PKMN.NET Forums

General Category => PKMN.NET => Topic started by: Lord Raven on August 14, 2012, 01:26

Title: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Lord Raven on August 14, 2012, 01:26
Right, so I'm not here to complain about anything since forums having less activity is something natural.  I just wanted to start a thread so we can bring this to light and we can suggest ways to make this forum have more activity.

For example, like in the debates forum, we could have something to the extent of current events and have a discussion about that over the week.  Probably a daily show sort of thing as well, where someone just makes fun of or picks up on inconsistencies in politics.  Maybe a game review of the day/week thing, where people review a game and discuss it.

A problem that I have myself is that there either aren't interesting enough threads, and when I try to make one that interests me it gets no responses.  People seem to love these "what are you doing right now" threads, which is fine because they're simple but we used to have some pretty good discussions outside of the Pokemon forum.  Just some of my own thoughts; I can suggest everything in the last paragraph to boost activity but not many people will be interested in having a discussion on it.  I haven't talked to many of you guys in a month either, and I want to fix that :/
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Richard and Blaziken on August 14, 2012, 02:05
I've noticed this as well, but I'm not sure what we can do to fix it. BW2 will boost forum activity I'm sure, but I think many of the people that made PKMN.net a tight-knit community have left, and there's not much that can be done about that. I do my part and rate teams, since it's pretty much all I'm good for around here, but I can't think anything I'd be actively involved in that would help the community.

I don't think this is entirely the fault of the members of the community, though. There's been a slump in participation from the admins as well. Hell, I submitted a rather lengthy article of content for this site like 7-8 months ago that was never even posted, so I mean... when the higher-ups don't care, and the members don't care... I find it hard to see anything I can do personally.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Kpyna on August 14, 2012, 05:47
i really liked forum burp to be honest, i thought it was really cool. even when we all complained people were making unnecessary posts to try to get in, at least people were making a lot of posts.

a lot of us have gotten older. i don't even really like pokemon anymore, i just stay here because i've been going here since i was 9 and it kind of feels like my home when i'm on the internet. a lot of people don't feel that way though, so when their interest faded, so did they.

i just feel like a lot of people don't post because there isn't a lot to post about. sometimes i get upset that i created the topic "what's making you happy right now", because it has about 450 pages right now, and i feel like people are thinking thats a topic where you post everything that made you happy. or everything that's confusing you. or everything thats making you sad. or everything that's annoying you. those topics when they were created were meant to get out the little things that made you happy, not things that could be a discussion point. i've considered getting rid of mine, but i mean, 98 percent of whats posted in there can't be discussed too much.

 beyond that, there's no real incentives. remember when post count was a big deal? karma was a big deal too, i feel like when karma was around people tried their best to make thoughtful posts. and even forum burp served as an incentive. we don't have pokemole anymore.

 but we also need to draw people in. richard is so right as far as members needed to post things, and admins needing to approve them. when i first signed up here, i remember going on pokemon emerald to try to find out where i could catch a feebas, and then i saw "name rater" and i decided to push a few names through there, except i needed an account so i signed up. about a month later i led myself to the forums. a lot of people had the exact same story as me. nowadays theres not a lot of news posts, and theres not a lot of content posts. the site portion needs tlc as a way to draw people in, so i think that when black and white 2 come out, that should be our plan of attack, to create some new articles there. the more newbies we have coming in, the better.

 also, this part goes out to people who roleplay, everyone who's not really *~in the community~* doesn't really need to bother reading this. don't criticize people who create roleplays that seemingly have no point, or that aren't made 100 percent properly. if nobody's interested, it'll sink down and nobody will join. when you invade the first 4 posts of the topic telling them what they did wrong, nobody is going to join that rp because honestly it's kind of been tainted. just let it get engulfed in the forum, and maybe shoot them a friendly message advising them what to do on their next roleplay. its a lot less confrontational. but some of those roleplays, people will want to join because they tend to be extremely relaxed and open ended. when i first became a member, most role plays were like this:

 "You're a pokemon at a pokemon daycare center! Fill out this application and we'll get to started!"
 No literacy level. No real rules, no real plot. It was a good time.
 "You're a fire pokemon, and we all must unite to defend ourselves from trainers and protect eachother! Here's the form"
 Same thing. That role play reached i believe 45 pages of us just making up what we were doing as we went along.

 Even as the years went on, most popular role plays, even though the more literate player scoffed at them, were more relaxed. I've been wanted to start just a simple one for a while now, and just let everyone who wanted to join join. Lots of roleplays then didn't make it, they were simply looked over, but my favorite roleplays, maybe it was because i was just a kid, were the easy and simple ones. and when 100 percent of our role plays are supposed to be written in novel quality writing, we're not really opening up to new role players. At all. Just let the new guys learn for themselves. I love that we all love high quality writing, but not everyone is as pompous as us guys :p

 I guess this role play thing would have been more relevant a few months ago, because things have improved, but don't make the role play board a board full of elitists. I really think that board is one of the coolest ones for younger folk, let's let them play too. Because I really think that someone who's involved in a role play is more likely to stick around and post elsewhere, since you're waiting for someone to reply to your post. plus newbies have a tendency to post post post, which is great for our activity.

 tl;dr, roleplay, try to be welcoming and newbie friendly :p


 when the new games come out, things will get better, just let's do our best to prepare for it.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Joeno on August 14, 2012, 08:12
On the topic of content - and other things that require staff to do work, such as forum burp - we don't really have the time. All staff works fulltime now, we've got other things going on and we're just not as focused on Pokemon anymore. Some of us focus on our own things (I'm still working on coding things, updating the Pokedex for example) that we enjoy, but we can't really justify spending the time on writing articles - or really even taking the time out to completely HTMLify an article, source images and so on - especially when we also know other places got there faster and have better info.

In fact, we've been working on starting something that matches our interests more closely, but even that runs into the time constraints we have.

Right now though, it's basically how life worked out, these things happen to forums and sites. B2W2 may improve things, but we're not suddenly going to get a lot more time (looking at what's coming, it'll rather be the opposite). I just hope we can get things moving on our other project soon, although right now that's not down to me.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: lets all go out for some frosty chocolate milkshakes on August 14, 2012, 08:54
i reckon its cos it's the summer holidays and everyone gets super lazy during the summer holidays

that and there hasn't been any lgbt ineptitude which usually create at least a bit of forum drama and subsequent activity and laughs for all haahahahah
what
was that too soon




tbh i think whats happened is that everyone's outgrown puk and its not gonna be much else than lots of activity in the game threads and minimal activity in the random randomness threads unless you eject the section of the forum that caters for children more or less and tell them all to sod off to blocked or pokemasters or whatever the rivalry story is with you lot and the other pokemon forums

holy crap how is pokemasters still going ugh

i had this happen with a forum i went to in the past they tried to cater for the newbies and there was this awful "NO CUSSING! BE NICE!" kind of smileocracy that just ruined any sense of community cos you couldn't ever argue or be sarcastic about things newbie users seemed to refuse to understand cos the mods would get in a huff and mod you if you were like "holy crap did you even read the rules" cos you weren't Being Nice To The New User
and the veteran members literally couldn't stand it and it culminated in a row over hosting costs and one of the admins leaving in a flounce and setting up a forum and dragging the newbies with him and then their ragequit forums were swamped with about 30000 people all just asking the same stuff over and over again and even now its a cesspool of users posting furry art and being stupid and doing stuff
us back at the original forum now having all the idiot users long gone to aforementioned New and """"Better""""" forum like our place dwindled in quantity but kept quality whereas New Ragequit Forum had lots of members and activity but almost constant bickering between mods and normal users and lots of people quitting cos they were sick of everyone being so limpwristed and it was just literally hilarious to poke fun at it more often than not like those two moody guys out of the muppets its 9 in the morning and im insomniac and i havent slept ok so i cant remember their names waldorf and salad or somethign

and they tried to introduce a "well if someone asks something obvious you can be sarcastic if you want" rule but too little too late and the "popular" forum still sucks horribly like their limpwristed "ok you can be mean SOMETIMES i guess its a bit silly having a play-nice forum all the time" just was worse than before 


 
not to mention a lot of drama in the past here has scared/turned a lot of good/long-time users away just cos of the dichotomy of trying to have a close-knit-community-forum but trying to also cater for 13 year old pokemon fans and having people who freakout when a joke falls flat and it just sort of creates this venn diagram with slightly agitated looking emoticons in the centre and over time the forum slowly dies 



like forums just get old and infirm cos even the owners more or less can't pretend they're as into it as they were 10 years ago and unless we have another massive shakeup or some more wonderfully melodramatic forum drama like it won't get much more active than this
maybe minor resurges every time a pokemon game is released but they're going to stop making that one day too

a forum i've been at since like 2006 is pretty much suffering the same fate tbh and now theres like one post a week and we're all sarcastic to any new user that bothers to sign up cos they usually disappear once they realise this isn't a forum of buxom young females that surely want to ask an awkward male nerd new forumite out

like roll back to when i was like 15 and the gamefaqs spinoff scene was THE PLACE TO BE now theres only about two gamefaqs spinoff boards left and no-one really cares any more cos they all Grew Up or they set up their own communities up and no-one really cares if you were banned off GameFAQs a whole bunch of times and resided in GAMEFAQs FOR PEOPLE TOO COOL FOR SCHOOL kind of thing



i mean what do i know ive only been here like a year or two at best though har har har
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Lord Raven on August 14, 2012, 09:34
Some of us focus on our own things (I'm still working on coding things, updating the Pokedex for example) that we enjoy, but we can't really justify spending the time on writing articles - or really even taking the time out to completely HTMLify an article, source images and so on - especially when we also know other places got there faster and have better info.
I'm just curious as to why we can't link to these other places if that's the attitude that is going to be taken >_>

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Right now though, it's basically how life worked out, these things happen to forums and sites. B2W2 may improve things, but we're not suddenly going to get a lot more time (looking at what's coming, it'll rather be the opposite). I just hope we can get things moving on our other project soon, although right now that's not down to me.
I'm not going to try to sound like a dick or a douche- I'm just curious how you think the members of this forum can go forward and attract more members during the BW2 release date.  At this point we kinda know that content is not going to be updated, so how would you suggest we work past that to make this place more active?

