Make FF Great again! Ideas and suggestions to increase forum activity

[Hockey5djh]

1 hour ago, iPwn said:

They're already there. If you follow a forum, it gives you the option of how you want to be notified, including a weekly email.

 

1 hour ago, Webmaster said:

That is already an option.  But it's a good idea and we will to promote that option to members.   

I guess my thought was more along the lines of a "opt out" rather than an "opt in" type of email. The vast majority of people don't or won't directly sign up for weekly content emails or set up their notifications but if something is properly done each week that highlights NFL news and Forum events they might not opt out.

 

For example the Front page NFL News and rumors links that take you to the forum. It gives you direct updates on whats happening in the NFL and also promotes discussion in the forums/threads that you choose need activity. Other things that could be added to this type of email could be the weekly team forum promotion that you were discussing earlier in the thread and other forum wide events that happen such as FFMD (or whats left of it?), Big Brother, etc.

[Danger]

5 hours ago, Webmaster said:

@HorizontoZenith, all good ideas.   I was already planning on having some more options for badges and I think it will be good to run some more games.  I don't know about the need for a games forum, but it's something I will think about.  

I presume subforums are possible under IPB?

[vike daddy]

wonderful to see not only the new tech platform for FF, but a discussion like this, looking for new suggestions.

[FinneasGage]

On 7/18/2017 at 5:38 PM, MKnight82 said:

We need to revive the FFMD back to its former glory.  Keep it simple and try to promote new members into participating.  It should just be about having fun, not what's most "realistic".  There are other mocks for that.  The FFMD is why I joined the forum to begin with.  

Agree 100% w/ this. Joined the site to participate in FFMD & it dying was a big blow. Was my favorite part of the forum. 

[TLO]

On 7/18/2017 at 3:11 PM, ramssuperbowl99 said:

If there's any website that FF should siphon traffic from, it's walterfootball. 

You could build a directory (or, use an official @FootballsFuture twitter account) to promote high quality posts like @CWood21's draft thread or Goldfishwars rankings.

I'll second the idea of an official twitter account. I think that'd be pretty beneficial in the long run.

[mission27]

1 hour ago, thelawoffices said:

I'll second the idea of an official twitter account. I think that'd be pretty beneficial in the long run.

Didn't there used to be one? 

Anyway agreed about Walter football.  There content is not nearly as good as FF's but they have some solid SEO going on, so sometimes even I will accidentally stumble over there. F

[NewAge]

On 18/07/2017 at 4:20 PM, Webmaster said:

Every forum has 10-20 very active members who just disappeared years ago for one reason or another.  I could send them an email with an update on the forum changes and fun activities happening in their team forum that week.  

This is a great idea.

However, I think the biggest issue is the lack of active new members. I know my personal acitivity has decreased but not completely disappeared over the past year or so, but as I remember it for years, pretty much all the active posters were around for a while. I joined in 2010 and started posting in 2012. Pretty much every other even moderately active poster started before I did (most likely in 2006-2008). Due to obvious reasons, a good percentage of those posters are no longer active nearly a decade later. The lack of new members wasn't a huge deal in, say, 2009-2012 when much of the original core was still around. However, as those posters naturally began to move on, there was not much of a new crop to replace them. As logic would have it, the overall forum activity has gradually decreased over the years as more and more of the original members move on for various reasons. 

In 2006, you had a large number of what were presumably mostly high school students (with a number college students too) who liked sports and, more specifically, football. Now, I'm 21 years old and I'm still probably one of the youngest "active" members on here. If a 21-year-old posted on here in 2006, they'd probably be older than a majority of the posters on the site. 

Obviously, you're always going to have a number of people moving on and becoming less active for real life reasons, especially considering that the 16 year olds from 2006 are now 27. The key is to have a continually emerging mantle of posters ready to take the handle and fill in the gaps. Since I wasn't around in the original years I can't fully speak to what went on then but I'd imagine the climate to attract new users is rougher now than it was then given twitter, reddit, and so on. Back then, a message board was thought of as a cool online thing to share thoughts about interesting just like twitter is thought of now by a lot of young people (and 71 year old men). I think this new design can go a long way towards starting to win back a portion of that demographic but it is just a start. 

