Questions to forum regulars/admin/staff

[Cameratose]

I signed up here thinking I had found a nice, easy-going forum. Instead, I think I stumbled on a forum that's in its last throes of existence, like a mammoth slowly sinking into a tar pit. 

I see a lot of people sign up, post, and leave. Primarily because no one responds to their posts. It appears that almost no one ever hits a 'like' or comments on a photo. Some of the technical questions seem to get a response, but not even many of those. I see people from other forums that I know that have posted and left. Some of them produce very good work, but they got almost zero response. 

So, do you like it this way, or would you prefer more traffic? This is the sister forum to Sony Alpha Rumors, correct? Is Andrea happy with the forum, or has it been abandoned for FB/YouTube etc.? 

This feels like it could be a good place to expend effort in getting some participation, but if the members prefer status quo, then I will cooperate.  

[Phormula]

It is a common situation to all forums.

They have been killed by socials and even them are fading away.

In the early 2000s I was a moderator in a forum dedicated to travel and tourism. We were more than 20 people, between admins and moderators, plus two webmasters. Nevertheless, we were not able to keep pace with the traffic, I remember logging in in the morning and finding more than 1000 new posts, having to read all of them, delete the spam and derailed ones and remove the ones that could lead into trouble (upset people often use words that could led into trouble and it was not uncommon for people that ran out of arguments to switch to insult and personal attack). Plus the huge work of joining discussion because people ignore the basic rule of forums, i.e. do not open a new discussion if there is already one on the same topic. 

Now this forum is simply dead. Game over. 

This is just an example, I can list many other forums that have gone this way. The average internet user does not want to spend time to search and read discussions, unless they have a problem that cannot be solved by a Google search limited to the results in the first page, and even in this case they register, open a discussion, expect to get an answer by an "expert" almost in real time, and then disappear into the blue. No sense of community, just free problem solving in real time. This is the spirit of internet today and I do not expect that a small, specific forum, will be able to reverse the trend.

That said, I am glad that forums like this still exist and I hope they will continue. I found a lot of advice and even the solution to some issues without having to open a new discussion, simply because the matter had already been discussed. This, to me, is the real value of a good forum, a search engine that allows to dig into the knowledge base.

Sorry for the rant.

[Pieter]

I've been active on this forum for almost a decade and have to admit I miss the lively days where heated discussions with the occasional snarky / sarcastic yet knowledgeable and constructive comments provided me with a lot of reading fun. And I have to admit I 'contributed' to some of these as well. Peculiar yet skilled characters like Golem/Username surely livened up this place but eventually got banned for crossing the arbitrary line of becoming offensive. Then again, I'm glad this forum isn't as toxic as the average comment section on SolyAlphaRumors.

The Amazon-spam surely doesn't help the forum either. I understand people trying to at least make the forum pay for itself, but I recon most of the income is generated by the parent site SonyAlphaRumors anyway. An active and useful forum can also help draw traffic to the parent site, so I feel these advertisements are counterproductive: new visitors are immediately put off by a spam post on their introduction message.

[Cameratose]

I don't think forums are dead quite yet. I was very active and a moderator at another forum but have decided to pull out due to a disagreement over the forum owner's decisions about running the place. That forum looked very much like this one when I started posting there, with maybe a handful of active members. I set about posting, and man did I post. I posted silly things just to start a post, responded to anything I could, welcomed new members, started controversial and sometimes borderline rude debates, posted every interesting rumor from SAR, etc. I also urged others to join in. When you do a search with Bing that forum now pops up on top, while this place is three pages down. I think there's still room (albeit much smaller) for forums, but they need to be active.

So many people post an image, expect to get likes and comments, but then never participate in the rest of the forum. These things are a community and it takes effort. If someone signs up and gets no response, they leave. Pretty simple stuff. While poking around here I've run across a handful of folks from other places that I recognize that have posted and left. Some are guilty of not participating, some tried. 

Toxicity is going to happen, but I believe some of it needs to, it makes the world go 'round. A good controversy or debate can help forum traffic. The key is to set limits and enforce them.  

I don't mind the advertising, but that stupid Amazon "Hey check here' is really annoying and misleading. I've seen at least one time where the OP was tricked into thinking it was an actual response. 

In any event, I may try to do the same thing here if there's any interest. 

[Cameratose]

Well, I didn't expect a landslide of responses, but only two surprises me, and nothing from admin or mods.

Perhaps the real question is: Does anyone even care? 

[Pieter]

What is it you hope to achieve with this thread?

[Cameratose]

Should be pretty obvious, no? Answers to the posted questions from regulars.