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I hate to sound like a mod here but they've been saying at least as long I've been here (going on 5 years now) that if you want more coverage, get all the information together (and that means ALL of it) and they can write code around it. The mods have the same problem we commonfolk do; they're getting older, they don't play games as much, etc etc. Not to mention, there is General Gaming Chat and General Squenix Gaming that cover any and all games not officially hosted by the site. Rangers51 and the other staff have generously provided ways to talk about the other games, and it's not like they aren't used. I don't think non-coverage of FFX, for example, is going to keep too many people out. Is it possible that interest in Final Fantasy as a series is going down? I remember a lot of hubbub about FFXII, less about XIII, and I can't say there seems to be a lot of excitement about FFXIV, at least from what I'm seeing. Would CoN feature games from other series? I doubt it. So I guess we simply need to make Final Fantasy exciting again.

So how do we do that?

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Squenix games completed:

FFIII
FFIV
FFVI
FFVII
FFIX
FFX
FF Tactics: Advance 2
Chrono Trigger
Dragon Quest 8
Dragon Quest 11
Super Mario RPG

Quote (Quad @ 19th October 2010 15:19)

So I guess we simply need to make Final Fantasy exciting again.

So how do we do that?

That's a fantastic question, because none of us (that I know of) are members of Square Enix. We're members of CoN. We'd have to be part of the making of the games to make them more exciting. The only thing we can do is make this site more exciting. So, I don't accept that argument. It's kind of a cop-out.

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Praise Be To Helix!

I would argue that the site IS exciting, for the games it covers. And, as has been pointed out (in chat, anyway), would CoN's numbers really jump if we got an FF with a number over 7? Because I don't really know that it would. And, again, there are forums to talk about whatever other games are necessary. I wonder if there could be some sort of mass emailing to the people who have forgotten about the site. "We're still here!" or something of the sort, to bring back old members who may simply need a rekindling of interest.

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Squenix games completed:

FFIII
FFIV
FFVI
FFVII
FFIX
FFX
FF Tactics: Advance 2
Chrono Trigger
Dragon Quest 8
Dragon Quest 11
Super Mario RPG

Well, there was the awards thing, which did partly work in getting me to hang around more often.

(Though what was more effective was me finishing the grad program I was in.)

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

Quote (Quad @ 19th October 2010 21:15)

I wonder if there could be some sort of mass emailing to the people who have forgotten about the site. "We're still here!" or something of the sort, to bring back old members who may simply need a rekindling of interest.

The last mass emailing was for the first burst of awards. I haven't emailed other users as they've hit the five year mark, but once I'm sure that the automated award addition I talked about a couple weeks back is working exactly how I want it, I might well consider strapping an email function to it. I don't want to get much more obnoxious than that, because I'd rather have a slow site than a site that spams people up.

I'm disheartened to see how many people seem to think that adding more games is a simple and quick fix. The fastest we could possibly get a brand-new game out, if we even wanted to right now, would be six months. Chrono Trigger took a shade under that but only because we had a lot of people with free time who really loved Chrono Trigger helping, and we had some data that Tiddles and Neal had put together many years ago for their own pleasure.

While we are working on new content, we are still working on improving and broadening the content offered on games we already cover, because we're years behind in getting those projects up. Keeping up as best we can may not bump forum traffic, but it is more important to the mission of the site. Evidence aside, that mission is not to make the forums the busiest FF forums online. That ship sailed probably before we even had forums.

If you want me to go over things I've said before about adding new content to the site, let me know; otherwise, the answer remains, in brief, "we don't make our livings from this site, very few of us have much free time, and we do the best we can." If that answer isn't good enough and you think it dooms the site, well, we worry that it does so too. But that doesn't mean we can wave a magic wand and fix it.

Bottom line here is that I don't want to be rude, because I know you guys have good thoughts at heart, but don't bring me "new games will bring new posts" and expect it to stick. Even if it might, which is no guarantee, it just isn't going to happen right now unless someone out there is hiding a lot of free time and talent from me.

Edit

To be more clear, I absolutely respect the opinions of those who have said that more game coverage would revitalize the site, and I don't even necessarily disagree - there's not enough evidence to know either way. I just feel tired of kicking that horse.

This post has been edited by Rangers51 on 21st October 2010 21:32

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

Well..

The forum designers could make an area for FFX and possibly just for FFIX.

These games are quite big and i'm sure you'd get some topics in the area.

