Forum participation of late

[cybot]

Just want to say a humble thank you to those who care enough about the forum to air their concerns and, more importantly, are prepared to do something about it. There's still enough life in the old dog yet...Here's some thoughts:

1. There's absolutely nothing wrong with the current layout. Leave it be....

2. The only problem I see is lack of response/appreciation to posts. Terrific time consuming posts by the likes of Sean, MCQ, Jadarin, Fergus and many others get little or no response. If they do it's by the same people time and time again. It's a crying maddening shame.....

3. Too many lurkers who only use the site for their own needs.

4. People should only be alowed to sell stuff if their posts reach a sufficient target set by the mods ie 100 posts or more? The exception, of course, is the commercial sellers vetted by the mods.

That's all I can think of for the time being. Actually looking at the list I have to say the most important one is #2 above.....

[Sloop John B]

It strikes me that it would be a good idea if the organisers of the Summer fest in the Burlo viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2769 (Audio space and Cloney) would allow us have flyers or a poster about the forum?

I'd certainly chip in to facilitate this if folks thought it was a runner.



SJB

[jaybee]

I know it's a small thing, but is there scope to increase/update the image upload facility?

the upgrade of nearly every site to flash makes finding a link able image very difficult these days!

[fergus]

Just a small contribution guys; we can tweak to our heart's content with presentation and layouts etc but if people are not prepared to put a small bit of effort into regular contribution and participation then any forum is dead. A forum will obviously mean different things to different people but participation is the key irrespective of whatever section one is interested in. The technical end of things holds relatively no interest for me and I can only speak from experience in the Classical music section. Over there we had a thriving little community which is all but a graveyard now. We have lost most of the membership at this stage, why I have no idea. These people were knowledgeable music listeners and collectors. What bothers me somewhat is that this forum holds everyone in equal respect and friendliness irrespective of their level of experience and our membership is only too willing to help with advice and equipment demos if required so I do not understand the fall off in activity. That is my concern. I do not buy into the cyclical theory as the active membership has dropped steadily over time - the problem being that we have not been able to replace those that have left. Unfortunately I have no suggestions to offer to help solve this problem at the moment. I have tried all sorts of innovations in the Classical area but all have come to nothing unfortunately. One can but hope the situation changes soon.

[Fran]

I have been looking at this over the last while...

1. the image upload thing is a pain - but linking form flickr etc works really well. However, for anyone that doesn't have one of those accounts then its a problem. I'll look again at fixing the upload direct to here.

2. Please no-one take this the wrong way but I do wonder if the huge amount of CA threads/posts are part of the mix here. If someone views the forum by only looking at the most recent posts, or using an app then all they will see is CA post one after another.... the eg classical music posts are drowned out. If they see this every day for a week then the interest wanes and they drift off..... I don't view the forum in those ways, I just go straight into the normal landing page. What do you all think?

3. I've always resisted splitting the forum into yet more categories - I've always felt that it would just result in ghost estates of sub fora. If its what people want (eg with the CA section) then its easy to do.... but last time we had this discussion about 3 people wanted it and noone else!

4. Any suggestions I'm well up for!



Fran

[Adrian]

Well.... I have been thinking over the last few days about how I could improve the quality of my posts... what I have decided is to post more information about an album I have listened to. Rather than just posting up an image of the album cover etc .... I will attempt to post a short paragraph of information with it... ie. Year, history of the album, band members etc etc. It's an attempt to try and "flesh out" the post and make it more interesting.

Obviously the more experienced audiophiles will know more than I do... so if I post up stuff you already know.. then you can skip over it, but I hope there will be a few interesting "tit bits" for most users.

Perhaps Ireland being a smaller country... members have to make a greater effort at "keeping things going", rather than places like the "Wam" where there is always something going on.

Like Fergus and others... I don't believe this is cyclical... what I do believe is that we are in the "last chance saloon"....

[DaveF]

2. Please no-one take this the wrong way but I do wonder if the huge amount of CA threads/posts are part of the mix here. If someone views the forum by only looking at the most recent posts, or using an app then all they will see is CA post one after another.... the eg classical music posts are drowned out. If they see this every day for a week then the interest wanes and they drift off..... I don't view the forum in those ways, I just go straight into the normal landing page. What do you all think?

The exact same thing occured to me a while back. While all the CA posters are most welcome here, I do remember it was requested a while back that a new CA section be set up cos it was drowning out the General area.
I dont think its the main reason though, really just a general lack of effort from many here and I'm guilty too but I have the lame excuse though of not having a hifi for most of last year and travelling with work a lot since before last xmas. :-))
Thankfully that has calmed down now.
Like yourself Fran, I always read the forum from the main page.

[Sloop John B]

can the "view new posts" be disabled?

I'm guilty of clicking it and having a quick scan rather than reading the posts. ON Pink Fish and the Naim forum I don't do this (as it's not a ready option).

and like a dog with a bone I'll once again say that the music threads being separated by genre is a mistake. PF, Naim or the Wam don't do this (for good reason I'd contend). I know when it is brought up here some regular users say they prefer it this way but with all due respects the forum seems to be dying so perhaps trying to do what all other successful fora do rather than keep a few old die-hards happy may be worth a try. Personally I wouldn't even separate out classical but I realise why this was done.


and like Adrian I must try harder as this is a wonderful resource and it would be a shame to loose it.


SJB

[fergus]

I know that it is not being done but once again I think it should be said that the CA guys and posts are not the issue here. If it were not for their enthusiasm the through traffic would be significantly reduced. If one is not interested in those threads then one just does not read them. The problem lies elsewhere as we have discussed.

I agree with John; this is too valuable a resource to loose without a good fight! Let us see what we can do.

[HiFiFan]

I read the forum, and many others, everyday and do enjoy it. In particular there have been a few people over the years who have been very helpful either directly through the forum or via PMs. In general I just don't have the bandwidth/energy to post most of the time. Between work, study, family and other activities it is difficult to make the time. I will say that one thing in particular that put me off making the effort to post here is that I felt that many of my posts got quickly hijacked and brought off topic. Perhaps it was all in my mind but that was enough to discourage me.

I like Adrian's idea about the albums - including some text not just the images.