So have we already talked about everything there is to talk about?
1 - 14 of 14 Posts
It seems like everything slowed down after the holidays. Would another round of posts help?? I don't mind asking 5-10 questions to generate traffic.
There seems to be a lack of follow-up on posts. Most of the threads are less than 3-5 posts. Maybe we need more controversy and drama. :argue:
There seems to be a lack of follow-up on posts. Most of the threads are less than 3-5 posts. Maybe we need more controversy and drama. :argue:
Joined
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605 Posts
I've been checking out some of the other gun related sites. They all seem to be much more specific.
I'm up for it, I'm tired of doing the new post search and seeing nothing!
I'm up for it, I'm tired of doing the new post search and seeing nothing!
Joined
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4,826 Posts
I know we just need more traffic here, but there doesn't seem to be much I can do about that without spending money. I had keywords set up in Overture and was getting 400+ people per day coming in here, but each visit was costing me 10 cents each. I'm sorry, but I am just no willing to spend $1,200 per month to get traffic to a FREE site. Obviously I can get a lot of people to visit here, but there just isn't enough glue here yet to get them to stick. The BOI is the glue that works for FaunaClassifieds, but here there is no interest at all in it.
I try to make an effort to ANSWER any question I may know something about, but some things are just outside of my area of interest. I think that if someone new comes in here, posts a question, and gets an answer quickly will be a good reason for them to keep coming back.
Heck, I don't know. I guess I like to pigeonhole everything into a separate area so I can find out information when I want to. But maybe most people find something like rec.guns more to their liking where everything is just in one big forum. Perhaps most people don't really care about finding information, they just want to TALK. Maybe my perspective of all this is just screwed up.
I try to make an effort to ANSWER any question I may know something about, but some things are just outside of my area of interest. I think that if someone new comes in here, posts a question, and gets an answer quickly will be a good reason for them to keep coming back.
Heck, I don't know. I guess I like to pigeonhole everything into a separate area so I can find out information when I want to. But maybe most people find something like rec.guns more to their liking where everything is just in one big forum. Perhaps most people don't really care about finding information, they just want to TALK. Maybe my perspective of all this is just screwed up.
Joined
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402 Posts
I’m not a real regular here, but I’d like to offer a few suggestions.
Make registration mandatory for posting. If somebody isn’t willing to put his tag on a post, he isn’t too proud of it in the first place. Somebody looking over new posts sees “Unregistered”, he’s like as not to pass. It’s a sort of “name recognition” thing. If the same subject had “Clint Boyer” as the thread starter/contributor, it would generate more hits and possibly better participation. (I’m not singling you out for any particular reason Clint, just that I’m writing this at home for pasting in tomorrow, and I remember your name).
Trolls come in two types: Obnoxious and stupid. The obnoxious ones should be whacked real quick (mandatory registration would be essential here), as they can really mess up a board. The stupid ones, you might want to keep them around for a little comic relief.
Trim the board down a little. Any forum that has no action for 3 months probably won’t ever take off. New visitors who see a lot of forums with the latest post dates months ago will get the impression they have hit a dead or dying board and surf right on out.
You seem to have a fairly capable core of regulars here, although not too many of them. They’re the key to the life or death of the board. Get some of them to agree to moderate. Moderators serve several purposes. They can stop a troll, pick out dangerous or illegal posts, hopefully answer questions, and keep a forum active. If a person agrees to be a moderator, he is agreeing to take on those tasks. Sort of gives him a little added incentive to stick around and stay active.
Answering questions. You (Rich Z) mentioned that earlier in this thread. That is absolutely essential. Ignore a person for over maybe 48 hours and he won’t be back. It is also essential that any answer be correct, or if it’s opinion, be tagged as such. Also, especially anything having to do with reloading, even opinions MUST be within safe limits. You don’t want somebody cramming 68 grains of Bullseye into a .45-70 case, topping it with a 500 grain bullet and touching it off, all on the say-so of some poster on the armslocker board.
Encourage new posters. Three or four people saying “Howdy and welcome to the board” in response to his first post creates some good feeling.