Problem is:Do they have enough room on the forum? any problems caused by doing this?

This is of course my view on how to get more new members,attract members who are attracted to new games and then introduce them to old games,by doing this,you will have more people.

I think this would work+advertisement.

Maybe have a donation section?

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We are stardust.Our bodies are made from the guts of exploding stars.

Neil Degrasse Tyson.

I'll bring out my usual points on the subject of having more forums.

You can't just create forum sections in the hope that topics will fill them.

That's just not how it works. For anyone who's tried the "Let's make my own pointless message board" game - and got anywhere with it - this was lesson number one. Empty forums don't encourage traffic on that subject, apart from at most one pity topic, regardless of what their name or supposed subject of discussion is.

The other point:

There's a perfectly good forum for discussing other Square/SE games already.

If you want to talk FF9, you can do it in General Squenix. Making a big empty room (aside from the crickets) would not make more people talk about it than they do there.

With the level of traffic we have now, if we made any forum structure changes, it should be to consolidate the existing Final Fantasy/Square forums into one. Maybe the whole lot.

A donation section, however, would make a lot of sense if there were some kind of way to donate free time.

i got a question

I was thinking:

FF1-6 retro section
FF7-XIII modern sections
chrono trigger ff tactics parasite eve and other games that aren't in the series:spin offs and other square games.

This means games like:FF legends 1-3 crystal chronicles and such can all be fused within the spin offs/non ff games section.

Crisis core/dirge of cerberus and any ff7 spin off can go there.

Why do i recommend this? more activity within the actual archives.

I know its a lot of work,but it seems like it would increase and would broaden the range of final fantasies to modern ones without having to create more areas in the forum and cause it to crash or give more problems.

The main issue with this:Its more work for the actual forum admins but i was trying to add my piece to increase the population of the forum.

I read old topics about problems with creating new areas so i was wondering if modifying them would simplify the problem.

Would this be too hard to do?

Its said in your topic that we are getting older,then the solution is:we need to attract new younger gamers and make them aware?
This is really hard because there may be a limit in the page itself and i myself dabble in html and java and know a little about problems.
Its a lot of work so i don't doubt this may create issues

This post has been edited by Magitek_slayer on 23rd October 2010 19:31

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We are stardust.Our bodies are made from the guts of exploding stars.

Neil Degrasse Tyson.

Quote (Magitek_slayer @ 23rd October 2010 14:28)

Why do i recommend this? more activity within the actual archives.

I know its a lot of work,but it seems like it would increase and would broaden the range of final fantasies to modern ones without having to create more areas in the forum and cause it to crash or give more problems.

The main issue with this:Its more work for the actual forum admins but i was trying to add my piece to increase the population of the forum.

I read old topics about problems with creating new areas so i was wondering if modifying them would simplify the problem.

Would this be too hard to do?

Its said in your topic that we are getting older,then the solution is:we need to attract new younger gamers and make them aware?
This is really hard because there may be a limit in the page itself and i myself dabble in html and java and know a little about problems.
Its a lot of work so i don't doubt this may create issues

I'm a little pressed for time today, I'm in a meeting right now, but I wanted to finally get around to responding here: it's not much work to do exactly what you said. However, I don't think it will increase the number of posts one bit, and if we were to do it and then decide it was a mistake (which I think it would be), it would then be a lot of work to revert.

Why will it not add more posts? Well, people already know where to post about Square games and other games. Jamming all of those posts into just three forums, instead of the nine forums open right now, is only going to make topics harder to find, because there's less taxonomy available to categorize them. Would it make you more likely to post about Final Fantasy Tactics if you could only find two FFT threads on the first three pages of reading a forum? Or would you assume that nobody wanted to talk about FFT and decide not to post at all?

You're not understanding what we say about adding new "areas." It is a lot of work to add new content sections to the actual site. If we want to add FF9 to the site, we have to collect all of the data, write all of the code, and do all the editorial writing and editing (like, say, for a walkthrough). Adding a FF9 section to the forums is a five minute job. However, we decided long ago that games that aren't covered on the real site (http://www.cavesofnarshe.com) do not get specific forums (at http://www.cavesofnarshe.com/forums/).

