4 ms·
Less companies more groups but the one I used to see kill forums back in the day over and over was slicing the community too thinly. You start with a general or
by corobo 4y ago
Less companies more groups but the one I used to see kill forums back in the day over and over was slicing the community too thinly. You start with a general or focused set of discussions, eventually you want to split general banter out, no problem.
The problem comes in when you fall for the idea "well, I'm already here, might as well make loads of sections". Now instead of on topic and off topic you have general, misc, gaming, books, whatever else.
If you don't have the community to fill out all of those areas, they all end up becoming mini ghost towns. This makes the community look dead, feel dead, eventually become dead.
Used to happen in forums when they were the new hotness, these days if you use Discord you're probably idling at least 2 or 3 communities that did this and now wonder where everyone went.
Premature optimisation, social style.
- Cthulhu_ 4y agoI've seen that happen a few times on various forums I've visited; one part was because they copied sections off of established, larger forums. Another was just adding sections when someone asked about it. And another was trying to encourage certain forum topics. Since then I've just said, if there's enough topics about a subject to warrant a new section, then we'll add it. Until then, just post it in #general or whatever. You don't need a dedicated section if you want to talk about things.
- yakubin 4y agoWith Discord separate threads aren’t supported as well as they were on phpbb forums. They’re not prominently displayed and the older ones (a couple months old) fail to load at all. So channels play the role of a small static set of threads, not of old forum sections. Without separate channels everything is intermingled into one big mess. I’d prefer phpbb. Alas we’re in a race to the bottom since the naughts.