For a forum to stay alive and grow, it needs new threads, at least two or three a week, preferably that many per day. That’s another moderator job, keep it going until it becomes self-sustaining. Some posts will generate a lot of response, if they are started right, especially some that invite differences of opinion. (“CorBon is Junk” or “CorBon is the Best”, or something along that line, with the viewpoint rationally presented would pick up a lot of posters).
Encourage (solicit?) short, informative “articles”, apropos of nothing. It’s amazing the response these get, especially if they answer a question that nobody asked but still sort of hung in the back of a lot of minds.
Remember, controversy and differences of opinion are good, as long as it stays at least semi-civilized. Questioning a person’s ancestory is probably stepping a touch out of limits, but, short of that, let people go at it.
I believe I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ll say it again. You (again, Rich Z and possibly others) should leave armslocker.com in a signature line when visiting other boards. DON’T make it a clickable link. On the boards I moderate, I’d edit it out as soon as I saw it and issue a warning. Do it again, and you’d be off the board permanently. If it’s just a reference, I’d probably leave it alone.
Every once in a while I get an email asking me to join a new board. I don’t know where they get the address, maybe it’s an easy thing for a computer-literate type. You might want to look into that as a recruiting tool. After your board becomes a little more active, of course. You don’t want new folks to see a stagnant board at their first look.
This is too long to call it my $.02 worth, but that’s probably all it’s worth.
Good luck. I think you have the start of a pretty fair board here. It needs work, and that requires commitment from more than just the Administrator, but it can develop nicely if that commitment, along with a healthy dose of common sense, is supplied.
DC
Make registration mandatory for posting. If somebody isn’t willing to put his tag on a post, he isn’t too proud of it in the first place. Somebody looking over new posts sees “Unregistered”, he’s like as not to pass. It’s a sort of “name recognition” thing. If the same subject had “Clint Boyer” as the thread starter/contributor, it would generate more hits and possibly better participation. (I’m not singling you out for any particular reason Clint, just that I’m writing this at home for pasting in tomorrow, and I remember your name).
Trolls come in two types: Obnoxious and stupid. The obnoxious ones should be whacked real quick (mandatory registration would be essential here), as they can really mess up a board. The stupid ones, you might want to keep them around for a little comic relief.
Trim the board down a little. Any forum that has no action for 3 months probably won’t ever take off. New visitors who see a lot of forums with the latest post dates months ago will get the impression they have hit a dead or dying board and surf right on out.
You seem to have a fairly capable core of regulars here, although not too many of them. They’re the key to the life or death of the board. Get some of them to agree to moderate. Moderators serve several purposes. They can stop a troll, pick out dangerous or illegal posts, hopefully answer questions, and keep a forum active. If a person agrees to be a moderator, he is agreeing to take on those tasks. Sort of gives him a little added incentive to stick around and stay active.
Answering questions. You (Rich Z) mentioned that earlier in this thread. That is absolutely essential. Ignore a person for over maybe 48 hours and he won’t be back. It is also essential that any answer be correct, or if it’s opinion, be tagged as such. Also, especially anything having to do with reloading, even opinions MUST be within safe limits. You don’t want somebody cramming 68 grains of Bullseye into a .45-70 case, topping it with a 500 grain bullet and touching it off, all on the say-so of some poster on the armslocker board.
Encourage new posters. Three or four people saying “Howdy and welcome to the board” in response to his first post creates some good feeling.
For a forum to stay alive and grow, it needs new threads, at least two or three a week, preferably that many per day. That’s another moderator job, keep it going until it becomes self-sustaining. Some posts will generate a lot of response, if they are started right, especially some that invite differences of opinion. (“CorBon is Junk” or “CorBon is the Best”, or something along that line, with the viewpoint rationally presented would pick up a lot of posters).
Encourage (solicit?) short, informative “articles”, apropos of nothing. It’s amazing the response these get, especially if they answer a question that nobody asked but still sort of hung in the back of a lot of minds.
Remember, controversy and differences of opinion are good, as long as it stays at least semi-civilized. Questioning a person’s ancestory is probably stepping a touch out of limits, but, short of that, let people go at it.
I believe I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ll say it again. You (again, Rich Z and possibly others) should leave armslocker.com in a signature line when visiting other boards. DON’T make it a clickable link. On the boards I moderate, I’d edit it out as soon as I saw it and issue a warning. Do it again, and you’d be off the board permanently. If it’s just a reference, I’d probably leave it alone.