--------------------

"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

Quote (Rangers51 @ 1st November 2010 12:26)

You're not understanding what we say about adding new "areas." It is a lot of work to add new content sections to the actual site. If we want to add FF9 to the site, we have to collect all of the data, write all of the code, and do all the editorial writing and editing (like, say, for a walkthrough). Adding a FF9 section to the forums is a five minute job. However, we decided long ago that games that aren't covered on the real site (http://www.cavesofnarshe.com) do not get specific forums (at http://www.cavesofnarshe.com/forums/).

Actually, I think a lot of people haven't understood that. Putting more boards for each game might indeed generate more traffic, I dunno. But that's not CoN's policy, right? CoN gives information about games, and when it says that it "covers" a game it doesn't mean just that it talks about the game, but really thoroughly shows everything relevant. A board is a board, but CoN wants something to back it up.

--------------------

Squenix games completed:

FFIII
FFIV
FFVI
FFVII
FFIX
FFX
FF Tactics: Advance 2
Chrono Trigger
Dragon Quest 8
Dragon Quest 11
Super Mario RPG

Oh, I forgot to mention. Neal and I are planning a CoNtest for the Holidays this year that we hope will be interesting to you guys, but should also spur some discussion here around the time that a lot of our school and college-age members will have some free time opening up for breaks. Stay tuned for around the beginning of next week for more details on that score.

--------------------

"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

And I'm bumping this just because I can, and because I had a couple other thoughts with Del and others in chat today, and on my own.

1. Would it be helpful for you folks out there to know more about what we are working on? Maybe there's something you'd like to help with because you like the game or think that it's something we can use to help the problems outlined in this thread. We're working VERY slowly, I have to say, but we are working on some stuff, I promise!

2. You'll note that Miss Ronin returned today and posted a ton of fanart. We still have some loyal artists here - if you can't find anything that you want to talk about, why not visit the fanart section and share your thoughts on some of the great work in there?

--------------------

"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

Quote (Quad @ 1st November 2010 18:25)

Quote (Rangers51 @ 1st November 2010 12:26)

You're not understanding what we say about adding new "areas." It is a lot of work to add new content sections to the actual site. If we want to add FF9 to the site, we have to collect all of the data, write all of the code, and do all the editorial writing and editing (like, say, for a walkthrough). Adding a FF9 section to the forums is a five minute job. However, we decided long ago that games that aren't covered on the real site (http://www.cavesofnarshe.com) do not get specific forums (at http://www.cavesofnarshe.com/forums/).

Actually, I think a lot of people haven't understood that. Putting more boards for each game might indeed generate more traffic, I dunno. But that's not CoN's policy, right? CoN gives information about games, and when it says that it "covers" a game it doesn't mean just that it talks about the game, but really thoroughly shows everything relevant. A board is a board, but CoN wants something to back it up.

Well, there are forums in which any game can be discussed. So it isn't as if any given game couldn't be discussed. What I mean is that there's an equal potential to talk about a game with or without its own forum. But our community itself, though, exists around the games covered here on the site: new members visit in search of information on a particular title we cover, and join. Given these facts, it just seems unnecessary to create extra forums, in my opinion.

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Currently Playing : Final Fantasy V
Most Recently Beat : Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
Favorite Game : Final Fantasy X

The newest CoNcast is up! Have a listen!

We had drama causing members? I must have missed that memo.

Anyway, one of the things I've found with a lot of other fansites (such as starmen.net ) and their forums is that in order to stay "fresh" with ideas and the like you need new members. You can only discuss back and forth so many times who you think Gogo's real identity is (the correct answer being Adalai Stevenson, of course) before the same old rehash starts getting to you. As an older member, I enjoy looking at "fresh" ideas and topics. Sure, some of the newer members that turn up fall into that n00b category but hopefully in the long run they end up improving the forums as well as the site as a whole.

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kame, tortue, tortuga, schildkröte, tartaruga, turtle

"Arthur Dent?"
"Yes."
"Arthur Philip Dent?"
"Yes."
"You're a total knee biter."

Quote (Rangers51 @ 2nd November 2010 19:35)

1. Would it be helpful for you folks out there to know more about what we are working on? Maybe there's something you'd like to help with because you like the game or think that it's something we can use to help the problems outlined in this thread. We're working VERY slowly, I have to say, but we are working on some stuff, I promise!

Maybe it would actually. As an outsider it's interesting to read about updates and so on, and also it gives the impression that things are constantly moving forward on the site. How about a separate forum with threads from staff about what's in the pipeline and progress on it? Or just news posts every month or so would probably have the same effect. Even if the comments are just "That sounds cool" it would be good for the staff to get some more appreciation, and like you say maybe some people could help. Did you decide against adding embedded video in the end?