Like is often the inevitability of many industries worldwide, online messaging has become an example of a select number of big-named giants running over the common man or small/niche business (yes, I know that twitter is still not turning a profit). Rather than going on specific message boards for specific interests, people tend to turn to single sites that can cover all of their interests, for better or worse. Obviously, Football's Future is not going to stand head-to-head against twitter or reddit anytime soon but that doesn't mean it can't become a new trend on a moderate scale. 

The key, in my mind, is getting the name out and introduced to the young person demographic, whether it's through twitter or what not. And once they check out this website, they can see stuff that they can't find elsewhere. Some of the ideas I see thrown out here to increase activity sound wonderful. I agree with Webby that these catch-all threads turn away new users and I am not sure how much of a coincidence it is that the rise of WAYTA coincides nicely with the decline of new membership. No one is joining a new website to post in a forum that has one thread with 1200 posts in it on a bunch of topics and threads from 9 months ago still on the front page. I honestly cannot overemphasize how awful that is and unappealing to anyone not already in the inner circle. It's like you're signing up to just sit in on a few people's group text chat. 

[CWood21]

On 7/18/2017 at 4:38 PM, MKnight82 said:

We need to revive the FFMD back to its former glory.  Keep it simple and try to promote new members into participating.  It should just be about having fun, not what's most "realistic".  There are other mocks for that.  The FFMD is why I joined the forum to begin with.  

I feel like I can speak from the operations side, but we simplified FF back to the way it was several years ago and the interest in it was minimal.  I think I had ~20 teams that people signed up to be GM, and I think that includes posters that quite frankly I wouldn't count as dependable.  Honestly, the interest wasn't there and I think that goes from the top to the bottom.  Even if I had to pretty much beg a few mods to help get involved.  Too many people weren't interested in it.  Maybe it was from bad experience in previous FFMDs, or maybe the forum has outgrown it but nobody wanted to participate.  Perhaps we go with just FFMD2 and stick with that as the "official" forum mock, but FFMD1 was pretty much dead.

[NewAge]

And this is a bit more out there and maybe not an immediate goal, but I think another big move could be ehancing the parts of the site that are not NFL related. Obviously, college football is the lowest hanging fruit here. A thread that was founded based on the NFL Draft and literally "football's future" should probably embrace college football more than just giving it a single forum. And I say that as someone who hardly even watches college football these days.

To that end, I personally would love to further enrich the baseball, basketball, soccer, etc. forums but I understand that doing so would contradict the name of the website (soccer aside, for all Brits reading this) and prove a tall task. It would be a tough process to suddenly try to attract copious fans of these other sports to create essentially a Baseball's Future, Basketball's Future, etc.. Obviously, there's the chance that doing so would pay off immensely but I think more modest upgrades to the other sports probably make more sense for the time being.

Football is declining a bit (I know I follow it a lot less and mostly just post in the baseball forum these days), so I don't think it can hurt to slightly broaden the appeal of the site beyond just hardcore football fans. There are also probably a TON of posters in team forums that follow other sports as intensely as many of those in the baseball, basketball, and soccer forums do. I think more should be done to get those people to post about these sports on this site, whether it's by advertising the other sports forums or, like I said, moderately expanding the attention paid to them. Perhaps add new features to those forums or gradually split each sport into a few different forums (MLB General, MLB Team Threads, MLB Draft/Prospects). 

As someone who posts frequently in the baseball forum, I can tell you it mostly consists of various team threads, a general gameday thread, a general prospects thread, and for this month of the year, a trade deadline thread. When a big transaction goes down, someone (ok, this is generally always me) posts a thread dedicated to it. These are basically the only threads in the entire forum that are not just general, chronic threads with a ton of different things discussed. So if baseball was split into the three forums I suggested in the previous paragraph, you probably could see these sorts of threads in the three forums over the past month alone...

