How can we revitalise this forum?

[spuddog0507]

there has been some good threads on this site over the years and one or two good debates, i followed this site for a good while before signing up, and there has been some very good well expiearanced guys on here who have now disapeared, not deceased but just dont bother any more and i some times feel the same myself, and the reason why is plain to see, this thread started as a way to may be make the site good and a bit more relaxed but about 15 posts in its getting in to a argument WHY, as said before there is some good well expiearnced guys on here with well over 40 years in the trade and some even more, but you will all ways get some smart arse kid who knows ten times better than the guy who has been doing it for decades, and the people who just wont let go dont do the site any good either, there is quite a few i know personally that either dont post or dont even bother looking any more,it could be good again but needs one or to sit back a bit, i have put posts on here just to see what feed back i get and all i can say is there is some total knobheads on here who know a hell of a lot but in realaty know very little but just like to get there pennys worth in 

[wisewood]

Funny how I managed to avoid brexit on here until this thread.
I appreciate everyone's input, at the very least it has encouraged some of us to interact [emoji1]
I will try and post regularly and keep them pertinent and informative [emoji108]

[Steve Bullman]

5 hours ago, Woodworks said:

I am on a few other forums and have not noticed much decline. On here there used to be plenty on the Woodcraft forum and quite a bit of chat about charcoal but it doesn't have its own specific place. Now colliers have their own facebook page with no swearing, racism or political talk. A much happier place to discuss matters. 

 

Again, this just isn't the case. Forums across the board are feeling the pinch. As you might imagine I spend a lot of time on forums for forum owners(yes thats how sad my life is) so see a completely different picture to what you are seeing. Forums need to evolve to keep relevant, and offer things that facebook doesn't. That means adding features which gravitate away from traditional discourse.

[trigger_andy]

6 minutes ago, Steve Bullman said:

Again, this just isn't the case. Forums across the board are feeling the pinch. As you might imagine I spend a lot of time on forums for forum owners(yes thats how sad my life is) so see a completely different picture to what you are seeing. Forums need to evolve to keep relevant, and offer things that facebook doesn't. That means adding features which gravitate away from traditional discourse.

Im on an American car forum for Chrysler/Mopars, Ie Dodge Chargers. The UK forum is dead in the water and has less and less members whilst a new FB forum, which is UK based has 50,000 members within the last 2 years. But a USA based forum has a global member base and is constantly full of new threads. Unfortunately FB is where forums seem to headed, its horrid as FB has no way of keeping a track of threads like a traditional forum does. I guess its up to the users of this and other forums to keep them alive and Im quite sure this forum is going from strength to strength. FB is no substitute. 

[Steve Bullman]

8 hours ago, wisewood said:

 

Going back several years when I was first dabbling with this artform this forum was a font of useful information. Fellow newbies and masters alike were posting regularly, showing us their recent works. Job opportunities and carving logs were advertised and queries were asked and answered.

I check in two or three times a week, sometimes more and it can be months before a new thread is posted.

I guess the majority of us are content with Facebook and Instagram and don't feel the need to share on here anymore.

It would be nice to inject some more life into this forum though, not everyone does Facebook. I follow the milling forum as well and that doesn't seem to have suffered the same fate.

So what do we do?

Q&A?

Tips and techniques?

Simply posting pics of your work isn't enough, but it's a start lol

 

Thanks for the post.

 

Yes the carving forum inparticular has been impacted more than some other threads, thats for sure. You pretty much answered your own question though.....post more! 

 

Some interesting facts.

 

Forum traffic is actually higher now that what it was at its peak back in 2013-14. The site is performing better in Google now, thanks to the change of software 2 years ago. I know this upset a lot of people at the time and stopped a lot of people visiting literally overnight, my stats clearly show that. I guess it was too hard to spend 10 minutes here and there learning the new software. I guess I can understand that, as apart from a few cosmetic changes, the core forum software and how it worked hadn't really changed for 10 years and then all of a sudden it was completely different. As I had been developing the new site for over 12 months, this shock wasn't evident to me personally as I had spent so much time accustomising myself to the new features. Ultimately though, it was a change that HAD to be made, any choice was basically removed.

As well as losing a lot of members, it was also hugely damaging for the google ranking which plummeted overnight. I knew this part was going to happen, although I didn't really the drop would be so severe. Fast forward 2 years and the site is showing up in google more than it was at its peak, in fact its breaking records on an almost weekly basis.

 

Chart below shows how much google impressions have improved over a 16 month period. Just last week we had more than 60,000 impressions in google in a single day. 