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Scepticism, that dry rot of the intellect, had not left one entire idea in his mind.

Me on the Starcraft.

Quote (Rangers51 @ 1st November 2010 17:26)

I'm a little pressed for time today, I'm in a meeting right now, but I wanted to finally get around to responding here: it's not much work to do exactly what you said. However, I don't think it will increase the number of posts one bit, and if we were to do it and then decide it was a mistake (which I think it would be), it would then be a lot of work to revert.

If i think of anything new,i'l bump it here.

For now,i don't have any ideas that i think would be helpful at this time.

And:Yeah it would increase traffic,you are right about that.

And i think that general square enix is fine just for non ff games anyway.

quote kame:

Anyway, one of the things I've found with a lot of other fansites (such as starmen.net ) and their forums is that in order to stay "fresh" with ideas and the like you need new members. You can only discuss back and forth so many times who you think Gogo's real identity is (the correct answer being Adalai Stevenson, of course) before the same old rehash starts getting to you.

I agree with kame on this.

I haven't seen as much talk about:

Advent children
The second movie to ff7 which i can never remember
FF4 the after years

News has been added whenever some new info about ff7/tactics/ff6 or some new final fantasy has come out,so i think we do pretty well at keeping up to date.



This post has been edited by Magitek_slayer on 13th November 2010 12:17

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We are stardust.Our bodies are made from the guts of exploding stars.

Neil Degrasse Tyson.

Quote (sweetdude @ 12th November 2010 19:06)

Maybe it would actually. As an outsider it's interesting to read about updates and so on, and also it gives the impression that things are constantly moving forward on the site. How about a separate forum with threads from staff about what's in the pipeline and progress on it? Or just news posts every month or so would probably have the same effect. Even if the comments are just "That sounds cool" it would be good for the staff to get some more appreciation, and like you say maybe some people could help. Did you decide against adding embedded video in the end?

Well, the reason I don't do it more frequently is not because I don't like talking about it (there are few things I like more), but more that with an all-volunteer staff, I don't like putting distinct public timelines on projects because it adds a lot of pressure to meet them.

I do tend to talk about things when we get them done, of course - that just doesn't happen all that often!

With regards to video embedding, I do have it on my long term plan. It's something that just didn't satisfy the equation of (effort required <= benefit gained), so I started doing stuff that was more efficient.

--------------------

"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

So has forum traffic increased at all? It actually appears to me that it has decreased since the time this topic was started. I still check in here from time to time, but between now and November I've had one post. It's not for lack of trying. I got nothing but love for CON! But there just isn't enough activity or topics to warrant participation on a regular basis. I'm worried that one of my favorite forums is running out of steam. Please, somebody reassure me.

Quote (MetroidMorphBall @ 3rd March 2011 02:42)

So has forum traffic increased at all?  It actually appears to me that it has decreased since the time this topic was started.  I still check in here from time to time, but between now and November I've had one post.  It's not for lack of trying.  I got nothing but love for CON!    But there just isn't enough activity or topics to warrant participation on a regular basis.  I'm worried that one of my favorite forums is running out of steam.  Please, somebody reassure me. 

MMB, I've got a lot of respect for you as a CoN member and as a person, from our personal interactions not necessarily tied to CoN. I want to get that out there for both you and the members who haven't been around as long as you, because I don't want what I'm about to type to be construed as a response to you personally; it's a very general response to those who have lamented the lack of posting not just now but over the years. I've addressed it in prior posts, but it bears repeating and a bit of extrapolation.

Forum traffic, obviously, comes down to just one metric at the end of the day: the number of posts. Of course, we would prefer a number of quality posts, but for the sake of discussion I'm not considering quality here. If people are seeing that there aren't as many posts, well, they're right. But to say that there aren't enough posts and then never post about anything, well, isn't that just contributing to the problem?

Yeah, the forums are running out of steam, ever so slowly, as is chat, as is fanart, as is just about everything that requires user contribution to thrive. Even development of new site content is incredibly slow right now. Everyone has their excuses - and I don't mean that as a pejorative, because everyone has things in their life that are frankly more important than CoN, even me - as to why there's nothing that they can do about the problem. If everyone out there reading this can say, "well, I would love to have more conversation here but I just can't think of anything to post about," then, yeah, there's really absolutely no chance that forum traffic will ever increase.

