[CnC] Forum Restructure

The market has always been our blood and the way most people find us. The community used to be amazing and people would stay around because of the people. There was always somewhere to post and someone to talk to. You could find people to play games with and there was always people on to have discussions. A lot has contributed to the destruction of this and we can gain traffic and use that to rebuild our community. I think that is completely doable.

It IS completely doable. We just need CDT/staff motivated to start bringing changes, and admins willing to make those changes. It's not going to be free. Advertising costs money, but it would work out in the long run.

 

[SuF]

It IS completely doable. We just need CDT/staff motivated to start bringing changes, and admins willing to make those changes. It's not going to be free. Advertising costs money, but it would work out in the long run.

I don't even think we need advertising but we do need more motivated individuals willing to put time and effort in.

 

Sometimes a discussion has to go back and forth between ideas in a different light to come to a conclusion. I know you're against removing sections but cleaning up the structure can promote activity, a clear direction on what this restructuring hopes to achieve would be a better discussion before deciding what to add and what to remove, which is what I feel most of the members on this thread are currently trying to do. We all have different opinions on what will succeed but we should also be able to back up why our claims can promote activity.

If our focus was solely on increasing traffic I would say continue to update viral threads but as we seen none of the members who joined contributed which was quite redundant. If the focus is the market we can promote safe trading measures or focus on new markets, and if the focus is to develop a community then segregating it won't achieve this purpose.

The site set it's fate the day it was established. It doesn't really make sense to combine discussion in a market forum. I guess OP figures that the market would somehow support discussion more since both are in the same place which is slightly understandable, but in reality it just doesn't look right. At that point you're trying to indirectly force discussion by stuffing things together. I was never an advocate of forcing activity, rather one of letting things take it's course. You stop freaking out about the activity of the site once you realize that activity is correlative to the status of the market.

 

You can't really force people upon the idea of discussion. You can post all you want and start up topics, but ultimately its on the community to decide if they want a discussion based forum or a market based forum.

Sythe has done a fair job at integrating the two options but I feel this site is more market based and should be pushed as one. Trying to form it into a discussion forum is quite far fetched and doesn't seem to be working.

This forum has failed numerous times to get more community involvement by starting topics and such. Those events/discussions bring out the motivated posters, but they're not bringing in new members.

If you tell a friend about Sythe, what do you tell them to get them here:
1) It's a place to sell virtual goods
2) It's a place we talk about our games

I feel like more people will come here if it's marketed as a full on market forum. That includes ads, smart marketing, etc.

 

I don't know if you mean the OP is trying to make it a discussion forum, Barton, but I was just trying to organise to where it makes sense for me

I think the general idea is that the market brings members but the community and the events and discussion retain them and make them choose Sythe to come back to over other markets.

 

[SuF]

You can't really force people upon the idea of discussion. You can post all you want and start up topics, but ultimately its on the community to decide if they want a discussion based forum or a market based forum.

Sythe has done a fair job at integrating the two options but I feel this site is more market based and should be pushed as one. Trying to form it into a discussion forum is quite far fetched and doesn't seem to be working.

This forum has failed numerous times to get more community involvement by starting topics and such. Those events/discussions bring out the motivated posters, but they're not bringing in new members.

If you tell a friend about Sythe, what do you tell them to get them here:
1) It's a place to sell virtual goods
2) It's a place we talk about our games

I feel like more people will come here if it's marketed as a full on market forum. That includes ads, smart marketing, etc.

There was a community. There used to be a lot of discussion. There can be two sides to the same site. I'm not sure why you think there can't be?

 

I don't even think we need advertising but we do need more motivated individuals willing to put time and effort in.

The only time advertising isn't necessary is when the community is growing on its own by word of mouth. That's obviously not the case. We're losing users as well as activity per user.

 

[SuF]

The only time advertising isn't necessary is when the community is growing on its own by word of mouth. That's obviously not the case. We're losing users as well as activity per user.

Doesn't mean that we can't change some stuff and rebound.

 

I don't know if you mean the OP is trying to make it a discussion forum, Barton, but I was just trying to organise to where it makes sense for me

I think the general idea is that the market brings members but the community and the events and discussion retain them and make them choose Sythe to come back to over other markets.

I would say more the ease of a site and populous of said site. More market members, more business. Therefore, more members.

There was a community. There used to be a lot of discussion. There can be two sides to the same site. I'm not sure why you think there can't be?

I never said their can't be. Integration is obviously possible, look at the current forum. I'm saying that you gotta choose what vision you want to put across: market or discussion based. You can have both obviously.

 

Honestly, archive viral threads - it's a waste of space and like punjabi said, not one of these dog enthusiasts contributed to the forum

Removing community input would be a good idea too, just feedback is fine.

Agreed with punjabi about moving market tools above the market place, should help safe trading practices.

Don't remove SFA but rather loosen the rules there. Also a lot of the stickied threads in general from there should be removed. I'd say we don't even need Richard's permission for that since it's not like he actively participates in the forum at all, we're the ones that do. I'm with punjabi - I've stayed away from SFA for majority of my sythe.org tenure for fear of getting infracted in the SFA. It just feels like there were too many barriers to posting in there.

