Promoting Community Participation

[Eternity]

whenever i encourage members to take part in competitions with prizes, they are never taken part in. i find that smaller communities dont really need competitions and even on larger forums, participation is often non-existant

as for encouraging member participation by way of letting them have a say in which direction the forum goes in, i find this very useful for letting members know that their opinion is valued and that helps make a nicer community for all

[Gamoc]

I have rpg's, and there is like a currency in it, you can earn money(s) by winning things, or participating, or just through random events. I like the contest ideas, and i have as a fader to pm me if they have good ideas for the forum. I also like to make clubs for the members to join, no guests, so it also gets guests to make an acount. My rpg's are also only available to members. I even made a staff position that is pretty close to admin if they have participation in a certain rpg, you'll have to find out yourself at Link Removed

[kelendria]

I find competitions & member activity very hard.
I used to regularly run rewards, prizes & such but there's only so much you can come up with for prizes.
Now my board is quiet I don't bother with that stuff, it's a shame cos a board 'awards ceremony' can be quite entertaining!

[Mmomenth]

One thing I've found works is on a rpg board in especial when you have money involved have a race to 100 posts contest. Whoever gets the next 100 posts gets a set amount of money. This works as it encourages members to post frequently to get the bonus money.

Another thing I'm trying to incorporate on a new forum is a 'Forum Family' system. This is where those members with over x amount of posts can become heads of various families and can invite newer members to join the forum thereby helping to build up community

[emu]

Interesting. Very helpful as well Enchant. I did do a few contests in the past, like at MidNight we had a graphics competition for the new sig banner, we had almost five entries from different members, but it came down to a hard dicision, we called in a person who isn't a member to help judge.

Writing copetition, good idea. I shall think of one that is related to the Fine Arts and see how that goes for Classical Times...now to think of the prize...hmmm...

[Drewz]

I created something a while back, called the Easter Egg hunt. Bassically somewhere, anywhere on the forum, I hide an "Easter egg" it'd just be text telling the member they've found it, also telling them the password to PM me, 1st person to PM me with the password gets a set number of karma points.

I created a hidden board, made a hidden thread, which was the easter egg, and in a certain picture I hooked it up so the picture was a link to the thread. In a much easier one, I smiply hid the egg in the news fader, and another time I changed the font colour, and hid it in a inactive members signiture.

[Nimthiriel]

enchant said:

What about having a scavenger hunt contest. These have worked well on my own forum in the past. You could even separate your members into teams. I know the Harry Potter forums have houses, which would be the same done the same way.

There are so many things out there that could help promote community participation. What type of programs have you found to be successful either as a admin or member?

Every month I have a forum event, which includes a few multi-member games and a scavenger hunt. The first time I did it, I only had three members participating, but it came out as a great success. The members got to know each other and interacted a lot.

I'd recommend the scavenger hunt for any forum.

[kuchinawa]

contests would be difficult with my forum... basically because no one there is very artistic, but those were some pretty good suggestions.

If you have a Gamer forum, like me, you could also host tournaments in MMORPG's and other types of online games. We did one in the past, and it turned out pretty successful.

The only thing about contests that I'm a bit iffy on are prizes. I mean, you enter a contest for fun and to get to know the other members, but without prizes the whole process seems a bit... incomplete. And I never know what to give as a prize, except, like... karma points or something

[wcsjk]

I am running a posting contest where the member who makes the moet intelligent , helpfull, and original post will win. It seems to be working only started a bit ago, but this should drive them out from being so quiet. I am going to keep it running monthly. The only catch with it is it can not be copied. So it doesnt matter how many times they post it is based solely on just one.

[kelendria]

kuchinawa said:

contests would be difficult with my forum... basically because no one there is very artistic, but those were some pretty good suggestions.

If you have a Gamer forum, like me, you could also host tournaments in MMORPG's and other types of online games. We did one in the past, and it turned out pretty successful.

The only thing about contests that I'm a bit iffy on are prizes. I mean, you enter a contest for fun and to get to know the other members, but without prizes the whole process seems a bit... incomplete. And I never know what to give as a prize, except, like... karma points or something

I'm exactly the same, no-one who has come & gone on my forum has been very artistic, so 'making' awards is hard.
Also you said about prizes, I have trouble with prizes too apart from post counts, colour changes & karma points.
Without those mentioned there really isn't much else.
Besides attracting people in the first place

[Timothy]

I reward interesting ideas or thoughtful posts with karma, no matter the member. I also started a new feature called "DCChallenges" which are set- "extra credit" tasks placed around the board that give you karma upon completion. For example, one of the challenges is to exactly count every bad Mr. Freeze "ice"-themed joke throughout the course of "Batman & Robin"... It's fun, it's fairly simple, and you get a ton of karma for cool bits of trivia...

[~Horsejumper93~ ~ Saddleclub~]

hey

[myke]

saddlegirl said:

hey

Hey, please be sure to read the rules before posting.

[~Horsejumper93~ ~ Saddleclub~]

ok sorry

[Ryanizme]

Hi, i dont know if the members even check anymore, i put a lot of new and usefull info up, but no real responces. im just a member, but ive posted more than even the staff. i want to see more action in the forum, ive thought about PMing them all but thats 360 people!