 

 

In addition to that, new member registrations are also higher than what they were at its peak, not substantially, but they are higher.

 

In fact the only statistic thats down is the amount of posts people make, to which I don't really think there is only 1 answer.

 

Someone mentioned previously that all they see is brexit talk and off topic conversation. I've just looked at the past 40 threads in the todays post section, and can only see 3 that are off topic. If this small figure is putting people off posting then i'm not really sure how to answer that? I know some forums have a no politics rule, and I can understand that. However like it or not politics are relevant to all of us and our businesses, never more so than in the case of brexit. And yes of course thats hugely differing views within these threads. Thats to be expected. I can't say I have seen any amount of blatantly racist comments, although to some people the suggestion that immigration is putting a strain on the countries resources is enough alone for the racism card to be deployed.

 

So putting the brexit thread aside, what else contributes to the lack of posting? heres a couple of observations:

 

1. One thing I believe is that one thing Facebook has been very good at is effectively dumbing down the population. Most people would rather watch and giggle at a 3 second video, or make an outlandish comment on something, than sit down and respond to a forum thread with any sort of in depth reply. Probably even few people will even bother to read a reply longer than a couple of sentences. Even this very reply i'm spending my time to make will at best be skimmed over by the majority of people, at worse not read at all.
2. People on the whole want to take only, and give nothing back. Its always been this way, with hundreds of people browsing the forum whilst very few post. In fact I could probably query the database and it would show thousands of member accounts without a single post to their name. This has got worse, perhaps in part due to the sheer amount of information available on arbtalk. Most questions have been asked in some form or another, and much of the traffic coming from google may well have their answer in a thread without the need to create one. The tip site directory is a prime example. This is currently a new service for which I have never asked any recompense for. This is one of many ideas that I have as a way of offering something beyond simple discourse on the site. I had hoped this feature would encourage members to give something back a little, by way of posting a bit more. However it has proved next to impossible to even get people to submit a simple 1 sentence review when using a tip site, despite it being incredibly simple to do. Lets consider the fact that the tip site directory alone is viewed 14,000 times each and every month and is actively used by people all over the country, yet in a little over a year since its launch a mere 39 people have bothered to take 20 seconds to leave a review on a tip site which would benefit other users. In fact out of those 39 reviews, 50% of them are probably made by the tip site owner themselves!!
3. Its too hard to post on a forum(apparently).....well this kind of goes back to point 1 with regards facebook dumbing down the nation. One things for sure, they made a platform which makes it very simple for someone to post something. On the other hand its not so simple in other areas, such as the whole group thing. Its not exactly easy to find a thread thats a few days old on a facebook group, unlike a forum which is typically split into sections. 

I could go on, but fingers starting to repeat myself a little I expect, plus i'm enjoying reading other peoples views.

 

But back to my initial point to Wisewood. The answer is simple, post more. There are less topics created these days, which corrolate directly to the overall post count. When a topic of interest is created there are still plenty of people replying....take a look at the recent HSE thread for example...the interest is still there for people to post, and in most cases spend time putting together worthwhile comments rather than 1 line quips such as are common place on social media.

 

There have been 1617 registered members log into the forum in the past 30 days (85,000 visitors in total including registered members). Imagine what the results would be if every member committed themselves to post just 1 new topic each per month?

 

 

[Steve Bullman]

23 minutes ago, trigger_andy said:

Im quite sure this forum is going from strength to strength

It is in many ways, but more posts would always be nice!

 

[Steve Bullman]

Oh, and nice bears @wisewood

[Steve Bullman]

By the way, I do spend my time and money creating useful features such as this....just saying

 

 

 

[Rough Hewn]

Going back several years when I was first dabbling with this artform this forum was a font of useful information. Fellow newbies and masters alike were posting regularly, showing us their recent works. Job opportunities and carving logs were advertised and queries were asked and answered.
I check in two or three times a week, sometimes more and it can be months before a new thread is posted.
I guess the majority of us are content with Facebook and Instagram and don't feel the need to share on here anymore.
It would be nice to inject some more life into this forum though, not everyone does Facebook. I follow the milling forum as well and that doesn't seem to have suffered the same fate.
So what do we do?
Q&A?
Tips and techniques?
Simply posting pics of your work isn't enough, but it's a start lol[emoji106]

Get in to milling [emoji6][emoji106][emoji106][emoji106]

[eggsarascal]

If I got complete immunity from getting banned, (I've been close and had a few dressing downs by pm from Steve over years) I'd revitalise it no problem...