Cleaning up a forum
There's a message board that I read a lot and occasionally post in. It's the best forum I have been to in, I don't know, eight or so years, but a bit more intelligent.
Recently the board has apparently been having technical problems. Many members have complained that whenever they visit, it is either down or it's going slow. However, this only happened to me once, yesterday. I only visit every few days, so I guess I didn't notice. But, anyway. I still read the board a great deal. I really got into it. I love the community. The people are generally well-spoken, and dumb thirteen-year-old types simply don't find a place there and they generally leave. It's quite easy to post something and be taken seriously, something I rarely find in any message board.
Well, an idea to fix the technical problems is to move to a different version of message board. This will require that the old posts be wiped out, everyone re-register, and start over. Most people think it's a good idea. The general attitude is, "as long as the board works better ..."
I'd suggest that they get hobbies, but I should be more understanding. It's possible that they've never been around for such changes before. I have.
When you clean out a community and start over, the community will change. Totally. For better or for worse. These people obviously love the community, and so do I, but I think they like it the way it is. It's just the slow boards they don't like. But if they're going to wipe it and start over, they'd better be prepared for the community to be very different. That's what happens. An important part of a community is its history. The old threads and posts HAVE to be there. I suggested to them that if they have an archive area, or re-posted the old posts in each thread (rather than completely starting each thread anew), then it can be okay.
But starting completely fresh? No. Even an archive won't guarantee anything. I have seen this happen before. Unfortunately, the message boards I used to read were wiped out, no old messages retained, a lot of old threads re-started but never the same. It's not even that I disliked it at first. It was fine. I continued reading it. But it simply deteriorated. It was downhill from there. I would seriously hate to see the same thing happen to this new board.
Sigh.
Recently the board has apparently been having technical problems. Many members have complained that whenever they visit, it is either down or it's going slow. However, this only happened to me once, yesterday. I only visit every few days, so I guess I didn't notice. But, anyway. I still read the board a great deal. I really got into it. I love the community. The people are generally well-spoken, and dumb thirteen-year-old types simply don't find a place there and they generally leave. It's quite easy to post something and be taken seriously, something I rarely find in any message board.
Well, an idea to fix the technical problems is to move to a different version of message board. This will require that the old posts be wiped out, everyone re-register, and start over. Most people think it's a good idea. The general attitude is, "as long as the board works better ..."
I'd suggest that they get hobbies, but I should be more understanding. It's possible that they've never been around for such changes before. I have.
When you clean out a community and start over, the community will change. Totally. For better or for worse. These people obviously love the community, and so do I, but I think they like it the way it is. It's just the slow boards they don't like. But if they're going to wipe it and start over, they'd better be prepared for the community to be very different. That's what happens. An important part of a community is its history. The old threads and posts HAVE to be there. I suggested to them that if they have an archive area, or re-posted the old posts in each thread (rather than completely starting each thread anew), then it can be okay.
But starting completely fresh? No. Even an archive won't guarantee anything. I have seen this happen before. Unfortunately, the message boards I used to read were wiped out, no old messages retained, a lot of old threads re-started but never the same. It's not even that I disliked it at first. It was fine. I continued reading it. But it simply deteriorated. It was downhill from there. I would seriously hate to see the same thing happen to this new board.
Sigh.