Previous Thread

I closed the last thread at 29 pages because I've got something I want feedback on, and don't want to log on in the morning to see it's gone to like 32 pages or something

Anyway, it's about the drop in activity lately...

In recent times we've had ppd comfortably in the 400s, even getting in the 500s, and we're always around 3rd/4th in the forum rankings, even 2nd before those stupid Pokemon forums got so popular!

Right now we're laying in a lowly 10th, and activity has been noticably dropping lately. Ppd has been in the 200s lately, and has just recently fallen below that. I don't want it to continue falling, I don't want this place to become stagnant and boring!

What I want to know is why do you think the forum is less active recently? The other thing is [b]how do we make it more active again?[b]

I've got a few ideas myself as to why, but I get a nagging feeling that those reasons aren't enough to make activity drop as much as it has. One is obviously the release of FIFA 10, however I wouldn't expect this to cause such a massive drop in activity, and I would have thought it would start to rise by now, over a week after release.

Another possible factor is the current international break. Most of us care a lot more about our clubs, and as the majority of people here are English, there wasn't much to discuss. 1-0 loss to Ukraine in a meaningless match that no-one saw anyway! However, I'm sure the activity has been dropping before this during busy Premiership and Champions League schedules.

Another thing I don't understand... why is the General Discussion so slow? It used to move incredibly fast. We were lucky if a thread lasted 2 days. When that was more active it seemed to encourage everyone to participate in the other threads, as you might reply to one of them whilst waiting for someone to reply in the GD...

Some other vague things that may have perhaps contributed to the downturn in activity:

Unstickying the GD
Creating the General Football discussion
The new format for the Premier League threads...




Anyway, how are we going to turn it around?

Create some threads! Don't worry about if it's thread worthy, if it's interesting and people can talk about it and they're not already talking about it - create it! One of us will close it if it's really not needed. I tried to do this with the "Have your expectations changed?" thread but I have trouble thinking of things to make threads about. Most people don't create threads, just reply to them, so rack your brains and get creating more threads! The more chance of people disagreeing with eachother, the better! But please don't make pointless, rubbish ones!

Those of you who post in Football Manager, FIFA, PES or other forums that might have members who would be interested in football in general, advertise the forum in your sig or custom title!

Post in the GD a bit more, get that banter going and community feel strengthened. Talk about games, what you did last night, what you're doing tonight, movies, cars, TV shows, etc. All the things that used to make the threads last about 5 minutes! It's only a theory of mine that I just came up with, but if people post in the GD a bit more, it helps the rest of the forum. I think Djedwardsmith used that argument once when we took it away for a few days. On that note, don't spam it, just use it!

Get off FIFA and come back here, the forum needs you!

I do think the forum will pick up again. People will get bored with FIFA, proper football will start up again, and there will likely be an influx of new members when the new football manager game comes out. If the social forum merge goes ahead then I can also see that being beneficial to attracting members here. It doesn't hurt to give the forum a bit of a boost to get out of this little slump. This is by far the best forum on neoseeker when it's active, and I want it to return to that state ASAP!

I have no idea why, but unstickying the GD has kinda killed it.

Maybe another reason PPD has dropped is alot of people have started back at school/college/uni ... I really dont know. I'll do my part anyway!

I think the GD's been slowing down ever since it's peak of a thread a day... and perhaps will build up to a similar crescendo intil it dies down again.. circle of life...

Oh yeah and because we tend to have crude spam filled fun or just let it trundle along.. one of the main reason for the presious high levels around the time IG/Sam started modding was that we got away with pretty much anything then they clamped down a bit and after the fallout from The Revolution/Punfest the activity noticeably dropped.. then picked up a bit until we got it taken away... seems a bit of all or nothing

Talking about things that make threads last five minutes tend to result in a deterioration in quality and increase of things that could be considered spam... remember...umm... was it you, Sween and Tommo? crusading for better post quality.. could argue quantitities gone down since then.. although tbh I think thats mainly coincidence. I feel when TurnA posts up his wee treat it should spark some good discussion... but I imagine some of it may head south quality wise...

As for the rest of the forum? I dunno... people back in school, uni, etc?

It's hard to try and lift PPD without spamming... you can't force most debates and if nothings happened then theres not much to disucss... the international break didn't really throw much up.. it was fairly active and flametacular after Eduardos dive/not a dive, Rooneys dive/not a dive and the added time in our game with United

My personal PPD are down from an average of 14 to 7.200 over the last 5 days, and it was the same the week before.

I'm not sure why there are less people posting, but If I had to take a wild stab in the dark (That sounds sooo wrong), then I'd have to agree with Rob's 'FIFA10 being released' comment.

Is it just me or do you find that it's just the regulars that seem to be posting now ? I've not seen some of the other members for ages

What's happened to:

Venne
jonaldinho2004
Bigger Than Jesus
Chappy_112
Chelsea Boi
The Realest

The betting threads seem to be creating a lot of discussion and is always on the first page. The General Football Discussion needs to be scrapped imo, that in turn would help move the GD forward again.

quote Blue Moon

I feel when TurnA posts up his wee treat it should spark some good discussion... but I imagine some of it may head south quality wise...

Mike knows all about the post that I'll be doing, It's also going to be in The Sun too, just waiting for them to get back to me to see what they can and can't use, hopefully people will have some views on this.

Football Manager 2010 is out soon, and with FIFA10 having been released not that long ago, I think the quicker they put this Football Social into motion the quicker it could produce more activity in the respective threads and hopefully create new members.

I still feel the 'community' is quite good at present and there hasn't been any incidents for a while now, which is good.

I'll try do my part too !

Edit: Done my bit

code

[img link=http://www.neoseeker.com/forums/35/]http://i35.tinypic.com/dxy79.jpg[/img]

This message was edited by TurnA on Oct 13 2009.

quote TurnA

Bigger Than Jesus

Banned.

