Forum Update and Reorg

Hats off to you Anc for going through the trouble of making the list.

Has it ever occoured to you that the people in it have perhaps moved on with their lives?

Take Summerteeth for instance, whom you seem to have left out. She is raising her beautiful kiddo and working on her career.

Jeriko. Jeriko is dead. There is no other explination. He was right here in Houston and we had planned a hookup. He disappeared before we set it up.

Herp still posts when there is something that captivates his interest. Same with Rincewiend and armalyte.

Most people's lives don't revolve around message boards. They find other interests and move on. Sometimes their lives become so complex or fucked up they can't be arsed to deal with board politics. People move on man, it's a fact of life.


The emails to the people idea is an old one and iIrc has been done by some here who had access to them. Still, no rush to the door.

We have this hash out every year about this time, oh the board is dying blah, blah, blah when in fact this is the slow time and always has been.

But I'll play along for a minute.

How many of the posters listed do you think may have gotten a life beyond WF, how many do you think were "run off" and how many people do you think are probably dead?


To directly answer yoiur vested interest question, here it is.

This place is familiar. It's a place I come to where the people are for the most part familiar with interesting lives and not so interesting lives. It's a place where like my old Chucks I can slip them on and be comfortable.

You seem to want a pair of New Balance or pump it up Nikes. That's all well and good but some of us, much more than you apparently realize, like things like they are. Just because they're not in here butting heads with you doesn't mean they agree so don't try to take it as such.

Take the last exodus of Maud, Ward, Scorp, and a fistfull of others. You have it in your mind and continue to try to perpetuate it as a rep warrior thing when if fact it has to do more with one of the key founding principals that brought WF into existance in the first place.
I read some say fine, fuck 'em let them leave, you have in fact in so many words and yet you try to sell this package of all of the posters have left will come trodding back if we just do X.

Bullshit. You want to change it to say you helped made some changes to the board. Never mind the pretty packaging and salesmanship because you'll not sell ice to this Eskimo.

At any rate I wish you the best in all you do, including this amusing attempt to "forge" the board.

I've already said I was for Lanz making the changes he felt comfortable with, the continuation of the theme, but like I also said up there in so many words, you are not the captian, he is.

Take your suggestion of paying tribute to Tom in some other manner. That was an insult to him and his memory just to make you feel like you are contributing..., something.

Look, I'll bow out of this scherade now, ya'll go on and continue your circle jerk. Whatever Lanz decides is fine with me, I mean, it is his board after all.

Be sure to let us know how the email campaign turns out. Maybe you can get the chance to say "I told you so!"

By the way, Camp Wordforge hasn't had a post in five whole days!



Pfft.

I'm still gobsmacked by Asyncritus' misinterpretation of intentions/events.

Caboose, of course Real Life has a part of it, however all that means is that online stuff got pared down to make more room WF wasn't good enough to make the grade. It's not like those people don't get online anymore, it is that they don't come here anymore. This place wasn't worth their time anymore so they stopped posting.

All I am trying to do is improve the board to increase activity, attract new members, and bring back some old ones. Other boards that consolidated dead forums have seen an increase in activity and I'd like that here.No there will not be any massive shift. There wasn't shift that got us here, but instead slow and steady stagnation (not the same as 'dying' btw).

Let's try out Async's idea with Lanz's naming system, like Rep I am sure it won't be the end of the world many predicted, but I am willing to be wrong. If it doesn't work we can always come back to same old same old, or something else, but if it does work we've improved something.

It's what I tried to tell you - FACEBOOK.

If you want to get more people in and get more people back, make this place smartphone friendly and bridged to facebook and twitter.

Really.

Would this be possible after a software upgrade? How do you go about integrating it into FB and Twitter?

And ya know? Speaking as a genuinely NEW person at WF, if you want to retain these it might be a good idea to not be accusing them all of being "duals" and such.

Also, I think a "Indroduce Yourself" type forum would be good, where the new people can like, introduce themselves and stuff.

One of the problems with not getting any new membership is that almost the only people that sign up are duals and spammers.

We tried this, but again there just weren't enough new members to justify it. Didn't get posted in for months. Eventually got axed.

Instead maybe just a "Introduce Yourself" thread stickied to the top of one of the active forums.

Also if the number of forums are pared down you can have a welcome message at the top of the main page.

NEVER upgrade vBulletin past the last stable version of 3.8.7! You will rue the day you ever do that, vBulletin 4 is terrible - SO terrible in fact that the original creators and coders of vBulletin quit the company over it! They formed their own company, Xenforo.

The second part of your question - there are many mods available on vBulletin dot org for bridging facebook and twitter to a existing vB installation without having to upgrade the overall package, and also mobile suites and even dedicated skins for the smartphone market. There's a mod for detecting the smartphone and mobile browsers and forcing the mobile skin on them, etc.

