Ideas For Reinvigorating The Forums - Your Feedback Please

[Shyflower]

@Sega ;

@Sega

IMHO I’ve not experienced much of this here. People seam to report it within 15 minutes.

Yes they do report it. I spend about an hour a day moderating spam. We certainly don’t need forums that are just spam/fluff traps.

@Sega

I want systematic updates, once every 2/3 months, so I can take part and improve my skill set, and have fun along the way.

Subscribe to the community newsletter.

@Sega

You could possible put a portfolio page in here were we could list our portfolio pages.

We certainly don’t need any more “list your” anything here threads. SitePoint is meant to be a discussion forums. From experience with the recently closed List Your Blogs Here thread, such threads are just used to self-promote and ramp up post counts. Rarely is anything in a list discussed. In our Web Content Resources threads, the duplication is nauseating. Nobody bothers to read, everybody wants to post their list.

The News from Our Members forum was created so our members can share their accomplishments with the community.

@Sega

One thing which I noticed and I was not completely a fan of, was this full page thing. I have a 24" monitor, and as you can imagine it’s not the easiest thing to run 1 line with 20+ words on. It was much easier to read the forum postings when the screen size was reduced.
Sitepoint already have linked in many learning services. But maybe these need to be a bit more “in your face”. You have to have more services on the right-hand side. More engagement. Personally I am still not completely used to the new design, but I must say I did prefer it back in the “good old days”. The people who kept using sitepoint were the loyal readers and contributors. I like sitepoint, it’s still what it was, and I am still doing to use it irrespective of any major changes, but maybe we have to sit back here and find out ways for people to find out their topics easier without the need of scrolling down.

There is a way to see only those forums that interest you. Simply go to the first page of any forum and at your right there is a drop down list of forum tools. Simply tick subscribe to this forum and it will appear in the dashboard of your profile.

[HAWK]

@Shyflower

Subscribe to the community newsletter.

We actually killed the Community Crier off at the end of last year when we launched the new niche newsletters.

[bo5ton]

@Sega

One thing which I noticed and I was not completely a fan of, was this full page thing. I have a 24" monitor, and as you can imagine it’s not the easiest thing to run 1 line with 20+ words on. It was much easier to read the forum postings when the screen size was reduced.

@Sega

For instance, I am not interested in .NET or Java or Ruby. I want to know topics on HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SEO, SMO and Content Writing, all those other categories are irrelevant to me. Maybe we should think of a way to restructure the page a little and allow users to customize their topics rather than just displaying everything. This what’s new tab says it all, just lists everything which is new. I can;t be doing with this either. I go there and see topics I don’t want to see.

I agree with these two points here.
I know we can change our own window size, but as soon as we navigate to another site then we have to maximize again.

There are a few forums I am terrified of. If we could have a “Your Favourite Sub-Forums” option, where instead of the whole list, we see our favourites? Then we don’t need to scroll through everything to get where we want.

[Shyflower]

@HAWK

We actually killed the Community Crier off at the end of last year when we launched the new niche newsletters.

Well that’s too bad. How do you get the news out of the forum?

[HAWK]

@Shyflower

Well that’s too bad. How do you get the news out of the forum?

I know. I’m actually in the middle of developing a Community Roundup tab for our Facebook page which will deliver the same information.

[DanielMilstein]

HAWK, I haven’t read all the comments. The one thing that is coming to my mind is that we should incorporate a cash system so that if an active poster reaches a mark, could be a target posts, or mentions or tags… you should award the user some free eBooks or tools. If you decide on something like it there would be many writers, coders who will approach you with their ow products… what do you think??

[Sega]

Thanks Shyflower, I will get to this.

[kohoutek]

@DanielMilstein

HAWK, I haven’t read all the comments. The one thing that is coming to my mind is that we should incorporate a cash system so that if an active poster reaches a mark, could be a target posts, or mentions or tags… you should award the user some free eBooks or tools. If you decide on something like it there would be many writers, coders who will approach you with their ow products… what do you think??

That’s a nifty idea.

[bo5ton]

@DanielMilstein

HAWK, I haven’t read all the comments. The one thing that is coming to my mind is that we should incorporate a cash system so that if an active poster reaches a mark, could be a target posts, or mentions or tags… you should award the user some free eBooks or tools. If you decide on something like it there would be many writers, coders who will approach you with their ow products… what do you think??

Not a bad idea, however I think it would be just another attraction for spam. Even regulars will stretch to respond to every post to get something free. I think this kind of reward would have to be based on a voting system (like rep or the tags). Anything that encourages post numbers I don’t think will attract quality. Plenty of people are making plenty of posts now. Less is More.

