It seems that the past forums were not used very much. It may have bene a case of too many choices. I have deleted everything for now and reverted back to just one forum/tpic to see if that helps.
If members of WIGIT don't actually feel that forums are useful then please do let me know. Well let me know if you feel they could be usful - and let me know how we can do that.
Bad move to be honest Gwynn, the choices wre about right for those that wanted to use them.
Forums are a strange beast, One of my other hobbies is flight simming as you know, I am a member of a virtual airline which has 1200 members. In all honesty there are probably about 100 members if that who are frequent posters on the forums.
Quite often members just want to look, and see if there is information they want - the lurkers of the forum.
By deleting the posts you have probably lost their interest!
I am glad to hear that two of you feel that the forum is or could be useful. Are there any others?
Something that you may not be aware of is that I have to pay for the forums as they are supplied by a third party company (ie they are better at security and this sort of functionality than me). So I want to feel that the forums are useful and being used.
I have watched them this year since january and the posting had declined to zero posts. This didn't mean that no one ever visited but, certainly no one was posting.
It is difficult when the membership is quite small, but we are an online society that will live or die from the activity or otherwise of its members. So I ask you all to let me know how to make it work for you. What do you need?
One of the problems the forum is now faced with is that there are two few topics, well one only! If I were a new memeber looking at this, I would think that the forum was a waste of time and not bother looking again.
If there is no useful structure then there is no use in the forum to be honest.
I would propose the following thread/theme/topic structure -
General Information - Somewhere to discuss things that do not fit into other categories
Equipment - Discussions on equipment
Software - Discussion on Software
Techniques - Discussion on photographic techniques
I agree with Ian that we need topics here, i also agree with Gwynn that the forums where not used fully. I have a friend who had a forum which took him a year and a half to take off. Perhaps the solution is e mail all members and see if they want the forum and if so what they want from it. Or go back to the free forum until it builds up. Ok i know it was a lot of hassle but thst would safe you money and perhaps ask Ian if he'd be prepared to assist with the moderation. Unfortunatly i don't have as much time as i would like with my job, but try and get on here for five minutes or so before going to bed
