How many forums is too many to have?

[a5gunner]

Apr 25, 2009 0:12:29 GMT -8 hpmad said:

More than one = too much.

Honestly it's like opening a business, and then opening another business that does something else under a different name, and then opening another 17 business all doing different crap and you don't even have a customer-base to help.

You'll get a few members on each forum, maybe 100 posts, and then they die.

QUoted for truth. I think one is enough, any more it will just get disorganized or die eventually

[TheBirdOneWon]

Yah, More than one isn't that easy to handle and if the admin is barly online, the members won't have anything to appreciate about the forum. Don't get me wrong but Moderators are good, but sometimes the admin is needed

[Weezze]

I think the same rule for how many characters you should have applies to how many forums you have, you can have as many as you can keep up with. For some this will be more than others but as a forum is a fairly large thing to keep running, the number than can be kept up with is not going to be large and if you have quite a few forums but all of them have only a few members then is it really worth it, you could perhaps keep one forum, tell the members of the other forums that you are doing so and then not just close but delete the other forums (it seems a tad pointless to not delete sites that have closed).

[el oh el ya *]

I've only ever been on RP forums so that is all I can speak for. There was a point where I had four sites and I was running them pretty much by myself because my best friend, who was supposed to run it with me, got so busy that he could barely do anything. It was murder and I was so stressed out at that point. Running so many sites is one thing, but I had about 20 characters spread over those four. For me, it was just too much so I decided to close one, then another followed, staff drama made another follow. Right now I have one site that I run, where I have several characters and it's been working perfectly for me. I can give that one site more time, I can give my characters and plots more time. I love it.

I do think that it's different for everyone, some people can handle a lot more than others. I think that if you want to run more than one you mostly need people to help, to check things when you're not there. Running several all by yourself is too much I think.

[EelKat]

I think it depends both of the person running it and the type of forums they have.

A big forum takes a lot of time to manage so requires the admin to need a lot of mods or not hold a full time job!

I have a couple of forums I created years ago - in 2005 & 2007.

One board (for fiction writers) went on to be very successful for a few years, got really big, had like a 1,000 or so members, but tapered off in recent times as other similar forums have since been created.

One was a "private" forum, just meant for me and a couple of friends so that we could have a place to chat online (Twitter and FaceBook had not yet been invented at the time).

I had tried to set up an RPG forum at one point, but realized I had no idea what I was doing and decided it was better if I stick to joining RPGs run by others. Running an RPG forum turned out to be not my thing.

The others were each forums for web sites (online businesses) I have built and so are generally very small and basically are more of a FAQs section for the web sites, so are used only very rarely, because they are not for general discussions, but rather are for providing info to clients and answering their questions.

As a general rule none of the forums I've made are for "mass market crowds" and very niched and never were intended to grow very big. I'm not into creating the "fan-forums" I try to search out forums I'm interested in and join them, rather than create new ones as I can usually find what I'm looking to be a part of, already out there.

I haven't created a new forum since 2007, just stuck to managing the ones I had, which really did not take up too much time as the business site ones only get get a handful of new posts a year, and the private one is just me a a few friends, and the big one has died down to the point that I only have to update it once every other month or so now.

So with me, personally, having several forums is not a big deal, because they are not high traffic, heavily active forums (and were not intended to be) so it's pretty easy managing them. But say if I had a really, big, huge forum, with 10,000+ members and a 100+ new posts a day that'd take a lot of time to manage and I would be stuck with no time for other forums, and in that case it'd be silly for me to try to have several forums, because I would have to stretch myself too thin to manage them all.

Of course you never see me over here promoting any of them either. Like I said, they were not really aimed at the general public, so promoting them here was pretty pointless. The only time I ever linked to any of my forums here was in the help sections, when I got stuck on codes and needed some one to help me sort out the mess. So, around here, no one really knows my forums or how to get to them! LOL!

Apr 21, 2009 12:07:05 GMT -8 Patrick [ASE] said:

But how many forums is too many?

Depends on the person and the forums in question. I think it is silly to have several really big forums. So I would say admins should limit themselves to no more than 2 big forums.

If you are running very small forums, than it's possible to have several, but still any more than 5 or 6 would be hard, so you should not push past your limits. If you find you don't have time to spend actively posting on each of your forums, than you have reached your limit and should not create any more.

Apr 21, 2009 12:07:05 GMT -8 Patrick [ASE] said:

Is there a magic number of forums per admin?

I have never personally seen any one who could successfully manage more than 12 forums, so I would say 12 is the limit, but that for most people 5 is the limit to what they can handle and do well.

Apr 21, 2009 12:07:05 GMT -8 Patrick [ASE] said:

Do you think the maximum any admin should have is one per subject area, like one RP, one General, etc.?

No, I think imposing limits like that would be very bad. I have seen great RPG sites and noticed that there would be 3 or 4 I really liked, and they would all be run by the same admin. If the admin has a talent for creating and running a certain type of site, they should not be forced to have limits on their doing so. So people can handle several sites, others can not. The people who can do it, should not be punished because of people who can not do it.

