Nobody likes a sloppy jack of all trades.
*goes sobbingly away*

I too want what you want, a strong community. I don’t care if it’s only 10 members, if there is a strong sense of some kind of relationship and people that get along normally and talk about interesting stuff on a regular basis, that would be great.

The forum that I co-administer is an off and on deal. We have a fairly solid member base, but they post infrequently. Sometimes we get influxes of new members that are highly talkative, but the content amounts to crap (crap being offensive stuff, which includes being mean to other members, “tough love,” spouting dogma that isn’t meant for discussion, etc).

Sometimes I’ll survey members about their inactivity. It is always, with the exception of a personal crisis, due to “lack of time.” Most of these people are sort of lying, as after stating that I see them posting madly on another forum. It actually reminds me of online dating. I’ll send a girl a PM, and I don’t get a response. Finally, after a long period or from me calling on them not responding, I get “Sorry, I’m so busy! Work, school, etc!” Then I see when they post two 80 question questionairres about useless personal info and how they’re bored… I don’t think it’s a lack of time, it’s a lack of interest, which could be applied to our forums.

I think one reason, is that while both of our forums have a central topic (mine being Jedi, yours being Anime/Videogames), they aren’t hugely popular topics, at least to talk about anyway, and seem to occur in niches. We also both have several areas of other interests where people can engage in conversation. But let’s face it, the people that go to the Jedi site go there for info on Jedi stuff (they read Academy info, check out the blogs) and the people that go to your site go there for the anime and videogame stuff (read reviews, blogs, etc). So I agree too, that many people simply look to other sources like blogs. I think this because, I’ve found that the “other topics” just don’t seem to spark as much conversation. Topics that get a lot of people going are stuff like martial arts (yeah… people love to talk about how to fight others for some reason… lots of advice to be found in these places), religion is a huge one (for example, a christian group that shares concerns, experiences, etc), and maybe politics.

I’ve found that a lot of people online like to give “advice.” There seems to be a “helping” epidemic when it comes to forums, and forums that are dedicated to this sort of practice thrive at an alarming rate. I don’t know, maybe they have something to prove or want to be seen as an expert, but it gets really crazy sometimes. Members like these, and members that have a poor attitude or poor communication skills, have undermined many decent discussions and turned topics into 20 page slug fests (not on our watch of course! But I’ve seen this happen at a surprisingly large number of places). My experience has been, that when it comes to forums, at least 50% of the member base is these people! Hot-headed, quick to judge/blame/tell people what they should do, etc, it is just crazy. I guess what I’m trying to say is: It’s hard to get good members.

What can we do? I don’t know, after rambling all that I got nothin’, haha. The communities that I’ve seen thrive the best have low moderation… which leads to frequent posting, but what does it matter if it’s all crap? I think the very nature of “online” is a good incentive for a lot of people to act differently, as in blunt and mean. It’s easy to act certain ways when the other person isn’t really in front of you. Moderating takes that away from them, it makes them remember “Oh yeah, it’s a real person, not just pixels on a screen.” For some reason, a lot of people don’t like that.

Travis

*yawns for the 20th time* gahh.. im going back to bed.. already got 8 hours.. apparently i need more sleep.. (>z_z)

Just me me me ME.
And get whatever you want and go.

Even torrent sites where a sort of forum-y reply is appreciated are annoyed at silent fleeing leechers.

Big fansubbers forums are pretty small core it seems as well.