It has got quieter lately, probably due to people going back to school/college/uni etc and the release of FIFA (and don't forget FM is out at the end of the month too so that may have an impact). Even so I think there has been a bit of a lack in new topics in the last few months. Towards the back of the last FF&S thread Ishy and one or two others had good ideas for threads which would probably generate some good discussion. But generally it may be a lack of ideas or a lot of ideas for threads to contribute already been done or something of a similar topic has.

Maybe something along the lines of a forum competition? Like earlier in the year we had Andy's draft which I think was a really good idea.

But the community spirit is fine, there is virtually no childish arguing/namecalling which is a start contrast to when I first started to post here and everyone seems to get on well.

Maybe open up the new PL Thread. Get everybody talking about the weekends matches.

I personally think the football GD is not needed, and is only causing harm to activity and production of certain topics. The current one was created on September 20th. Almost a month and not even half a thread demonstrates lack of interest for a start. There can really only be one topic at a time in those threads, too, which seems a bit backwards. IMO, the bottom line is that this forum just isn't active enough to warrant a thread such as that which kind of puts a lock on members creating new threads. Maybe some members are even worried about creating new threads and don't bother, purely because they don't want to be ridiculed/have their thread closed. It all leads to negativity to me.

Scrap it and allow threads for any topic. Discussion worthy in your eyes or not. If there is one place where something is being discussed heavily, then fair enough go ahead and close the thread or switch discussion points. If topics break out in the EPL thread, or somewhere else, link everyone to the thread dedicated completely to this topic and I'm sure the discussion will migrate.

If there have been good arguments in the past against what I'm suggesting please let me know. I've just never understood why topics have been closed and continuously forced into a certain few threads.

quote Underated

If there have been good arguments in the past against what I'm suggesting please let me know. I've just never understood why topics have been closed and continuously forced into a certain few threads

I don't like that either, and am trying to encourage people to create threads for things, however if someone creates a thread like "Gerrard Goal" to discuss a goal he scored, I would normally close that and link to the EPL thread. Are you saying we should allow threads like that?

I think a middle ground needs to be found. I don't want to really have a thread for every incident, but on the other hand I really don't want to force everything into the EPL thread, or whatever competition it is related to.

I like threads like the "video technology" one being created, we also had a good one on diving. Issues like this more than deserve their own threads and can't be forced into an existing thread.

If you remember, I wanted a sub forum with threads for particular matches. While the idea may not have been a good one, I think it shows I don't want to smother the discussion by directing it all into one thread.

I think the format of having "one thread for everything" used to work well in the early days of the forum when it wasn't as active as it is now, but now it has just stuck around kind of like a habit. I think new ideas are neeeded.

I'm open to getting rid of the general football discussion thread, but I can't make decisions like that on my own here.

Oh and... bring back Clowney and WiganAthDan!!

WiganAthDan came back for a few days then left again

As for Clowney, he seems to be one perma ban that didn't eventually get overturned.

Tbh, it's been shit all season so far, even when the big games have been on. Unstickying the GD and creating two threads just hasn't worked and seems to have killed off either thread, plus the fact that the GD was heavily moderated ruined some of the spur of the moment discussions. Plus knowing what some of the supers think, I think some people stop themselves from posting risque stuff.

Basically, there's no humour, and no point posting lately. I still come and read, but there's like, no decent discussions or even spam to partake in. I know I was one of the main ones against all the changes, but I wouldn't say that they're to blame for the lack of activity. Although maybe they've hindered it a bit.

quote DjedwardSmith

Basically, there's no humour, and no point posting lately.

I feel like that too, however I think if people do post more regularly then there might be more things to laugh at.

Once this article gets the OKAY from The Sun, I'll tell everyone to buy the paper and also do a thread about it on here.

I'll let you know a tiny piece of what it's about now... It involves a League Two Footballer, but that is ALL I'm saying

So, some conclusions I've drawn-up after the last few posts:

Abolish the General Football Discussion Thread

Re-sticky the General Discussion Thread

I've never tried to be heavy-handed in the GD, or anywhere across the forum since I was promoted. I'm all up for things taking a bit of a lad-ish and slightly immature tone in those kind of threads, as it reflects the football community and the personality of many football fans.

I think the forum could do with some new members. It's always refreshing to get some new opinions and maybe get a few posters on the fringes to contribute a bit more often. Maybe that is also some of the reasoning to the feeling of 'stagnation' around the forum?

Maybe it could also be worth using the location-based threads such a Europe, North American, etc. to tap into some new members? It'll give us a bit of change and spice things up a bit.

I'm also well up for more debate on football outside of England. I think we could do with a French football, other European football, Scottish lower-league and maybe some buid-up to the SA World Cup kind of threads?

quote Andres

Maybe it could also be worth using the location-based threads such a Europe, North American, etc. to tap into some new members? It'll give us a bit of change and spice things up a bit.

I'm also well up for more debate on football outside of England. I think we could do with a French football, other European football, Scottish lower-league and maybe some buid-up to the SA World Cup kind of threads?

Great idea, I'd love to get people with knowledge of other football leagues into the forum. I can ask them for tips on who's hot and who's not when placing my dodgy foreign accumulators

quote Andres

I'm also well up for more debate on football outside of England. I think we could do with a French football, other European football, Scottish lower-league and maybe some buid-up to the SA World Cup kind of threads?

Problem her is we have very few fans of football from France/Fans of French teams.. smae goes for other parts of Europe and lower league Scottish sso we can't really discuss it

Also not everyones countires going to the SA WC.. and so not everyones going to be too bothered about contributing to such a thread, I'm not saying it's a bad idea but just that it may not lead to lots of posting