Tweet
One of my forums is 50% busier than it was this time last month thanks to people in the UK and other parts of the world largely confined to their homes mos of the time because of lockdowns. I think it's a great opportunity for forums to claw back some of their presence which has been eroded by social media. In fact, I'm using social media to boost my forum (Instagram and Facebook in particular).
-
-
No. My primary forums are sports and professional, collegiate, and high school sports have all been shut down. Now, if I was in unemployment law I'm sure I would be getting slammed right now. -
-
A lot more lurkers, that's about it.Comment
-
Yes much busier but still the same regular members, just posting more.
What I have noticed is much less toleration, some nasty, aggressive posts from those who are normally very polite and considerate.
Lockdown and worry affecting them I think, going stir crazy!
__________________________________________
We don't stop playing because we grow old;
we grow old because we stop playing.
George Bernard ShawComment
-
We had a bit of that, but only in the section of the forum for off-topic free discussion and only from a a couple of individuals. One left and we've been managing the others. We've always used a light-touch but firm when required moderation policy and over 13 years I have only needed to kick out a small handful of members. Some of the worst offenders left of their own accord, thankfully.
-
-
Yes it's hard to get new members signed up but those that are there are posting as much as 50% more than usual - in fact we've had record days this last week and we've been going since 2007. We don't have too many problems with bad behaviour and we operate a light-touch policy but I have had to remove a couple of posts recently after requesting no-politics during the virus crisis.Comment
-
My forum get more busier 80% on this lockdown.
Unique Members daily: 93-120
New Users daily: 47-50
New topic daily: 21-30
New post daily: 30-50
Private message support request from new users daily: 6-10
Though I delete alot of post with links, daily I moderate upto 100 post and delete spam post.
The lock down have really been favorable to my forum. And also ranks well on Google. People visit the forum from different countries.Comment
-
At last I am seeing an encouraging flow of new members (and old ones rediscovering the forum). This has probably been because we started a Facebook page (not a group), an Instagram presence and a YouTube channel (members have loved being involved in Zoom sessions, sometimes with guests they are keen to interact with and we publish the recordings on YouTube).
Meanwhile the daily visits from existing members is up by over 100% and they are posting 3-4 times as many messages.
We don't get spam as we moderate all new member applications, but maybe 15% of new members seem to have a problem getting past the email validation stage - and based on their profile information and my experience in helping some of them these are not spammers.Comment
-
We too have a Facebook page but did have to turn off visitor posts as they started to use that instead of the forum for chat, so now we just use Facebook to share links back to the forum.Originally posted by imager View Post
YouTube is used for product reviews and we have had some Zoom meetings for members only as we can’t meet up face to face during lockdown.
It’s all proving to be very good as people look for company during isolation.
__________________________________________
We don't stop playing because we grow old;
we grow old because we stop playing.
George Bernard ShawComment
-
There is a difference between a Facebook page and a group. We use a page. This allows us exclusively to make new posts. Facebook members can comment on posts but they can't create new ones. We get a lot of likes but not many comments. All of our posts link back to the forum. A Facebook group is basically a forum, so yes, it would compete with your forum.
-
-
I'm not seeing new members or any particular uptick in activity, but some lapsed members have returned, the subjects being discussed (it's a general forum) have changed, and people being stuck inside has given the arcades a bit of a renewed importance for some so we've started adding new (to us) games again.Comment
-
April stats - mighty pleased (new posts):
We upgraded from vB3 to vB5 in December and it was controversial for our users - many of them felt helpless because of the differences. But I think we have overcome that!
We have just exceeded half a million posts (accumulated over 13 years) so a reasonable size. I think because all the urls changed over night we had a massive reaction from the index bots. February saw a dip in new posts but certainly during that month the server was very unreliable because of the massive loads we experieced from bots. But a lot of work using CloudFlare building up the block and challenge IP and ASN lists has worked brilliantly. Plus our server traffic dropped dramatically overnight thanks to the CDN (shame we're on an unmetered server!).
But our biggest problem has been a dwindling membership - partly because the camera brand we are focused on is no longer used by some of our users but because, of course, of social media. But in April we had 69 new members - the highest rate since late 2013. No spammers, either as we manually validate all registrations. So after years of gradual decline, our membership is starting to rise again, if slowly. But we have also been successful in bringing dormant members back, too. Nevertheless, nearly 75% of our membership is dormant. I may well be culling some accounts soon that haven't been used in several years.
One funny thing is that a former member who asked me to close his account a while back has returned and even donated to our running costs fund!Comment
-
Yes now all user find social networks with news feed real time, and then is the forum obsoleted?
i dont know, i dont like social network but maybe users like, for me my best questions was...Sat 15 Sep '12, 6:52pm
Comment