Raven Silvertongue
Junior Member
Paradise was made for tender hearts; Hell for Loveless hearts.
Posts: 319
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Mar 6, 2012 12:57:51 GMT -8
Raven Silvertongue
Paradise was made for tender hearts; Hell for Loveless hearts.
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March 2009
torataco
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Post by Raven Silvertongue on Aug 15, 2009 13:37:53 GMT -8
I used to have a site... which died. I think the main reason it died was because I, the admin, lost internet for a couple weeks. And my only other staff member also lacked internet. It was really sad, because I had a lot of great members, who I really liked. I've actually since been remaking it, but I'm not sure if I should contact the old members about it...
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Sierra One
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Michelangelo "Spike" Scarlatti
Dead To The World
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burbee34
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Post by Michelangelo "Spike" Scarlatti on Aug 15, 2009 14:06:30 GMT -8
I used to have a site... which died. I think the main reason it died was because I, the admin, lost internet for a couple weeks. And my only other staff member also lacked internet. It was really sad, because I had a lot of great members, who I really liked. I've actually since been remaking it, but I'm not sure if I should contact the old members about it... I still think though that if your members were really interested in your site they could have stuck around and kept it active. I mean real life does happen for us admins to and computer troubles too. So that to me is a lame reason for members to up and leave a site they supposedly found really entertaining/interesting/fun.
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Spectra
New Member
Come say hi and stir up some trouble on TS!
Posts: 43
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Aug 14, 2012 9:32:49 GMT -8
Spectra
Come say hi and stir up some trouble on TS!
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March 2008
spectra
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Post by Spectra on Aug 15, 2009 16:19:07 GMT -8
Lack of advertising is the main cause of death for most forums, as I see it. Admins get lazy and stop advertising, and the lack of new blood while old members get caught up in their lives and slow down creates a huge downturn in activity. Eventually people just don't bother checking the site anymore. As an admin it's your responsibility to make sure your members always have something to do, or you have no right to be running a forum and pretty soon you won't be.
Deletion just seems silly to me though. Revamp it and e-mail your old members, or put it in Maintenance Mode and leave it with a link to where people can find you if they check back some time. I check the dead sites I used to be on in the hopes of reconnecting with the awesome people I chatted with there. If you have no connection to your members, maybe that's why they left. Chances are they'd like to get back in touch once they've found some free time.
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Raven Silvertongue
Junior Member
Paradise was made for tender hearts; Hell for Loveless hearts.
Posts: 319
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138458
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Mar 6, 2012 12:57:51 GMT -8
Raven Silvertongue
Paradise was made for tender hearts; Hell for Loveless hearts.
319
March 2009
torataco
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Post by Raven Silvertongue on Aug 16, 2009 14:41:48 GMT -8
I used to have a site... which died. I think the main reason it died was because I, the admin, lost internet for a couple weeks. And my only other staff member also lacked internet. It was really sad, because I had a lot of great members, who I really liked. I've actually since been remaking it, but I'm not sure if I should contact the old members about it... I still think though that if your members were really interested in your site they could have stuck around and kept it active. I mean real life does happen for us admins to and computer troubles too. So that to me is a lame reason for members to up and leave a site they supposedly found really entertaining/interesting/fun. Yeah, that's what I thought... I mean, in the few times I did have internet I even emailed them about it... But oh well, life's life.
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dominick2
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Post by dominick2 on Aug 18, 2009 15:54:54 GMT -8
With, "what makes a forum die", there are many easy answers.
Inactivity, lack of originality, power-hungry admins; the blame game pursues. The list goes on and on, which has been demonstrated here.
A good question would be "What makes a forum succeed?"
That question is a little bit trickier to answer... it's like asking many different successful forums, "What's your secret?" Not many people know.
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jadw2k9
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jadw2k9
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Post by jadw2k9 on Aug 19, 2009 6:01:14 GMT -8
I've actually since been remaking it, but I'm not sure if I should contact the old members about it... Why not? It's worth a try. Not really your fault when you could't get on your forum. A lot of the time, it's just that the admin had made their forum at the right time and the right people have come along. Though besides that will come hard work and consistency.