Apr 21, 2009 12:07:05 GMT -8 Patrick [ASE] said:

What criteria do you use to determine if a forum admin is overworked with too many forums?

You need to be able to post on threads at least once per week, or however is considered "regular" for your forum (daily if it's high traffic to monthly if it's a tiny board).

You need to have time to deal with complaints-trolls-reports-spam-etc at least once per week. Even if the admin don't actively post on the thread, you still have to be there chasing out trolls and spammers.

If I see a forum with a lot of spam-bot link-posts on the front page, and those posts are over a week old, I know the admin is overworked, needs to hire a couple of extra mods, or has abandoned the forum.

[RF44]

Two at most because anymore and you're just splitting thread. It's possible to "have" more forums if you co-own but if you are solo running multiple forums, you won't be able to fully dedicate yourself to them in order to keep them active. I mean, you can run 10 forums, but chances are 9 out of ten will be dead or unmaintained.

~RF

[Jessecast]

May 10, 2011 5:52:08 GMT -8 RF44 said:

Two at most because anymore and you're just splitting thread. It's possible to "have" more forums if you co-own but if you are solo running multiple forums, you won't be able to fully dedicate yourself to them in order to keep them active. I mean, you can run 10 forums, but chances are 9 out of ten will be dead or unmaintained.

~RF

True some people can handle more forums but those are the people who have trusted staff in each one. I am currently working on one forum and I am having a hard time just on that. Doesn't help I am the only one working on it. All in all I think if you haven't kept your first forum for a year and kept at least on member of staff for longer than 5 months than DO NOT make a new one.

[RF44]

Yeah, but staff sometimes can't run things the way you want to. Back in '07 when I was a much more active Proboarder, I tried staffing several forums and running two of my own. Ultimately, it is one of the reasons I took several years away from the community as a whole. The idea of time management is thrown out of the window...maybe it was just a bad personal experience.

[Jessecast]

I wasn't saying that staff are going to run it completely. By having staff like that will allow you to spend time on the other forum. Maybe with that way spend one day on one and another day on the other and let your staff know how they can contact you if it is urgently needed.

[Hacksaw Hugglemonster]

As long as they can moderate them nicely so they keep rules being followed and all that.. I have no problem with it.

Heck, I have a variety of forums.

[Stinky666]

It varies from person to person. It all really depends on a few things:

1) How much time and effort the person can dedicate to each forum. Adding content that is appropriate etc.

2) How much knowledge the individual has on the subject(s) involved within that forum. Don't wanna be creating a forum for coding and design if you don't know anything about either.

3) Whether or not the individual knows how to handle situations (problems that may arise, and so on).


That's 3 big ones, but the first 2 are definite ones.

[CROWLS.]

well, it depends on the person. If they have a lot of time on their hands, than they can take up as many sites as they want. For me, I can only be in charge of about two sites at a time (role play site), because more than that is just two overwhelming. and the sites have to be different, like, not about the same fandom.

[CherokeeRose]

It depends on you, really. You just have to ask yourself, "Can I handle running this site? Can I get on every day almost no matter what? Can I keep it going?" If the answer is yes, than go for it. If it's not, well that's kind of a warning sign to not go for it. It's all a matter of what you can take and what you cannot take.

For me, I cannot have one more site. I cannot be the head admin on more than one site. The head admin really keeps the site in line, kind of like a backbone, and if you aren't able to uphold the forum than there's no point. It will die, and then you will come to the realization that because of you it has died. Because you didn't do what you were supposed to do. I don't like selling myself short or stretching myself thin.

I focus on one thing, and I do what I do to the best of my abilities.

For just co-admining, I can do many forums at the same time. I can be on several. Modding is so much easier. You normally just focus on one aspect of the site instead of the many the creator has to deal with. You take aim at one thing unless your admin needs you to do more. Which makes it all more important to take in mind the first question you should ask yourself. If something happens, you have to be there.

[Former Member]

Y'know, it really depends on the size of the board. If it is a small 10 member private RP site, you could have a couple of those without getting overworked. If it's a "mega" forum with 2000 members and 5 staff members, one is enough. Co-admining: If there are other admins that are active on a enormous site, you could probably have 2 other sites.

The limit for the main admin would be: 3 forums
The limit for a staff member, gmod, or mod would be: 5

[- あゆみ]

I've never really owned a forum myself before but I can see that forum creations and maintaining are a lot of work. I myself am a lazy person so I think if I were to make a forum, I'd make no more than two, one general and one roleplay because I really don't want to make a forum and have it die. I also think that general forums are perhaps easier to maintain than roleplay ones because they don't require as much plotting, and writing technically. But I do know a lot of people have more than one forum.

This is my personal opinion and based on my own kind of personality.

But there is something I do find in people that make many forums. It's hard to maintain them all and people tend to lose muse and start to slack off or they feel overwhelmed. Being staff holds lots of responsibilities and as head admin or even as co-admin this is especially true since you are responsible for the entire site and the members. If you just disappear, the forum will die.

So, as many people have already said, I think that it all depends on the members and the forums that you make.