It seems this thread has turned into suggestions for the org's forum, and I have some I'd like to add! =)
Forums for the most part are dying, yes, but there are still some sites with quite active forums. I have been a member of forum communities for most my life and I am still on some websites which have very active forums. I've also made some suggestions to the org that have been implemented before, so I hope I can say I have some experience in this area and that these suggestions will be useful.
If you see something, say something.
The best and worst part of forums are the history and stats. They're great because they're a valuable resource we never want to lose (especially in the org's case) but they're also terrible because they highlight times of inactivity.
For example, I came by last week or so to look at the Opinion exchange forum. And I saw a ton of time-locked threads that had zero replies. I decided I didn't want to post there and I left the site.
Things like this are a downward spiral. People come in, they see threads with zero replies, they think "this place is dead" and they leave. The cycle repeats itself until finally you just never have any new people checking the forum out at all.
The Org's forum has been inactive for some years now with temporary upticks in activity (like right now), but without
sustained activity, you will always run into this issue of the "it's dead" first impression,
even if the forum isn't actually dead.
Of course, the best way to solve this issue is encouraging people to post more. But nobody is ever here 100% of the time and not everyone can always find something to say. So that leads me to my first suggestion:
Create a staff role whose specific job is to post things.
It seems a little unethical and forced to create a usergroup specifically for keeping discussion alive, but literally (not figuratively) every forum I am a member of that isn't dead has this role. Forums die without it, because there will
always be periods of inactivity - that's normal - but if you don't at least create the illusion the forum isn't completely dead, you'll fall into the downward spiral of nobody posting because they're afraid nobody's around, even if that's untrue.
So the forums that have managed to survive through the years have this role; it's usually named something like "community manager" and it consists of people with mod status but no mod power. Sometimes they're not even considered staff publicly so they maintain the illusion that they're just normal users.
Their sole job consists of finding threads that have zero replies, and figuring out something constructive and appropriate to say in those threads.
They also find forums that have 0 posts in them for that day (or other specified period of time, say week) and make threads in them to create reasons for other people to respond.
This role is filled by people who are great at coming up with things to say. Whether it's "I loved this AMV you just posted" or some dissertation on why AMVs are great. It doesn't really matter what they post as long as it's relevant and the person they're responding to doesn't walk away from the thread thinking the forum is inactive.
This brings me to my next suggestion:
Consolidate the Forums
In an effort to project the image of "I swear we're really not dead," there should be as few 0s in the statistics as possible. Any forum which does not get a lot of activity should not be kept on the board index. Personally, I'd just get rid of every forum that hasn't had a post in the last month, save Site-specific forums like Site Announcements and help & feedback.
This means all the following should disappear:
- AMV Monthly
- Org Supported Contests
- Anime Series Discussion
- Visual Effects
- Probably most of the subforums not directly showing statistics on the main forum list as well
That's just my personal opinion on it, though, there's several ways to solve stagnant forum issues.
They can be deleted, merged with other forums, or all shoved into the "archive" forum just to get them off the board index. You could also go an entirely different route and hide the post statistics.
A lot of people think having a ton of forums is a good idea because it seperates different topics, and certainly that has some merit for
highly active forums. The issue with the org is we're not highly active (anymore) and we have less visitors overall. If we want more people to post more, then we should decrease the "workload." We can always revisit the issue later and re-segregate the forums again if we regain our prior levels of constant activity.
Why do I say "workload"?
- The more forums there are, the more there is to scroll through. It gives the first impression of "this is complicated" or that there's a learning curve.
I'm going to make a sweeping generalization here, but a lot of younger people I've interacted with get very easily overwhelmed and anxious. Large forum lists are intimidating, because it makes users believe there must be a specific forum they need to be posting in, and what if they post in the wrong one? What if they didn't read the rules correctly? What if they missed something? etc. etc.
- The more forums there are, the more things people have to read and/or check.
If we want members to respond to things, we want to make that "job" as easy as possible. The less things to click on and check, the better.
Yes, there are tools to easily see which forums have new posts and whatnot without clicking them, but those tools and visual cues are not immediately apparent to people who have never used the forum before. And even moreso, people who have never used PhpBB specifically.
And on that note, PhpBB is pretty dead. The Org is the only "active" forum I know that's still using it. The most active forums I'm a part of now are either custom solutions that might have started on PhpBB but look nothing like it now, and
XenForo. Most people opt for Xenforo. I'd like to suggest dumping PhpBB and moving to XenForo but I'm sure that's not feasible so I'll save you the read.
Cater to mobile users
I've been informed there's a lot the org is limited by due to how it was made. So I know some suggestions just can't be done right now. I'm pretty sure mobile friendliness is one of them but I want to make it clear that
over half the online audience uses mobile phones to access the internet. And that's from 2016.
Here's the 2018 statistics.
I run a website myself now (although it's not a forum, it is community-based), and, as much as I absolutely hate it, this is just the reality.
