ideological sympathy with him.

I'm certain that any American proud of his heritage would recuse such a treatment of favor and protection. Americans are not children to need others to defend them.

Of course jax is just having a good moment of joke, but what I said is to be taken in account.
A matter of attitude.