Every once in a while I get an email asking me to join a new board. I don’t know where they get the address, maybe it’s an easy thing for a computer-literate type. You might want to look into that as a recruiting tool. After your board becomes a little more active, of course. You don’t want new folks to see a stagnant board at their first look.
This is too long to call it my $.02 worth, but that’s probably all it’s worth.
Good luck. I think you have the start of a pretty fair board here. It needs work, and that requires commitment from more than just the Administrator, but it can develop nicely if that commitment, along with a healthy dose of common sense, is supplied.
DC
Joined
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4,826 Posts
Thanks for the response.
Honestly, when I first opened up this board, I had no restraints on people posting, and it started to pick up nicely. Then there seemed like some trolling was beginning to heat up and I then made the registration necessary. Stopped the troll threads, but it also apparently stopped everything else as well.
So I figured that I had to choose between having a dead board with strict registration requirements, or an active one where registration was optional.
Looks like I got neither one.
As far as the sig line when I post on other boards, that would be fine if I had a lot of time to do that. But since I have other message board of my own that I need to spend time in, that really doesn't leave a lot of time to be going to other sites. As far as the clickable link is concerned, I have people do that on my sites all of the time and it doesn't bother me one bit on my own sites. I don't think a site that has a lot to offer it's own members has anything to fear from a visitor sucking away traffic. And if they do, well maybe that shouldn't be resting on their laurels and should take steps to make sure they are still in the running with the competition.
Now people who just post a message saying something blatant Like "Hey check out my new site at ...........", yeah, I do have a problem with that sort of thing.
As far as moderators are concerned, that can be tricky. I have seen more than one board get in real trouble by having moderators that went way overboard on the way they enforced the rules. Actually caused a lot of damage that was hard to recover from. Really, there isn't enough traffic here to warrant a bunch of moderators. Even on my FaunaClassifieds site, which gets a LOT of traffic, I have on a couple of moderators there.
I would prefer forum "sponsors", as in time and effort, over moderators to help out.
But yes, this site does need help from the people here if it is going to survive. I set it up simply because I like to talk about guns and read about them, so I tried to put in enough forums to cover a wide range of interests.
Will it survive? Heck, I don't know. Sometimes I think maybe I'm just being too impatient. But where is the line between having unreasonable expectations, and allowing the board to go stagnant? As far as spending $40 per day to get traffic here, no I am just not willing to do that. If that $40 were getting 20 new members signing up and participating each day, then I would think differently about it. But to watch 400 people flit in then back out again just isn't worth me spending that kind of money.
So what are those people looking for that just is not here? Obviously they came here to take a look, but did not choose to register and plan on coming back.
And reasonable, how much can a core of a dozen people or so contribute without becoming redundant in short order?
Basically, it's a catch-22 apparently. In order to get traffic, you have to already have traffic. Also apparently, a startup message board has a lot of already established message boards to compete with for attention. And honestly, if someone has a choice of going to an older well established board with several thousand members and LOTS of traffic, why should they come here? What does this site have to offer them that they can't find elsewhere?
I'm in a kind of "wait and see mode". I will contribute what I can, when I can, and hope others will do the same. Either this site will grow, even slowly, or eventually I will find another use for this message board license and I will have no reason not to use it for that purpose.
Maybe I'll try to simplify the board by cutting out some superfluous forums on it. I guess it's worth a try just to see what happens.....
Thanks.
Honestly, when I first opened up this board, I had no restraints on people posting, and it started to pick up nicely. Then there seemed like some trolling was beginning to heat up and I then made the registration necessary. Stopped the troll threads, but it also apparently stopped everything else as well.
So I figured that I had to choose between having a dead board with strict registration requirements, or an active one where registration was optional.
Looks like I got neither one.
As far as the sig line when I post on other boards, that would be fine if I had a lot of time to do that. But since I have other message board of my own that I need to spend time in, that really doesn't leave a lot of time to be going to other sites. As far as the clickable link is concerned, I have people do that on my sites all of the time and it doesn't bother me one bit on my own sites. I don't think a site that has a lot to offer it's own members has anything to fear from a visitor sucking away traffic. And if they do, well maybe that shouldn't be resting on their laurels and should take steps to make sure they are still in the running with the competition.