The key to mobile browsers is small download size, 190kb would be my limit for loading a page on these. This is because of some data plans that can be restrictive. But there are many skins that have small size but also have all the features - which smartphone and pad users also demand. They don't want a totally stripped down skin.

The default skin of WF though is small in kb size and loads very fast, it's already a nice fit for the mobile world. I tested it here:

MSIE browser: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/120703_F1_HDV/

Apple I-Phone: http://www.blaze.io/mobile/result/?testid=120703_KW_1MM&src=wpt

Half the battle for the mobile users is already won. Now you gotta go and get them. You need a facebook page and a twitter feed, to promote WF.

Yeah, but how do you promote a forum on FB or Twitter? How do you get to a new audience with these platforms?

Keep in mind that while I have a FB, I have it locked down so no one can search for me, use a false name, have a false picture, and have biographical information on my page. I have a very small friends list and just use it for communicating. For Twitter it is similar. I use it to consume content, not create it. I have my 'followers' list locked down and hardly ever post a tweet.

In other words, I have no idea about using social media to market a forum, so break it down please.

We've got a mobile-friendly version already. Tapatalk.

You start a WF facebook page and a twitter feed, and you get people to "like" them, and link threads and posts from here, on those pages. When people click the links, you'll have it to where they can sign on using their FB or Twitter credentials, creating their account here and naming it whatever they choose. Disable comments on the FB and twitter pages, and the mobile users will come here, sign on, and comment. And be hooked.

It's a paid app and you don't need it. Nobody's gonna use it. FREE is the way.

And you're already quite mobile browser friendly as it is.

Nick, O2C, would this (the sign on using FB or Twitter credentials, creating their account here and naming it whatever they choose) be possible?

Oh yeah, there's Mods for that on vB dot org, and there's also apps for vBulletin in both twitter and facebook's API. It's nothing new, lots of boards already have it and the latest versions of vB4 have it as native code.

My point is, this is where message board people are going. Mobile. So that's where you gotta go to get them back and get new ones. It's the 21st Century already.

Thanks for bringing it up. Sounds worth a try for me.

Along with Forum Reorg, it's something else for me to nag Lanz and the staff about*.



*Hey, you all have admitted that the board pretty much runs itself these days, it's not like a little work work would kill ya!

Well... I'm just pretty sure from my more than a decade of coding for vBulletin and being involved with message boards in all capacities, that the mobile revolution is 90% of what's killing the message board, and 10% is other, ancillary stuff like board organization. You guys have your eyes on the wrong ball.

I should do a parody song, "Facebook killed the message board star."

It sounds worth a try, but I know for a fact that combining less used forums into larger more diverse and active forums increases activity. Also, a cleaner front page means a cleaner mobile experience (the board where the consolidation happens has a GREAT Mobile experience, easy since there are only 5 forums now).

No reason we can't pursue both (which is why both are in the title of this thread).

Many people here do not want their names associated with their WF accounts. The personal information rules being so crazy here is because of that.

I don't think there are a lot of people who want their WF lives connected to their Facebook lives.

...feel like a special little crusader for a brighter tomorrow.

I've already demonstrated that the current setup is quite mobile friendly already. There's no good reason to change it.

Again, most people don't scan the forums looking for the activity, they click "New Posts" to find it.

The Mods don't reveal the person is even on facebook, or even that they signed up that way. No personal information is broadcast, other than what the person puts as his/her nick. Just like when a person registers now.

While you might not think so, quite a few posters have expressed interest in consolidating the board in order to boost discussion and activity.

Again, no reason we can't do both.

They are misguided, is what I am saying. They want to work on maybe 10% of the problem. They're focused on cosmetics. Swinging at the wrong pitch, as it were. Well intentioned but not fully aware of the real issue.

I must be the oddball then. Never have used that New Posts thing.....

I always see the catergories and forums and go from there....

Try it, you'll be surprised how busy the board really is and what you're missing.

Problem with Facebook is that it brings to much personal life into it.

If I could have a Facebook for my family and a Facebook for Zombie I'd do it. As of now that's not an option.

Plus Facebook Timeline sucks ass. Really sucks ass.

I would posit that they know the board, it's members (past and present) and how we function more than someone who has been here a week.

Async when he first posted his proposal, I think he summed it pretty well:

Now yes, some people use 'New Posts' to get around the poor forum layout. But not everyone, or even a majority. We've also come up with other workarounds, like anchoring a topic in the Red Room so that it won't get sent to another forum to die. If topic placement/board organization you wouldn't see that kind of activity b/c it wouldn't matter what forum a thread got put in. So while on other boards you are familiar with New Posts might be an adequate substitute for good organization that is not the case here.

Instead of just having one active forum where a thread will get noticed and posted in, surrounded by a dozen other forums where threads go to die, lets have 3 or 4 or 5 active forums.

As I have asked over and over, besides 'DON'T GO CHANGIN' NUTHIN' what is the argument against such a plan?

I don't miss anything.

Quiet dual.