Of all the businesses I'm not in, one of the primary ones is forcing people to post. I mean, everyone out there can post, or not post, or try to figure out some middle ground between the two if that's what tickles the fancy. I don't have the motivation to be out there swinging a club, whacking people in the head until they post. I will note, though, that if I could make a living doing so, it sounds like a lot of fun.

I can sum this up. I love that people care about the state of the site and the forums and want to protect it. I don't want to point fingers, because above all I could be doing a better job myself. But it's not just me - keeping the site going is the responsibility of everyone who comes here and posts things worrying about whether the site will die, or even just comes to CoN and posts in general, or even just comes to CoN. If you're not adding content to CoN, whether it's fanart or forum posts or site work, then to at least some small extent the responsibility is yours as well as mine.

I can't offer a whole lot of reassurance, but I can say that I haven't left yet. It may be slow, but as long as I'm still here, CoN will still be here. Beyond that, though, it has to be a community effort.

As one final aside, I haven't posted anything at all about updates in progress at CoN, because only one person seemed to express any interest. Doesn't seem like it's worth my time to write even more stuff that nobody reads. However, DP, Del, and I all have projects that we're slowly working on right now with help from folks in chat, it's just taking forever, as usual.


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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

Quote (Rangers51 @ 4th March 2011 05:29)

MMB, I've got a lot of respect for you as a CoN member and as a person, from our personal interactions not necessarily tied to CoN.

NP, Josh. The feeling is definitely mutual. And don't worry, at this point I'm beyond taking anything said on a message board too seriously. I just turned 30 and have more important developments in my life.

Quote

But to say that there aren't enough posts and then never post about anything, well, isn't that just contributing to the problem?

Well, I certainly tried for a long time. I've created many topics on CoN over the years, some of which I like to think were unique and stirred a lot of conversation. The bottom line is that we don't have the active membership now to garner the same volume of replies. By way of example, this is ostensibly a video game site. I've often posted about games I'm playing. Most recently I made a topic about Nier, a Squenix game (which probably should have gone in Squenix Gaming but which I posted in General Gaming) and it's gotten a whooping zero responses. Now, granted the game is a few months old, but that's a low reply rate by anyone's standards. Also, for similar games the same thing has happened. Bad Company 2, Demon's Souls, etc. These are really popular games that no one here seems to care too much about. By their own admission, many members here don't even play video games anymore, including Final Fantasy, which kinda makes the theme of this website a bit misleading I guess. General Topics seems to get the most traffic, and I was glad to see the religion thread sparked some substantive conversation like in the good 'ol days. But even there things seem to have slowed down.

A lot of members seem to have drifted away and new members seem slow in the coming. There are probably tons of reasons for this. Lots of us have grown up and have more important things to do. No doubt about it. I include myself in that group. Saying this with the utmost respect for you and those who run the site, I think part of the problem might also be overmodding. CoN has some of the most stringent modding on any message board I've seen. Now, part of that is good because it keeps this place from becoming Gamefaqs. Part of it comes across as overbearing and, frankly, condescending, even for innocent mistakes. You may remember I left this place for a good year due to problems with moderator behavior. When I finally returned, I looked through the threads to find that two other members - The Ancient and Zodiac - left for the same reasons.

Again, this is your website and you run it how you want. I love CoN and am not suggesting you change anything. I've never had the time to run a website or even substantively contribute to this one outside of my awesome presence ( ) but I've seen plenty of other sites where the modding is less draconian and they still manage to keep order. In fact, while I will still come here for as long as this site exists (and I hope that's a long time regardless of activity), I'm afraid that my solution after trying to stir up discussion and failing has been to move onto greener (i.e. more active) pastures. Yes, CoN, I'm cheating on you with other message boards. I'm sorry.

Please don't take any of this too personally. In fact, when I first posted my one paragraph follow up, I was expecting either "yes, forum traffic has increased" or "no, it hasn't," not a substantive reply like the one I received, and which I appreciate. I thought about PMing all this to you but figured why not put it out there for public debate and get people talking. Maybe it will lead to some good brainstorming and ideas or, at the very least, an active thread. If you don't like the direction it takes, you can always close the thread.

As I said before, even if I post less I will always love CoN and you can still expect to see me posting here as a member.