[Stevie_D]

@bo5ton

There are a few forums I am terrified of. If we could have a “Your Favourite Sub-Forums” option, where instead of the whole list, we see our favourites? Then we don’t need to scroll through everything to get where we want.

You can hide sections of the forums from the main list, by clicking the little ‘up’ chevron on the blue category bar. So you could hide the whole of Program Your Site, for example.

[bo5ton]

@Stevie_D

You can hide sections of the forums from the main list, by clicking the little ‘up’ chevron on the blue category bar. So you could hide the whole of Program Your Site, for example.

I tried that for a little while but there’s probably 2 or 3 from each i like to peruse, so it didn’t work out for me.

[HAWK]

@DanielMilstein

HAWK, I haven’t read all the comments. The one thing that is coming to my mind is that we should incorporate a cash system so that if an active poster reaches a mark, could be a target posts, or mentions or tags… you should award the user some free eBooks or tools. If you decide on something like it there would be many writers, coders who will approach you with their ow products… what do you think??

Hey @DanielMilstein; I like how you’re thinking, but my concern is that we’ll get people posting a whole lot of crap in an attempt to get to the goalpost. We ran a promotion called Golden Posts for a month or so last year, where we awarded free eBooks to really useful posts. That way it wasn’t about quantity, but quality. We could definitely look at doing that again in a long term capacity. What do you think of that?

[ServerStorm]

@HAWK

Hey @DanielMilstein ; I like how you’re thinking, but my concern is that we’ll get people posting a whole lot of crap in an attempt to get to the goalpost. We ran a promotion called Golden Posts for a month or so last year, where we awarded free eBooks to really useful posts. That way it wasn’t about quantity, but quality. We could definitely look at doing that again in a long term capacity. What do you think of that?

Hey Hawk,
I thought this was a good idea when it was done. Anything that encourages a wider population to put forth quality posts is a good thing. Sitepoint books are great so as long as it is a limited affair that members can look forward to a random times throughout the year would be great.

My 2 cents on this subject.

Regards,
Steve

[DanielMilstein]

@HAWK

Hey @DanielMilstein; I like how you’re thinking, but my concern is that we’ll get people posting a whole lot of crap in an attempt to get to the goalpost. We ran a promotion called Golden Posts for a month or so last year, where we awarded free eBooks to really useful posts. That way it wasn’t about quantity, but quality. We could definitely look at doing that again in a long term capacity. What do you think of that?

Hey HAWK! thank you for liking it, however i just gave you a very vague idea… Yes, if you started to focus more on quantity than SP will become any other webmaster forums… whole lot of crap posted everywhere. It is important to post quality, and may be something like if the post is getting good no of thanks or mentions… that post will only qualify…! What do you think?

[HAWK]

@DanielMilstein

Hey HAWK! thank you for liking it, however i just gave you a very vague idea… Yes, if you started to focus more on quantity than SP will become any other webmaster forums… whole lot of crap posted everywhere. It is important to post quality, and may be something like if the post is getting good no of thanks or mentions… that post will only qualify…! What do you think?

I’ll do some brainstorming. Thanks for the idea.

[Sega]

The way you post comments it’s very important in readability. I like to see people give +1 points to people who use relavent italic, bold and underline in their comments.
Just a thought

[edge_kingdom]

Forums have been in decline for quite some time… Around 2007, twitter/facebook shifted away people’s habits similar to what forums originally did for usenet. Now, things like stackoverflow make it MUCH easier to post.

Why are forums in decline? Simple. Most forums require users to sign up, and then wait 48 hours… either that, you that stupid captcha in unreadable.

Forums will likely be around as an “arm” of a site, but they will no longer be the main reason sites exist. Forums are very niche, and will remain that way. Again, twitter/facebook moved 95% of the thought to those sites.

[edge_kingdom]

I should also add… most questions about PHP and MySQL have been asked. If there are more advanced questions, generally, they are discussed within a corporation.

I think that another fad… being a “web developer” stemmed from geocities, but today kids are more content with copy/paste and myspace/facebook/twitter. If any quesiton crops up, just google it and it’s probably been discussed.

[r937]

@edge_kingdom

I should also add… most questions about PHP and MySQL have been asked.

i can’t speak for php, but for mysql, this is definitely not true

i’ve seen ~thousands~ of mysql questions, and people just keep on coming up with new ones

as for the idea that 95% of php/mysql questions have already migrated to twitter and facebook, i’m not even gonna comment on that daydream

[rguy84]

I know I have basically left the forumns due to an event that happened last year. I have not seen any changes as to how blue, green or red people treat others. This is my reason for not being active.