Well Since I spent most of my weekend hear monitoring the forums I seen a huge decrease in members logging in and the lack of posting as well in general. Although people are logging in and posting, spam posting is showing up more i caught a few myself and looked over ones that been already taken care of as well. Also old topics are surfacing again as well.

So i think it's time we brain storm idea's on how to improve overall posting and people joining and staying as well.

Let stay away from free hosting credits and free hosting plans.

some suggestions i have are

more link exhange programs that won't break the adsense rules
People posting website review on website hosting review sites
and at least my favorite joining topsites that are gear towards hosting and forums as well.

So let her some good idea's and let keep the posts to at least this topic so no hijacking and going off topic thanks.

I have also noticed the fact that people aren't on as much anymore becuase things come up of course with school starting up again. This is one of the problems and people forget about the place I think because they'll go away for awhile because they won't have the time and when they do they forget about the place. I think we need something not so time consuming that people can come and use for a little bit. I don't know if that really makes sense or not. I don't really know though other than a few games what could fit in to that category.

We could have more contests of some sort or something to reward members that make good posts or even reward someone that went from spamming to being a good poster. Maybe not necessarily credits but something to be proud of. I really don't know about the reward itself I'm not that good with that kind of thing. Of course credits will still keep people from posting because that helps them not have to post anymore.

I like the top site and review site idea. I think part of the problem though is people come thinking this site is something else. They do a google search for a runescape clan and find a sub domain to Trap17 and it ends up taking them here. I have seen a lot of people come here and think this is some sort of clan. I don't know how we could prevent that because people just don't really read the signs saying Free Web Hosting on the top of each page.

This post has been edited by Plenoptic: Sep 4 2006, 06:25 PM

We all know a forum is only as good as the people that post on it, & I admit I frequently struggle to find something decent to post it, & any threads I make myself tend to drop off the page at a high rate of knots.

This is probably down to me being somewhat older than the average Trap17 member, different age groups are interested in different things & all that.

As for getting members to stay & improving the forums, the existing members will have to join in with staff to make this happen.

A decent arcade, with high score tables linked to points/credits - always a winner. I can personally donate nearly 300 high quality java games with the corresponding thumbnails. Once set up, it'll run itself.

A weekly general knowledge quiz, again with points/credits for winners. I can donate question for this as I used to set quizes on a student website I was admin on.

Post/thread of the week competitions. Referral bonuses for people who bring new members to the forums.

There are loads of things that can be done, but the members themselves will have to give a bit of input to make sure they all work.

Well, we have a partner site/forum just for that. And I don't think it would be wise to link the credits to the Arcade. Eventually, people will find out how to manipulate it. And plus, it'd be kinda hard to code it with the Credit System and it just might bug up the forum. As Saint Michael said, it'd be best to stay away from ideas that have anything to deal with the credits and stuff.

I myself personally want something that want to do with Writing. Some sort of contest maybe. I know I'm not the best writer, but I guess it would be kinda interesting to have a contest where people submit their writing. And then we could set up a poll for people to vote on their favorite. And then people could put up reviews or something. There IS a section for this, but not many people use it sadly. (The Creativity Forum) Also, I don't think anyone even uses that forum to put Writing. All I see is songs and stuff...which isn't very interesting in my opinion because you can't really feel it unless you hear the song.

This post has been edited by Gyad: Sep 4 2006, 11:47 PM

I login to the forum everyday, and the reason I don't post sometimes is that I find nothing interesting to talk about. I think everybody should try to contribute topics which could generate a fair amount of interest to the other members. For example, in the mobile phone forum, there is hardly any interest, and it would help if people would help create threads to generate interest.

I agree that we need to find other ways to reward credits to the users other than just posting quality posts. A quiz or a writing would be a good idea, this will help the users to post more interesting posts especially the writing, it is through this that many people bother to take 30 minutes to write something and to have people comment on it would be great. This would increase their credits as well as providing an interesting pivot of discussion.

The arcade for me is a no-no if you want to add credits in it. The users would just stay 2-3 hours on the arcade, trying to get credits without contributing anything to the forum. The arcade is after all just a fun zone, but it is the posts and users which matter on any forum. No point having 1000 high scores in an arcade if the forum has hardly any new posts everyday.

Another reason why the arcade won't be up;oaded is #1 we have a gaming site for that #2 it's a BW eater as well.

It is true not alot of topics to think no making and posting about but maybe we can use the debate forum as a focus for people's opinions about world events both domestic and international.

Hopefully we can get some more input as well.