A Few Community Suggestions

One of my main problems with Sythe is the length of the index. There's just too many sections. I liked SuF's re-model, but that just made it even longer.

Anti-Scam Section

Delete this main category, and just move the sub-category Report a Scammer to the Market Tools section (get rid of the redirect and make it an actual section).

Scar/Simba

This is a completely dead section. It gets maybe one post every other day. I suggest it gets completely deleted, and all threads get either moved to the Runescape Cheating section, or to the Archive (although I'd recommend Cheating more).

Programming

I know this section probably won't change much, but it's also pretty dead. It would be much nicer and look more active if you reduced it to three sections.

Programming General
Software Programming
Web Programming​

There could be sub-sections in those if needed, but even if there wasn't then it would work fine.

Rules & Donations

Why is this on the forum listing? You could easily add links to it in the navigation bar up top instead, to clean up the forum appearance.
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I have a ton of other suggestions to hopefully gain activity and improve the appearance of Sythe. I'll bring those up later, but for now I have to run to class.

Something needs to be done, because Sythe is losing activity.

 

you know I was thinking who would actually read all that information, but most of it should be read...

maybe a tl;dr version(professionally done ofcourse)

on the other suggestions they don't really seem that big of a deal, but I'll leave that to someone else.

 

tl;dr: delete and merge dead sections.

 

I meant for index xD

 

Oh, right.

Anyways, to my original point, no one wants to see a dead forum. Once they scroll past the marketplace and see no recent activity, why would they want to sign up? If we make the sections smaller, then it looks more active than it actually is.

 

i could see topics switching on the front page more often, but it would still look smaller. btw get on irc more.

 

I agree with all of this. Sythe is big. But honestly, the only sections that really get posts often is Runescape. We need to expand for other games, cause no doubt prices will drop more, or in general, people will stop using the market. A year ago, prices were like.. .8/m+ about. Now down to .3/m? I give it a year more before RS markets die down, and then the site will.
Sorta went off topic there. Back to the point, if we get rid of threads, newcomers won't have to go around and see that part of this forum isn't used. It's bad appeal, especially if they're coming for something other then the markets. Getting rid of these wouldn't hurt the forums at all either, as there is only the same person or two using the section (Example: Simba section)
Rules&Donations, this could stay, but really, no newcomers come here and are like "Let's go read the rules guys!" No, they head straight to somewhere to start posting, mainly the market.

Okay, I went off-topic at points, but I just woke up and I'm tired. My mind isn't set on stone yet. Off to school I go!

 

Been busy for IRC man. and it like disappeared.

 

Sythe is perfect and does not need to change.

Anyways, yes this all needs to happen, but we all know that the attitude of most upper staff is going to prevent it from movng forward.

 

Not too sure on how much moving anti scam is needed but the other ones are very good points. It is also as you said, it makes us look more active which will attract more people to stay for a while.

 

I think sythe needs to expand to other games mainly and get our name out there to make sure that the forums activity rises again.

 

This, agreed.

 

This Alexa graph is incredibly misinterpreted, not just by you but by other people too. For a number of reasons, I'm going to ask that we not use alexa to track our growth/decline. I myself am guilty of having done this, however I've discovered that there are other sources that are more accurate. For example, it says our activity 2 weeks ago was twice as high as it is today. It also says we're up 5% for the month overall.

Let's look at some other accurate figures:

Here is a graph showing how many people google-searched the word "sythe"

http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q="sythe"

Seems fairly stable, that's a good sign. We see a spike in February 2011, as expected, but after that, there's no indication of recent decline.

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/sythe.org/

This graph is a little more damning, as it does show that our site's unique visitors are decreasing month-to-month. However, if you compare this to tip.it, runehq.com, and even runescape.com, you'll notice the exact same pattern. Rise in activity for summer, decline in activity for winter. We also all have overall declines in traffic since the same month last year. It's definitely not a "good" thing, but it's largely out of our control. Much of this site's popularity comes from the popularity of runescape, if runescape shoots itself in the foot, we're gonna feel the effects too. Not to say that increasing site activity is a bad thing, we just don't need to panic like OMG sythe is dying zomg.

I'd also agree that focusing on other games is a good way to increase traffic. That would be my personal recommendation anyway, not claiming it as my idea, it's just what I believe will work well.

For reference:

 

Either way, your graph is in a decline as well. Whether it's winter or not, we should do more to get more members.

 

I can agree with that much. Please do update with all of your suggestions when you can

 

I agree, something has to be done. My main suggestion thus far has been paid advertising. However, that doesn't seem like it will happen in the near future.

I'm all for expanding our market, or focusing on under-focused games, and making them the primary, or along side Runescape, an equal focus for Sythe.

It's clear this sites activity and traffic is in decline, and relying on previous ways based of Runescape's popularity and market demand years ago isn't going to happen. We need to make an effort, sooner rather than later.

 

I agree that it's too long, we should be condensing a lot of the forums INCLUDING the runescape discussion forums. I believe that some of them deserve to be subforums more than actual forums.

 

100% agree with this statement.

 

I think we went off-topic with the amount of people visiting sythe. I agree with the OP that the index is cluttered and needs a cleanup because there is a lot of dead sections that just fill the page.

 

He also is talking about finding ways for the site to grow. He wants this just so that it looks nicer to new members.