How to make RC more active
- Thread starter TheCamaroShow
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TheCamaroShow
Member
lets get this back on topic
Sorry #2963, I think I was #11??. I've seen a lot of things here at RC. (home?) Even those in charge have "dents." If your so quick to ban somebody or dish out a refraction without a rebutal, at least make sure the math is right. In other words those in power shouldn't have it. Hmm...
Bpb
New member
I'm a member on several forums. I don't feel like the others are picking up the slack in busyness to be honest. I don't have any empirical data though.
An opinion on the matter...
Social media is killing the reef forum. Well maybe not killing it, but sending it into it's golden years. Corals are becoming like trading cards. The Facebook groups I'm a part of, local and national are wildly busy with posters. But it's never reef discussion. It's just picture show offs of 1/8" designer acropora tips, often times maybe just the terminal growth node and a couple polyps beyond that. Or single zoa or mushroom polyp show offs and sales.
The coral market has turned into trading cards basically. Reminds me a lot of the micro brew/craft beer thing going on as well. And I love craft beer. But every time I go look I'm greeted with several dozen new silly name offerings from some new brewer you've never heard of. Or in this hobby some assortment of new silly name acros from some two or three letter abbreviation of an aquaculturist you've never heard of. It's now a popularity contest. Maybe it always was. But it's fever pitch status.
I fully realize the customer ultimately drives the market. But it's just wild to me people are paying $500-1000 for acro frags that contain literally less than half a dozen polyps. "œMother colony" pics of specimens id consider skimpy frags.
In short. People are less interested in discussing the finer points of the hobby, or sharing the progress of a mature tank. Growing and showing colonies, or things like that. People just want to show off and trade the latest and greatest. Kind of making this platform begin to age a bit
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An opinion on the matter...
Social media is killing the reef forum. Well maybe not killing it, but sending it into it's golden years. Corals are becoming like trading cards. The Facebook groups I'm a part of, local and national are wildly busy with posters. But it's never reef discussion. It's just picture show offs of 1/8" designer acropora tips, often times maybe just the terminal growth node and a couple polyps beyond that. Or single zoa or mushroom polyp show offs and sales.
The coral market has turned into trading cards basically. Reminds me a lot of the micro brew/craft beer thing going on as well. And I love craft beer. But every time I go look I'm greeted with several dozen new silly name offerings from some new brewer you've never heard of. Or in this hobby some assortment of new silly name acros from some two or three letter abbreviation of an aquaculturist you've never heard of. It's now a popularity contest. Maybe it always was. But it's fever pitch status.
I fully realize the customer ultimately drives the market. But it's just wild to me people are paying $500-1000 for acro frags that contain literally less than half a dozen polyps. "œMother colony" pics of specimens id consider skimpy frags.
In short. People are less interested in discussing the finer points of the hobby, or sharing the progress of a mature tank. Growing and showing colonies, or things like that. People just want to show off and trade the latest and greatest. Kind of making this platform begin to age a bit
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This is absolutely true!!!:beer:
This is why I thought hard about my crappy post about being kicked out all the time from something as simple as checking the remember me box. I did a self check and I'm still posting. I'm willing to change my old behavior in order to enhance my experience here on RC. I realized I was being an "old dog".
Interesting.....You touch on many things.
Would you say the community has gotten younger? Immature? Careless? Or, have things just become more adapt to the things already in peoples lives? Social media being in the palm of (almost) everyone's hands......If it is as simple as accessibility. How do forums become more accessible?
I for one, don't have social media. Not my gig man. People are lucky to reach me on my cell phone. HaHa. Especially over the weekend. I start early, I'm at work at 3:40-3:45 so I can start at 4am. Friday's my boss typically lets me peel out after an 8 hour shift. So i'm out by 12:30. There's a beer in my hand by 1:15. You want to talk micro's, lets PM. I home brew and love good beer.
As to people making a quick buck and bragging about these tiny frags. Maybe there might be something to learn from them? What is the success rate of these tiny frags? Not that I want to pay high price for small frags. (I wont!!) or some crazy made up name for said frag. However, if they are successful at growing these tiny pieces out. Then they can't be to far out of touch as to what the corals need. Right? It just becomes a matter of greed.
Bpb
New member
Wish I had a clever reply. But I don't. Yes to the first paragraph. The crowd is younger, more into social media, and the hobby may be a more fleeting interest (reaching on that last one, I can't presume just speculate).
And yes. Something is to be said for the success rate of these booger sized frags. I think someone would be hard pressed to invest so much of they weren't confident. 6 years in the hobby now for me and I'm only now able to have near 100% success rate on frags of less than 10 polyps. It takes tremendous skill to pull off (in my mind anyway). I don't know how to get them more active on a forum level for biology, chemistry, and infrastructure discussion, sadly
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Bpb
New member
andrewkw
Active member
You can say forums are dying, social media is taking over ect ect but other forums are continuing to grow while this one slowly declines. Let me just be clear I have nothing against reef central or anyone who posts here. I feel like I have to say that so someone doesn't take this the wrong way. I've been using RC for 12 years but while I used to check things out here dozens of times a day I usually only login once a day or every other day these days.
