Forums Need more Users!

[Cosmic]

I'm not talking about this forum, or another specific forum. I'm talking about the forum community as a whole.

The number of people who use forums appears to be declining. We, the forum admins, need to find some way to get more people interested in using forums in general. Is there anything we can do to do that?

Facebook is a competitor for all of us. So is twitter. We need to steal their customers away, so that people will use forums instead. 😀

 

[Geoffrey]

I definitely agree that social media is taking over where forums used to thrive. It's honestly much easier to use social media than forums. I can refresh the homepage of Facebook or twitter and post and reply to statuses. On forums, posting and replying to topics involves more pages, clicks, etc. and that alone explains why social media is taking over. People are lazy and don't want to work that they don't have to.

Forums just need to become more user friendly.

 

[Cosmic]

I definitely agree that social media is taking over where forums used to thrive. It's honestly much easier to use social media than forums. I can refresh the homepage of Facebook or twitter and post and reply to statuses. On forums, posting and replying to topics involves more pages, clicks, etc. and that alone explains why social media is taking over. People are lazy and don't want to work that they don't have to.

Forums just need to become more user friendly.

Good point. I think there have been some attempts, such as Discourse, but the really, truly misguided decision which the Discourse people did was coding their forum in Ruby, I think. Because it's coded in Ruby, no one will use it to create a small site.

I am, personally, very interested in finding a solution to this problem. If enough of us can agree on a particular software solution to this problem, and can get behind it, I think we can start up a forum software to solve these issues. Of course, maybe it isn't a software problem. If that's the case, I'm all for starting some other type of initiative.

 

[Geoffrey]

I think a software change/solution is one approach, but not necessarily the single solution to the problem. I think any forum, on any software, could take steps to be more accessible and easier to post on. Simple things like condensing layouts, being more general (think how general social media is) and making the "new topic" and "add reply" buttons/boxes larger and more noticeable will help.

 

[Cosmic]

I think a software change/solution is one approach, but not necessarily the single solution to the problem. I think any forum, on any software, could take steps to be more accessible and easier to post on. Simple things like condensing layouts, being more general (think how general social media is) and making the "new topic" and "add reply" buttons/boxes larger and more noticeable will help.

Good point. I guess another way to work on this would be to build a theme for existing forum systems, and try to get people to use that as a base theme for their software.

Or maybe a combination of both solutions.

[user]Carson[/user] - Maybe we should do this for FP? 😛

 

[Geoffrey]

Yes, I think a modified theme using new approaches rather than just redesigning existing elements) would be the way to go. A few ZB forums have done this, with the revolutionary idea in mind. http://outlineforum.com comes to mind (it's in an inactive state, so please don't look at this as advertising). The themes there, especially the default (Arux) one is so out of the box from other ZetaBoards and even all forum softwares. While I don't know how it works with the idea of being more accessible like social media, it's certainly on the right path.

 

[Cosmic]

Yes, I think a modified theme using new approaches rather than just redesigning existing elements) would be the way to go. A few ZB forums have done this, with the revolutionary idea in mind. http://outlineforum.com comes to mind (it's in an inactive state, so please don't look at this as advertising). The themes there, especially the default (Arux) one is so out of the box from other ZetaBoards and even all forum softwares. While I don't know how it works with the idea of being more accessible like social media, it's certainly on the right path.

I agree. That's a very interesting theme.

I wonder if we could draft a UI design standard. Then the details of how it's implemented could become completely separate from the UI idea. So, some of us could build a forum system from scratch which follows the UI standard in its purest form, and some of us could write themes which follow the UI standard pretty closely.

 

[Geoffrey]

Yes, I think a modified theme using new approaches rather than just redesigning existing elements) would be the way to go. A few ZB forums have done this, with the revolutionary idea in mind. http://outlineforum.com comes to mind (it's in an inactive state, so please don't look at this as advertising). The themes there, especially the default (Arux) one is so out of the box from other ZetaBoards and even all forum softwares. While I don't know how it works with the idea of being more accessible like social media, it's certainly on the right path.

