Preface:
It is important to get fresh blood on forums.
It is important to get 'good' members on a forum, and keep them.
Reason for this? Well, it's simple. Members are what really makes a forum. Without new blood forum will easily turn out a playground for a few regulars, who will create their own lil community, which easily turns out to be repulsive towards newcomers. And even if it would not be that intentionally, it is difficult for people to get into a group which has their own jokes, topics and ways to communicate. And when old folks leave (eventually that usually happens, if people do not get bored, lose internetconnection, get busy in RL, they will at least die eventually.)
So achieve the goal of making good new members we must first understand the motives people may have to be there. I will just throw out some examples, you can add more
One can be searching for knowledge on some topic. One can just be bored and accidentally bumb into some interesting topic. One can want something he cannot get by other means but posting (example OG and games [the points system] )
Well, basically those who wish to gain knowledge often just post the question and if they get the answer, they will leave. Of course, if answer was good, and soleed the problem they might come back with another question. Or then they may see someone asking something they know, and decide to help..
The wanderers usually just seek for amusement. Or company or...
And those who post just to get something, want of course to get what they want.
So, how to keep these people on a board?
1. there must be interesting things to read. All starts from this. If people do not see interesting topics, they will not stay. Internet offers so much that people do not bother to read boring stuff (that makes me to think why am I babbling now?
)2. There must be an easy way to make people to participate, or then something should be offered when people do participate.
The part 1 is difficult when starting a forum. Empty forum is hardly interesting. So first there should be enough people starting it, and those should be active enough to post interesting topics with only a few replys (since at start there is probably not many people posting). I could say this is the first critical step. Since after the first posts have been made, and things start to go on, there will be the style in the forum. With the style I mean the athmosphere. So first posts should be not only interesting, but also frienly & warm. No one likes to be on nasty forum for too long, and if they do, then at least nasty forum will not be too attractive for newcomers. And later it easily turns to be fightinground where nasty mods ban everyone who do not agree with them. It's just the way it goes, the system feeds itself.
The nice athmosphere should be also constantly maintained, since things can turn out nasty quite quickly. And it's always easy to spoil things, correcting them is much more difficult. I just feel I cannot say it sharply enough, so I will say it many times: When a newcomer arrives, it might be high step for him/her to do his/her first post. So part 2 helps there. And so much depends on which kind of replies does users first posts get. If they get no replies, then he will 100% surely leave. If he gets nasty answers, he will turn nasty himself. But if he gets opinions which are explained, and especially if everyone puts some effort on their replies adds something or disagrees. Remember, there is different ways to disagree. You can just make other to look stupid, or then you can explain your point of view. I know, oh believe me I do, sometimes it's just so attempting to make other poster look like a fool, but it might sacre them off. Instead doing explained reply does encourage person to explain his point of view better, if he still think the same way
Also that is the way to make friends instead of enemies. And since we cannot just believe that every people on a forum bothers to think what's best for a forum, this task of writing good replys is crew's task. Another task for crew is to keep the tone of posts nice. Not by being nasty themself, but by being strict enough and still fair. So much depends on mods/admins...Always this is not enough itself. Often there is good to be some other hooks to make people addicted. This is why somekind of ranks/postcount/reputation feature is great. I myself was once addicted into points system at OG, I desperately wanted to reach next level, but at the same time I wished to have reputation as good converser with valid points, not just a spammer with lot of posts. And of course, if crew notices people who do good posts, it does raise the spirit and encourage to be even better
I believe that was what made OG so special back then. There were interesting topics, and good fellows in the crew/amongst older regulars with high status, who did not turn down nebies, but let them hear if they were good
Also available positions in crew were attemptong Of course one cannot expand crew to contain 50% of forum regulars, but somekind of 'status' would be good to be given IMO Of course this status should be something one cannot ask for, it should be something that is just suddenly given, when people notice someone is a good fellow. On larger sites this could be made so, that not only crew could give that status, but also others with the same status. Lets say if some amount of 'statused' peole votes for giving the 'status' to certain newcomer, he will get it.Technically this would not probably be even too hard to make
Oh heck, time is so much that I must to run. But Let's continue this psychological/philosophical pondering, and I do wish others would let me heard their opinions etc, so I would have a reason to write more... ...
(You see the point/pattern I have here?
)
Something just hit me... Maz's date of birth is on 12/03/1979 and... yours... is too... Spooky! For a second there I thought I may have been having the same conversation with two completely different people on two compeltely different forums who just happend to be born on the same day!!!
actually no, it is not in my nature to give hugs... lol
) But since I at least used to be a jolly guy, I did enjoy humour. That means I did like reading amusing posts by some other members, and it was important to me that others could take my odd(ish) humour so well. (Sorry Parv. I know you're a 'perfect english freak', but since english is not my native language, and I cannot be bothered to spend eternity on thinking how I should spell things, I do drop word sence which I'm positive I should use in conjunction with word humour, at least at some places.)
