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Topic Started: Apr 28 2011, 09:41 PM (847 Views)
Karrit
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Baltimore Ravenz! <3

I want to help Bluezone777 out real quick. We were talking the other day, and, well, what is your take on Rapture? How can we improve upon this place? I love coming here, but I hate how long it takes to get a response. I always see people lurking but not posting... Why is that!? Lets get this right. What would you like to see different around here, and what do you like about this place?
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Bluezone777
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I really like to hear what anyone has as I have been at a loss as to what to do to turn this place around like it used to be. I am pretty open to just about anything within reason and being things I can actually do.
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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
 
"Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think."


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Fluffy the Shark
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Emotionally Insane

I've just grown a distaste for forums. At-least on this forum, there is a unique conversation flow. Well, unique might be the wrong word. Different? Its a good thing though :P. I think the majority of us get along/accept each other :P

Most forums I've noticed just copy cat each other's rules, without any thought to why they have them. There are forums with topics like 'what is your favorite color' with it nearly impossible to have a discussion from that (well, you can always randomly ask people why they like that color.. but people tend to be tender and get aggressive about it.. when you are being honestly curious about it >.<). I enjoy it when topics diverge from the original topic, its more dynamic and enjoyable to read the topic or jump into the conversation.

Edited by Fluffy the Shark, Apr 30 2011, 05:04 PM.
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Karrit
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Baltimore Ravenz! <3

I figured it out!

My thoughts... I put a lot of work into this anyways... Alright, well first of all the layout is way too big for such a small board. I love all the forums, and the purpose behind each of them, but try and make more sub-forums instead of so many main forums. Understand?

Also, this community is so close (like a brotherhood). The layout and content should reflect that. Try adding more personal forums such as a life forum/blogging/try and get to know people more/etc. A lot of these forums are just made for spam which makes this place feel worthless. Not to mention the colors of the theme remind me of puke and just make me feel overall depressed.

Try livening this place up! And add new content everyday or at least every other day. There are a lot of intelligent people here so why not make an in-depth debate section. I could help you formulate a new layout if you'd like. But yeah that's all for now. Oh yeah, and make some competitions or something. Give members something to do. Like how about the old "We ask you!" forum. Or poll of the day? Anyways, hope that helps! :D
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Xarina
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<3 Jason

Interrogation forum: http://raptureif.net/forum/47222/
Poll forum: http://raptureif.net/forum/47228/
forum/blogging/: http://raptureif.net/forum/47248/ it can be used for that.

We have plenty of themes and we have added more when people have requested it. So I don't see any problem with the themes. We have 11 + zeta original.

I personally don't think the board is that big considering we have more than 100,000 posts on here. But I do think some of the forums could be turned into sub-forums. The news forum for example since it isn't very big (used a lot). And chit chat is where people can debate but we might need to rewrite the forum description so people are aware of that.
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Karrit
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Baltimore Ravenz! <3

You see though. Like I didn't even know you had those forums... The layout needs to be more organized and condensed. It just makes things easier to find and navigate through.
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Bluezone777
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The news forum was just added in as a main forum to see if it would take off or not. It could easily get put as a sub or merged into chit chat if necessary.

The second category is the only category I can see even getting condensed. The other two really don't have room for condensing and all the forums are either necessary(forums that don't get a lot of attention but are needed anyways like announcements) or popular.

ask me questions isn't getting used enough to stay around. That might get hidden and same goes for offline which can easily get merged into general chat. Most of the current subs don't get much attention. Polls could get merged into chit chat too.

Here is the top ten most viewed forums on here.

1. Shoutbox
2. Forum Games
3. Personality Quizzes
4. Image Warehouse
5. Entertainment and Anime/Manga Shack
6. Chit Chat
7. Spam and Humor
8. Video Showcase
9. Ranting Room
10. The Front Door
11. Offline Discussions
12. News and Announcements
13. The Interrogation Room
14. Suggestion Box
15. Poll Booth

All Forums listed have at least 20 thousand views. Shoutbox was the forum where shoutbox posts went into when that code was functioning. This helps to get an idea of what people found interesting on this board.


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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
 
"Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think."