• General:
  • Week of 6/17 Game Discussion Thread (and so on for every week); unlike in the past, this will generally only be about the actual games
  • Week of 6/17 Game Highlights Thread
  • Cubs acquire Jose Quintana (and every other transaction thread)
  • Propose a Trade Thread
  • Trade Rumors Thread
  • Random threads about interesting individual articles from FanGraphs, Baseball Prospectus, etc.
  • Multiple threads about interesting sabermetrics trends, ideas
  • Threads comparing different players, teams, etc.
  • A thread arguing about which teams should buy or sell at the deadline
  • Any other threads about interesting thoughts, happenings, questions, etc
  • How long should a rebuild take?
  • Is the baseball juiced? (Yes)
  • When will we see MLB expansion?
  • What is the trade deadline impact of the QO changes in the new CBA?
• Team Threads: just the 30 team threads
• Prospects/Draft:
  • Week of 6/17 Minor League Games Thread
  • Baseball Prospectus Midseason Prospect List
  • ESPN Midseason Prospect List
  • Baseball America Midseason Prospect List
  • Grade the 2017 drafts
  • 2017 Summer League Discussion
  • Early 2018 draft rankings
  • July 2nd coverage
  • Who is the #1 prospect in baseball?
  • Do the White Sox have the best farm system of the past decade?
  • College baseball discussion

I think, aside from some team threads, this would be active enough if only the existing members of the baseball forum posted. If it is advertised throughout the rest of the site and elsewhere, it could really explode. There's a huge untapped market and much of that market might already post elsewhere on this site. 

Not to mention, people like myself and @ramssuperbowl99 can post threads that can introduce other members to aspects of the game, such as specific sabermetrics concepts. 

[Deadpulse]

59 minutes ago, CWood21 said:

I feel like I can speak from the operations side, but we simplified FF back to the way it was several years ago and the interest in it was minimal.  I think I had ~20 teams that people signed up to be GM, and I think that includes posters that quite frankly I wouldn't count as dependable.  Honestly, the interest wasn't there and I think that goes from the top to the bottom.  Even if I had to pretty much beg a few mods to help get involved.  Too many people weren't interested in it.  Maybe it was from bad experience in previous FFMDs, or maybe the forum has outgrown it but nobody wanted to participate.  Perhaps we go with just FFMD2 and stick with that as the "official" forum mock, but FFMD1 was pretty much dead.

I can second this. I tried so hard to get people in the Patriots sub to get involved. We probably have one of the better population number on FF and still I got borderline no one to take the reigns. 

[TLO]

1 hour ago, NewAge said:

And this is a bit more out there and maybe not an immediate goal, but I think another big move could be ehancing the parts of the site that are not NFL related. Obviously, college football is the lowest hanging fruit here. A thread that was founded based on the NFL Draft and literally "football's future" should probably embrace college football more than just giving it a single forum. And I say that as someone who hardly even watches college football these days.

To that end, I personally would love to further enrich the baseball, basketball, soccer, etc. forums but I understand that doing so would contradict the name of the website (soccer aside, for all Brits reading this) and prove a tall task. It would be a tough process to suddenly try to attract copious fans of these other sports to create essentially a Baseball's Future, Basketball's Future, etc.. Obviously, there's the chance that doing so would pay off immensely but I think more modest upgrades to the other sports probably make more sense for the time being.

Football is declining a bit (I know I follow it a lot less and mostly just post in the baseball forum these days), so I don't think it can hurt to slightly broaden the appeal of the site beyond just hardcore football fans. There are also probably a TON of posters in team forums that follow other sports as intensely as many of those in the baseball, basketball, and soccer forums do. I think more should be done to get those people to post about these sports on this site, whether it's by advertising the other sports forums or, like I said, moderately expanding the attention paid to them. Perhaps add new features to those forums or gradually split each sport into a few different forums (MLB General, MLB Team Threads, MLB Draft/Prospects). 

As someone who posts frequently in the baseball forum, I can tell you it mostly consists of various team threads, a general gameday thread, a general prospects thread, and for this month of the year, a trade deadline thread. When a big transaction goes down, someone (ok, this is generally always me) posts a thread dedicated to it. These are basically the only threads in the entire forum that are not just general, chronic threads with a ton of different things discussed. So if baseball was split into the three forums I suggested in the previous paragraph, you probably could see these sorts of threads in the three forums over the past month alone...