I kind of made this thread so the community can throw ideas around, because as of now most of our activity may end up being down to the forums and I want to see how we can use the forums to bring more members in.  At this point, I will take the time to acknowledge that I know I've had friction with you (Joeno) in the past, and I'm not intending to start drama or criticize anyone or anything, I just want to bounce ideas around.  I do really care about this place because I've spent almost 40% of my life here, after all.




idk what kind of charm do you feel this place had?  I'm not sure what we can capitalize on- I'm sure there is some sort of quirkiness associated with it.  I was thinking we have a group of welcome wagon people who post in threads to newbies and let them know that if they've got questions, they've got someone to talk to and that they can make friends with you.  They can be funny and a little bit quirky in their posts, but they can sort out what kinds of things they can do to make this place seem easy to get along with and easy to figure out.

Rules can be daunting and so can my pinned thread (which I can have a talk with someone about trimming down- instead of saying "read this before posting" we can say something like "everything you need to know about these forums in a nutshell").  Maybe having a .png image floating around that condenses them heavily?  Have a list of references so like...  if you want help with this, this, and this then consult that person?  Something to that extent.

This may not be the thread, I also think 50 messages is too low an inbox limit.  I don't think there's enough activity that we can really justify having only 50 PMs anymore...
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Kpyna on August 14, 2012, 10:50
i'm not suggesting we have people hawking over pokemon information and quickly punching in articles, i'm saying just put some kind of general information out there, so people click on it. i don't really like the idea of being totally out of the running as far as provided information goes. sure, you're more likely to have people on your page if you put things out there the fastest, but you'll still get more traffic putting up "late" information than putting up no information. when i joined, i wasn't looking on cutting edge information for how to catch feebas. like most people, i just wanted to catch a feebas so i shot a google search, clicked a link, and here i am 7 years later. if typhlosion, gravy, whoever actually wrote that up, decided people could just find the info somewhere else and didn't bother, i would have never come here. a lot of people wind up coming here because of site content and decide to check out the forums.

 i liked this site because it was campy and not too intimidating. even the staff and members weren't intimidating. i'm not saying "everyone be nice now", don't put on a fake personality because people aren't stupid and it just seems weird. im just saying don't be complete jerks to newbies, even if they are kind of acting weird.

 
i had this happen with a forum i went to in the past they tried to cater for the newbies and there was this awful "NO CUSSING! BE NICE!" kind of smileocracy that just ruined any sense of community cos you couldn't ever argue or be sarcastic about things newbie users seemed to refuse to understand cos the mods would get in a huff and mod you if you were like "holy crap did you even read the rules" cos you weren't Being Nice To The New User

 i don't want pkmn.net to be like this, but i think it would be most welcoming if it was like, a blend of what we have now and that this forum tried to do. i remember when calling a new guy a noob was super offensive here... i want to say one time i said noob in a kind of joking sense (probably mixed in with a lot of afro and policeman smilies, those things are beast) and i wound up getting reprimanded for mentioning it.

 and joeno im going to lightly throw it out there, if you need submitted information to have some html in it, i'd be willing to see if i couldn't help out with that a bit so its a matter of just copy and pasting for you. i've done classes on html coding before so if its something thats a matter of popping in a bunch of tedious <br />s and <h#>s, sticking some images in there, i can do that to take a load off unfinished stuff off the site. even if i decide i kind of really hate doing it too and i don't do code much, at least some stuff got done. whatever works for you. i don't want to just say a bunch of stuff that should get done and not offer a hand.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Clairefable on August 14, 2012, 12:29
and joeno im going to lightly throw it out there, if you need submitted information to have some html in it, i'd be willing to see if i couldn't help out with that a bit so its a matter of just copy and pasting for you. i've done classes on html coding before so if its something thats a matter of popping in a bunch of tedious <br />s and <h#>s, sticking some images in there, i can do that to take a load off unfinished stuff off the site. even if i decide i kind of really hate doing it too and i don't do code much, at least some stuff got done. whatever works for you. i don't want to just say a bunch of stuff that should get done and not offer a hand.

Good idea, if tedious but necessary stuff like this is getting in the way of implementing ~other fun things~ then perhaps these tasks can be delegated to willing volunteers?
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Specstile on August 14, 2012, 14:18
I'm not as active because i don't want to spoil anything from black and white2, i already know who the champion is and that is jsut too much xD
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Sean and Gliscor on August 14, 2012, 17:11
I think to be honest, this site was very active on the teambuilding section during Gen IV. People would join IRC because of it to ask for advice, and create topics with teams and lots would give advice. It had a competitive spirit... however, since Gen V I feel all that has gone downhill, partially due to the fact that Gen V just isn't as good as Gen IV competitively. Also, i think this site attracts a particular age group and we've all now fallen out of that age group - so yes we do need to attract more members perhaps. I think we all need to realise that its not the site's content as such that has made the forums like this, it's just there's not much adversity of this site. Like I remember finding this site by accident and i didnt sign up - and i remember for weeks i was trying to find the site again but i couldnt find it anywhere. We need more advertisement, and I would be up for taking on that challenge.

Also, Joeno, you say the moderators and admins are busy - why not simply add some more that are more active? No, I'm not asking to be one. But I am offering my help with coding, since I am studying Computer Science at University very soon so I will be able to help with that, and advertising I think I'm ok at. We are a tight-knit community and we can all come together to improve the activity on the forums and make this site like it once was.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Lord Raven on August 14, 2012, 18:59
I'm not trying to be mean or anything but I hope you guys aren't biting more than you can chew...  On the bright side however, if multiple people do offer to do HTML then it's good because then you're splitting the work.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Joeno on August 14, 2012, 19:15
Trying to address basic points in order.

Hell, I submitted a rather lengthy article of content for this site like 7-8 months ago that was never even posted, so I mean... when the higher-ups don't care, and the members don't care... I find it hard to see anything I can do personally.

Bit late in responding - yeah, this sort of stuff sucks. I personally stay away from putting up content as it's the type of work any of us can do, while I'm the only person doing coding and focusing on related data entry. It's bad of us, and absolutely a failure of the system, but I can only defend why I haven't done anything yet.

I'm just curious as to why we can't link to these other places if that's the attitude that is going to be taken >_>

You can, as per the rules, which mention that linking is not allowed if we already offer such content - in the cases where this applies, we obviously don't, so linking is allowed...

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At this point we kinda know that content is not going to be updated, so how would you suggest we work past that to make this place more active?

To be honest, I don't think that's going to be too possible at this point. We're not focused on this and it's not a priority.

If there's one thing, though, I'd say it would be through attracting new people - not change the rules so old members can do whatever they want and scare off new members with too many injokes, sarcastic/aggressive posting and so on.

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At this point, I will take the time to acknowledge that I know I've had friction with you (Joeno) in the past, and I'm not intending to start drama or criticize anyone or anything, I just want to bounce ideas around.  I do really care about this place because I've spent almost 40% of my life here, after all.

I was hoping past friction would be mostly forgotten by now. At this point, if there's something I can easily support (and don't disagree with too badly) I can see where we might help, but that does run into time limitations - 'post more content' isn't possible at the moment.

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Rules can be daunting and so can my pinned thread (which I can have a talk with someone about trimming down- instead of saying "read this before posting" we can say something like "everything you need to know about these forums in a nutshell").

Purging bits from the thread, sure. Rules-wise, we might be able to turn it into a shorter version, sure, but only as a reference, the sort of 'more details can be found here' thing.

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This may not be the thread, I also think 50 messages is too low an inbox limit.  I don't think there's enough activity that we can really justify having only 50 PMs anymore...

Inactive member PMs still use server space and slow things down. I've upped the limit for higher post counts, but I'm not going too far without seeing what happens.

i'm not suggesting we have people hawking over pokemon information and quickly punching in articles, i'm saying just put some kind of general information out there, so people click on it.

That type of content still needs to be written, which takes time, which we can't all justifiably create. Still runs into the same objections, and if we're late, you do look at it and wonder why you'd bother writing it. It's an additional thing that demotivates, not the only one.