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Fluffy the Shark
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Emotionally Insane

no. no debates. I steer. straight clear from the debate of 'gay marriage' because i always get ticked off, and I don't want to get ticked off at someone on this forum because of that. I hold very strong grudges against someone for seeing homosexuality as wrong (normally that point gets thrown across a few times in that thread.).. i'm phobic to homophobes? ironic. but owell...
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VoidHawk
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LOVE IS THE DRIVING FORCE OF ALL

Anything to liven things up is worth trying.

I personaly like debates and if such happens in here more often so much the better.

I do know that I love to visit the Forum, and I do not do it often is mainly due lack of time nowadays, but I keep visiting and posting as much as possible.
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Bluezone777
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I have been thinking of cutting down the layout to reflect the size of the community(active members wise). It's definitely grown smaller in that regard and I think the layout should reflect that. I bounced around the idea of merging inactive sub forums into their main forums and making main index forum into sub forums instead. Even shrinking down the number of categories as well. I haven't full decided yet how I would want to go about it.

I was thinking perhaps have poll, offline discussions, and news forum all merged into chit chat. Perhaps make images forum a sub of video and change the forum name/description to reflect the change. Have spam forum a sub of forum games(change name/description to reflect change obviously)

It would make the board look busier this way and may help us to pick up new people if we look alive as right now it looks dead all of the time which doesn't really help anything. Besides, it would make finding things easier if it's not all spread out IMO.

Thoughts?
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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
 
"Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think."


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Karrit
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Baltimore Ravenz! <3

I like those ideas. I don't really have the time to run a board, but the layout I made for Karrit's Krib was pretty good. IDK take a look. It was a general discussion board like this one. Anyways, I'm lost now-a-days and all my forums fail no matter how hard I try... Time to help the forums I like out. (Here, battery, and wober) ZN dispatch is dead too. Forums in general are dead.
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Abu Khadijah
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~Proud Muslim~

Forums are not dead. You just need to appeal to a niche.

What have you guys done in regards to using Social Networks to get more life?
Facebook and Twitter can be a godsend if you know how to use them.
The problem with my post is that for this forum, I wouldn't be too sure of how it'd work.

Maybe create a few of those random Facebook fanpages, humourous and witty ones.
Post an announcement for people to click 'like', hope it goes viral. Then send out one link. Bob's your uncle. Repeat if you need to.
Ideally, for such a varied forum more focussed on keeping a community than a set line of discussion (just the vibes I get from Rapture) this could be advantageous.

But, I think that's the only idea I have...
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NEW debating forum. Seeking moderators.
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dac
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forums are a dying breed. most of the forums im on are suffering with the same lack of activity: large amounts of people in the general/games sections and the cbox, but not enough anywhere else. this is mainly because either these forums dont have gimmicks or their gimmick is too good to concentrate on the forums. for example, anime/manga download sites have forums, but they're relatively similar to this one. they have a concentrated following that continues to interact with one another (like Karrit said, a brotherhood). but most people just dl, chat on the cb, then go their merry way.

this is because no one needs forums to discuss things anymore. to begin with, what sort of niche does this forum belong to? forum-like sites like stack0verflow (computer-related) and even something as small as gemot encubed(visual novel development related) get hits because they cater themselves to a certain niche. people go there to ask about questions for that niche, get resources for that niche, or just discuss about that niche. forums that just have socializing can't compete anymore with the likes of facebook and twitter...

however, aside from getting a niche, there's also another way to get more activity. the gimmick is an idea, such as providing downloads or something really fairly unique, but it has to be in conjunction with some sort of ranking or currency system. NSL (National Sig League) gets tons of activity because the users get ranked for their sigs, battle it out to get points, and then climb the rankings through evaluations by a panel. download sites such as asianload get activity because you must post in order to download. others like Gaia Online provide a store/game that's integrated into the forums. tl;dr gimmick + incentive = activity.

Edited by dac, Jun 9 2011, 12:05 AM.
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Bluezone777
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It's what I been thinking for a long time now. There was a time when you didn't need it but those days are long gone and I currently don't have the gimmick and incentive needed for the above to work.
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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
 
"Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think."


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otis booard
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I really don't know.

I wish that I did. :computer:
Edited by otis booard, Jul 11 2011, 06:17 AM.
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