Niche-Based Forums Are Most Engaging!

[Forces of Steel]

It would be great to see more new forums focusing on specific hobbies and interests. There are far too many general discussion and promotion forums, but few of them even stand out.

A niche-based forum is more likely to keep me hooked, especially if the theme isn't a straight rip or just a recolored default with a spiffy logo slapped on top. The content shouldn't just be copying information, because discussion is a huge part of why forums matter. If the administrator won't bother giving out his dos centavos on a particular subject, then why should the community care?

General discussion forums are even more boring. Yeah, let's talk about what we're eating while posting our selfies. Now, wait, is this a forum or is this Bookmierda? Social media is for that kind of stuff, whereas forums are more about personal hobbies and interests. Also, most promotion forums are easily crushed by Forum Promotion and The Admin Zone, so they're pointless to consider starting, let alone signing up.

Try to think of something that hasn't been done to death already.

 

[KnownSyntax]

The problem with this is that there are still a ton of niche related forums that are out there. Although some are very poorly done, people tend to stick to the ways that have more active users and are more engaged vs. joining a new forum that might have some issues with activity here and there.

For example my discussion board has been up and running for about 7 months now, and only a week ago I passed the 500+ post count with 64 members (only a few handful of those members are active). I do get a lot of traffic (over 1.2GB/month and rising ~400MB per month due to visitors) but the turnover rate for visitors to register is extremely low. This is due to other communities having bigger member pools, more engaged users, and other factors as well.

 

[Geoffrey]

YES. This (OP) is everything I think about the current state of forums.

If you want to chit chat about random crap or just share a life update, social media beats forums every time. But if you want to discuss a specific thing, be it a show, movie, game, issue, whatever, that's where forums still shine. The linear, threaded, and organized format of a forum is ideal for discussions (not standalone posts). Forums where members can and are encouraged to have back-and-forth discussion will do the best.

 

[Reverie]

I think the tough thing is actually finding a genre you necessarily like enough to put up with for more than a few months. That's the tough thing with specific genres. Gaming in general? That might be good, but honestly I see a lot of those. Maybe Call of Duty Specifically? ~ Meh the games are getting worse and less of an audience.

You have to keep little things more in mind like that. Or if it's a specific tv show forum, what happens when that show is cancelled or is just done?

I personally like General with a sense of a direction at the same time. I'm currently trying to figure out the direction I would like to point myself in. But I think people also have this other idea stuck in their head. Once you have a forum and a layout you can't change it lol. That's far from true. I feel like you have a never ending possibility to change your community and grow into something totally different than originally planned.

I join all Advertising communities, I even join General chat forums but I rarely will join a genre specific forum unless I'm absolutely in love with it and it's hard to find things that I feel that way about so my personality is better fit on "general"