V6 - when?

[linche]

Don't get mad at me but it seems like we've been waiting for v6 for years now and there's still no rollout or even a target date.

Is there ever going to be a v6 released?  I'm particularly antsy for the new Forum Directory which, hopefully, will make it easier for new people to find forums based on their interests.  I don't think I've had a new member - except spam - in years and there's no way anyone is going to find my forum in the current Directory.

Thanks.

[bigballofyarn]

ProBoards is still planning on releasing v6, but there is no release date.

I'm sorry if any of the following sounds rude. They are just opinions.

The median age of a ProBoards member seems to be in the high 30s. This is an overgeneralization and is merely based on observation. Your forum seems to be for people who are 65+ and you may be targeting a very specific and much smaller market. That may be why you are getting a lot less registrations than other forums. You're also not very active on ProBoards Support. Most of my forum traffic outside of search engine bots comes from people who click on the link in my signature. The ProBoards directory in itself isn't guaranteed to get anyone more members.

I would encourage you to interact with people on ProBoards Support, respond to feedback in your forum feedback topic, and assess ways you can improve or build upon your forum to gain more interest.

Edit:

Nothing is meant to be discouraging or offensive. I want your forum to be successful.

[vank]

linche

My senior dad was looking for forums. You have a known political bully on your forum who rage deletes himself over and over from other forums. That's why my dad won't join yours. V6 and the directory won't change that.

[private]

Bigballofyarn:
Your reply to linche started me thinking.
1. Talk about Phoenix v6 began in 2016.
2. An updated directory with improvements would be nice.
Hopefully beneficial for at least some members.
3. You said:"The median age of a ProBoards member seems to be in the high 30s. ...." 
I am older than 30.

Jan 12, 2023 4:15:28 GMT -8 bigballofyarn said:

ProBoards is still planning on releasing v6, but there is no release date.

I'm sorry if any of the following sounds rude. They are just opinions.

The median age of a ProBoards member seems to be in the high 30s. This is an overgeneralization and is merely based on observation. Your forum seems to be for people who are 65+ and you may be targeting a very specific and much smaller market. That may be why you are getting a lot less registrations than other forums. You're also not very active on ProBoards Support. Most of my forum traffic outside of search engine bots comes from people who click on the link in my signature. The ProBoards directory in itself isn't guaranteed to get anyone more members.

I would encourage you to interact with people on ProBoards Support, respond to feedback in your forum feedback topic, and assess ways you can improve or build upon your forum to gain more interest.

Edit:

Nothing is meant to be discouraging or offensive. I want your forum to be successful.

[bigballofyarn]

private ,

I don't keep a running ledger of people's ages, but when the information is made public, I tend to remember whether or not people are around my age. In the general going of the internet, people don't seem to care about age. However, when you have a forum that is marketed to people who are of a certain age group, it's showing a "No Trespassing" sign to everyone else. When you have a tech forum, general forum, RP forum, or whatever else that doesn't focus on an age, I don't really think the topic of age comes up often at all.

[vank]

Just did the average age of the 77 members on my dad's site and got 39. Go figure. Late 30s is the case there too and he is older.

[Kami]

I mean, it makes sense. PB was established in 2000, at the height of forum use. The people with access and interest around that time tended to be teenagers, give or take a few years in either direction — older folks tended to still be in MSN or yahoo groups, or part of listservs, live journal, xanga, or any microblogging platform. PB's core audience aged alongside it.

Now, with social media, forum usage has gone down and slowed. It's still the preferred method for certain genres of topic (like RP), but the core users are generally the people who "grew up" with the platform (this is also why newer social media skews younger, while older social media skews older; see also tiktok versus facebook).

As far as v6 coming out: it absolutely will. However, the PB team is very small, even with the VS acquisition, and not every PB employee is a programmer. I do think PB fumbled with too early an announcement, but I also know there have been circumstances beyond their control that have impacted release as well. It is, however, actively in development.

[linche]

No offense taken but I would like to respond:

1) Until a year or so ago my forum's name was "America Now" and before that "The Great State of Debate". I've changed the forum in hopes of attracting new members. The last time I checked the Directory before going with the "age" thing, America Now was on something like Page 77. I know Proboards doesn't guarantee anything with its Directory but staff ignoring it completely for years is not right. There is no other way to find most forums. And if people try to look in the Directory they'd have to check out dozens and dozens of abandoned forums. Even the Featured Forums have abandoned forums listed. There are far too few categories. To me, if the Directory is useless then no one is going to get new members except maybe those NEWEST forums on the front few pages. And where does that least your most loyal forums?
2) To Vank: There's only one man on my forum, has been with me for years and is one of the nicest guys ever. If your dad looked at the members' list - I just never delete people because it keeps our member count (falsely) up there even though we're down now to 4 people with 1 stopping by occasionally. I could take several guesses about whom you're talking about but your dad should look at when that person last posted. It's probably been years - and I probably banned him too.
3) As to version 6: Yes, it has been YEARS. Frankly, for me anyway, I couldn't care less about having a new version. I only asked because I'd been told the DIRECTORY would be greatly improved. That, and only that, might mean people could find my board.
4) As to me not being on Support much, I honestly have no idea why that has anything to do with anything. Or mentioning bots??? (I've got plenty of those visiting my board daily.)
5) My board doesn't mention being for people over 65. It's just "Older & Wiser" which, to me, meant 40's and up - not kids.