• General:
  • Week of 6/17 Game Discussion Thread (and so on for every week); unlike in the past, this will generally only be about the actual games
  • Week of 6/17 Game Highlights Thread
  • Cubs acquire Jose Quintana (and every other transaction thread)
  • Propose a Trade Thread
  • Trade Rumors Thread
  • Random threads about interesting individual articles from FanGraphs, Baseball Prospectus, etc.
  • Multiple threads about interesting sabermetrics trends, ideas
  • Threads comparing different players, teams, etc.
  • A thread arguing about which teams should buy or sell at the deadline
  • Any other threads about interesting thoughts, happenings, questions, etc
  • How long should a rebuild take?
  • Is the baseball juiced? (Yes)
  • When will we see MLB expansion?
  • What is the trade deadline impact of the QO changes in the new CBA?
• Team Threads: just the 30 team threads
• Prospects/Draft:
  • Week of 6/17 Minor League Games Thread
  • Baseball Prospectus Midseason Prospect List
  • ESPN Midseason Prospect List
  • Baseball America Midseason Prospect List
  • Grade the 2017 drafts
  • 2017 Summer League Discussion
  • Early 2018 draft rankings
  • July 2nd coverage
  • Who is the #1 prospect in baseball?
  • Do the White Sox have the best farm system of the past decade?
  • College baseball discussion

I think, aside from some team threads, this would be active enough if only the existing members of the baseball forum posted. If it is advertised throughout the rest of the site and elsewhere, it could really explode. There's a huge untapped market and much of that market might already post elsewhere on this site. 

Not to mention, people like myself and @ramssuperbowl99 can post threads that can introduce other members to aspects of the game, such as specific sabermetrics concepts. 

I like where this idea comes from and the intention behind it, but I think it's too much. Too many sub-forums is going to lead to a more cluttered look and  hurt the aesthetic appeal of the site. I think the baseball forum just needs to have more threads created, mainly because I think it is sort of falling into the same pit that was already mentioned where there are too many catch all threads. That, I think, leads to burying productive discussion that could be going on. So something like "Do the White Sox have the best farm system of the past decade?" should be it's own thread, not something just buried in a general prospects thread.

[NewAge]

@thelawoffices I bet there's a way to have it where the main forum page can just provide a link to these other sports or baseball forums, so that each forum doesn't have to be lists on the homepage. It could be some sort of sub-menu. 

And if you did this for just baseball and basketball, that's only four added forums combined. Maybe add a fifth for college basketball. 

Just the fact that the other sports forums expanding could be enough to draw in a significant number of posters who previously only used this site to post on Sundays during football season. 

[TLO]

1 minute ago, NewAge said:

@thelawoffices I bet there's a way to have it where the main forum page can just provide a link to these other sports or baseball forums, so that each forum doesn't have to be lists on the homepage. It could be some sort of sub-menu. 

And if you did this for just baseball and basketball, that's only four added forums. Maybe add a fifth for college basketball. 

Perhaps. If that could work, that's not too bad of an idea. I think it'd be particularly useful just for the team thread aspect. I don't always wanna see the Brewers thread popping up at the top of the forum. Sorry Rams and BKO 

[CWood21]

3 minutes ago, thelawoffices said:

I like where this idea comes from and the intention behind it, but I think it's too much. Too many sub-forums is going to lead to a more cluttered look and  hurt the aesthetic appeal of the site. I think the baseball forum just needs to have more threads created, mainly because I think it is sort of falling into the same pit that was already mentioned where there are too many catch all threads. That, I think, leads to burying productive discussion that could be going on. So something like "Do the White Sox have the best farm system of the past decade?" should be it's own thread, not something just buried in a general prospects thread.

I can't say I totally disagree.  The baseball forum has more posts than all but four team forums.  If you break up that by even 3 (assuming every proposed baseball subforum was created), each baseball subforum would have less posts than 16 team subforums.  At the very least, there needs to be expansion of posts outside of team threads and GDT and the other usual standards.

[NewAge]

1 minute ago, thelawoffices said:

Perhaps. If that could work, that's not too bad of an idea. I think it'd be particularly useful just for the team thread aspect. I don't always wanna see the Brewers thread popping up at the top of the forum. Sorry Rams and BKO 

Yeah like as it is now, interesting threads about say the juiced ball, or the White Sox farm system, or July 2nd will pretty quickly get pushed off by a bunch of team threads than most people don't care about.