Quote (MMB)

Saying this with the utmost respect for you and those who run the site, I think part of the problem might also be overmodding.  CoN has some of the most stringent modding on any message board I've seen.  Now, part of that is good because it keeps this place from becoming Gamefaqs.  Part of it comes across as overbearing and, frankly, condescending, even for innocent mistakes.  You may remember I left this place for a good year due to problems with moderator behavior.  When I finally returned, I looked through the threads to find that two other members - The Ancient and Zodiac - left for the same reasons.

I've got to be honest, you lost me on this. You're referencing something that happened back in... 2006, I think, and I'm not sure it tracks here in 2011. You haven't been around much, and I hate to be the pedant who corrects, but I have to point out that we have given out only five warning additions since December of 2009, and we have lowered warnings five times in that same timespan (sometimes the same members, sometimes not). We haven't banned any user who wasn't a spambot in even longer.

I get it, we got a reputation for being heavy-handed back in the day. And we still can be a bit snarky when we moderate posts, I won't disagree. But we could be all sweetness and light from here to kingdom come and your post indicates that for at least part of the community, it won't matter, the reputation is already locked in. So, I'm not going to spend much time worrying about it, it's clearly already too late.

Beyond that, I think I am just at a loss for words, really. This thread's been open for months, and most of the ideas that have come from it involve adding new games to the site to push topics to the forums. That would probably even work, at least for a while, I'll admit. We've been down that road a lot - I swear, if CoN were my job, I'd add every game everyone ever wanted. But, as I said at another forum recently, CoN is my fourth job, behind my real job, my freelance work, and my family and house.

Really, all I can say to you and everyone is you get out what you put in. Finding the common ground that creates good conversation is up to everyone, so if you come here and don't post, then you're just expecting someone else to come up with something interesting for you to read that might make you respond. The only thing that's really changed around here is that there are more people waiting for someone else to do the work and seemingly wondering why the forums are less active than they were seven years ago.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

Quote (Rangers51 @ 6th March 2011 17:19)

I've got to be honest, you lost me on this. You're referencing something that happened back in... 2006, I think, and I'm not sure it tracks here in 2011. You haven't been around much, and I hate to be the pedant who corrects, but I have to point out that we have given out only five warning additions since December of 2009, and we have lowered warnings five times in that same timespan (sometimes the same members, sometimes not). We haven't banned any user who wasn't a spambot in even longer.

I get it, we got a reputation for being heavy-handed back in the day. And we still can be a bit snarky when we moderate posts, I won't disagree. But we could be all sweetness and light from here to kingdom come and your post indicates that for at least part of the community, it won't matter, the reputation is already locked in. So, I'm not going to spend much time worrying about it, it's clearly already too late.

Could be. Like you said, I haven't been around that much, and definitely don't have access to site statistics like those you just quoted. Maybe my point is more valid to the reason people left in the first place. Or maybe it isn't. Or maybe it was but it doesn't matter anymore, as you put it. Beats me. I was just trying to throw something out there for consideration.

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Beyond that, I think I am just at a loss for words, really. This thread's been open for months, and most of the ideas that have come from it involve adding new games to the site to push topics to the forums. That would probably even work, at least for a while, I'll admit. We've been down that road a lot - I swear, if CoN were my job, I'd add every game everyone ever wanted. But, as I said at another forum recently, CoN is my fourth job, behind my real job, my freelance work, and my family and house.

Really, all I can say to you and everyone is you get out what you put in. Finding the common ground that creates good conversation is up to everyone, so if you come here and don't post, then you're just expecting someone else to come up with something interesting for you to read that might make you respond. The only thing that's really changed around here is that there are more people waiting for someone else to do the work and seemingly wondering why the forums are less active than they were seven years ago.

Yeah, new game coverage would probably be the best move. Or maybe forums dedicated to later FF games even if the site doesn't offer coverage of those games, but I know your stance on that. Might nonetheless be worth a change in that policy to keep things interesting and enable new dialogue.

All I can say is, this is me taking you up on your last sentiment and trying to contribute. I used to make lots of threads. When people stopped responding, I stopped making threads. What you say about getting what you put into it is definitely true. But while CoN isn't your job, it is your website. And just like you can't drop everything you're doing to make new game coverage because you have a real job, many regular members can't make super-efforts to keep the site content going either.

Well, I do hope everything works out. I'm not trying to be confrontational. I really did start off with an honest inquiry into the state of forum traffic, and wasn't expecting to get into this level of detail. Nonetheless, this dialogue was probably a good thing, and maybe others can contribute to it.