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i don't want pkmn.net to be like this, but i think it would be most welcoming if it was like, a blend of what we have now and that this forum tried to do. i remember when calling a new guy a noob was super offensive here... i want to say one time i said noob in a kind of joking sense (probably mixed in with a lot of afro and policeman smilies, those things are beast) and i wound up getting reprimanded for mentioning it.

Agreeing with this here - if we get too new person unfriendly, things won't work.

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and joeno im going to lightly throw it out there, if you need submitted information to have some html in it, i'd be willing to see if i couldn't help out with that a bit so its a matter of just copy and pasting for you.

And

Good idea, if tedious but necessary stuff like this is getting in the way of implementing ~other fun things~ then perhaps these tasks can be delegated to willing volunteers?

While I appreciate the offer of help, and would be willing to accept it, it's something I've personally always been a bit hesitant about, as it's happened several times that people volunteered to help out with things like this, but then failed to come through.

Part of this is automated by our systems anyway (Line breaks are - I forgot I put that in!), but there's a number of PKMN.NET specifics I need to show.

If people are willing to help out and put some time in, then I'll be happy to give some more access to a few people - the system should be fairly failsafe that we can give people enough rights to content without opening it too far.

We need more advertisement, and I would be up for taking on that challenge.

Please don't. We don't get higher in search rankings or get more members by spamming other forums or similar. I've studied SEO and worked with it on a few occasions, which is how we want it to be more visible. Part of that is down to content now, though.

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Also, Joeno, you say the moderators and admins are busy - why not simply add some more that are more active?

Because we want to have people we trust, can do the job, and so on as well. Furthermore, we don't need mods, and admins really need a lot of training, which takes time, and really is for people who've already proven themselves. Furthermore, experience shows that making people admins doesn't mean they'll suddenly start doing more work.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: f3raligatr on August 14, 2012, 20:27
Hmm..

I was thinking about this a lot myself the other day actually, remembering and reminiscing about things on here. It's a shame really, at one point we had a really tight-knit community for a wide range of aspects of Pokémon as opposed to being designated, but for a lot of us we've done the inevitable; grown up and chased dreams, begun living our lives which restrict the time we can spend online. A lot of us have gone off in our own directions which finds you further and further away from those who you used to be close to, breaking such a community (certainly one I felt I was part of, both as a member pre and post being banned). You go weeks without speaking to some who you couldn't bare to not speak to them every day..

I think that's becoming an evident problem, one I don't particularly think we can do much about, we are pretty much all growing older and whilst the interest in Pokémon isn't exactly dead, it's not exactly as gripping or as exciting to the youngsters (in general) who should be replacing us all as we head off in our own lives. Nobody in particular, I just remember when you couldn't go into a room without somebody talking about Pokémon in some form, now I'm lucky to meet people who're ten years my junior who actually know what it is, other than to blurt out "pikachu" and think it makes them cool (because playing Pokémon into your early twenties is blatantly cool). Basically put, I don't believe the audience is particularly there anymore.. three years is a lot of time especially when you're stepping from your adolescent to your early adulthood where your internet time usually resolves around things like Twitter and Facebook. I could be wrong, but you know.. when Ruby and Sapphire came out, there was somewhat of a renewed interest and it was still relevant enough that younger kids got into it. It was still 'enough'. Not so much when Pearl and Diamond came out, certainly not when Black and White came out (but don't forget, eight years there in release dates).

Now, I'm going to take a step back here and speak on behalf of myself, not on behalf of the rest of the Admin team who, I'm sure, have their own opinions and their own ideas on this front. I'm not going to stand here and try and convince you all that I'm even a.. decent Admin in terms of content because, bar research when Black and White came out, I think I've hardly contributed to the website other than to be a figurehead, a point of authority, one I don't particularly feel I'm actually that.. good at. But, this isn't going to be about me, it's about the community of course. But the point comes where.. and I look across and see the rest of the team, bar Joeno who really IS an old man now (;o), we're all of similar ages where we've all hit these points in our lives and, for us desireable ones, find time that we used to spend on here is being spent with spouses, with social circles, being spent at work trying to earn money to allow us to do things we want to do (anybody want to give me a mortgage?).

In fact, I'd say work is possibly the biggest hinderance because for a lot of us, we find ourselves in reduced productivity due to stresses at work and other things that we're supposed to be doing (such as being now late for a pool tournament because I wanted to type this up oh god). Again, I'm blabbering on, simply put we're chasing our dreams and living our lives which, like the members and the community, finds the time we can devote to PKMN.net dwindling and reducing by each passing day. Things that we used to be able to do, or rather YOU used to be able to do seeing as I wasn't particularly involved in anything other than giving out 'advice' (used loosely :D) on Team Building, we just don't have the time or energy for, but then again, we wouldn't have time if we could put them on to actually do them anyway.

I think.. and I do hope I'm wrong, I think we're just facing the inevitable like a lot of forums out there where we'll remain active as long as have members and a community (although no longer as close knit as we used to be) and a reason to keep the website running, but we'll get smaller and smaller.

Whether we need a complete refresh of the direction of the website, which I guess we've already attempting to initialise with Jeroen: Our next project, or whether we need to buckle down and try and work out ways of getting back on track.. I don't know.

</2cents>

=]
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Lord Raven on August 14, 2012, 21:03
Lack of Pokemon interest is something I'll say something on.  Since it's me, it will be extremely quick because I don't like beating around the bush...  The easiest solution to the problem is to just talk about other things.  There are other boards and we can post whatever our interests are, and I'll even go out of my way to take an interest if someone ends up posting something (so long as it isn't in Sports).  I know work is stressful (I was working 40/week while on 24/7 call with another job during the summer, it's awful), but hey at least boost forum participation!

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Purging bits from the thread, sure. Rules-wise, we might be able to turn it into a shorter version, sure, but only as a reference, the sort of 'more details can be found here' thing.
I think this is good.  I'm writing a draft of a rewrite of the thread and I'll PM it to you as soon as I'm done.

I'll respond to other things later.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: b1g on August 18, 2012, 13:49
There are other boards and we can post whatever our interests are, and I'll even go out of my way to take an interest if someone ends up posting something (so long as it isn't in Sports).

For me (and perhaps I am speaking for other once upon a time posters here, too), the problem with talking about other things is even that became tiresome, it seemed in two years there were always the same topics being made, the same people giving the same replies, yada yada yada, circle goes back around again. And what tends to happen is you'll have a few people who start a topic and it gets going, people are interested, hefty replies, et cetera, until you get this rush of one sentence comments that ruin discussion. Now I know that comes with the territory but it seems that most of the time, for me, talking about any interests just... isn't interesting. Who knows... refreshing the media board once bimonthly seems to get me by with only two new topics posted that aren't talking about Lady GaGa's latest hit or something like that. It'd be nice to see stimulating discussion floating around the board that stays stimulating.

Welp, thanks for linking me this thread Muhed, hopefully something comes out of it. Maybe everyone has outgrown the central focus of the forum and we need a new one if there's going to be a forum here at all.... !
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Turner on August 21, 2012, 18:26
I think it's all about the community.

If anyone remembers when bulba had an article on fansites, PKMN.CO.UK was listed and I remember the comment was something like 'While not as robust as the other sites, PKMN.CO.UK has a great community' or something to that effect.

With the namerater and so on, I think community is what brought a lot of people here, not features. Basically, I'd say PKMN.NET has been riding the 'community' wave, and now that people have moved on, that community feeling that drew people here isn't there anymore.

I'd partly blame this on facebook too, lots of other forums all over the internet have seen a major decline in use ever since people started moving to facebook, but it's not the sole problem.

I think there are two ways you can approach this problem:

1) Work severely hard on the content of the site, add guides and do all kinds of things like that, while I'd say we're definitely in need of this regardless; I don't think this will solve all our problems because the simple truth is that more people are used to blocked and bulba for providing a database of information, and even if PKMN.NET got to that level, we'd be no different from them; same info but just jumbled about in a different order.

2) Somehow boost the community. I honestly have no idea how to do this, as there's no certain way to make this happen and the community is dependent on the members anyway. This would be the most difficult thing to do on paper, but I think the results would be more rewarding. Effectively we'd be playing to our strengths, which is never a bad thing.

Content definitely does need to be updated and should be updated, but all I can say is that I don't think that'd make much difference...we need to approach this from a different angle I think. Random suggestions that might be interesting to think about:

-Change the main site layout

-Emphasize the community more, try and get IRC active again...maybe make use of the PKMN.NET youtube account. We were previously known for having a strong community but despite all these new sites and content sharing ways to be social on the internet, we haven't really embraced them that much.

-Focus on the lesser-known side of pokemon, maybe focus on Toys, spin off games, the Pokemon Adventures manga, fanart, cosplay etc. I don't really see the big sites showing much of this stuff off as much, it'd make PKMN.NET a bit more unique if we had a fan submitted cosplay gallery or a place to share old toys you've found on eBay or something.

I'd like to see PKMN.NET go a *little* bit web 2.0, if the community is meant to be the strongest part, we might as well use that to our advantage and allow full community participation.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Lord Raven on August 21, 2012, 19:36
To add onto that, assign the Name Rater and Sentret to other people on this site.  Perhaps have a name rater contest where the best name rating gets up on the site.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Joeno on August 21, 2012, 23:05
Let me emphasise this again, as it is worth keeping in mind:

When you say 'Content should be updated', that's not too useful, as the people who'd usually do so aren't going to get the time to do so any time soon. If anything, we are going to have less time available.

