How many forums is too many to have?

[Reisuke]

If you have more then one forum then you've already went to far. Running a forum is like running a business and it becomes hard and "stressful", believe it or not, after a while. So to run two forums, a.k.a businesses, at once you have to be out of your mind. I say stick to one thing at a time so that you're not overwhelmed.

As far as it being multiple forums based off the same genre and/or series (i.e. naruto, bleach, twilight, harry potter, etc) may the best forum win. I mean they all basically have the SAME plot so I suggest finding one that you'll stick to and let that be your main site of that genre.

[Squishy]

I'm not sure if some of these points have already been mentioned, but I'm just going to state my opinion. If you have one board that you are committed to that you have made, you shouldn't make another. In fact, I think that then you should not even join other boards. It's way harder to keep up, and then you may end up forgetting about the other ones. If you're staff on any board, you should probably just stick to that one board too. It's way to easy to get distracted and lost. That's why I'm just trying to keep on working on my board in which I co-admin instead of joining a million others. It helps with success in the end. Again, this is just my opinion, and it may be different for others.

[Kit.]

I think that it depends on the admin of the site(s). If they have the time and really are determined to make the boards work, they probably will. I, myself couldn't have multiple boards. I work hard whenever-wherever I make a site and I sometimes have a hectic schedule and I wouldn't be a great multitasker. I just want to have all my energy in one place and one place only and the chances are that I'll be super active in one board, and semi-active or not active at all at another.

I've had, let me think, 1,2,3 boards total before in my years of proboarding and thats a fine number for me. All have been RP themed and with different themes and I'm content with how they were.

[simlizzie]

I think it really depends on how much time you have. Some people do fine running several boards if they're at home for most of the day, but for those who have other occupations then it would be best to have one forum. So it really depends how much time you have, and I wouldn't say that having a lot of forums is a bad thing as long as you can do maintenance on them almost daily, but for those who have a hard time getting on their forum every other day shouldn't try to do two boards at once.

[lollipop;;lemondrop]

it depends on the person. some people may be able to handle being an admin and multiple characters on 7 different sites while others might not.

but in my opinion, i think three should be the maximum. it's hard keeping up with one site and doing all the admin stuff. it would be very stressful, for me, to have to admin multiple sites.

[cisleader]

The way I see it; ProBoards has not set a limit on how many forums one may have, and in any case, users should be allowed how many ever forums they choose. While I can understand, having so many unused forums on the server mite take some data. In a way, it'd be like saying how much money you're allowed to have, and if you have too much in the bank, they have to take some.

I, myself have over 20 test forums and spare forums I no longer use. If it was required, I'd go delete some [if not all] of them.

[Anya Ozera]

I make a fourm but they dont last so I have spare fourms plus the ones I mod or admin that are active that dosnt include the ones i'm just a member of. I dont think there should be a limit.....yeah it clutters servers but than again its not doing anyone any harm

[rpbtvs]

Alright. All Admins have rules. One rule that I see often is, if you're not active your account will be deleted. I say Proboards should delete boards after admins don't sign into them after a year or something. It get annoying when you search for, say a buffy rpg site. You have 5-8 pages of dead proboards buffy sites, then you get to my active site. It's just nuts.

[ForumPromotion.net]

yeah, i searched like "Proboards Sports" trying to find some good sports forums, and the fist few pages were all dead sites.

[silvermoon1]

Yeah that's the problem around here nothing is ever active

[Artemis]

Sept 11, 2009 17:29:29 GMT -8 ForumPromotion.net said:

yeah, i searched like "Proboards Sports" trying to find some good sports forums, and the fist few pages were all dead sites.

Sept 12, 2009 9:53:59 GMT -8 silvermoon1 said:

Yeah that's the problem around here nothing is ever active

Hi,

Welcome to the Discussion board. Please check out the rules of the board and make sure you're posting in accordance with the length and discussion guidelines. Elaborate a bit, why are these forums inactive, why do you think this may have to do with too many forums?

[, b e x ']

It definitely depends on the person running the forum - especially their activity. I, personally couldn't handle being an administrator of more than two forums. Then again, I know a person who has four roleplay boards and they are all active and going great. There isn't a magic number..it all depends.. I can't see a person successfully running more than ten forums though. If that ever happens, let me know. Haha xD

[shadowblast]

I myself have a few forums. I don't so much see it as how many you have, its how much TIME you have. I run 2 successful boards, but I have a fair bit of time to play around with them. If you don't work, then I don't see a reason why you couldn't have 5 or 6?

[Kaida]

Sept 11, 2009 11:39:46 GMT -8 rpbtvs said:

Alright. All Admins have rules. One rule that I see often is, if you're not active your account will be deleted. I say Proboards should delete boards after admins don't sign into them after a year or something. It get annoying when you search for, say a buffy rpg site. You have 5-8 pages of dead proboards buffy sites, then you get to my active site. It's just nuts.

Unfortunately, I can't agreee with that. I'm currently a part of a site that, while the Admin hasn't logged on in over a year, the co-Admin and the rest of us are still very active. That the Admin has not returned to us is sad but if we were to delete proboards accounts just because the Admin has become inactive, how many active sites will we be deleting as well?

Presently I'm staff and active RPer on one site, trying to start up my own RP site (of which I will be an active member) and helping a friend set up and start a third site. And that is not counting making daily (and long) posts in a fourth area that provides a back-story for the first site.

It can get hectic if everyone is on at the same time, but that's part of what introduction threads, (and now the Chat-box) is for. Most people, if you tell them you are trying to multi-task, will give you a break. And besides. Having everyone on every site posting at the exact same time means that there are alot of posts that will then be edited. My suggestion is to use the Chat-box to let people know that you are busy or currently working on a post for that site so that others know to be patient. Its do-able, especially if your on when most people are either asleep or at work, but it can be tiring.

If you feel you can handle being staff and active member of several sites I say go for it. Just don't get mad if you discover you've taken on too much and must bow out of one or two of them.

[♠ Pear ♠]

As many people have already said, there's no set number that constitutes a boundary between too many forums to have and a good number to have. It depends firstly not only on how much time you have but on how efficient you are within that time: ie, if you are an admin on an rp board, but you take twenty minutes to post, you could probably handle more boards than an admin who takes an hour to post, even if you both have three hours a day to devote to forums. Secondly, it depends on how big and how active the sites in question are, and how many other staff members there are to help you deal with the workload. One really big, hectic forum will obviously take more time to manage than several very small ones where only one or two people log in and post every day.

Essentially, it's down to preference and capability: some people might feel uncomfortable about trying to devote sufficient time to more than one forum (myself included), especially those people who have busy lives. But others may get bored of only one, and may have enough time on their hands to manage two or three forums easily.

Buttt on the whole I think the best admins (or staff and members in general, for that matter) are the ones who keep to a small number of forums and really work at them to make them worth being a part of. Having one good-sized, active, well-managed forum is far better than having four or five that could obviously do with some improvement. If you don't know how many you can handle, start at one and work your way up - don't instantly decide to start three new forums and hope you can keep up with them all.