So I've been trying to figure out "whats with the coldness" at the forums... Is it still over the botched Railroad.net parody? Is it my overall over the top personality?
I found out while it's those two things, it's mainly my expansion plans that I'm shoving down the throats of our users... Many people say "we've only been here for a year, why are you try to do this?" Or "Why would WMATA fans come to an MBTA fan site?"
Because I'm trying to raise the bar.
I've wanted our forum to become a top transit forum for a while, as opposed to a MBTA fan site. Our users say "why go national?". Well why would you all care? You all are MBTA fans... I'm trying to make a successful website and that means having a site with thousands of users as opposed to 100... Having a huge site works to OUR advantage... today, when I have a guest series, I can't get anyone to do it because we are nothing... But however, if we are this huge transit site, they would come to us to be in a guest series...
And forget that, we'd have alot more posters to contribute and we'd all gain more information... why not?
But is this possibile? If this was a formidable business, expanding would work great. I know about building brands, I've done it for many years (despite my age). But can I do this with the Forums? Was the "MBTA Forum @ Boardzero" a "brand" (if you will) that I could sell? Do people enjoy the MBTA Forum experience? And the MAJOR goof I made with the RR.net parody didn't help... so now I have a brand with a new name, where our users have mixed feelings about me... and while we have a great partner in Transithistory, people have a bad taste in their mouth about the Forums @ Transithistory....
I put in a "Moderator-In-Charge" to do the adminstrative editting of the site and basically be the head of the site while I do the major work... This was done to take the heat of me... But, this guy isn't hot about our forums either... Personally... Corey (yeah, I'm calling you out - this is CS - I've done crazier things) I wouldn't enlist for something I think doesn't work.. but whatever....
So whats the problem guys? Since I started the expansion, our post went up... I've halted Railroad.net parodies and by the way - we (Otto Vondrak, and myself) made up a long time ago - for you all to still be angry over it is outrageous as we have a smooth working relationship right now...
So what is our problem? Why aren't our users happy with our service? While it shows that obviously, our usage is going up, the users generally have a negative view of the Forums... Tell me guys, what is the problem?
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3 comments:
Personally, I think it's great as is, but unfortunately, not everyone else does for some reason. Too all the others, please be patient, we should be able to make a rebound.
We never went down... we are up... any kind of "rebound" would be a surge... as we never go down...
I'm pretty happy with the forum overall. Doesn't effect me what your expansion plans are. It would be nice to try and lure more hardcore users and insiders over here because it generally allows for quicker better responses to questions but other then that I think we're doing fine.
I don't think anyone is angry over the rr.net parody anymore. Personally I never was just a bit confused by your timing.
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