What makes a forum die?

[Former Member]

Mar 22, 2016 2:54:34 GMT -8 Anatoly said:

people never get informated if a forum gets created (sorry if this post is existing, i am too lazy too see all 62 pages)

The directory has a listing of new forums.

[LostInTransit]

In my opinion, what make a forum die is what the forum's about, what the forums members consist of, and diversity.. if the forum is not willing to change, then there's no room for improvement. No matter how many members you have, if none participate.. the forum will die.. Lastly, the typical forum (like Proboards) is being pushed aside by sites like Facebook and Goolge+ but even those sites are having issues, which all related to the quality of the forum and it's members.. What's being lost, is the human contact, if one doesn't run a taunt ship it will become obsolete. I personally like and enjoy the ease of use of these old school forums.. 

[Eileen]

A few reasons really.
Main thing is that admin is not active enough. If the site is just starting, you basically have to be there 24/7, guests are always coming in and if they say HI on the cbox and no one is there, they'll leave. They might care enough to bookmark your site and come back a different time, or they might now and you've lost a potential member.

Rudeness. I don't see this often, but I do see it. Mostly, it's rudeness towards guests or people from other sites. Like if you're trying to advertise on a site and have a question, so you ask it on chat. Then someone responds with a rude comment like "it's on the advertising board! It says advertising on it, like really it's clearly written right there, read it". Guests can see your chat and be turned off by things like that. And then whoever you were rude to will spread the word.

The last thing I'll talk about is what your site is about and the kind of coverage it gets. Most people agree to come up with something unique. There's also the problem of making a Fandom type site that doesn't have a huge fan base or gets ruined by an outside factor. For example, I made The 5th Wave site based on the books- love the books. But then the movie comes out and it just sucks, so then everyone automatically thinks it just all sucks and are turned off by it.

But I think with any problem you come across, you have to make the decision on whether you are going to stick to it and give it 100% or you're going to give up.

So the ultimate death of your site is dependent on you.

[grimpooper]

Any forum whose purpose is unclear is doomed to die before it even started. If you make a forum without anything unique to offer, nobody will even bother joining you except maybe your own friends.
Basically anything where the forums are treated as a chat room. A forum board is NOT a chat room, that's what the ShoutBox is for. Having a topic dedicated to chatting only results in pages upon pages of low-quality posts like "hi", "how are you?". It's basically the quality. If your site is the shoddy workmanship of a typical Internet noob, then it is low quality.


There's also the organization and polishing needed. Nobody likes to join a forum with seizure-inducing design and typos everywhere. These forums will die even if people joined, because they will soon find a better place to be, or just gets tired of how low the quality of the forum is.


Don't make a forum with the purpose of chatting. Don't expect lots of members to join overnight, and don't join other sites for the sake of advertising. The last one will only leave a bad impression to your site, especially if the site you're advertising is low-quality. Ultimately this poor organization practice leads to the site's death.

[The Maniac On Wheels (The MOW)]

Mar 25, 2016 19:22:42 GMT -8 grimpooper said:

Any forum whose purpose is unclear is doomed to die before it even started. If you make a forum without anything unique to offer, nobody will even bother joining you except maybe your own friends.
Basically anything where the forums are treated as a chat room. A forum board is NOT a chat room, that's what the ShoutBox is for. Having a topic dedicated to chatting only results in pages upon pages of low-quality posts like "hi", "how are you?". It's basically the quality. If your site is the shoddy workmanship of a typical Internet noob, then it is low quality.


There's also the organization and polishing needed. Nobody likes to join a forum with seizure-inducing design and typos everywhere. These forums will die even if people joined, because they will soon find a better place to be, or just gets tired of how low the quality of the forum is.


Don't make a forum with the purpose of chatting. Don't expect lots of members to join overnight, and don't join other sites for the sake of advertising. The last one will only leave a bad impression to your site, especially if the site you're advertising is low-quality. Ultimately this poor organization practice leads to the site's death.

Even if you make your forum unique, even by putting a new twist on a board in a general chat forum, nobody would bother at times.

And don't get me started on the Shoutbox. I see no useful purpose for a "chat room" on a forum.

Typos in the board name or description is a complete turn off, especially for a spelling Nazi like me.

[Mandoli]

Mar 25, 2016 20:35:12 GMT -8 The Maniac On Wheels (The MOW) said:

Even if you make your forum unique, even by putting a new twist on a board in a general chat forum, nobody would bother at times.

There are so many times you can make a general forum until the concept has been beaten to death, though. I don't frequent them as much as I did in the past, which is kind of saying that I don't have as much of an interest in them anymore.