Instead, think of it as 'I can update content'.

If you can't, then saying others should isn't too helpful - sure, it might help, but we don't necessarily have the time. For the reasons mentioned earlier, we will focus on The Acid Reflux more instead.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Turner on August 22, 2012, 00:08
Let me emphasise this again, as it is worth keeping in mind:

When you say 'Content should be updated', that's not too useful, as the people who'd usually do so aren't going to get the time to do so any time soon. If anything, we are going to have less time available.

Instead, think of it as 'I can update content'.

If you can't, then saying others should isn't too helpful - sure, it might help, but we don't necessarily have the time. For the reasons mentioned earlier, we will focus on The Acid Reflux more instead.

I'm speaking from a very abstract point of view here, I've read this thread and even before reading I knew that there were constraints on this. I'm talking very generally here, we'd have to break it down into smaller parts like you would with any project.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Hicky on August 24, 2012, 17:42
Threads like "what are you doing now?" always elicit responses but they never generate any kind of meaningful discussion. There are loads of other ways of letting people know that kind of information, as well. I say we should have monthly debates, or at least someone should just bring it upon themselves on an unofficial basis to make a monthly thread about something moderately controversial. Other than that, though, I guess PKMN.NET has reached a point of decadence.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Turner on August 26, 2012, 02:35
Well, I'm willing to help out wherever possible - I'd rather not see PKMN.NET die.

Joeno, in what ways can the average member help out? I'm sure there are others out there with the time who are willing to put in some community work, even if it's just making big informative guide threads that can be later made into site-content if necessary.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Joeno on August 26, 2012, 09:14
If people feel that content is an issue, then that is probably the best way - make the threads, get them out there, possibly help people correct them. We (probably me) can help a few people and explain how to get these things uploaded. That would (partially) remove us as a bottleneck.

This can apply to other things as well, but with the exception of episode guides, it's difficult to see how to organise it. I can try to help out where I can (certain things are more easily organised through code, such as a list of Pokemon and their dream world abilities), but I'm not really a content writer and would prefer not to be - it feels better to have me coding instead.

A second way would be to help us make TAR a success. As more energy will probably be spent there, we've been wondering whether to 'move' the community there down the line. This is also because there we'd be more comfortable going for a more mature setting (swearing, content and so on) that people have been desiring. Mostly because, well, it's not a Pokemon site.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: sans the skeleton on August 27, 2012, 21:59
Well, I'm not one for long posts, but as others have said I miss forum burp, though I understand why you stopped it in the first place.

One of the main reasons why I'm not really a part of the site now though is because some (see: some) of the community has taken to being completely unfriendly and the like, so instead of possibly being banned/being provoked further whilst stressed I just left. Maybe there needs to be more moderation on trolling on the first place? I don't know.

But away from that, This is just one of those sites where it's been around so long that no matter how much you love it, it's not one of those quick access sites (in personal opinion). Then again, it's only like that for me due to two things.

1. My computer is slow.
2. I'm usually searching for move sets/pokemon index entries (which brings me to another site, which has a certain Celebi as it's mascot, or to Smogon) anyway, and the odd time nicknames (which brings me here to the wonderful name rater).

I'm happy for you making an adult side to the forums too, which was in the announcements. Well done, but don't put all of your time on one of the sites :P
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Turner on August 28, 2012, 03:34
If people feel that content is an issue, then that is probably the best way - make the threads, get them out there, possibly help people correct them. We (probably me) can help a few people and explain how to get these things uploaded. That would (partially) remove us as a bottleneck.

This can apply to other things as well, but with the exception of episode guides, it's difficult to see how to organise it. I can try to help out where I can (certain things are more easily organised through code, such as a list of Pokemon and their dream world abilities), but I'm not really a content writer and would prefer not to be - it feels better to have me coding instead.

A second way would be to help us make TAR a success. As more energy will probably be spent there, we've been wondering whether to 'move' the community there down the line. This is also because there we'd be more comfortable going for a more mature setting (swearing, content and so on) that people have been desiring. Mostly because, well, it's not a Pokemon site.

We do seem to have a lot of content already...I think perhaps the biggest problem is the layout maybe? I think even then if PKMN.NET was as robust and full of content and info as other sites we would just be doing a remix and a re-jumble of that same information, which I don't think is enough on its own to get more people to come to the site.

I don't want to sound too futile here, because as you know I will do anything to keep this site alive and strong...but I think if we realistically look at a couple of the most well known Pokemon information websites, they pretty much offer everything we have and more. I know there doesn't need to be only 1 site full of information, but I think that the reality is maybe that PKMN.NET is a little bit irrelevant nowadays without the strong community we had before.

I see what you're doing with TAR and it makes sense on paper...but I know that without Pokemon I'm not really interested and I can't be the only one. I don't think shifting the community will do anything but dilute both sites, but that's just my opinion.

My train of thinking is this:

-Site used to be popular for the community
-Community has dried up, bigger and more well-known sites have got most of the Pokemon fanbase and more extensive content to boot.
-Makes most sense to bring back the community (This is difficult and there are no sure-fire ways of doing this) while progressively improving content.

While I haven't been as active on PKMN.NET as I used to be, I've still been interested in Pokemon and I've noticed a shift in the fanbase. Even though the mainstream popularity has gone down, the fanbase itself has grown but instead has fallen into niche interests. Almost everyone seems to play the main series games, but you find some people who are competitive battlers, some people who are more interested in the Anime/Manga, some who prefer the TCG and others who just like the fandom itself and collect fanart, 'pokememes' etc.

I think the situation is like this:

When we got lots of new members, most of them were fans who clung on to pokemon after it's UK popularity had died down. We got more for a few years after that too, but this site has been going almost 10 years now...a lot of new fans to Pokemon won't be interested for that reason, and will instead pick it up because they like J-RPGs or because they're a fan of Japanese culture...I think these people are the people we need to seriously think about accommodating in the future...I think this applies to all Pokemon communities that have been around as long as PKMN.NET.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Lord Raven on August 28, 2012, 05:46
One of the main reasons why I'm not really a part of the site now though is because some (see: some) of the community has taken to being completely unfriendly and the like, so instead of possibly being banned/being provoked further whilst stressed I just left. Maybe there needs to be more moderation on trolling on the first place? I don't know.
This is very interesting.  Why not go and talk to the trolls in private and try to reconcile/understand?  Report posts, PM staff members, etc also works.  I don't think this is the reason at all for inactivity, especially since it's rarely happened even recently.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: sans the skeleton on August 28, 2012, 11:51
This is very interesting.  Why not go and talk to the trolls in private and try to reconcile/understand?  Report posts, PM staff members, etc also works.  I don't think this is the reason at all for inactivity, especially since it's rarely happened even recently.

I tried to do that in the topic but they continued to troll, so I don't think they'd want me to 'bother' them anymore with a simple PM. (And if my past experience with them has proved anything, they usually then say something like 'lol you gave me a pm that doesnt do anything' in reply then get worse... which is kinda messed up tbh). But it was very nice of you to be mature about it and give me advice, it helps. <3. It's a bit late for me to report and PM staff now though, but if it happens in the future I better do that.

I didn't mean trolling as a whole killed pkmn.net, though (the inactivity) but I'm thinking quite a few (read: not many) members have left due to trolling in the past, but I can't really name any off of the top of my head really because probably... yeah. I know it happened on this site a tiny bit back in 06, but it was (for the most part) forumburp worthy stuff rather than 'lol i h8 you your so quirky for thiz'* stuff, really.

*inb4negativeremarks.

This site though was actually part of the reason why I started RP and foruming in the first place though, so quite a few milestones here and I just love it, you know? It's been here since my first days on the internet. <3
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Turner on August 28, 2012, 16:08
I don't think trolling has been THAT bad, maybe drama has been though.

I doubt we will get much drama in the future though, not until PKMN.NET is back to it's original levels of familiarity and activity.

The community has died down if anything, if you're looking for a time to post troll-free this is probably your best opportunity.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Joeno on August 28, 2012, 23:06
Two simple arguments:
1. We don't want to do Pokemon. We want to do other stuff. TAR allows for that. If there's no TAR, we'd probably not be doing anything. It's a personal decisions made so we can keep working together. TAR is staying.
2. Changing the main page? All those other changes? See my earlier argument about time. Or rather, the lack of.

Your comments about rules and interesting boards... that's what happening to TAR.

But yeah, no time to do a lot of information work combined with a lack of real Pokemon interest means that TAR is staying and we aren't going to be able to make any large changes for the current site (never mind that I'm not even interested in making some of them)
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Turner on August 28, 2012, 23:37
Two simple arguments:
1. We don't want to do Pokemon. We want to do other stuff. TAR allows for that. If there's no TAR, we'd probably not be doing anything. It's a personal decisions made so we can keep working together. TAR is staying.
2. Changing the main page? All those other changes? See my earlier argument about time. Or rather, the lack of.

Your comments about rules and interesting boards... that's what happening to TAR.

