Comments on: Forums don’t have to be popular to be good

By: Martin Reed - Blog Author

Martin Reed - Blog Author — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 22:40:54 +0000

SocialBang – Ah, you are at the most challenging stage of developing a new community. Good luck!

By: SocialBang Chat rooms

SocialBang Chat rooms — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 14:02:08 +0000

As a chat room we’re just trying to get to a critical mass so that when other users go there is someone to chat to

By: Martin Reed - Blog Author

Martin Reed - Blog Author — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 16:50:13 +0000

Kevin – You have the right goals; all too often people aim for quantity over quality and that is a big mistake. I prune inactive accounts based on the following rules:

1) Members must activate their account within 7 days
2) Members must make at least one post within 90 days

By: Kevin Malone

Kevin Malone — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 08:48:53 +0000

My goal has long been to promote MEANINGFUL DISCUSSION and a real sense of community or MEANINGFUL INTERACTION. For this reason, I (1) get to know and invite to become members people who I know are contributive, (2) Regularly think of are search for topics elsewhere that have promoted discussion, and to add my own meaningful input, (3) avoid one-time post, one-liner generating polls such as “What color are your eyes?”, and (4) have a detailed rule against spamming and no forum games or spam forum.

And I never understood the desire to inflate the member list. Why show 4000 members being responsible for 50000 posts if you only have 500 members who have been doing the posting? Wouldn’t you WANT to show your guests that, “Look, 500 members have generated this much content! They’re dedicated, they care, they have contributed a lot for their number!” It is my policy to regularly delete spam bots, and any account that has, since the very day of registration to about (for I sometimes give more time) 1 to 2 months later, failed to accumulate a single meaningful post.

By: Martin Reed - Blog Author

Martin Reed - Blog Author — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 16:58:56 +0000

Smiley – That sounds great, just keep working at it and keep that community feeling!

By: Smiley

Smiley — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 14:08:28 +0000

No, certainly not inevitable. Luckily, I’m far, far away from worrying about that. It’s a small, tight-knit community at the moment, un-cliquey, loves new members. Just right.

By: Martin Reed - Blog Author

Martin Reed - Blog Author — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 16:20:57 +0000

Education Blogger – I am glad you recognise the need to be constantly striving to increase the level of interaction in your forum. I hope this article was useful for you.

Matthew Anton – You’re right; visitors to your site are a fickle bunch and will often draw conclusions about the quality of your community based on member count alone. If your member count is low, you need to draw more attention to your forum’s assets – namely its quality content.

Hirsutism – It’s good to hear that you have personal experience of what I spoke about in the article, and is further proof that a high member count does not necessarily make a good forum!

Smiley – I am glad to hear that you are still watching the competition! You’re right when you say that as a community grows, it can actually loose its community feeling. This isn’t inevitable, though.

Draven – Of course, only an individual reader can determine if a forum is ‘good’ – it depends on what they are looking for. Of course, you can determine this by studying your traffic logs – if people are sticking around, then you must be doing something right!

Panama Condo – As long as your members love your forum, you are well on your way to success.

Online furniture store – A forum simply has to have a personality, otherwise it has no character and doesn’t stand out from the competition.

By: Online furniture store

Online furniture store — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 10:44:14 +0000

I agree with a lot of you; sometimes what a blog seems to lack is just personality!

By: panama condo

panama condo — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 06:14:21 +0000

i moderated 3 forums daily and non of them are popular but members are constant steady and love them.. it may the topics are interesting. and yes income is stable too

By: draven

draven — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 21:18:00 +0000

definitely true.

ofcourse it is in the way you write such topics that you can rate it as good or not good.

and sometimes it’s in the reader’s interest to rate it from 1-10. though you write about the world’s famous topic… if the reader doesn’t have interest in that… he’ll surely rate it as not good.