Finding motivation in the death throes of a failing forum

[Ghost]

I wanted to share this short story to motivate those of you who may be starting new forums, or holding onto an older forum. Years ago I was a part of a community that was focused around a specific topic. This was back in early 2000s. By 2006-7 or so, it was on its last legs. However, it lasted for many more years. It only took a small group of a few core members posting each week, or even monthly to keep it going.

Unfortunately we believe the owner died because his sites disappeared without a trace. Some of the domains continue to be renewed, but never hooked up to DNS/hosting. If I remember correctly, it was around the time of covid19 or shortly after that things went completely offline.

In my opinion, a forum can thrive with as little as 3-5 core members plus an admin, but preferably 5+.

Think about a lunch table back (or currently) in your school days. Did you need 30 people to have a good time? Probably only 2-4 people was fine! Forums are like lunch tables. If a few people are having fun, you might be surprised how active a forum can be. However, time between responses is important. You can't have 5 members who post once per month and expect that to work as well as having 2-3 other members posting daily. I'd rather have a few daily posters than dozens of monthly or yearly posters, personally.

So, if you are feeling discouraged, just remember that we're supposed to be having fun, engaging in discussions, and I truly feel that this can be accomplished with less than 10 members on a forum. People always want to go big or go home, but a small forum can still be a home to HQ members.

Don't lose faith, stay motivated, and remember that all things come in time.

~~
This might read like AI... Check post history, I've been writing essays on FP long before LLMs hit the mainstream 🙂

 

[fantanoice]

This is pretty true to my experience running them throughout the 00s-10s. Today, though, I find Discord a better replacement for the 'small group of friends at the lunch table.' It has its downsides (walled garden, centralised system), but it saves a would-be admin time and money with regards to hosting, and getting people to sign up.

 

[Ravenfreak]

This is pretty true to my experience running them throughout the 00s-10s. Today, though, I find Discord a better replacement for the 'small group of friends at the lunch table.' It has its downsides (walled garden, centralised system), but it saves a would-be admin time and money with regards to hosting, and getting people to sign up.

I think Discord is good for those who just want to chill with likeminded people but it can't replace a research community IMO. I think Discord is also good for Youtubers who want to keep in touch with their subscribers too. But I do like the idea of having just a few people talking on forums, we know forums aren't as big as they once were but heck to have at least one other person to talk to on a forum is fine by me lol.

 

[Felly]

I think it depends on the context of the forum. If it's just a group of likeminded people, maybe Discord (or another similar program) is the way to go. I'm part of a Discord server with just friends that I met through another forum's chat option. Would I interact with them on a forum? Absolutely! That was basically how we all met, after all. But do I necessarily need a forum to interact with them? No, not really. We have our Discord server, and that's good enough for me. Forums do come up on occasion, but we're all happy with the Discord option.

On the other hand, forums are a great option to meet people to interact with (either on the forum itself or on Discord). I always enjoy the smaller forums because they're more close knit communities where it's easier for me to get to know the people and interact with them, and sometimes, those friendships go beyond the forum. Of course, that doesn't help the forum thrive, and I think that's where the downfall might be sometimes. I think sometimes, the motivation is harder to keep things running when you're already talking to and interacting with your friends on Discord because you don't really need to do it in two places.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

People need to change their mindsets on forums.

I recently removed the statistics widget on my forums. I don't even show it to just me. No longer do I nor my member know how many posts we have, our member count, or who the latest member is.

No longer do we need to care about vanity metrics that usually only drive you nuts because you so badly want them to rise.

Now all we see if today's new content. We're now worrying about the NOW rather than the WHAT IF.

I run a Facebook group that has over 50,000 members. No one knows each other. There are too many people and too much activity is going on to build real relationships there. As much as I love my group, I still love a forum with 100 members more than that group any day of the week.

You can build a relationship with a 100-member group. You can show up to a conversation that you left the previous day and jump right back in with people knowing who you are.

We must change the way we see a forum.

No more "big board" mindset. Now let's have a "community building" mindset.

Remove that widget. It feels like you've recovered from an addiction. It's awesome.