But yeah, no time to do a lot of information work combined with a lack of real Pokemon interest means that TAR is staying and we aren't going to be able to make any large changes for the current site (never mind that I'm not even interested in making some of them)

Okay, well I don't have a problem with TAR but I can't see myself using it. That might change, but I guess I fall into the other category of people who still likes Pokemon and would like to see this place grow again.

If you're not going to make any big changes to the site, that means if we as members pretty much only have the forum to work with, right?

I think something that is working against us is that a lot of people in general aren't interested in forums at the moment...I've seen that as a trend all across the internet.

In any case, how much leeway are you willing to give us with regards to forum changes? Is there any point to asking for new boards, ideas relating to the forum etc?

This is just an idea, but it might also be worth creating an official PKMN.NET survey or something so we can tell what kinds of things our current users are most interested in? I'd love to see more stuff geared to the fan artists and Role Players we have here because I think they make up a decent amount of the active userbase...but it'd be nice to ask them anyway.

Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Richard and Blaziken on August 29, 2012, 01:23
As has been seen, there is still some interest in Pokemon left here, but all of your posts seem to convey the message of 'PKMN.net's days are numbered, and we intend on ending PKMN.net in the near future'. A lot of us here aren't interested in TAR, but more than that, a lot of us here care about PKMN.net. I've been here for seven years, and the site has changed a lot in that time. Interest in the forums has waned, that much is certain, but perhaps there is a way to get that interest back.

My idea is somewhat of a vague one, but I think it has potential if you keep an open mind. I'm thinking that we may be able to merge our forum community with that of another established Pokemon community. I myself am hesitant about this, but when it seems like your intent is to kill PKMN.net anyway, those of us still interested in the Pokemon side of the community might like a place where PKMN.net's established members can still have a feel of PKMN.net while simultaneously bringing in new members and new life. Of course, we'd have to find the right community to do this with, and that's a bit of work. I don't expect you to do it, Joeno, especially because I'm almost certain that you'll be completely against this, but some of us don't want to be moved to a new community with no focus on Pokemon. I think this is an idea that at least deserves some discussion.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Joeno on August 29, 2012, 08:08
We're not ending PKMN.NET, but we're not going to invest as much time in it to update it as people might want. We're not going to kill anything, nothing's going anywhere, but right now I believe I'm the only one doing any regular work on the site. I'm not interested at the moment in focusing on stuff like writing, and if there's nobody else who does so either, nothing is going to happen there.

TAR is intended to solve that, because more people are interested in writing for that, while avoiding some legacy that's holding us back now.

I'm not going to merge any communities as there's no point in doing so. I'm still interested in and am updating parts of the site, just not the ones people apparently want. Merging communities means that I'm severely restricted in that - don't forget that you use your forums account here on the site as well, the two are too linked to seperate.

As for forum changes - how about trying out to see how TAR works down the line? We're relaxing the rules there compared to here - intentionally, as we feel we can do more in that setting. New boards doesn't seem like a good idea, there's too many empty ones already, the existing ones need more activity first. As for other things... I don't see how doing stuff like upping a signature limit will make any real difference.

To set up a proper survey, we need to spend more time on actually getting that set up and working, while I don't see the benefits it would bring. It might be nice for people to say something, but then what are we supposed to do? And with the usual response rate to surveys and the type of answers you get back, I'm not sure how many conclusions we could really draw from it.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Spriter on August 29, 2012, 16:05
I must say that the main influence for my activity here is because of the community. It's just lost it's magic now, I guess, but TAR is definitely a nice concept. I would gladly stay here, and I can keep up with both sites.

Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: OVOxo on August 29, 2012, 17:36
PKMN.NET I'd say isn't dying but it most certainly is regressing. There isn't enough effort being put into it; I don't blame the higher ups for it because everyone's life has changed over the years. It'd need a lot of changes for this place to get to where it was and that would need to come from the current member base or a new one (which is why Richard and Blaziken's idea does have merit but whether that's plausible or not is another matter... I don't really know about that sort of thing so I won't mention it further). As with the higher ups the rest of us don't really have the time for it either and those that do may not want to or even be given a chance for them to be completely helpful. I guess it's just natural site regression.

TAR is a potentially good concept but tbh it's two or three years too late for it to have been truly successful. With a more active and contributing PKMN.NET then more members would move onto there and help it flourish. To get TAR working you'd need to seek out a new audience for it to get anywhere near the interest that this place had. It's also why we can't just 'wait and see how TAR works' because it won't work for a lot of members. Plus TAR getting preferential treatment over PKMN.NET complicates things further; it seems that the side project has become the primary project and vice-versa. Don't blame you guys for it at all (if TAR becomes successful then it'll be justified) but it is clear to see that it could hurt this site more than help it. I'm not saying stop TAR because it's obvious that there is a want for it and there has been a lot of work put into it which should be respected. I just don't want to see this  be compromised for it.

If this and TAR are going to co-exist I think they need the same treatment. That means they should links to each other on their own sites, very similar rules (obviously with slight differences due to their subject matter) among whatever else. I like the fact that they are styled similarly which helps. New boards wouldn't help at all. In actual fact; maybe there should be just one forum for both PKMN.NET and TAR? I don't understand site to forum mechanics and whatnot but surely if TAR is just going to be a place for content outside of Pokémon then have this as your forums with Pokémon content but have a TAR section in the forums? So have PKMN.NET General and TAR General with their respective Updates and Suggestions boards, etc.; it's not necessarily about new boards but revamping what there is to make it an easier compromise.

Trolling happens everywhere so I doubt that has led to inactivity.

If activity were to increase though new members would need to be brought in... and if that can't happen the community will flop to an extent. This is where I agree with Turner I think it was; if other Pokémon sites are far more serious about their work then perhaps we should integrate a more laid back approach and build the community around that as it were?

As for more activity in our current boards; maybe a weekly topic for discussion? I've seen before in places that have a weekly debate where a topic is chosen and it keeps the place fresh and interesting. Of course, it'd comply with the rules and whatnot but considering members have shown that they like to debate it'd be great! Plus the whole attitude of 'what happens in the board stays in the board' would also work alongside it.

As for the art boards, that's dependent on the activity of posters and right now it's not going to work that well as members don't have as much time for this place any more. Same applies to RP.

For the media boards... this could work with aligning TAR's and PKMN.NET's forums but what if we have an Album of the Week, Song of the Week, TV Show of the Week, Film of the Week, Book of the Week and Game of the Week. Discussion would take place on the forums and then analysis can be provided by the contributors on TAR for those choices. It'd be a great way of being interactive between both sites with retaining this community (as I alluded to before, not all of the member base will switch over to TAR which means this would keep both audiences together).

RR has always been a funny board... so I won't go into that.

Pokémon boards would remain as they would provide information; that could help with content? Those learning information can easily help contribute that.

Sorry if what I've said isn't really helpful since I don't know how sites to forums and stuff like that works (never needed to learn it as of yet) but I thought I'd at least throw some ideas around because there is evidence to show that people still want to see this place around =]
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Pam-the-Lamb on August 29, 2012, 22:20
 I usually go on a broader forum now because of the atmosphere over there, not my actual reason to why I don't spend as much time here though.

 I could try and get a few people to come here like, they all seem pretty entheusiastic towards Pokemon, but isn't there a whole rule about not advertising other sites?

 This site is nice but I've noticed loads of people joining up, posting 1 or 2 different messages and just not coming back. Which is sad :(

 
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Richard and Blaziken on August 30, 2012, 06:36
Bringing others here won't work if they have no reason to stay. The lack of time and care for this site doesn't present an atmosphere for a forum that begs a member to stay. No new content is being added, and you can tell you're at a dead forum when you come here.

I could write up a weekly thing like 'Pokemon of the week' that talks about a Pokemon in all aspects (competitively, from my personal stance, and some general information about it), as a way to show people that this site is still active and wants users to come back. Now, you could get knowledge about a Pokemon from Bulbapedia, but it's so structured and written professionally. I'd like to write something that has a bit more soul to it, and I definitely have extensive knowledge about Pokemon from many aspects, especially competitively (we could even split the Pokemon of the Week into sections written by different users. For example, one user writing the competitive aspect of the Pokemon, one writing anime bio, one writing about cards it has been featured in, etc.).

My main worry with this is that staff doesn't have time to post these things we've written. It'd be a complete waste of time and effort for those involved if staff isn't willing to put it on the site. I want to help get this site back on the right track, but it's a little frustrating when you keep hitting the "No time, don't care" wall. =/
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Joeno on August 30, 2012, 07:54
My main worry with this is that staff doesn't have time to post these things we've written.

If we can sit down to show you how to properly do our HTML and you can get that checked by us two or three times (I can quickly go through them and correct them), then it's trivial to give you access to add them yourself. That's always been possible.

