Watchmen News

[Mike]

I had this site for a long time now and it really hasn't been to active. I would like some feed back please.
It is a bible based site so I would really appreciate the feed back so I could make this site better.
Thanks and God bless
Watchmen news link

[Kami]

May 14, 2023 10:18:13 GMT -8 Mike said:

I had this site for a long time now and it really hasn't been to active. I would like some feed back please.
It is a bible based site so I would really appreciate the feed back so I could make this site better.
Thanks and God bless
Watchmen news link

I am happy to do a more in-depth review at a later date, but right now I am unable to do that because I am completely put off by your home page.

There are a lot of faith-based forums on PB, and probably on other parts of the internet. The biggest question is always "Why should a potential member join your forum instead of someone else's?" and every forum admin needs to do some soul-searching on what that is.

Right now, the home page you have is a *lot*. I am not even sure what audience you're trying to target with this — Christians, presumably, but you have a lot of animated gifs with random "inspirational" or religious quotations, as well as news, as well as more quotations, as well as videos... and I haven't even looked at the forum yet. Aesthetically, this home page is really quite... challenging. It's all over the place, difficult to read, and lacks direction and organisation.

Moreover, I do not understand why you have created a forum. As mentioned there are plenty of successful faith-based forums hosted on PB / the internet as a whole; but the key to those successes is the community. Forums should be about building community in one way or another, whether based on a common secular interest or a shared system of belief. All I can see on this home page is that the forum is run by an individual that wants to preach about end times and all related subtopics. How can a potential member, who wants to join a *community* be at all moved to join a forum whose purpose seems to not be a community, but rather a lectern for someone to proselytise with the grand goal of saving souls? What is the community a user is supposed to engage with?

Ultimately, you should run and design your forum as you think best suits your purpose. But between a home page that is really physically painful to look at and very difficult to read, and the stated goal of delivering a message as opposed to cultivating a community, I am not certain that this is the appropriate platform for you to deliver your message — more specifically, the forum is about you and your desire to save souls, not foster a community between other believers, and that is not conducive to a successful forum.

I hope that helps. If you make changes to your home page and refocus your mission to building a community, I would be happy to take a more in-depth look. Otherwise, I don't think I — or any other PB user — have anything of value to offer as there's really nothing we can say if the goal is to use the platform to preach.

[Mike]

Thanks for your opinion Kami

[Kami]

May 14, 2023 11:04:19 GMT -8 Mike said:

Thanks for your opinion Kami

You're welcome. I hope you understand that I am not trying to be insulting or dismiss your goals, okay? And I have the utmost respect for your beliefs and what you want to do in service of those beliefs.

It's just the flip side is, you are trying to make a forum successful, and there are certain trends and practices that can either be beneficial or be detrimental. At its core, it's all about community, so I really want to drive that home.

If you have any questions about what I said previously, please feel free to ask!

[Mike]

Kami
In what way do you think it's preachy?

[Kami]

May 15, 2023 14:11:07 GMT -8 Mike said:

Kami
In what way do you think it's preachy?

Well, it goes back to what I said about forums being a community. Generally, the reason someone would join a forum as opposed to another place where they could talk to people (like a discord chat server, a twitter community, tumblr, other social media) is because they want to interact with like-minded people about a particular topic.

When a guest visits your forum, the first thing they see that aren't motivational quotes or bible verses is a mission statement. In this mission statement, it says a few things that (to me) do not come across as community-oriented; those parts are as follows:

- "What I'm trying to do is make you aware of things to come"

- "If you don't know God yet I suggest you seek Him out"

- "Will you be a watchman for God and warn the masses around the world?"

- "My true intent for this site is discipleship"

So in these four quotes: the first states that the guest is not aware of something and need to be educated in that something; the second, tells the guest to seek out God if they are not a Christian (which implies that you want non-Christians as part of your target demographic, but for the purposes of conversion); the third is a call to action in service of God to preach what they learn on this site to others; and lastly, you explicitly state you want to create new disciples for God as the intent of this forum.

A vast majority of users who are looking to join a faith-based forum are looking for a COMMUNITY where they can discuss their faith with others, to build fellowship with other Christians, to have faith-based fun and get to know others... why would they join a forum that tells them on the front page that the admin's intent is to transform them into a disciple for God and is already asking them to do things to service the goals of the admin (on behalf of God). Why should they join that, when there are plenty of other forums that are also faith-based but make it a point to emphasise community and togetherness and love?

Broadly speaking people don't join forums because they want to listen to someone else tell them what to do in order to be good people, even those who join faith-based forums. People join forums to be with others. It's not church. It's not an auditorium where one person speaks and the others listen. It's a community. If your goal, at the end of the day, is to deliver a message, I would gently encourage you to rethink how you do so.

"Preach the gospel at all times, and when necessary, use words." It's okay to want to spread a message; but if you want to build a forum community around it, you need to not be so heavy-handed and remember that the number one use of a forum is for community and fellowship (both religious and secular).

**Of course, this only applies if you WANT it to. At the end of the day, my suggestions are really just from the perspective of someone who has been running online communities for the last 20 years and have nothing to do with faith or my personal belief system. This is your forum, so do with it as you are inspired. My comments are only to address the idea of community growth and management.

EDIT: After some additional thinking, a potential suggestion on how to reframe your goals to be more community oriented — it might be more appealing to the "community" side to phrase it in a manner closer to:

"We are a Bible-based community dedicated to [your topic]. We hope to use this forum to build our fellowship, discuss our faith, and bring knowledge to others for the glory of God."

(Of course you don't need to use this exact wording, but something of this nature).

[Mike]

Thanks again Kami

[Kami]

May 15, 2023 16:33:48 GMT -8 Mike said:

Thanks again Kami

Of course, any time! 

[Mike]

Bump

[bigballofyarn]

Good day friend. Please note that anything negative that I say is just an opinion and is not meant to be hurtful or offensive. If you disagree with me, that's perfectly fine and you don't have to make any changes to your forum.

I clicked on the link in your original post and your home page made me a little dizzy. The background reminded me a bit of that TV static channel. The animated banner was jumpy and distracting. It was very difficult to read the light blue font on top of the light grey background color of the navigation tree. Then came the very large white font that seemed to have shadowing behind it, which was very loud compared to everything else. The footer of your forum was barely readable. Make sure that it is completely readable in order to be in full compliance with the ProBoards ToS.

See the two images below. Do you agree or disagree that they are very difficult to read?








I don't really like that you have your forum only partially visible. I have to use multiple scrollbars to navigate on your forum page.

What is "Category List Scroller" supposed to do? It looks like a link and the text enlarges when I hover over it, but it does nothing when I click on it. Do you see how I see two scrollbars on your forum?




I do like a lot of the people on your forum as well as the topic of your forum. You're all really good people. My concerns are with your forum's visual presentation.


Edit:

As far as specific suggestions, I don't necessarily have a visual picture in mind for what your forum should or shouldn't look like. That's up to you.

[Mike]

Bump

[Mike]

Bump

[vank]

Do you have answers to the qs you were asked about the unreadable text and broken links

It doesn't seem like you fixed them yet

Your forum is not readable on my phone. I can't read any of the text on the background. They are almost the same color and the links don't work yet.

[Mike]

BUMP

[Mike]

vank
I have been pretty busy hoping to get to it soon.
Thanks for the feedback