<----it loves CoN.

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Quote (Rangers51 @ 6th March 2011 17:19)

I've got to be honest, you lost me on this. You're referencing something that happened back in... 2006, I think, and I'm not sure it tracks here in 2011. You haven't been around much, and I hate to be the pedant who corrects, but I have to point out that we have given out only five warning additions since December of 2009, and we have lowered warnings five times in that same timespan (sometimes the same members, sometimes not). We haven't banned any user who wasn't a spambot in even longer.

I get it, we got a reputation for being heavy-handed back in the day. And we still can be a bit snarky when we moderate posts, I won't disagree. But we could be all sweetness and light from here to kingdom come and your post indicates that for at least part of the community, it won't matter, the reputation is already locked in. So, I'm not going to spend much time worrying about it, it's clearly already too late.

Could be. Like you said, I haven't been around that much, and definitely don't have access to site statistics like those you just quoted. Maybe my point is more valid to the reason people left in the first place. Or maybe it isn't. Or maybe it was but it doesn't matter anymore, as you put it. Beats me. I was just trying to throw something out there for consideration.

I think it would matter. There were "only five warnings" because the mods set a precedent. If they didn't stick by those rules, it wouldn't take long for this place to look like a Youtube comment section, which I don't think anybody here wants.

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Praise Be To Helix!

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Yeah, new game coverage would probably be the best move.  Or maybe forums dedicated to later FF games even if the site doesn't offer coverage of those games, but I know your stance on that.  Might nonetheless be worth a change in that policy to keep things interesting and enable new dialogue.

I've got to point to Tiddles' post in this thread (which echoes other posts through history) for this. Since we don't have any other options, maybe we'll consider it at some point, but I really see it ending with just empty forums, which in turn make the forums look even more empty than before, more than a bump in traffic.

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All I can say is, this is me taking you up on your last sentiment and trying to contribute.  I used to make lots of threads.  When people stopped responding, I stopped making threads.  What you say about getting what you put into it is definitely true.  But while CoN isn't your job, it is your website.  And just like you can't drop everything you're doing to make new game coverage because you have a real job, many regular members can't make super-efforts to keep the site content going either.

Well, that's kind of a broken analogy, in my opinion. There's a significant difference between spending five minutes writing a post (or even a half hour writing six) and spending the hundreds of hours necessary to build a site section. I don't do all those hundreds of hours myself, of course, but I would estimate that I put a good eighty hours in on the CT section alone when we did that a couple years back.

Since 1 January 2005, I've made just a shade under 4000 posts to CoN. Yes, the most of any single user. Since the same date, 2008, I'm in second place with over 1500. Since the start of 2010, back at the top with 630. I think I could give pretty similar numbers for topics started, too, if I were to dig into the database a bit further; I know I'm in second place for that since 1/1/2010, at least.

I don't ask anyone to do that, or anything even close to that, but I don't think I'm in the wrong in saying that I'm more than pulling my weight in terms of contributing to the community (not that I'm saying that anyone is saying that, I just want to be clear that I'm not holding other users to a higher standard than I do myself). It just gets tiring to have all the responsibility all the time - heavy is the head, I know, but nobody wants to be the person who feels responsible for keeping everything together all the time, whether it's a website or even just a group of friends that meets for beers a couple times a month.

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Well, I do hope everything works out.  I'm not trying to be confrontational.  I really did start off with an honest inquiry into the state of forum traffic, and wasn't expecting to get into this level of detail.  Nonetheless, this dialogue was probably a good thing, and maybe others can contribute to it. 

I hope I haven't been confrontational in my replies, either, but I do feel as if there's probably no productive solution to this problem that doesn't start with more of the current members taking a revived interest in communicating at these forums in general. In my opinion, anyone who cares enough to post in this thread is theoretically a vital part of the solution; if they can't or won't pick up that mantle, there's only so much I can do myself.

To answer your question, though, which I haven't directly done as yet, there's no real answer. Traffic spiked with the CoNtest, which is great, but many people who participated heavily there stopped coming again afterwards. We don't have a ton of data that isn't impacted by that anomaly since this thread started, so it's hard to get something statistically relevant from it, but the short answer is "yes, I believe traffic has continued to slow at the forums, and to a steeper degree than site traffic, which is relatively consistent from month to month."

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

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