Zelaron Gaming Forum - View Single Post - How to improve activity on Zelaron (vote, discuss and ideate)

Profile · 03:01 PM

Lately, I feel that Zelaron has slowed down significantly, almost to the point of stagnation. Sometimes we get quite a few posts per day, but on other days, the forum is a virtual ghost town.

New posts almost exclusively originate from old-time members who still believe in this forum ("The Forum that never dies" has survived for more than five years thanks to all of you; our dedicated members and our staff, save tacoX). We get around 1000 unique visitors per day, but only an average of 7 of these guests decide sign up. Most of our sparse, new members never post anything at all. This needs to change ASAP, and this thread will help us ensure it happens.

!King_Amazon!, Lenny and I have listed some ways to make Zelaron a more active (and awesome) forum. Discuss the ideas listed, suggest new ones, and vote for your favorites:

Quick Signup
This should exist both in the archived section on the forum (where most guests end up thanks to search engines) and on the regular forum. All you'd have to do is to enter a preferred user name, and click an OK button. Then you're taken to a confirmation page which says something like "Thank you for registering, CreativeUsername. Your temporary password is: kr52. Please change your password and set up an e-mail in the fields below, or [Go back to the thread] to post right away."

Archive Quick Reply for guests
A quick reply in archived (search-engine friendly) threads, for guests. Posts would still appear moderated, which means more work for the staff, and easier for spambots to flood the forum, but in return, it becomes significantly easier for everyone to post. Lenny adds that we could "put a five post limit on a guest's IP, with a message after five posts inviting them to quick/full sign up."

Zelaron Shop
Active users will gain a certain amount of points per day (e.g. 5 points per day if the "Today" activity bar is full), which can be used to purchase things in the Zelaron Shop. This will work as a great incentive to stay active. Right now, the only rewards for remaining active are the new postbit and having your custom title displayed. The Zelaron Shop may allow users to purchase their own sub-forum, moderator status for a day, a Zelaron t-shirt, new arcade games, access to a "Gold Forum" and so on.

Adult Forum
Self-explanatory. For 18+ members only.

Remove thread expiration
This has been discussed before. (1) (2) Basically, old threads expire and thus become impossible to reply to. Keep in mind that a lot of visitors find Zelaron via search engines. Most of the Zelaron threads which are indexed on Google and Yahoo have expired. It is likely that a lot of our new members want to reply to the thread they found on Zelaron, as it contains information relevant to their search. At the moment, they can't.

In !King_Amazon!'s words: "It might make the difference between someone staying and someone leaving. Even if it's thread digging, it's activity, which could spark conversation (hey guys, remember when...happened?) It's an unnecesary feature that just discourages activity."

Change the rules for how the new postbit (larger avatar) is obtained
In !King_Amazon!'s words:

"Currently, to get the postbit, you have to reach 100% activity. I do not want to change that.

Once you reach 100% activity, you have to wait a month until you get the postbit permanently. I do want to change this. I think once you hit 100% activity, you should keep the postbit for good.

Currently, once you have the postbit for good, you have to stay above 50% activity to keep it. I do want to change this. I think you should have to stay above 75% activity to keep it.

Now, my reasons behind these changes. Currently, I think the postbit is out of the reach of most of our posters, and I believe they believe that as well, so I don't think anyone really tries for it. I also think that requiring the people that do have it to stay above 50% activity doesn't really promote much activity, because to be at 50% activity, you only have to post twice every day(actually less, I think, so probably a mixture of posting once and posting twice), or come and post 4 times every other day. 50% is retardedly easy to keep, and isn't much activity. 75% activity isn't all that hard to keep, either, but it's what I would consider active."

More forums/Bring back regular mods
!King_Amazon! says:

"One thing that has been changed in the recent past, is the removal of forum-specific mods and more specified forums. This kinda goes hand-in-hand with Lenny's suggestion of having a forum for each console. Back in the day, we had lots and lots of forums, some of which weren't all that active, but they were very specific(Final Fantasy forum, Starcraft forum, etc.) We also had individual mods for specific forums(RPGmaker mod, Starcraft mod, etc.)

I think that this change had good reasons behind it, in theory, but in practice I think it just lowered activity. Having less forums and less staff makes the forums look neater. Having more forums and more staff makes the forums more active, naturally. We need stuff like this. For instance, Vault Dweller, the new guy in town, really digs Fallout. Make a fallout forum, make Vault Dweller the mod, have him post strategies and story conversations and stuff like that, and you've got an active staff member and active forum to go with it.

Make Bluecube the RPGmaker forum mod(or someone else who's more active, perhaps), have them post guides and tutorials, places to download RPGmaker(host it on Zelaron if we have to.) Have newbie guides so people who dont even know anything about RPGmaker might be interested in getting into it. I've never used or tried using RPGmaker, but if there were some sort of guide for starting out(what all you need to use it, what you need to download, good websites to get these things) I'd maybe be interested in trying it. If other members have that same thought process, we've suddenly got a forum that is possibly growing in activity."