I agree. That's a very interesting theme.

I wonder if we could draft a UI design standard. Then the details of how it's implemented could become completely separate from the UI idea. So, some of us could build a forum system from scratch which follows the UI standard in its purest form, and some of us could write themes which follow the UI standard pretty closely.

This would be an interesting experiment, and with some clever split testing, could potentially be done on the same site.

 

[drucrazy]

Forums do provide other things that Facebook, and Twitter don't, help. Instead of a quick little 150 post limit, or a stupid feed that will disappear within minutes, forums actually give you a simple and smart design.

I use twitter and Facebook to get my websites out there, but, they really don't provide anything else for me. I would say that social media is dying, in my mind.

 

[Cosmic]

Forums do provide other things that Facebook, and Twitter don't, help. Instead of a quick little 150 post limit, or a stupid feed that will disappear within minutes, forums actually give you a simple and smart design.

I use twitter and Facebook to get my websites out there, but, they really don't provide anything else for me. I would say that social media is dying, in my mind.

I agree completely. If we do create some kind of UI standard, we'd need to make sure it's still a forum rather than a mini social network.

 

[drucrazy]

I agree completely. If we do create some kind of UI standard, we'd need to make sure it's still a forum rather than a mini social network.

Another thing that is bothersome with forums are advertisements and funds, most people use ad blocker (including me) and other things that prevent website and forum owners from gaining a revenue.

There needs to be a new way to gain revenue from your website or forum from user impressions.

 

[Cosmic]

I agree completely. If we do create some kind of UI standard, we'd need to make sure it's still a forum rather than a mini social network.

Another thing that is bothersome with forums are advertisements and funds, most people use ad blocker (including me) and other things that prevent website and forum owners from gaining a revenue.

There needs to be a new way to gain revenue from your website or forum from user impressions.

We could work a standard for how to display ads into the UI design standard. Then, we could add in software into the implementation which gets around ad blockers. That way, we would not annoy users, and also have ads be shown more often.

(By good ad blocking software, I mean loading the ads off of a proxy instead of straight from a adsense.google.com ad server, and also not naming the HTML element which contains the ad "forumAd." 😛 I think we could definitely make software to thwart ad blockers for all ads bought directly from the forum. Adsense is harder, of course.)

 

[drucrazy]

Who would be making this UI? This sounds like a lovely idea but I don't think it will be nothing more then an idea.

 

[Cosmic]

Who would be making this UI? This sounds like a lovely idea but I don't think it will be nothing more then an idea.

I think the best way to approach this is to be as open as possible.

First, we'd put together a working group which would be responsible for drafting the ideas. Just like with any software engineering project, we'd start with requirements. What does a system have to do to fulfill this particular UI design? After that, we'd move on to the design phase. We would make UI mockups and toss them around a bit. Share them with other people and ask what they think. Then, we'd adjust requirements as needed. The UI spec would be 100% open source, MIT License.

After the final UI standard is set in stone (it would be a document specifying exactly how everything should look), we'd proceed with implementation. We'd have a few parallel projects to make this a reality. I would build a forum system which would implement the idea with the most purity, with help from a few other people. We'd find someone really into skinning phpBB, MyBB, etc. to make skins for those systems. All would follow the UI spec.

Then, we'd start using it. People would find the concept through the phpBB skin store mostly, I think. But it would spread, and people would start using the forums systems, etc.

If anyone wants to join the working group, send me a PM. No coding required. 🙂 This idea is still in the concept phase, but I think this is something that could succeed. Not sure yet what the UI will look like. We need to figure out requirements first.

 

[drucrazy]

I think the best way to approach this is to be as open as possible.

First, we'd put together a working group which would be responsible for drafting the ideas. Just like with any software engineering project, we'd start with requirements. What does a system have to do to fulfill this particular UI design? After that, we'd move on to the design phase. We would make UI mockups and toss them around a bit. Share them with other people and ask what they think. Then, we'd adjust requirements as needed. The UI spec would be 100% open source, MIT License.