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emimar
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Post by emimar on Aug 22, 2009 7:46:24 GMT -8
This is an interesting thread. I've been a moderator of a forum (not on proboards), but on another forum host. It started to die and the owner of it decided that it would be a good idea to move it to a different host. It worked to begin with, as it attracted some old members back and was pretty active while it was being set up. What went wrong? Moderators left because of real - life issues getting in the way and I myself went to university. I left it in a good state last September and I only really seem to be the moderator whose still consistantly around. Problem is now, I don't have enough time to devote to the site, the owner of the forum thinks that I should maintain everything without help from even him and well, I'm sorry to say, but university is more important and if the owner doesn't invest any time or energy into the forum, then how do you expect staff to and then in turn, ordinary members? I still like the idea of having a forum, etc, and so made one on proboards (problem is, I worry about it dying because of uni!) but I would have stayed with my old one perfectly happy if most of the others had stayed and put effort in. It's a shame, because while everyone was interested in it, it was a good site. One of the problems I also think occured was the fact that a lot of the old material from the original forum was going to be moved over to the new one and this never happened. A lesson here:
- If you're the owner of a site, make sure that you're willing to pubt time and effort into it yourself and don't expect moderators to do absolutely everything, even if it means that sometimes you have to pay profressionals do work which your moderators aren't capable of.
- Make sure you have enough moderators to run the site properly - e.g. make graphics, keep the peace between members, make sure they follow rules and of course, come up with ideas to keep members interested. Sometimes, members come up with ideas themselves, but not always!
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jeffhulk
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Post by jeffhulk on Aug 22, 2009 15:07:41 GMT -8
Well mine went quite because of someone on my site opened their own site and I have very strict rules about trolling on my site .
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dovehroseninja
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Post by dovehroseninja on Aug 22, 2009 15:12:43 GMT -8
Emimar, that was really helpful! ^^
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Candice
?Just because you haven?t heard about it, doesn?t mean it?s a conspiracy theory.?
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quietgirl
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Post by Candice on Aug 22, 2009 15:15:01 GMT -8
Well mine went quite because of someone on my site opened their own site and I have very strict rules about trolling on my site . Emimar, that was really helpful! ^^ Hello, Welcome to D:YP. Please make sure that all your posts are at least 4 sentences long otherwise it looks like you didn't put any thought in your posts and they do not contribute to the conversation. Thank you.
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Daleeria Mae Chaotica
I am not a professional in no life or alternate universe...
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daleeria
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Post by Daleeria Mae Chaotica on Aug 22, 2009 15:23:36 GMT -8
Personally I believe not advertising, having TOO strict of rules, and being a jerk of an admin can really affect it...
Personally I'm one of the types that pretty much puts: Use common sense and don't offend others on purpose as the rules and I never had much of a problem with my members causing trouble... unfortunately that forum died mostly because I was 14, had a short attention span and too much homework to have time to even WRITE let alone run a forum... I place the blame mostly on myself because I could have done a lot more to make it active... at the time though I was very new to forums and didn't understand the concept of advertising except through word of mouth and links on DeviantArt and other stuff like that...
Being a jerk = bad... I was on a WONDERFUL website; it was unique, fun, full of members, and could have been amazingly overactive... but the admin was a real meanie to everyone, especially new members, and he was SO STRICT at times it was disgusting, because it's like we had no freedom to really make our characters form into real people so to speak...
But, alas, every forum dies from a different reason... I think those are three main causes, but I don't think there's any SPECIFIC reason why a forum dies!!! That's just me though!
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Rhinestone Eyes
Proud Owner of Rhinestone Eyes
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fiona007
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Post by Rhinestone Eyes on Aug 28, 2009 3:03:21 GMT -8
This is an easy question for me. The boards that I have been on have died, mainly because of a lack of an admin. I was first a member on a gossip girl role play site and when I offered to help out because of a decrease in activity, the admin promoted me to co-admin with another member on the site. However, at the time, I was no aware of what that meant. The main admin disappeared for months on end, along with the other co-admin without leaving me any kind of tools to help run the site. I could not accept new members. I wasn't given admin powers yet. All I could do was message new members and ask them to please be patient until the main admin returned. When she did momentarily, it was to ask me to basically completely update the site and try to get more new members before she disappeared again, neglecting to give me any of the admin powers I needed. Eventually I gave up and left the site. I still check back every now and then and because the admin only gets on once every month, it's essentially dead.