You have to cater to the mobile audience or your site will die.
The org is not mobile friendly. At all. This needs to be fixed as soon as possible. If you can't redesign the site to make it happen, find a workaround. Use
Tapatalk. Ramshackle together an app.
Do something on the interim or the site will never recover. Look, I love the org, and I'm sorry to be so grim about this, but it's something that defintiely has to be said, and definitely needs to be dealt with. The new blood all uses mobiles to connect to the internet, which includes forums. I would hope mobile-friendliness is in the coming recode. Assuming it is, your interim solution does not need to be perfect - you'd be surprised how forgicing users can be - but without mobile access, most people wouldn't give the site a chance at all. They'll just leave because it's so hard to be here it's not worth the effort to try.
With that being said,
Dumb down the forums more and make them friendlier.
What I mean is this:
Make rules/announcement threads introducing people to the forum, where to post, etc. Use casual language. Pretend to be their friend. Be cheery. Don't be business-like. Use pictures. Make things barney-level simple to understand. Lower your expectations of what the common denominator is.
It used to be that if you wanted to make AMVs, you needed to have some sort of technical knowledge, which usually meant that it was easy for you to learn new things and infer what people meant. It didn't really matter what "vibe" some stickied threads gave off.
That's not how people percieve things now.
There are people now who want to be editors who
haven't even used a real keyboard before. There are editors making videos from mobile apps. There are people who use that Youtube Enhancer thing to make videos. They don't know anything else. They need help and hand holding. And most importantly, if they're checking this site out,
they want to be educated.
Nobody's going to turn away from a forum because their sticky threads were easy and simple to understand, felt cheery and had pictures. But plenty of people will turn away from a forum if they can't understand what is being said immediately.
As a community, we should be welcoming and wanting to educate new people on why we love this hobby and why there's more to it than throwing pretty anime to popular songs. Times change and we need to adapt that AMVs have changed too; what draws people to want to make AMVs has changed. We shouldn't be turning people away because they couldn't google hard enough for answers - whether that's us turning them away by actually being rude to their face or
a perception created through threads that already exist on the site.
So for this I'd suggest:
-
Creating a person, or a group of people, solely responsible for public relations. (I'll touch more on this later)
- Using those person(s) to create new stickies in every single forum outlining what that forum is for, some examples of stuff that goes in that forum, and the rules for it.
- Making sure every forum lists the mods for that forum so they can be contacted, opening up that rules thread for questions in case anyone wants clarification on something, and/or making sure the person(s) who made the stickies are still active on the forum.
(That last one is hard to police, and it's why many sites choose to just have a "site account" or "site mascot" that is a shared account which posts all stickies and announcements)
- If individual rules stickies aren't desired, make one all-inclusive sticky for the entire forum, which lays out what each forum is for, even though it might seem obvious. (the
current rules thread does not cover this).
Alternatively, I've seen some forums now doing an "Adopt a newbie" thing. They'll make a sticky with an FAQ of sorts, and they say if you want to, you can ask for a "guide". A person, staff or just volunteer member, who has been around a bit, will then be "assigned" to the newbie, answer all their questions, show them around the site, and essentially just be their first friend they make on the forum. Initially I was a little hesitant at this idea, but the forums that have done the "adopt a newbie" programs have had success, and the newbies who I've talked to have enjoyed it, so maybe that's a path the org could take, especially considering the learning curve that is the not-forum portion of the site.
I'd also recommend cleaning up a lot of the stickies (e.g. unstickying a lot of them). Maybe make a resources sticky that links to all these previously-stickied threads. Maybe remake the stickies with better formatting and/or more polite verbiage.
We should be catering to new people, not the oldbies. Many of the oldbies aren't going to come back. The ones that are willing to probably aren't going to quit the org over a revitalization attempt. But I'm sure others can chime in, here. This thread has a few oldbies and I'm sure they have some more ideas? =)
For example, Yue had a great idea with
the FAQ thread in this very forum. I like it a lot. But it's not very easy to read in my opinion. It could be better. I actually found
The Site FAQ a lot more helpful (at least in the way it was formatted). Unfortunately, the Site FAQ was in the Site Announcements forum. Personally, I think it might be better suited as an announcement that appears across all the forums, so you don't have to hunt for it.
I'd like to also recommend some forum re-ordering. Put general discussion at the top, at least. I'd personally put all "general" discussions in one section (anime, AMV, OT, etc) followed by all "Q&A" type forums, then collaborative forums (MEPs, opinion exchange), then forums about contests & cons. I'm not sure where I'd put AMV announcements, but it should definitely be somewhere toward the top.
Right now, the top-most forums are the most inactive, and that's not a very good first impression. I'd also argue that the most useful forums are currently at the bottom (those being the help forums). This doesn't seem like good placement. I'd like to suggest some even more outside-the-box solutions (Like combining all general discussions together instead of seperating them into OT, AMVs, and anime, or changing the purpose of some forums entirely), but that might be overkill.