What are some opinions on taking the Media section: http://www.sythe.org/media/ , and collapsing all of the subsections into one section? I know I frequently do not go into there because it requires additional clicks to get to the TV/Movies section and none of them are particularly active.

I agree with this

Perhaps it would benefit from having post count count. Although that would also limit it in other ways since we couldn't just let people post constantly like they do now.

I don't see why there is such a stigma around post count in certain sections, post count isn't an indicator of trust and lots of other forums give post count for shit posting making it more of an incentive to participate in these forums, why not?


I believe it was sellerman that originally suggested it but having multiple donor ranks to choose from (from a diverse range of games) would be a good idea. The ranks in general need an overhaul though to move into a more general gaming type of thing instead of being solely runescape focused like it is currently. A straight shift to general icons for moderators/OMMs then multiple to choose from for donor ranks sounds like a good idea to me.

As for rest of the proposed layout, looks fine to me so far although would definitely like to see more discussion with valid points included at the bottom of the OP so as not to be lost ITT

 

[SuF]

I would say more the ease of a site and populous of said site. More market members, more business. Therefore, more members.



I never said their can't be. Integration is obviously possible, look at the current forum. I'm saying that you gotta choose what vision you want to put across: market or discussion based. You can have both obviously.

Ah. Ok. I understand what you're saying now. Thanks for clarifying.

Honestly, archive viral threads - it's a waste of space and like punjabi said, not one of these dog enthusiasts contributed to the forum

Removing community input would be a good idea too, just feedback is fine.

Agreed with punjabi about moving market tools above the market place, should help safe trading practices.

Don't remove SFA but rather loosen the rules there. Also a lot of the stickied threads in general from there should be removed. I'd say we don't even need Richard's permission for that since it's not like he actively participates in the forum at all, we're the ones that do. I'm with punjabi - I've stayed away from SFA for majority of my sythe.org tenure for fear of getting infracted in the SFA. It just feels like there were too many barriers to posting in there.



I agree with this



I don't see why there is such a stigma around post count in certain sections, post count isn't an indicator of trust and lots of other forums give post count for shit posting making it more of an incentive to participate in these forums, why not?


I believe it was sellerman that originally suggested it but having multiple donor ranks to choose from (from a diverse range of games) would be a good idea. The ranks in general need an overhaul though to move into a more general gaming type of thing instead of being solely runescape focused like it is currently. A straight shift to general icons for moderators/OMMs then multiple to choose from for donor ranks sounds like a good idea to me.

As for rest of the proposed layout, looks fine to me so far although would definitely like to see more discussion with valid points included at the bottom of the OP so as not to be lost ITT

We want to limit spamming opportunities but yea post count is a great motivator.

 

Doesn't mean that we can't change some stuff and rebound.

Absolutely true. Once again, we just need to get moving and make some changes.

 

Ah. Ok. I understand what you're saying now. Thanks for clarifying.



We want to limit spamming opportunities but yea post count is a great motivator.

I think we're too worried about spam, sythe has really high post standards in comparison to similar sites. I'm not saying be on their level as they're kinda shit but ya know?

 

Bump.

 

[vegeta508]

I agree with the forums needing an overhaul, when I first started here runescape was the only thing I cared about.
After being here for awhile and doing runescape related trades for the first few months I wanted to slowly branch off into other game markets to widen my customer base and business levels.
On Sythe at the time their wasn't really a cs:go section at all merely just a steam section.
Once the cs:go market section got added I found it great opportunity to get into it as I was already avidly playing the game and enjoying buying/selling skins on csgo lounge.

I believe it was sellerman that originally suggested it but having multiple donor ranks to choose from (from a diverse range of games) would be a good idea. The ranks in general need an overhaul though to move into a more general gaming type of thing instead of being solely runescape focused like it is currently. A straight shift to general icons for moderators/OMMs then multiple to choose from for donor ranks sounds like a good idea to me.

Runescape is slowly dying like we all know, and I believe the donations ranks like plenty have mentioned and Jack mentioned in one of his larger posts on this thread, we need to have general donation ranks that don't pertain to just runescape..

 

[Xier0]

I'd support the new suggestion. Sand box is pretty dead, not many people really use it. Hopefully moving it would help. Also, I don't even see a livestreaming tab anywhere 'o.o

EDIT: Found livestreaming. It's very hidden and hard to locate. Would definitely support moving it to be much more noticeable if it is to help boost the community. If its just for people to livestream, I think it should stay down there.

Sand box being dead has little to do with forum placement rather than lack of purpose of that section.

 

Bump, share your thoughts & ideas

 

[Superfluous]

Do you think it's worth posting your redesign (if you want to make changes before posting it) and letting people vote on different aspects of it? Could do a brief online survey or something

 

I was hoping for a few ideas before we poll anything, refine whatever happens here. Just hoping for a brainstorm/more ideas - I don't have all the know-how myself to turn the place around

 

[SuF]

I was hoping for a few ideas before we poll anything, refine whatever happens here. Just hoping for a brainstorm/more ideas - I don't have all the know-how myself to turn the place around

Going to have to be more than just some forum changes.