Okay. I wanted to make this thread for a while. This is an extension of Fixing the Dumping Ground by TL;DR.
As we all have noticed and seen people notice that this Forum is dead asides from the Promotion Section and posts that would belong there but aren't there we know there is something wrong. I've done extensive research, traveled to Rome, London and back to Vienna to sit down on my chair to find the reason.
Jokes aside.
At the time of writing the Promote Yourself! Section has 20,968 Threads and 31,991 Messages. Subtracting those it means the section has 11023 replies. Sounds better than I thought BUT WAIT It's an old Forum and people used to reply back in the day. So let's look at more recent Data.
Since Oct 1, a total of 265 Threads were posted in that section.
I have created a Google Spreadsheet showing how many replies each post got and whether or not it was a Media Section post. Feel free to experiment around with it.
It has shown though that 75% of posts from October did not get any replies. That's 199 out of 265 posts.
Here's the question: Does this profit anyone? It sure doesn't profit the Forum and Community that so many people just dive in to post stuff there and leave. Though we've been through this.
Instead of covering everything said by TL;DR let's focus on the reason this is like that.
The likeliest reason I can come up with is the way the Forums are marketed. Let's see how the Freedom! Team works to get the Forums out there and where they are linked:
On to my last point for this thread, I have a suggestion on making the Promotion Section viewable again.
Once a post with only a video without anything around it is posted, notify the poster they can't only post a video with anything around it and tell them to edit it. If they fail to edit the post take the rights out to delete it. I'd love to support some people in that section though half the posts I see are really low quality, only supplying the pasted title of the video and the video itself. This gets old after a while. So here's a step-by-step way to improve this:
Do leave Feedback on what you think of this down below, I'm eager to hear it.
As we all have noticed and seen people notice that this Forum is dead asides from the Promotion Section and posts that would belong there but aren't there we know there is something wrong. I've done extensive research, traveled to Rome, London and back to Vienna to sit down on my chair to find the reason.
Jokes aside.
At the time of writing the Promote Yourself! Section has 20,968 Threads and 31,991 Messages. Subtracting those it means the section has 11023 replies. Sounds better than I thought BUT WAIT It's an old Forum and people used to reply back in the day. So let's look at more recent Data.
Since Oct 1, a total of 265 Threads were posted in that section.
I have created a Google Spreadsheet showing how many replies each post got and whether or not it was a Media Section post. Feel free to experiment around with it.
It has shown though that 75% of posts from October did not get any replies. That's 199 out of 265 posts.
Here's the question: Does this profit anyone? It sure doesn't profit the Forum and Community that so many people just dive in to post stuff there and leave. Though we've been through this.
Instead of covering everything said by TL;DR let's focus on the reason this is like that.
The likeliest reason I can come up with is the way the Forums are marketed. Let's see how the Freedom! Team works to get the Forums out there and where they are linked:
- The Dashboard. Fair Point.
- Support.TM as a way to get help from people. Fair point.
- Discord.
Discord is the place many new members go. Now how do you show them the Forums?
Like this.
This pisses me off a ton. You only show people posting in a section that's not possible to be moderated reasonably instead of posting threads that serve to feed a discussion, to help people grow their channels or to serve a positive cause. It's like making a flyer for your village and showing the huge stinking garbage dump outside of it on the front page. - Freedom!'s YouTube Channel
This is done way too few, but just feature the forums on there a bit! I was insanely happy about stuff like you generally running over the Forums for a few minutes, you showing off contests or you just spotlighting a Forum Member who bulk uploaded all the work they've ever done within a few weeks to give to Partners on C.R.I.B.
On to my last point for this thread, I have a suggestion on making the Promotion Section viewable again.
Once a post with only a video without anything around it is posted, notify the poster they can't only post a video with anything around it and tell them to edit it. If they fail to edit the post take the rights out to delete it. I'd love to support some people in that section though half the posts I see are really low quality, only supplying the pasted title of the video and the video itself. This gets old after a while. So here's a step-by-step way to improve this:
- Create a full ruleset for the Promotion Section. Rules, not best practices. They've failed you a long time ago.
- Encourage users to post good threads instead of just a video in edits, if need be removing threads not following it.
- Feature threads following those Guidelines (Pins, Announcements) and reward users for following them (I'd hand out credits to good Promotion Section Posts myself, but they're rarely more than a copy of the YouTube Description which already is a Link Dump).
- Add a tiny credit reward (0.05 Credits) for viewing threads there.
Do leave Feedback on what you think of this down below, I'm eager to hear it.