However, it does need to be kept up then. It's easy to say you'll do it, do it twice and then forget about it. That's what happened to many things people see around the site they now miss.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Richard and Blaziken on August 30, 2012, 08:12
I can say that I will absolutely try to learn, but I have little knowledge of it. I am more than willing to learn and keep up with it, because honestly, I care about this site a lot. I don't know if it will help at all, but I'd love to try. I usually have at least two free days a week, and that's more than enough to write up an article about a Pokemon, especially when most of the information is already in my mind. I'd love to be given a chance to do it, really, if there is someone willing to teach me patiently.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Joeno on August 30, 2012, 08:18
I should be able to find time at some point to do so
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Pam-the-Lamb on August 30, 2012, 12:01
 Didn't we have that pokemon card thing before? That was really cool.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Mulholland on August 30, 2012, 14:05
My main worry with this is that staff doesn't have time to post these things we've written. It'd be a complete waste of time and effort for those involved if staff isn't willing to put it on the site. I want to help get this site back on the right track, but it's a little frustrating when you keep hitting the "No time, don't care" wall. =/

For the media boards... this could work with aligning TAR's and PKMN.NET's forums but what if we have an Album of the Week, Song of the Week, TV Show of the Week, Film of the Week, Book of the Week and Game of the Week. Discussion would take place on the forums and then analysis can be provided by the contributors on TAR for those choices. It'd be a great way of being interactive between both sites with retaining this community (as I alluded to before, not all of the member base will switch over to TAR which means this would keep both audiences together).

I could write up a weekly thing like 'Pokemon of the week' that talks about a Pokemon in all aspects (competitively, from my personal stance, and some general information about it), as a way to show people that this site is still active and wants users to come back. Now, you could get knowledge about a Pokemon from Bulbapedia, but it's so structured and written professionally. I'd like to write something that has a bit more soul to it, and I definitely have extensive knowledge about Pokemon from many aspects, especially competitively (we could even split the Pokemon of the Week into sections written by different users. For example, one user writing the competitive aspect of the Pokemon, one writing anime bio, one writing about cards it has been featured in, etc.).

I'm going to answer these quoted things at some point in this post but instead of splitting up this thought vomit with quotes it made more sense to just have it as a sorta-cohesive thing.

It is no point denying that with myself, Joeno, Mike and Rob being in full-time employment (Mike being in full-time education with employment on the weekends) that the posting of new content on this site has been lax. It's happened, it's there. We still have an admin where this isn't an issue.

To stand up for Joeno here, he is still working his socks off doing behind the scenes work on this site when he gets home from work. For me when I am teaching I come home to marking and lesson planning until 10pm... so the last thing I want to do is extra work when I could vegetate with some Gilmore Girls/Adventure Time/Star Trek etc (especially when I lose my weekends to lesson planning).

The whole point of TAR was Mike's and myself and Jeroen did a lot of work to get it off of the ground. Lottie has been fantastic since the launch and she can back me up when I say that when sent an article (as editor I will be looking at all as well as writing my fair share) it is up in a few days unless I lose the e-mail which can happen.

If you want to do some writing there is this new place for you to do it and the scope is pretty wide. And I am pretty darned reliable when it comes to putting stuff up. If you want to know where to send it PM me here and I'll let you know and we can get a conversation going OR even PM me on TAR OR Facebook message me as that is what Lottie does. We even have a Facebook group which mostly me, Lottie and Joeno so I would welcome the company.

I guess what I am trying to say is that this has been open for a fortnight and no one else has asked to write anything for it... and yet you guys want to write stuff...

If you have no interest in writing about games, movies, music or other stuff and the only way you can think of writing content is Pokémon stuff, well I step forward now and say that until you get some decent HTML in your knowledgeheads.

I am not in anyway saying TAR will be replacing PKMN but an admin split will probably be happening with Mike and myself taking TAR duties and Rob and Rex more on the PKMN side. Joeno has the task of behind the scenes on both and thus deserves ice cream at the next meet... not from me as I keep him regularly fed and watered.

I guess the tl;dr is that a meeting between the admins will be needed at some point where we can co-ordinate the four worker bees about how we can raise the content stuff... but TAR is currently here and we want to make this work.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: OVOxo on August 30, 2012, 19:05
Again though, the problem lies with the fact that TAR has no appeal to some people whereas this place will at least retain some form of interest to all within the member base right now. I don't blame you guys for wanting to do TAR instead given everyone's situation but it's evident that there is a desire for this place to get back to being a successful site rather than what people are worried it will become.

I'm going to say this now; as it stands, I won't want to do anything for TAR. There's no point me joining the forums because I'm on these ones and I see no point in being on both. I wouldn't be surprised if others agree with me here. I'm not going to write articles for it because I don't feel like there's any reason for me to and if I were to attempt to write articles I'd look at different opportunities for it. My viewpoint could change over time but right now I'd much rather continue to post on here, keep the social side of the forums going with certain posters and keep discussions on the boards rather than writing articles about the same subject.

However... if you guys think that boosting TAR may help this place I may write a few articles. I want to see PKMN.NET do well and if I've got to put effort into helping this place do well by helping TAR then I guess I'd be willing to do so. I know this probably contradicts what I've said prior but both show that I want PKMN.NET to do well. Meh. I can't write PKMN.NET content so I can't help there but I will offer to help in any way. I don't want to see this whole thing of 'PKMN.NET is dying' when there are ways we can all help out.

Dunno what I'd write about... I'll have to think about that. Might do a few types of stuff just to get stuff going if needs be. I'll see what you guys want first I guess =S

I do hope TAR becomes a success for you guys but I hope more for this place to have the activity it used to. I've already said that they should co-exist more rather than seem like separate entities because that would probably raise interest from this side to contribute on both. I guess I seem to be rambling now but oh well.

Btw:

Quote
If you have no interest in writing about games, movies, music or other stuff and the only way you can think of writing content is Pokémon stuff, well I step forward now and say that until you get some decent HTML in your knowledgeheads.

Is there something meant to be on the end of that? Can't really tell and I'm not really sure how to respond to that point in particular yet =P

But yeah, sorry if this post seems really confusing. I'm just trying to be helpful in a way that I can be... and right now that doesn't actually seem too helpful. Whoops ^^;
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Richard and Blaziken on August 30, 2012, 22:12
@Mullholand - I'm not trying to bash anyone that doesn't have time, I'm really not. I understand that fully, but I am just trying to get my point across that I don't particularly care for TAR while I do care about PKMN.net. I want to help keep this site alive, and I will learn HTML from anyone willing to teach me (I've already asked TCoZ on IRC, and I believe Joeno said he'd help when he does get some time). I'm not saying "I'm gonna save PKMN.net!", I'm saying I want to do what I can to try. I'm sorry if any of that came across wrong before.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Pam-the-Lamb on August 30, 2012, 22:38
 I'm up for helping in any way I realisticly can  ^.^
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Lord Raven on August 31, 2012, 02:22
I'm sorry I haven't been contributing much despite creating this thread.  I'm willing to do almost whatever's necessary for community stuff- I'd love to meet with Rob and Rex at some point in the future to brainstorm ideas (even though I'm not a staff member at all).  I'd love to start tournaments of all kinds, keeping an open mind to things, etc and whatever to keep the community running.  We get newbies and I want them to have interest and incentive to stay.

Also- I'm very good these days at being pushed and pushing others to do their stuff.  I *am* incredibly persistent these days and if someone isn't doing something I will gladly do whatever I can to make sure whatever they needed to do gets done.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Richard and Blaziken on August 31, 2012, 04:59
I've actually just written up the first Pokemon of the Week article completely, and Tim said he enjoyed it, just to show I am ready to follow up with what I said ^_^
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Mulholland on August 31, 2012, 09:52
How about sending it on over to an admin?
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Caldoran on August 31, 2012, 10:25
I personally went inactive due to a combination of losing interest in Pokémon, and having a newfound interest in PC games (namely Team Fortress 2).

I'd love to poke around these forums once in awhile though, it's still a pretty nice place.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Joeno on August 31, 2012, 13:06
How about sending it on over to an admin?

A bit more on this - it's probably good to get it proofread by an admin (and a few others), and do that for a first few - I know Peter's quite responsive. Beyond that, I can set you up with access to the relevant features and talk you through how to use them. Catch me on IRC or MSN for that, or I can reserve some time if you want to arrange that beforehand.

In general it'd be nice if people get some more experience before we set that up, but I think this is one page where we can speed ahead with that, and if that goes well it'll be easier to set you up with access to other areas, assuming you want to help out in getting more pages uploaded.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Spriter on August 31, 2012, 13:17
Well, since Blaziken and Richard have started something, I think I'll knock up a few newer topics that were suggested earlier, to help out.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Pam-the-Lamb on August 31, 2012, 14:48
 Part of my assignment in college required me to proof read a news article   ;)
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Richard and Blaziken on August 31, 2012, 19:25
A bit more on this - it's probably good to get it proofread by an admin (and a few others), and do that for a first few - I know Peter's quite responsive. Beyond that, I can set you up with access to the relevant features and talk you through how to use them. Catch me on IRC or MSN for that, or I can reserve some time if you want to arrange that beforehand.

In general it'd be nice if people get some more experience before we set that up, but I think this is one page where we can speed ahead with that, and if that goes well it'll be easier to set you up with access to other areas, assuming you want to help out in getting more pages uploaded.