[Former Member]

Mar 28, 2016 15:48:22 GMT -8 Mandoli said:

Mar 25, 2016 20:35:12 GMT -8 The Maniac On Wheels (The MOW) said:

Even if you make your forum unique, even by putting a new twist on a board in a general chat forum, nobody would bother at times.

There are so many times you can make a general forum until the concept has been beaten to death, though. I don't frequent them as much as I did in the past, which is kind of saying that I don't have as much of an interest in them anymore.

I have said it before and I will repeat it.
Many admins work hard to maintain their general forums.
Inactive members and a lack of members do not help.
All of the hard work and sincerity does not guarantee genuine members.
After awhile the admin may feel that keeping his/her forum maintained is no longer worth it.

[Mandoli]

Mar 29, 2016 1:42:17 GMT -8 private said:

Many admins work hard to maintain their general forums.
Inactive members and a lack of members do not help.

But those two things really don't apply in my case - I just feel as though I've found less of an interest in going to general forums. I don't get why "inactive members" now equals "spawn of evil".

[Former Member]

Mar 29, 2016 5:45:14 GMT -8 Mandoli said:

Mar 29, 2016 1:42:17 GMT -8 private said:

Many admins work hard to maintain their general forums.
Inactive members and a lack of members do not help.

But those two things really don't apply in my case - I just feel as though I've found less of an interest in going to general forums. I don't get why "inactive members" now equals "spawn of evil".

 No need to be so dramatic. Inactive members do not "equal spawn of evil."
Inactive members do not help maintaining the life of the forum.
Who wants to join a forum with many inactive members?

You have a forum. What do you do about inactive members?

[Mandoli]

Mar 29, 2016 9:39:08 GMT -8 private said:

You have a forum. What do you do about inactive members?

I keep them in case they want to come back. If they want to take time off, they're free to return at any time. If they want to delete themselves, I'm all for it. I'm not deleting anyone because I'm not going to wait for them to return.

Not the thread for this, though. Thought there was already one for inactivity.

[Former Member]

I guess not promoting or giving out updates makes members slowly drift away.

[Matt]

I think the longevity of a forum is highly dependant on the way the admin runs it.
If an admin is rude and nasty that forum will not survive. an admin has to interact with their community in order for it to survive well. an admin has to be polite and understanding if they want their community to survive.
I try my best to run my site in a way that makes everyone happy, if you try hard, then your forum can succeed.

[Former Member]

This seems to have gone dead, but I was wondering...Is anyone willing to provide a few links through my inbox where I could promote my forums? I need a little help.

[Matt]

Mar 25, 2016 19:22:42 GMT -8 grimpooper said:

Any forum whose purpose is unclear is doomed to die before it even started. If you make a forum without anything unique to offer, nobody will even bother joining you except maybe your own friends.
Basically anything where the forums are treated as a chat room. A forum board is NOT a chat room, that's what the ShoutBox is for. Having a topic dedicated to chatting only results in pages upon pages of low-quality posts like "hi", "how are you?". It's basically the quality. If your site is the shoddy workmanship of a typical Internet noob, then it is low quality.


There's also the organization and polishing needed. Nobody likes to join a forum with seizure-inducing design and typos everywhere. These forums will die even if people joined, because they will soon find a better place to be, or just gets tired of how low the quality of the forum is.


Don't make a forum with the purpose of chatting. Don't expect lots of members to join overnight, and don't join other sites for the sake of advertising. The last one will only leave a bad impression to your site, especially if the site you're advertising is low-quality. Ultimately this poor organization practice leads to the site's death.

Totally disagree with just about everything you said. I know lots of general chat forums that run really well, Some with hundreds of thousands of posts. They do work well, I actually find in my experiences that general chat forum work better than topic-based forums because we can reach to a wider audience, I run a general chat forum myself which has just over 22,000 posts, so not super huge yet but it's doing quite well.

[Pebbles]

Mar 15, 2009 11:26:48 GMT -8 Patrick [ASE] said:

People are always making threads about a lack of membership or that their forum is dying. One of the options always seems to be to delete their forum.

What makes a forum die in your opinion? Is there anything that seems to lead up to a forum death/deletion? Or do you think that some admins just get too nervous too fast and delete their forums without serious thought?

What advice would you give to admins to avoid forum death/deletion?

staff/admins that are not active 
especially admins who do not give much of a ....  and don't do much on the forum and then find it funny and strange how activity dies eventually

i see it all the time
forums go down when staff is nowhere to be found

keep the staff team active and not that big of a chance it will ever die
unless you make it a terrible place to be even though the staff is active
you do need to have a good and friendly staff team for people wanting to come back