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Suggestions
- Thread starter Stewart
- Start date
Shade
New Member
muggle said:
Now that, surely, is a matter of opinion... I do think it's a problem that at the minute we effectively have no active administrator (Darren was last seen here over two months ago, on 4 July, and has made just 58 posts in the last year. A site owner/admin doesn't have to take an interest in the subject matter of the site, but it helps if he does) and just one active moderator (Ice).
However I agree with you, muggle, about merging the Writer's Showcase/Block threads.
I also agree with most of Stewart's suggestions with the exception of reputations (which I don't know enough about) and post count (which I'm undecided on. What are the benefits of not having it displayed publicly)? My main complaint is that there are far too many forums - 27 - of which only 17 have more than 100 topics since their inception.
Zolipara
New Member
muggle said:Yeah, all he has done is make it the best forum around.
Atm even motokids forum has more activity.
It should not be hard to see that there is lots of problems on this site due to the lack of an admin. He doesnt have to post on the bookthreads, just do the job as an admin.
abecedarian
Well-Known Member
Stewart said:
Thanks Stewart! I appreciate your efforts to keep this place alive and well..
abecedarian
Well-Known Member
Peder said:
In some ways you may be right, July and August was extremely hectic for me..but I think the points Stewart has made are valid and our fearless leader needs to roll up his sleeves yet again to keep this place in order. Glad its him and not me
direstraits
Well-Known Member
Excellent suggestions Stewart, although I disagree on reputation, removal of the historical fiction section, and Comedy. I'm undecided about merging Horror and SFF - I agree on a practical basis and disagree on a selfish one. 
Plus I don't agree on conventions on thread titles. This is not a technical forum, and I don't think it's nice for general booklovers who are probably older than you and me combined to have to learn to conform to forum 'standard', and get a tick-off when they don't. Now that would be bad and unfriendly. I vote to allow people to post how they want it within the confines of the rules.
I totally agree with contests. That gets me interested.
I don't think the lack of moderation affects the activity in the forum - I think StillILearn will be able to tell all about her experience with a admin-less forum.
The lack of activity is due to perceived hostilities and general unfriendliness in the forum that members of all ages and seniority has faced at one point or another, bringing the karma of the whole place down. Someone said something out of turn, everything gets blown up and before you know it, people leaving with bruised egos.
To ramp up the activities in the forum again, people must be unafraid to post. The suggestions go someway in helping to achieve that.
ds
p.s. Peder, I'm glad to see you here. I owe you something - I hadn't forgotten you. I'm still thinking about a response.
Plus I don't agree on conventions on thread titles. This is not a technical forum, and I don't think it's nice for general booklovers who are probably older than you and me combined to have to learn to conform to forum 'standard', and get a tick-off when they don't. Now that would be bad and unfriendly. I vote to allow people to post how they want it within the confines of the rules.
I totally agree with contests. That gets me interested.
I don't think the lack of moderation affects the activity in the forum - I think StillILearn will be able to tell all about her experience with a admin-less forum.
The lack of activity is due to perceived hostilities and general unfriendliness in the forum that members of all ages and seniority has faced at one point or another, bringing the karma of the whole place down. Someone said something out of turn, everything gets blown up and before you know it, people leaving with bruised egos.
To ramp up the activities in the forum again, people must be unafraid to post. The suggestions go someway in helping to achieve that.
ds
p.s. Peder, I'm glad to see you here. I owe you something - I hadn't forgotten you.
I'm still thinking about a response. 
Stewart
Active Member
direstraits said:
I based the idea on the activity within them. They've been around for over a year and, looking in comedy, some of the few threads date back to 2004. Does that really make it worth having? Fiction is fiction, whether it's serious or comedic.
My thinking around this is to encourage a tidy forum where it is easy to search for previous posts about an author or a book. Typing Kazuo Ishiguro into the search engine may then return a number of threads: Kazuo Ishiguro: Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro: The Remains Of The Day, etc. - immediately I know which thread may yield the content I am after rather than has anyone read this book?
The bigger purpose, however, is making the threads have meaningful titles for the search engines out there (Google, Yahoo!, etc.) so that it can potentially bring more people here. Part of the search engine ranking is, afterall, determined by the title tags of an HTML page, making it one of the most important to get right. We want more newbies to harangue, right?
There's a rather nifty hack on the vBulletin forum on Book Group Online where you fill in the name of the book as the title of your thread and it gives you a further two boxes to enter the name of the author. When you submit the thread, it checks if the author is known to the site and, if not, adds them to the database. Atop each forum there's a box, as shown in the link above, which lists all authors. You can click on the author and it takes you to all threads related to them. Thread titles also get the author appended to it when you submit the thread. It is, however, slightly flawed, in that the author directory only relates to one specific forum. But I'm sure it would amendable at site level rather than area level.
No, it doesn't. But, when things get slow, it's up to the mods to keep the site active, encouraging people to post.
Ice
New Member
I am a member of another forum where this works rather well. They have had to modify how it is used, due to some abuse, so they have disabled the ability to debit points.Stewart said:
They have several differerent membership levels which is based on post count (but only in certain sections of the board). So for example - new members can add 5 points to a members reputation, more active members can give 10 points and long standing members can give 15. They can't be given to the same member in a short period of time and the amount of points you have available to give depends on your own status (and reputation I believe).
It does work well over there, but the forum isn't based on a VBulletin board so I don't know how much of that could be implemented here. It would mean a rather big change to how we work.
lady.cordelia
New Member
then you'd be in the negative!Stewart said:
as for many of your other suggestions, why don't you start your own board?
the HP board will be active during all the movies due to come out (three more left) and the last book I am sure, so why get rid of it. if it isn't bothering you, why not leave it alone? just because something doesn't appeal to you doesn't mean it shouldn't exist.
lady.cordelia
New Member
btw, i am saying this in jest. i reread it and it came off a bit wrong i'm afraid. i wanted to edit it, but it was too late to edit.lady.cordelia said:
Stewart
Active Member
lady.cordelia said:
One, the forum is for the books, not the movies. There's a specific movie forum for discussing them. Two, it isn't bothering me but the fact that the level of activity that merits it being a subforum all to itself does not justify its cause. If anything was deserving of having a subforum then, since activity relative to it is through the roof in comparison to other topics, it should be a Nabokov area in the Fiction forum.
What you also have to remember is that for you this is just a forum where you can post about books but to the admin this is part of his own business which makes money through book sales and advertising. Like most companies, you don't keep making the same product if it doesn't sell - so if a Harry Potter forum isn't really taking off, take it offline, and get something there that does attract, that is sellable.
Kenny Shovel
Active Member
Stewart said:
Perhaps Muggle has seen it in action? I know I've used messageboard software with the "karma" feature set on, and it seemed, to me at least, to be rather pointless.
In general I don't understand the desire to have some indictation of a members perceived worth to the board, be it a reputation score or post count. If someone gives a recommendation or other advice then surely the best way to judge it's value is on the post containing it, and other posts you may have seen from the same member. The judgement of how helpful a post is to you is an entirely subjective one. Just because a member has made thousands of posts and has a "high reputation" doesn't make thier taste any more likely to be in line with mine than someone posting for the first time.
Regards,
Kenny "PC still down, and loving every moment of it" Shovel