[vank]

People get a lot of their members off Proboards support. Posting here is a big help.

The member in question deleted himself from my dad's forum and 2 others that I know of 9 times and got into political debates with people all over Proboards. He's still active on your forum

I don't know if people even use the directory. They find forums on Support.

[dragonfli]

I never once used the directory in 5 years. I join forums based on people and adverts I see on pb support.

If Vank is talking about who I think, member A bullied me too.

Your forum advert thread says it's for seniors and people of retirement age.

[bigballofyarn]

Jan 15, 2023 0:58:59 GMT -8 linche said:

No offense taken but I would like to respond:

1) Until a year or so ago my forum's name was "America Now" and before that "The Great State of Debate". I've changed the forum in hopes of attracting new members. The last time I checked the Directory before going with the "age" thing, America Now was on something like Page 77. I know Proboards doesn't guarantee anything with its Directory but staff ignoring it completely for years is not right. There is no other way to find most forums. And if people try to look in the Directory they'd have to check out dozens and dozens of abandoned forums. Even the Featured Forums have abandoned forums listed. There are far too few categories. To me, if the Directory is useless then no one is going to get new members except maybe those NEWEST forums on the front few pages. And where does that least your most loyal forums?

4) As to me not being on Support much, I honestly have no idea why that has anything to do with anything. Or mentioning bots??? (I've got plenty of those visiting my board daily.)
5) My board doesn't mention being for people over 65. It's just "Older & Wiser" which, to me, meant 40's and up - not kids.

I've never use the directory to find a forum. I click on links in signatures and I see what forums are advertised in the Advertising section of ProBoards Support. That's why posting around here is important. It seems to be common practice. This isn't to say that others don't use the directory though. I just don't.

Your advertisement thread gives the impression that it's for people who are 65+ based on what you wrote.

Jul 6, 2022 19:49:25 GMT -8 linche said:

We just changed from a "politics focused" board to a board for seniors since most people on our board are retirement age.

[Kami]

For whatever it's worth, growing membership is an art, not a science. There are tools and methods to increase the likelihood of success, but none of them are guaranteed.

The main issue plaguing all forums (including ones that seem to still be relatively popular) is the decline in overall forum usage. Post-by-post interactions have broadly fallen out of favour compared to real-time, instant gratification responses that are common in social media; a large part of this is because social media is a centralised concept — you create a singular account and then cultivate what you want to see — whereas forums are decentralised and require a much more deliberate actioning and choice to join, register, and build relationships.

Obviously, while this issue impacts all forums, it's the forums that have smaller user bases, reach, and/or more niche community interests that will experience the effects more keenly.

The next issue is just time and growth. The more time passes, the more competition any online page has. Once upon a time I might find maybe a dozen RP forums for a particular show, or maybe a few hundred forums for just general chatting. But that was 10-20 years ago; now, a single search term has the potential to yield literally millions of results in a fraction of a second. Even if you only used ProBoards' directory, PB is home to, at last count, over three MILLION forums, with some form of activity on about 50-60% of those forums. Even if the directory were better, there is absolutely no guarantee someone would find your forum as well as decide to join; this isn't because of your forum inherently, just a statistical probability out of sheer volume — a needle in a haystack problem, except the person searching isn't even sure they know if they want the needle or not.

This is why people are talking about your activity here on Support; people are far more likely to join a forum if they a) see it often mentioned, and b) if they interact with a forum admin and like their vibes and conduct. A lot of people with successful forums here are active, helpful, and kind, which leads people to join their forums due to an established trust.

But also, on top of those issues, there's the added consideration of forum genre. While some established general talk forums remain popular and active, it's harder (always has been, but even more so now) to effectively create a forum about nothing / everything. Socially, people tend to gather where there are shared interests. It's what fosters community and relationships. With social media you can choose who you interact with and what you see; on forums, you have to accept a community as a whole. Finding individuals who share your interests is a lot more difficult if the community covers a wide range of topics, versus joining a community for a specific interest (wherein all the members by default share that interest).

From what you've said, you have a forum that kind of hits all the barriers to growth in the hardest ways: you're not active here, so there's no trust established with PB regulars / less organic traffic to your forum; you have limited advertisement on other forums which leads to less organic traffic again; your forum isn't a specific topic for folks with a unified special interest; and your forum is geared for a particular age group which alienates people not part of that group / who may not want to be part of an age-specific community. It will always be an uphill battle for a forum that doesn't have a specific draw or hook to retain membership / convert a visitor to a member.

The question you (and all forum admins) need to ask yourselves is why should any given visitor take the time to join your community? What do you offer that they can't get from twitter or discord or facebook or tumblr or tiktok or another forum? How have you set yourself apart from every other forum like yours?

The answer for most people is that they really haven't done anything of this nature. They create a forum and sort of just... expect people to join, simply because it's there. That worked a decade and a half ago, but that very rarely works today.

I am not saying that you shouldn't try or that it's hopeless, but rather if your goal is to grow a community, you need to think very differently nowadays and be much more deliberate about what actions you take to increase visibility and conversion (ie, conversion from guest to member) rates.

[vank]

Tip
All the Covid-19 disinformation you posted yourself violates the tos.

[🎶Sossity🎶]

Ok, this has gone South/off topic! So, locked.

vank or anyone else:
There is an invite here to report any false information concerning Covid posted on ProBoards. Please use that link rather than hijack or make a thread to do so.
Thank you.