pros of being a bigger, more active site:
- we help more people
- we show up more on google, and places like deeker and dpf show up less
- we could change people's perceptions of what being ABDL means
- we'll never get bored here
cons of being a bigger, more active site:
- more crazy people, spammy posts
- less intelligent discussion -- we compromise our principles
- little or no sense of community
- impossible to keep track of all the new posts
- very difficult to make any new friends, or keep in touch with old ones
personally i can totally see both sides of this issue. i'm not even going to vote yet. i'm just interested in whether anyone has anything to say about this.
A few comments :
(1) The mods are currently discussing ways of discouraging creeps from registering, and preventing spam posts.
Various ideas have been floated, including :
* hiding the live chat / gallery links from guests, to discourage creepy people from signing up
* removing the "thread games" forum and discouraging pointless posts in general
* giving up on the "everyone should play nice!" principle and letting posters say "GTFO" to newbies who post extremely unlikely stories
* requiring members to post before they can use the live chat or gallery.
Nothing has been decided yet. Once we have a better idea of the options, we'll narrow them down into a shortlist, and will probably post a poll, to find out how much the community supports each of the shortlisted ideas.
(2) Why does the forum being bigger make it harder to make new friends or keep in touch with old ones?
Surely you can PM them just as easily as you could before?
actually there are a lot of things you can do.
- you can request that other sites link to you.
- you can discourage or limit lurking so that people have to sign up and post if they want to read the site.
- you can post statistics like "referrals" "gallery uploads" and "wiki edits" in prominent places so that people feel motivated to be as active as possible.
all those actions encourage an increase in membership and activity. in my opinion they also tend to lower the common denominator and decrease the overall quality of discussion.
i'll freely admit to being a bit elitist. my idea of an ideal community is one that people seek out over time, then lurk for a few days to see if they want to sign up, and then register IF they feel drawn to the particular type of conversation that takes place there. it'd be a small, tight community of friends who get to know each other quite well, and who are able to take the time to get to know each new person who signs up.
our forum would grow even if nothing was being actively done to increase our exposure and seek out new members. i definitely understand the desire to help as many people as possible, but we also have a reputation for being one of the few ABDL sites on the internet where common sense and rationality prevail. it'd be nice to preserve that reputation.
I am aiming for a balance.
On the one hand, yes, I am doing a lot of things to try to boost ADISC's membership and activity level. Why? Quite simply, communities are either stagnating/dying, or growing. And I'd like us to grow. More bluntly still... if a newbie came to ADISC and saw we had only, say, 10,000 posts, would they register? Probably not! That's why the stats display on the forum homepage is disabled for guests right now, and why I push new people to post and get involved. Once our stats are at a more comfortable level, where we don't need to worry about people sent here by other sites taking one look at us and saying "too small"... then I will likely stop encouraging growth so much.
On the other hand... I'm very keen to retain the distinctive, rational culture of ADISC. The question is... how do we do that? There are many suggestions, from closing the thread games forum to having moderators close any "frequently asked question" thread, directing the poster to a wiki article on the subject instead. That's one of my plans... build a comprehensive wiki database so that common questions can be answered there and don't need to be asked over and over and over again on the forums.
There are other ways I'm trying to encourage original content, too. The mature topics forum (and the way it encourages serious discussion) is one way. Discouraging repetitive memes is another. Reducing the visibility of the gallery is another possibility I am considering.
I'm still undecided about what further measures we will take towards ensuring that ADISC's unique culture is maintained. Really, I think that that is what this is about. More active is good, so long as it doesn't damage our valuable culture.
Once the moderators have whittled down the relevant suggestions to a shortlist, I'll probably post a poll to find out how much each option appeals to the community.