Now people who just post a message saying something blatant Like "Hey check out my new site at ...........", yeah, I do have a problem with that sort of thing.
As far as moderators are concerned, that can be tricky. I have seen more than one board get in real trouble by having moderators that went way overboard on the way they enforced the rules. Actually caused a lot of damage that was hard to recover from. Really, there isn't enough traffic here to warrant a bunch of moderators. Even on my FaunaClassifieds site, which gets a LOT of traffic, I have on a couple of moderators there.
I would prefer forum "sponsors", as in time and effort, over moderators to help out.
But yes, this site does need help from the people here if it is going to survive. I set it up simply because I like to talk about guns and read about them, so I tried to put in enough forums to cover a wide range of interests.
Will it survive? Heck, I don't know. Sometimes I think maybe I'm just being too impatient. But where is the line between having unreasonable expectations, and allowing the board to go stagnant? As far as spending $40 per day to get traffic here, no I am just not willing to do that. If that $40 were getting 20 new members signing up and participating each day, then I would think differently about it. But to watch 400 people flit in then back out again just isn't worth me spending that kind of money.
So what are those people looking for that just is not here? Obviously they came here to take a look, but did not choose to register and plan on coming back.
And reasonable, how much can a core of a dozen people or so contribute without becoming redundant in short order?
Basically, it's a catch-22 apparently. In order to get traffic, you have to already have traffic. Also apparently, a startup message board has a lot of already established message boards to compete with for attention. And honestly, if someone has a choice of going to an older well established board with several thousand members and LOTS of traffic, why should they come here? What does this site have to offer them that they can't find elsewhere?
I'm in a kind of "wait and see mode". I will contribute what I can, when I can, and hope others will do the same. Either this site will grow, even slowly, or eventually I will find another use for this message board license and I will have no reason not to use it for that purpose.
Maybe I'll try to simplify the board by cutting out some superfluous forums on it. I guess it's worth a try just to see what happens.....
Thanks.
Joined
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4,826 Posts
Oh rats....
I was trying to combine some of the forums and danged if I didn't delete one whole category, posts and all. Dang it! I moved the edged weapons forum into the Other Arms category and then deleted ALL of the Other Arms forums....
Well, I guess that DID streamline it a bit.
Sorry.......
I was trying to combine some of the forums and danged if I didn't delete one whole category, posts and all. Dang it! I moved the edged weapons forum into the Other Arms category and then deleted ALL of the Other Arms forums....
Well, I guess that DID streamline it a bit.
Sorry.......
G
Guest
·alll u need, to get several thousand
more hits a day, and hundreds more posts, is to ask the Gunkid to tell everyone he's posting here.
more hits a day, and hundreds more posts, is to ask the Gunkid to tell everyone he's posting here.
G
Guest
·best as I can see, u aint talked about
much of anything, cause you aint got anybody here who knows much of anything. However, the latter is true of nearly every other gun forum, so that's not the main thing, obviously.
much of anything, cause you aint got anybody here who knows much of anything. However, the latter is true of nearly every other gun forum, so that's not the main thing, obviously.
G
Guest
·You'd lose at least a bit of integrity. Why would you want someone that thinks all of the users are idiots in charge of anything?
Joined
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4,826 Posts
It would certainly give this person the chance to prove he is either correct or incorrect.
Like I said, I was getting ready to shut down this site from lack of use anyway, so what would I really have to lose?
I didn't put up this site as a badge of any sort of integrity. I put it up hoping people would use it, and to be something of interest to me as well as those other people using it.
Other than that, I guess I don't really care either way. I have other sites that more fully occupy my time. This one can either sink or swim on its own.
Like I said, I was getting ready to shut down this site from lack of use anyway, so what would I really have to lose?
I didn't put up this site as a badge of any sort of integrity. I put it up hoping people would use it, and to be something of interest to me as well as those other people using it.
Other than that, I guess I don't really care either way. I have other sites that more fully occupy my time. This one can either sink or swim on its own.
G
Guest
·Hey TARD -- how you doin?Unregistered said:
This is the famous RETARD named GUNKID bating to ask him to join your board. If you do you will be sorry.
Bill
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