After the final UI standard is set in stone (it would be a document specifying exactly how everything should look), we'd proceed with implementation. We'd have a few parallel projects to make this a reality. I would build a forum system which would implement the idea with the most purity, with help from a few other people. We'd find someone really into skinning phpBB, MyBB, etc. to make skins for those systems. All would follow the UI spec.

Then, we'd start using it. People would find the concept through the phpBB skin store mostly, I think. But it would spread, and people would start using the forums systems, etc.

If anyone wants to join the working group, send me a PM. 🙂 This idea is still in the concept phase, but I think this is something that could succeed. Not sure yet what the UI will look like. We need to figure out requirements first.

This sounds like a solid plan, I would love to be in the planning group.

On the other hand, iAndrew is a popular theme designer for MyBB, maybe we could ask him for help?

 

[Cosmic]

I think the best way to approach this is to be as open as possible.

First, we'd put together a working group which would be responsible for drafting the ideas. Just like with any software engineering project, we'd start with requirements. What does a system have to do to fulfill this particular UI design? After that, we'd move on to the design phase. We would make UI mockups and toss them around a bit. Share them with other people and ask what they think. Then, we'd adjust requirements as needed. The UI spec would be 100% open source, MIT License.

After the final UI standard is set in stone (it would be a document specifying exactly how everything should look), we'd proceed with implementation. We'd have a few parallel projects to make this a reality. I would build a forum system which would implement the idea with the most purity, with help from a few other people. We'd find someone really into skinning phpBB, MyBB, etc. to make skins for those systems. All would follow the UI spec.

Then, we'd start using it. People would find the concept through the phpBB skin store mostly, I think. But it would spread, and people would start using the forums systems, etc.

If anyone wants to join the working group, send me a PM. 🙂 This idea is still in the concept phase, but I think this is something that could succeed. Not sure yet what the UI will look like. We need to figure out requirements first.

This sounds like a solid plan, I would love to be in the planning group.

On the other hand, iAndrew is a popular theme designer for MyBB, maybe we could ask him for help?

Good idea! I'm not sure yet whether we should contact well known people yet, or wait until we have something. We'll definitely need theme designers, though, for this to work.

Do you have skype? If you do, PM me with it. Otherwise, I'll contact you when we have something set up to share the ideas. Probably a forum.

 

[drucrazy]

Good idea! I'm not sure yet whether we should contact well known people yet, or wait until we have something. We'll definitely need theme designers, though, for this to work.

Do you have skype? If you do, PM me with it. Otherwise, I'll contact you when we have something set up to share the ideas. Probably a forum.

I PM'ed you, and it would be nice to setup some kind of design before contacting him, since it would be a lot easier giving him a detailed plan, other then a idea.

 

[R44]

I'm not talking about this forum, or another specific forum. I'm talking about the forum community as a whole.

In terms of the forums advertised here, the one inherent flaw is that it's the same people, discussing the same crap, on the same types of website. There's nothing unique, in a way they all clone each other.

Makes it very boring, IMO.

 

[Cosmic]

I'm not talking about this forum, or another specific forum. I'm talking about the forum community as a whole.

In terms of the forums advertised here, the one inherent flaw is that it's the same people, discussing the same crap, on the same types of website. There's nothing unique, in a way they all clone each other.

Makes it very boring, IMO.

That is one element of the forum community, but I do not think that's how it works from a broader point of view.

There are several big forums, none of which promote here. SitePoint, TAZ, DigitalPoint, etc. Once a forum becomes big, there's no use for a place like this from their standpoint, but that's not what we're for. There are indeed a lot of forums here which will not exist in 3 months. That is a provable fact. However, some will continue to exist. If even one or two becomes a huge forum in a couple years, then I think FP will have succeeded in helping the forum community to grow.

For people to truly become more interested in forums, we will probably need to get the larger forums to make their design simpler. However, we have to start somewhere, and small forums is a good place to start, I think.

 

[R44]

You've missed the WHOLE point of my post. So here, let me reiterate.

You can make forums simpler, but the same people will join, and the same people will post the same thing. And then there will be much confusion, and boredom, and it won't be worth anyones time.