I'm sure other people could have some better ideas for forum re-ordering, though.
Yup, even the Org -itself- felt that Twitter was a better place for discussion of the rise and fall of AMVs than it's own forum.
Which brings me to what seems like a much larger, underlying issue.
Who manages the Twitter?
Why aren't they using it to help revitalize the forum?
Why aren't the staff talking to eachother (or giving the impression that they are)?
I see Kionon here talking about revitalizing the forum, and she's posting more in efforts to aid that, but then when faced with "Why did the org make a tweet about this video but didn't make a thread about it?" she answers "Oh but there was!" and it's.. one post in some unrelated thread(?)
"Why don't you post a thread about it!
" could be a great response - gets Izumi posting their opinions?
Or "You know what, I'll make a thread about it right now! I'm interested in your opinions!" could be a good save.
But ultimately, Izumi brings up a seriously good point: the staff should be working together, here. They should all be on the same page and talking to eachother. Whoever managed the Twitter should've thought to themselves "Hey, let's also make a thread about this." Or tell somebody else to make a thread about it. Or even better: "Have you seen this new video? Here's a link to talk about it on our forum!"
Social media is an incredibly powerful tool. I didn't even realize the org's twitter was active. But since it is, it should be used to help draw people to the forum, or interact with the community (A social media manager, if you will). This is assuming that drawing people to the forum is one of the org's goals, of course.
The site I run is a review site for a rather large fandom - furries. The site takes user-submitted reviews and posts them in a central area. Furries are spread out across multiple social media platforms and it's impossible to have a presence on all of them, so I picked two. And by far, Twitter has given us the most referrals. How did I get more people to my site? Twitter. How did I get more donations to my site? Twitter. My Twitter account had so much surprising pull that when I created a hashtag for a special event (#SmallMakerSunday, to promote small furry businesses), it actually reached trending for "furry twitter". And I got 100+ new follows. By just retweeting shit. For a single 12 hour period. Social media, especially Twitter, is an incredibly useful tool, and you can
absolutely use it to drive new and existing users to your site and forum.
It takes time and dedication, though. I've been dealing with my site (and the twitter) for 3 years. You will be tweeting into the abyss for a while before you catch on. But the main thing is that you show you have a history of activity and engagement with the community. Open up Tweetdeck and search keywords and then think of something relevant to say to the tweets that use those words. You don't need to force a link in half the time - your profile would advertise for you at times you can't suggest your site in context.
But some examples:
"Check out my new #AMV on youtube"
- Org could respond with "Sweet vid! Have you thought about announcing it on the org?" or something similar.
You could ride the wave of some currently popular video:
"Amazing effects! Have you considered writing a guide on how you did this in our editing forum?" or something like that.
If that feels too contrived, then just give out compliments to people and make sure the twitter profile is all linked up to the org if they want to click through. Probably make a pinned tweet briefly explaining what the org is about and giving links to join.
Anyway, I'm getting a little off-track here, but basically this boils down to the fact that there seems to be disorganization or miscommunication among the staff. For this I'd suggest that the staff gets together and has a meeting where they discuss:
- what they want the target audience for the site to be (everyone into AMVs currently or just tech savvy people, something else?)
- what goals they want for the site in the future, but most importantly right now
- how they want to achieve those goals / what they're willing to do/change/sacrifice in order to achieve those goals
- what the limitations to achieving those goals are
- how they are going to share this information with the public
That last one finally brings me to the thing I said I'd come back to:
Creating a person, or a group of people, solely responsible for public relations.
This can be combined with the "community managers" group, if needbe.
The PR person's job is the liason between the staff and the people in the dissipation of information. For the org specifically, really it's the liason between the admins and the people.
If the admins aren't willing to, or are not very good at, public speaking/posting, then it's beneficial to have someone willing to be their mouthpiece.
The redesign is being worked on? What has been done on it? Has there been any progress? Is there any news?
All these questions would be things the PR person could answer. The difficult questions like "It's been 5 years, where is this thing? Why is it taking so long?" can be handled. PR person can explain the limitations of the site, or make up some fluff answer. Honesty would be best obviously, but anything is better than nothing. I like that Kionon seems to have stepped up to the plate, but it seems the org might be better served by having an "official" person to make themselves open to this sort of discourse.
I have tons more I could say, but this post has already reached critical mass so I'll leave it as-is.
I know I haven't posted much of anything, but I've been around. I could bring forward a bunch of excuses for why I'm not posting but they're just that- excuses.
Ultimately, I'm still here, it's evident other oldbies are still here, and new people are joining (good to meet you, DayFour!), so the org is not dead. There is hope!!
I love the org, I don't want to see it die, so I really hope some things do change.
Again, it doesn't have to be perfect, users are so incredibly forgiving. But something
does need to change before the redesign is released.
I'm sorry this became a novel but I hope it was at least helpful in some way! There is no ill will intended, like I said I still love the site and I'm happy to see some new people posting stuff! =)
