Improving Gamingforce

Speaking of theme months, we haven't done Color Month in forever. That's always fun.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Zephyrin

Just shut down the gurnals for a couple of weeks. It wouldn't be that devastating.

Zeph, we're trying to come up with ways to improve Gamingforce, not kill it entirely. (Seriously, a little more than a week ago I had two entries 24 hours apart in the top 10 most recent journal list, and then when we came home from Sebago there had only been three journals commented in in the previous 24 hours.) Following up with:

Originally Posted by KING MANCHU WOK

The journals are the closest thing GFF has to Facebook. I think a lot of the people who are sticking to journals are the people who have become more and more comfortable with that style of socializing rather than the forum style.

It's also easier to regulate the conversation to fit your desires (I believe they call it "e-forting").

If the idea is to get people away from the journals and into the forums then I suppose the right course of action would be to determine what makes the journals more appealing than the forums themselves (if there is any reason besides being able to make an e-fort).

Originally Posted by DieSeLFueLeD

Fix'd.

GFF is too cliquey. Honestly. I won't blame Meet Crew, but a lot of the discussion sticks to journals about whatever the fuck those people happen to be doing.

Sounds to me like you're suggesting a GFF mixer. But dragging the Concert Hall people into the rest of the forums might be difficult.

This might not be a popular idea, but we seem to have a lot of sub-forums that just don't see much action. Combine that with the fact that we have a large selection of subforums and new people might be overwhelmed. (I know the counter-argument to this already, but we're not Something Awful. We're not NeoGAF either. We simply don't have that many people running around here at all hours.) We have thread prefixes and people use them, so there's really no reason why we couldn't merge more of the subforums together. Creator's Cafe and I make a bitch sandwich could be merged into a umbrella creativity subforum and, even more outrageously, maybe even merge Media Center and Video Gaming.

I just crunched some numbers regarding our new members. The tl;dr version is spoilerized, the summary is after. (Total # of members, total number of posts, any members with more than 10 posts are listed with the number of posts, where they post, and their current status if they haven't shown any activity in a while)

Spoiler:

20 = 4
40 = 9
60 = 14
80 = 19
100 = 54
120 = 63
140 = 91 (NewNick, 27, Gamingforce)
160 = 91
180 = 121 (geveente, 12, Concert Hall; and bio_reef, 13, Concert Hall)
200 = 122
220 = 124
240 = 126
260 = 160 (Mighty Tor, 20, Gamingforce)
280 = 176 (Rex_Banner, 11, last active 7/22/2010)
300 = 178
320 = 186
340 = 189
360 = 190
380 = 190
400 = 206 (Cat Slobber, 10, Gamingforce)
420 = 211
440 = 218
460 = 262 (KamikazePotato, 42, Concert Hall)
480 = 267
500 = 271
520 = 281
540 = 289
560 = 291
580 = 311 (melakukan, 15, Concert Hall, last active 7/31/2010)
600 = 353 (Shake Appeal, 40, Halo Reach thread)
620 = 421 (Jolteon, 65, Concert Hall)
640 = 424
660 = 431
680 = 434
700 = 436
720 = 439
740 = 472 (Jellyfluff, 32, Anime Melody thread, last active 5/5/2010)
760 = 481
780 = 491
800 = 500
820 = 500
840 = 510
860 = 517
880 = 519
900 = 519
920 = 524
940 = 530
960 = 531
980 = 532
1000 = 582 (Charizard, 25, Gamingforce, last active 3/18/2010 and Worov, 23, Concert Hall)
1020 = 591
1040 = 594
1060 = 594
1080 = 624 (InvestmentBankr, 29, last active 4/16/2010, effectively banned)
1100 = 644 (Appetite Lad, 20, last active 1/18/2010)
1120 = 700 (slessman, 52, Gamingforce)
1140 = 705
1162 = 707

Since January 1 this year, we've had 1,162 new registrees. All new registrees have accounted for 707 posts total, and the 16 members who have more than 10 posts account for 457 posts between themselves, accounting for about 65% of the posts among new members this calendar year.

And at least one of those new members is likely a dupe. And another is effectively banned.

13 relatively active new members out of 1162 new registrees.

I'm sure this is interesting to no one.

How ya doing, buddy?

Well, there is a link to Gamingforce on VGMdb on this page.

And while I hadn't looked at VGMdb's forums until just now, all of the subforums are related to music discussion. There is no section for "General Discussion", "Off Topic", nothing.

So I'm a bit tepid to the idea that bringing GFF to their attention in a more pronounced way (or, more severely, merging the two forums, if that ever came up) will have much impact on Gamingforce, aside from that in the Concert Hall, the regulars of which don't spend much time, if any, in the "Gamingforce" sections of the forums or in the journals.

Nevertheless, if the idea is to seek an immediate influx of members, VGMdb is the likeliest well to tap.

Additional Spam:

Originally Posted by RacinReaver

I'd be all for a quick, obvious link to get into #gfchat somewhere at the top of the page.

What, you want something more direct than Quick Links > ChocoChat? You lazy bastard.

How ya doing, buddy?

I'm speaking purely from a general lack of knowledge on how vBulletin operates, but I have a question for Skills (and anyone else who may be trying this):

Since the conversation about upgrading has come up, has anyone tried taking a mirror copy of the core data on Gamingforce (e.g. members, posts, threads and subforums) and trying vB4 to see how it will work? Or is importing this data into an empty forum really that time-consuming or difficult? I mean, how hard would it be for us to take a fresh vB4 install and, bells-and-whistles removed, have a usable forum that would tide us over until the bells-and-whistles are fully functional again?

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?