Is the Pidgeonhole Syndrome killing your new forum?

[Retread]

In the era of Facebook, twitter, etc, forums still have a role. But getting one started is harder than ever. Established mega-forums can get away with different strategies which just won't work when trying to assemble a new community. They already have a membership base and established relationships between members. And lots of content a guest can see to get an idea of what the forum is about.

Today, I'd like to talk about a particular problem I've observed with new forums and present a different approach. I welcome opinions to the contrary and tangents on the subject, since conversation and interaction are the heart and soul of the forum concept.

For lack of a better term, I'll call this particular malady the Pigeonhole Syndrome. What I mean by that is slamming a prospective new member with a too many categories and boards, most of which are either empty or the content is posted by the owner.


In my opinion, a forum like that presents a very negative appearance for an extended period of time.

1 - Even with a moderate amount of activity by the first handful of members, it still looks like a ghost town.

2 - Prospective new members tend to shy away from starting threads in virtually empty boards. It's the nobody wants to be the first one on the dance floor kind of thing.

3 - With so darned many boards to choose from, which one is appropriate for MY thread? I don't want to make a bad first impression by posting in the wrong place!

Instead, I think a better strategy would be to do a minimum amount of initial definition by structure and let the structure evolve to fit the activity on the forum, rather than the other way around.

A typical informational/educational/conversational or fan forum might start with only three categories the public sees and a fourth for staff only, including a place to move troublesome posts and threads.

Forum Information might contain rules and guidelines, instructions on how to use certain features, a suggestion box, and perhaps a welcome center.

On-Topic would contain content for the main focus of the forum. For instance a fan forum for a baseball team would have topics related to that team in one board, another board for general baseball discussions, and another board for all other sports.

Off-Topic would cover everything else. News, music, entertainment, etc. Maybe all on one board at first, then create new boards and move the threads into the proper boards when you have enough so the boards don't look barren.

---

Those are my thoughts but more importantly ... what do you think?

- Does the basic strategy have merit?

- What changes would you make to that plan?

- Can we create a basic template as a starting point for most new forums, even though there are a wide variety of ways to use a forum?

[kevinjs]

Some good thoughts. Trouble with places like FB and Twitter is that the posts there are throwaway. Forums tend to attract a different crowd, who put a bit of thought into their posts and expect them to last a bit longer than 10 minutes down the line.

My forum doesn't really suffer because I'm only the figurehead. I started the forum with several other people, so we hit the ground running. A group of us decided we wanted our own forum and I was delegated to build it, since I had some previous experience. That said, we are actively looking for new members, because we like to spread the word and learn from others (about recorded music, btw).

We have a closed-to-visitors board that deals with suggestions and requests. If a member wants a new board for a particular genre of music, they get it. We have very few completely empty boards as a result.

We have what might seem to be another problem. We all have our screen names, but we tend not to use them, preferring instead to use given names. This could be equally off-putting for prospective new members, who might wonder how they'd fit into an obviously close-knit group. The reality is that we didn't start off as a close-knit group, but became friendly with each other in other places.