I then moved onto another role play site where I knew most of the characters from old forums. It seemed to be thriving for a while before the creator of the site had to leave for personal reasons. From there, it went downhill. The rest of the admins neglected to update claims, became very clique-ish, and never posted in an actual thread. When they began to complain about activity and enforced an activity check for all members but exempted the administration, most of the members, including me, got frustrated and fed up. I took two other of the members from that site and created my own (below). Because of the change of environment and what I would like to think as a better admin team, many of the characters followed us to the new site, abandoning the old one. It's currently dying and the admins have essentially given up and are barely doing anything to keep it afloat.
Other people may have had different experiences, but in my opinion, a good admin team keeps a site functioning like a well-oiled machine. Without it, the machine becomes rusty and eventually comes to a halt.
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LunyRed
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lunaticeyes
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Post by LunyRed on Aug 31, 2009 6:29:53 GMT -8
Let's see now. I've visited many forums around and seen some forums die of activity. If a forum somehow dies, it could be from following reasons: The admin fails to do any advertising at all. Advertising helps gain attention from the public and may attract other people to join if the forum also shares their interests. So yeah, if no one would ever hear of the forum, it would never gain visitors who may get interested to join. The admin does nothing else for the site.One of my online friends is also an admin of his own forum. What I find annoying is that, after he has created his forum, he hasn't done anything much from it because he waits for assistance from any of his members to help him finish the forum. If he wished to handle a forum, he should have at least thought about it if he knew he could take the responsibility! An admin has to be creative, full of ideas, and innovative in a way that he/she will exercise his authority to implement all kinds of new things for the forum such as contests or any kind of special forum activity/festival, etc. .....Chatbox?Although I honestly think chatboxes aren't that of a big issue, because the members use the chatbox to get to know the other members better - especially if the forum is a roleplay forum. It's not bad at all. If they always stay in-character within the forum, they could alway chat out-of-character in the cbox. But as for chatboxes, they should NOT remain as the forum's most important feature! I've seen a forum where the chatbox was at the top of the forum and at the same, was just too FREAKIN' LARGE, that it overshadows the forum, thus ignoring the forum's existence and people just use the GIGANTIC, HUMONGOUS chatbox for nothing more but....CHAT! So the entire place was nothing more but a chatroom, thus dropping the idea of a forum existing in there. I think chatboxes would be fine if they would be inside a board in which only members could access, not the guests? Because chatboxes are prone to trolling and flame wars anyway. Staff members that are unreliable.There might be admins who might not be able to handle all the work so they would really need the help of their fellow staff members to finish the job. Example: staff members who would specialize in graphics, or staff members who would facilitate the roleplays in the RP boards. If staff members would be doing nothing in the forum, then that means the admin didn't carefully select the right people to do the job. Staff members are also role models and they should not just sit around doing nothing. If the members don't see the staff members that active, they may lose faith in the site, thus lose interest with coming back in a forum that has lazy staff people. So that's that from me.
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tom
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Post by tom on Aug 31, 2009 7:35:34 GMT -8
I am an avid board admin, I have over 15 boards and most of them, 80% are active. I have had some of my boards just die or there were never any members join. So, I focus on the boards of mine that are active. Post often, affiliate with other boards, link exchanges help. I did realize that your board has to be unique and different. There are lots of boards out there. I also think with facebook, twitter, other social network sites, message boards are not highly sought after. I remember the time when everyone I knew were on message boards.
Good luck to all you admins who have boards out there.
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Rick Ace
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Post by Rick Ace on Aug 31, 2009 7:56:22 GMT -8
What makes a forum die? I could go on forever. But I'll go across to one point. If there are over 3 million Proboards. I bet you there are more than 1 million Harry Pottrer sites for that. But probably more. The sad part about this is that Harry Potter can be a great concept. he problem is members see a great HP site. They want a similar site, and make it better. So they imitate that HP site. Really , its a pattern. If you see someone on a HP site, and later they create their own, I've seen identical copies with the same colors, but different image. The same boards, but with different names....
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