Friends, I think this is a wonderful discussion. Thank you so much for continuing to share excellent observations and suggestions!
I am especially intrigued by what
@beeblebrox wrong about "growing the community," and I also appreciate what
@Patrick wrote about this forum possibly "driving people away." Growing this forum, in my mind anyway, has nothing to do with pride but everything to do with content. If bringing more people here can provide continuously exciting and helpful discussions, then the purpose of this forum has been fulfilled.
"Driving people away" could be one way to analyze the present situation, but viewing it more optimistically, I could also say that perhaps there is simply more honey in another forum's pot that is more attractive to forum-lovers because that other forum (similar to ours) has more active posts. I've always cared more about the Quality of posts than Quantity. So if our TD forum can provide useful posts like "here's the problem, and here's the step-by-step solution," rather than posts like "I agree!" or "Yes, I'll give that a try tonight," then we aren't doing so bad in terms of content. But I do agree that
looks matter. If a sub-forum has few or no posts, human nature takes over and hardly anyone is bold enough to be the one who kick-starts a conversation.
Again, I have no authority to unilaterally change the present TD category layout because I am not on the board of decision makers, but board members are surely reviewing our discussion in this thread. I trust the board to make the right decisions, but I also feel compelled to "stimulate conversation" when needed to supply them with more feedback from forum members, such that they can consider making important improvements.
So the question now becomes,
should the board take a leap of faith and severely truncate the number of sub-forums to see what will happen? That of course runs the risk of oversimplifying our forum and still ending up with the same scant number of posts. People still might go to New Posts regardless.
Please remember that this forum was created by your fellow geeks in the vintage computing (mainly vintage Mac) community. We wanted a place safe from bullying, and a place where one can more freely speak their mind without fear, and I believe we have achieved that. We also have a forum that doesn't limit itself to certain types of Macs alone. If a C-64 lover wants to post here, they can! Acorn? Sure! But openness alone is not attracting the masses and keeping them here. It's rather amusing and a bit disappointing to me personally that some would be willing to run the risk of bullying or have their speech more limited in another forum simply because it is perceived there is more content in that other forum. But I guess people are willing to take risks for what they deem to be better or more abundant content.
In terms of geeks having created this forum, the level of geekiness exhibits itself in the sheer abundance of forum categories. I really do think there's a correlation!
Maybe we are too geeky?
Question...
Do you think having interesting merchandise for sale (with proceeds to benefit the forum), or having fun activities, would be a way to attract more people to the forum and keep them posting here, regardless of how our forum categories are structured? Or do you think any such promotions would have little impact while our categories remain the way they are now?