I've sent it along to Peter to have it checked out. :>

Yes, I would like to learn as much as I can on this and help get more pages uploaded! Anything I can do to help! I'll see if I can find a day to get on IRC very soon! (Off to work now, though, my work schedule is unusually hectic, having been scheduled double my usual hours. Once I learn this stuff, though, it won't be a problem, since I have a lot of free time at night :>)
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Mulholland on September 02, 2012, 20:47
I've sent it along to Peter to have it checked out. :>

Who loved it btw and would like to see it on the site.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Neon Nocturnal on September 10, 2012, 23:28
Reading through this thread makes me feel so sad and nostalgic at the same time. I haven't posted since I went to uni really and I had a few clashes. But This site has been really good to me and I met a lot of amazing friends. It's interesting coming back here, as I'm much more mature than I was and I've had a lot of things happen since.

It's sad that it's gone so quiet but I do think that people have simply grown up and not got the time for it. People in Full-time work are more under pressure to work more than we usually would due to the recession and cuts. I think when the economic crisis improves we could see the workers return but that's a long time yet. So people in school are most likely the best targets right now.

I hope it does pick up, I do often come here when I have some spare time, just to see how people are doing. I hope everyone is well. :)
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Dragonpika on September 17, 2012, 23:56
Just popping in to say that Rich's articles are a fantastic guide to a Pokémon, whether you're using it competitively or ingame, and that you should all check them out ^^

I'm also lending a hand with PotW from now on with a section on the Pokémon's concept, the real world creatures, plants and stories that it's based on. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy researching it!
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Wrath of Zuruggu on October 07, 2012, 21:04
Reading through this thread makes me feel so sad and nostalgic at the same time.

Ditto :[

Being busy never stopped me from posting, but it certainly made me forget. I have a looksee every now and then but, tbh, it's the lack of activity that makes me stop coming back.

I don't have anything constructive to contribute tho so... carry on~ :>
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Turner on October 08, 2012, 00:13
It's sad but I am hopeful. I think the fact is that we have a great community, but many of us perhaps have nothing to say at the moment. I mainly post about Pokemon now and largely keep out of RR, the reason is because there are so many 'What are you __________ right now?' threads which are a bit too facebook/twitterish for me, I don't really care about writing small monologues about myself or my life and I think these threads by their very nature are a little bit self-centred and thus don't promote much discussion between people. Nothing against them or anything, but they should be a supplement to other topics rather than the only topics.

We've been through a huge peak of activity and a close-knit community feeling, this is probably the first dry-period we've had. Compared to a lot of forums out there, Pokemon is still around so the subject matter is still relevant, but maybe not as many people liked Gen V which is understandable.

I think the current generation of new and active posters are maybe a bit boring, it was more interesting when we had furries and emos and gamers and people from all walks of life, then again...even on the streets things are drab. Everybody seems to look the same nowadays, I never see anyone dressing differently...I haven't even seen a goth in ages. Everyone just kinda has that faded neon skinny jeans look with bieber haircuts and messenger bags...how did this turn into a social commentary? Whoops.

Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Lord Raven on October 08, 2012, 04:50
I'm not sure if your last paragraph was symbolic or not, but I've been too tired from school to post.  Closer to winter break I'll try harder, but I know this week is VERY light for me (no lab report due next week and all that) so I'll see what I can do this week.  If only more people took an interest in my FE LP :/  (speaking of which I should continue that one day- I've been bombarded with PMs asking me if I was ok or something LOL i've just been too busy to continue it)
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Pam-the-Lamb on October 08, 2012, 15:43
 Turner.... you described one of my friends exactly in your last paragraph, he has the jeans, the haircut and the bag  :ohmy:


 I should say though, I'm not going to be on as much during the day since I try to get to the gym about 5 ish and even then I usually get home between 8 or 7.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Green Apple on October 22, 2012, 14:52
As a past member (last year or so?) I remember the forums having much  more activity than this. Seems like people are creating accounts JUST for the name rater. Maybe there hasn't beenmany people because of the name nater problem (i think it it said 400ish nicks pending) Get the name rater to do more!
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: That Girl in the 'Roo Suit on October 22, 2012, 19:45
As inhumane as the Name Rater may be at times, they are most definitely not inhuman. Does the best they can, can't really expect them to do any more than the fab job going on already...
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Joeno on October 22, 2012, 22:39
Ehmm... usually the name rater rates 200 names in a weekend rush of things. Those get filled up in a few hours.

The only name rater problem there is, is that so many names get submitted, that it's impossible to get on top of it - rate fifty and they're put back in half an hour, rate 100 and it's an hour. And they deserve some consideration - it takes time to rate these things

Sorry - doing the best we can, but considering this is volunteer work and we have a lot to keep up with, this is the best name rater service we can offer.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Earth Traveler on October 26, 2012, 18:09
Okay, Joeno, you say this is mostly volunteer work, meaning you are doing it for the love of Pokemon, and I thank you.

But forget the name rater and remember this decrease in forum activity. As for us users, we need to be proactive. Sitting around talking about the fact forums activities are down is probably not going to help their activity go up. I have an idea that might help if we can muster the motivation. Yesterday I put up a pro-SMP (Standard Movesets Project) revival post (which had not had anything posted on it for the previous 426 days) and was told that we had neither the manpower nor the motivation to revive it. Well, the fact is we definitely have the manpower, but we need to get motivated. Why is forum activity down? Because sites like Smogon are taking over. Why? Because we here at pkmn.net aren't coming up with anything original and just letting Smogon do everything like new movesets, strategies, etc. The solution is to revive the SMP and actually coming up with original movesets, which will in turn lead to new strategies, which will lead to an increase in forum activity because people will want their teams rated. There have 2 posts in the Team Building forum since October 24, and one of those was a new topic! Unless we as users do can make something happen, not necessarily the SMP revival but just anything, nothing will happen!

To Richard's point back on page 1, the higher-ups on this site need to get some motivation too. Do THEY want pkmn.net to go defunct?! Do THEY?!?! Because if they do, they'd better start caring! Because unless they start caring articles like Richard's will KEEP getting rejected and people will KEEP continue to not care.

Thank you for reading this post, which may lead to an increase in this forum's activity.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: sylar on October 26, 2012, 18:24
i suggest a weekly virgin sacrifice to spice things up a little
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: f3raligatr on October 27, 2012, 22:05
Okay, Joeno, you say this is mostly volunteer work, meaning you are doing it for the love of Pokemon, and I thank you.

But forget the name rater and remember this decrease in forum activity. As for us users, we need to be proactive. Sitting around talking about the fact forums activities are down is probably not going to help their activity go up. I have an idea that might help if we can muster the motivation. Yesterday I put up a pro-SMP (Standard Movesets Project) revival post (which had not had anything posted on it for the previous 426 days) and was told that we had neither the manpower nor the motivation to revive it. Well, the fact is we definitely have the manpower, but we need to get motivated. Why is forum activity down? Because sites like Smogon are taking over. Why? Because we here at pkmn.net aren't coming up with anything original and just letting Smogon do everything like new movesets, strategies, etc. The solution is to revive the SMP and actually coming up with original movesets, which will in turn lead to new strategies, which will lead to an increase in forum activity because people will want their teams rated. There have 2 posts in the Team Building forum since October 24, and one of those was a new topic! Unless we as users do can make something happen, not necessarily the SMP revival but just anything, nothing will happen!

To Richard's point back on page 1, the higher-ups on this site need to get some motivation too. Do THEY want pkmn.net to go defunct?! Do THEY?!?! Because if they do, they'd better start caring! Because unless they start caring articles like Richard's will KEEP getting rejected and people will KEEP continue to not care.

Thank you for reading this post, which may lead to an increase in this forum's activity.

Hmm.

Before I elaborate further, I'll just make a few points in regards to the Standard Moveset's Project, which you are indeed correct in that it has unfortunately been unactive for far too long. The Project was created when we had more competitive players and since, a lot of them have faced what this (and many other Pokémon forums face) forum suffered in that a lot of people simply grew out of it and into their own lives. As more and more competitive people (I'm talking back of the time before I became an Admin) started being swallowed up in their own lives, the SMP just started to collapse in itself unfortunately. It is a great shame, but we've never advertised ourselves (nor will we as it's not a direction we've ever wanted to take the website in) as a competitive playing forum. To even consider competing with other designated websites is simply out of the question. As far as I am aware, and concerned, the SMP is simply a failed project.

However, in it's evolution, (and in regards to Richard's article which was a grave and unfortunate oversight that was only corrected very recently and his article has now been published) Richard has been given his own berth and a chance to shine with articles too which I see as being the evolution of the SMP where he talks about a Pokémon of the Week (http://pkmn.net/?action=columns&page=viewcolumn&id=2) which integrates both competitive aspects and in-game aspects.

We do not have the manpower nor the motivation or desire to do what you are suggesting with the SMP. For what it would require, our target audience doesn't allow it. Basically, there are more pressing concerns that the Site Staff have to aim their focuses towards. That isn't being defeatist, it's being realistic and honest, rather than kidding ourselves into doing something that many, many other websites and forums have tried to do and being the ones who somehow make it work.

I for one, and I'm sure the other admins, do not appreciate your tone when it comes to caring about the website. The honest truth, whether you want to accept it or not, is that we all have our own lives and that whilst this remains our project and our plaything, it is no longer as high up our priorities as it used to be, or as high as we would like it to be. We are in the process of constantly updating certain pages, such as our Black & White 2 section, but there is only so much we can do. We are not simply making excuses, we have jobs, careers and life-goals we are all working towards which dictate how much time we can spend. But, despite all of that, it pains us that we cannot spend the time we want to on the website, so do not tell us that we do not care.



Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: lugia95 on October 27, 2012, 23:08
I'm not so sure our whole problem is that we're not attracting enough new members. We have over 40,000 members at the moment, which is more than enough to build a strong community. The problem is that we have only about two dozen active members. Any new members that join usually seem to disappear within a couple of weeks and then are never seen again. I think that, while it is important to attract new members, we need to find a way to keep our current members interested in the forum. Whether we place further emphasis on non-pokemon related things is up to the higher-ups, given this is, primarily, a pokemon forum.

Also, although I think that the Acid Reflux is a great website, and an excellent place for the people of this forum who are losing their interest in Pokemon to go, it is a different forum, and we should try to build up the activity on both the forums, rather than just moving the community onto another site.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Joeno on October 27, 2012, 23:21
Do THEY want pkmn.net to go defunct?! Do THEY?!?! Because if they do, they'd better start caring! Because unless they start caring articles like Richard's will KEEP getting rejected and people will KEEP continue to not care.

I don't want to make much more of a point out of this... but it's this sort of attitude that saps the willingness to do anything.

Yes, we do care. If nothing else, why do you think I keep paying every month to keep the server running? (Advertising covers at most half the monthly costs). Why do you think we spend time updating the site - aside from B2W2 work, I keep updating the code, currently focusing on a proper Pokedex update.

True, I don't do much about SMP. That's because I don't care as much about competitive battling. But not caring about an aspect of Pokemon is very different from not caring about the site. If that's the only aspect you joined the site for, then maybe this isn't the site for you. If there's other things... we don't focus on everything. Our choice, that, and one that keeps us sane and interested.

Also, although I think that the Acid Reflux is a great website, and an excellent place for the people of this forum who are losing their interest in Pokemon to go, it is a different forum, and we should try to build up the activity on both the forums, rather than just moving the community onto another site.

Building up two sites/communities is double the work, double the time, which we don't necessarily have. That's why there's the thought of moving the community onto another site - because a number of us will have more interest and time in building the content that helps support that community.

Time and energy is limited. We can't do everything.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: lugia95 on October 27, 2012, 23:37
Fair enough, guess I didn't think of that. So, now what? Obviously, as the admins and moderators get older, they'll have less and less spare time, which is inevitable. So, wouldn't it help if we could get more people to work on the forum (not necessarily as admins or mods, just writing articles and such) while the older members of the site (the one's who are losing their interest in Pokemon) could help with the Acid Reflux? The more people helping out, the less time it'll take.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Joeno on October 27, 2012, 23:46
If you read the thread, that's partially what we've been doing, partially what's been planned, and partially what we've been saying but didn't really go beyond people saying so.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: lugia95 on October 27, 2012, 23:54
Well then let me go beyond saying so. If you need more articles, I'd be happy to help out.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Green Apple on October 28, 2012, 12:49
The problem is that we have only about two dozen active members. Any new members that join usually seem to disappear within a couple of weeks and then are never seen again.
ive tried not to disappear
its hard with school and other stuff
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Inferna on October 28, 2012, 13:58
Maybe there could be a set limit on how many posts people need to have to access some features on the site? Yes I know this would probably encourage a lot of spam or w/e. Like say you need 20 posts before you can submit a nickname to the name rater, this could mean more people would stick around rather than just making an account purely for submitting nicknames.
This would also lighten the load of the name rater as well.
I've seen it used on another pokemon forum, you need at least 15 posts before you can post links/images. This made me want to post there and doing that I got a good feel for the community and liked it. It also prevents a lot of spambots and the like.
I don't know if/how it would work but just throwing an idea out there. I suppose though it may be unfair to limit stuff to new members idk?
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Kpyna on October 28, 2012, 15:35
i don't know about the name rater thing, inferna. the only reason why i got an account was because of the name rater. being an impatient 9 year old, where my parents originally didn't even let me post things online, i never would have even come here.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Inferna on October 28, 2012, 16:15
Yeah I guess some people would be impatient. I suppose its one of the sites main hooks so it probably wouldn't work. Ignore my post :u
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Joeno on October 28, 2012, 16:19
Maybe there could be a set limit on how many posts people need to have to access some features on the site? Yes I know this would probably encourage a lot of spam or w/e. Like say you need 20 posts before you can submit a nickname to the name rater, this could mean more people would stick around rather than just making an account purely for submitting nicknames.

Accounts aren't just meant for the forums. Yeah, that's what they're based on (for technical reasons) and you do see those numbers. But accounts are used for a lot of different features, and limiting it to only those with a certain amount of posts would run counter to that point. People sign up for the name rater and stick around after that, or they might want to use other features, all without wanting to post initially.

I don't want to hold other features hostage to force forum activity. It would increase spam and lower participation in other features a lot. The forums aren't the only part of the site and we don't want to make other parts worse just to get a few more forum posts.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Turner on October 28, 2012, 17:08
I think with the forum it's just natural, I mean the main centre of activity with the forums have been a large circle of friends of roughly similar ages mainly from the same country, it's only natural that they're all moving on and getting on with their life at a similar time. When you couple that with the fact that facebook is pretty much a cause for lack of activity on almost every forum out there, it's normal that people would rather converse on facebook and check pokemon related things on bigger sites.

IMO what will happen is that the novelty of facebook will wear off and slowly activity will trickle back and things will go back to what they were again, it's just about keeping things ticking over in the meantime.   
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Lord Raven on October 28, 2012, 19:32
Maybe there could be a set limit on how many posts people need to have to access some features on the site? Yes I know this would probably encourage a lot of spam or w/e.
Speaking from experience, it attracts a lot of spam.  It's almost ridiculous.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: lugia95 on October 28, 2012, 20:33
Maybe we don't block of the site's features, but block off certain options on the forum profiles. For example, until you've reached a certain number of posts, you can't change the custom title, or you have to use one of the site's avatars instead of you're own. It could encourage people to post more like as already been suggested, but wouldn't stop new people coming in for things like the name rater.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Joeno on October 28, 2012, 22:39
Or it would discourage people from participating in the first place.

Taking things like this away from people doesn't feel right to me.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Richard and Blaziken on October 29, 2012, 02:57
Yeah, taking things away that are already established is sort of counter-intuitive, I'd think. Adding boons to post counts could be nice, but it could also create many needless posts as well. Still, I wouldn't be against it, but then the issue comes up of what to add, as well as the time it takes to add those features.
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: Kona on November 02, 2012, 22:39
Not posted here in ages, but I figure I should add my $0.02.

Personally, I haven't been visiting as much due to becoming bored of Pokemon, White took me several months to complete, and I haven't bothered with B/W2. Last Pokemon game I played through was Super Pokemon Rumble, and that was an impulse purchase. I doubt I'd have even finished it if it wasn't for two good school friends also buying it. To be fair, they also bought B/W 2, but that's two out of about a dozen of us who bought B/W.

I'd say it's people changing over time (I personally stopped bringing my ds to school to try and be more sociable, I kinda felt guilty getting sucked into a game whilst surrounded by lovely people), we've all changed over years, and that's how it links to this site. Loads of people that used to be here are still here, the diehards, so to say. I'd even bet that a bunch if those 30 or so haven't bought the latest game, and are here purely for the community, which is where this site's always stood out to me. It's still the same people I got to know 2-3 years ago, there's not been much change. People have left, and there's not really anyone new filling those gaps, as it's hard to feel accepted in an already established community. I'd know, I don't feel like I fit in elsewhere, the other places I've grown fond of have well established communities where everyone's close, and I've never felt comfortable to join them on mumble or in a tf2 team, mainly due to a large age gap, and not being too social.

I'd suggest getting new people in, but it would be difficult. Perhaps focusing on something else for a bit if the admins are growing tired of Pokemon? I know of the acid reflux, but it always seemed empty to me, but that was months back. Maybe turn the site into more of a general gaming site, but it'd go against the site's origins
Title: Re: So the forums have had less activity
Post by: The Shrub Dragon on November 03, 2012, 14:52
If it's okay, I'm may add my opinion into this.

I haven't really posted on here in months - I'm largely inactive and seem to be posting about once a month at best and as has already been pointed out, it's because the community is thinning out.  People don't have the time or interest for forum posts and for people who've been using the website for a while, there's almost an obligation to post intelligently once in a while rather than to just chill out and enjoy themselves with some somewhat shorter, more relaxed posts (like, not everyone, but idk I guess quite a few might).  As the pressure that some people are putting on themselves increases whilst their interest and time thin out, it's sort of a perfect recipe for them to end up not posting altogether, leading to a ripple effect of topics becoming less interesting and more people becoming disengaged from topics.  I can't really suggest a plan of action for these, other than to - perhaps, as Kona said - veer the site towards gaming rather than Pokemon itself.

The problem I can see with that, though, is that we've already got somewhat of a reputation as a Pokemon site - the younger people who join the site do so largely for Pokemon rather than other gaming and it feels like if we centre the boards towards gaming, we're disengaging people who might want to join, but if we keep it the same, we're disengaging people who've already joined.


I think that the Acid Reflux seems like it's probably the best course of action - the boards here might be less active, but we'll at least have the same community on a different site that might engage them more than PUK does.