The biggest advantages Reef Central has(had) is it was the biggest forum. If I'm looking for help I want the best chance of finding it. If I'm looking to share something I also want the biggest audience. For years I never signed up at R2R and I always thought why would I post there too when I can just come here. I'm not sure how many years ago that was but there has been little to no modernization here.
You don't want to have contests fine, but they certainly draw people in. The tank of the month feature here was second to none. I used to look forward to reading this so much and it's now been nearly 3 years since one has been posted. Yes there was trouble getting volunteers, but you know what you could do? Pay them - Money talks and maybe the forum is staffed by volunteers but someone is still making money from the website perhaps some of that profit should go to bettering it. R2R has a lot of things going for it, but even there the tank of the month spotlight is not very high profile. There are countless thousands of members and many people have beautiful tanks. It may be difficult but not impossible to find people who want their tanks featured.
I hate websites changing as much as the next person but perhaps its time for a facelift. It does feel a little dated here but something as simple as image hosting would be a big improvement. If I can just upload my pictures I'd be more inclined to post them vs finding somewhere to host them and then post the links.
Bring back the reef keeping "magazine", again update maybe make some of it videos but also make use of the vast archives available here sure you can still go back and search but going through years of stuff is a lot more tedious then seeing it fresh even if it is just "re-posted from..." Not really sure the best way to do this, but one of the best things RC has going for it is its super long history and the tons of useful information here.
End the feuds. I'm not sure if it still is but ************ was a banned word here. We'll find out when I post. I believe there was a couple other major places that were not to be discussed here. By cutting off groups of people you are limiting traffic.
I'm sure there are other better ideas, but this is what I've got off the top of my head. Something has to be done eventually. While this place will certainly exist for a long time what state it will be in remains to be seen. You can do better Reef Central!
The biggest advantages Reef Central has(had) is it was the biggest forum. If I'm looking for help I want the best chance of finding it. If I'm looking to share something I also want the biggest audience. For years I never signed up at R2R and I always thought why would I post there too when I can just come here. I'm not sure how many years ago that was but there has been little to no modernization here.
You don't want to have contests fine, but they certainly draw people in. The tank of the month feature here was second to none. I used to look forward to reading this so much and it's now been nearly 3 years since one has been posted. Yes there was trouble getting volunteers, but you know what you could do? Pay them - Money talks and maybe the forum is staffed by volunteers but someone is still making money from the website perhaps some of that profit should go to bettering it. R2R has a lot of things going for it, but even there the tank of the month spotlight is not very high profile. There are countless thousands of members and many people have beautiful tanks. It may be difficult but not impossible to find people who want their tanks featured.
I hate websites changing as much as the next person but perhaps its time for a facelift. It does feel a little dated here but something as simple as image hosting would be a big improvement. If I can just upload my pictures I'd be more inclined to post them vs finding somewhere to host them and then post the links.
Bring back the reef keeping "magazine", again update maybe make some of it videos but also make use of the vast archives available here sure you can still go back and search but going through years of stuff is a lot more tedious then seeing it fresh even if it is just "re-posted from..." Not really sure the best way to do this, but one of the best things RC has going for it is its super long history and the tons of useful information here.
End the feuds. I'm not sure if it still is but ************ was a banned word here. We'll find out when I post. I believe there was a couple other major places that were not to be discussed here. By cutting off groups of people you are limiting traffic.
I'm sure there are other better ideas, but this is what I've got off the top of my head. Something has to be done eventually. While this place will certainly exist for a long time what state it will be in remains to be seen. You can do better Reef Central!
der_wille_zur_macht
Team RC
The problem I'm seeing in this thread is we are using words like "better" which are incredibly subjective. What counts as better? Seems like there are a lot of very different definitions being implied.
Are we trying to get more of what RC is already best at? Or are we trying to change RC to be better at something it is not currently good at?
Is social media, or competing forum XYZ, "killing" reefcentral? I don't think that's possible really. Reducing traffic? Yup. But is a certain number of hits per day really what we want to be good at? Does it have anything to do with the soul of the experience? I hope not.
Are we trying to get more of what RC is already best at? Or are we trying to change RC to be better at something it is not currently good at?
Is social media, or competing forum XYZ, "killing" reefcentral? I don't think that's possible really. Reducing traffic? Yup. But is a certain number of hits per day really what we want to be good at? Does it have anything to do with the soul of the experience? I hope not.
muttley000
MTS Sufferer!
I hope this doesn't offend because that is not my intent. I have been a member hear for a long time. This was the first forum I joined when I was getting ready to set up a salt tank again after a brief stint before going back to my African cichlids in the early 90's. I used to stop in a couple times a day, now I don't stop in once a month on average. The reason is that even though I personally have not had a problem with the mods here, I have seen behavior that seemed unfair based on what was public. I'm not saying I deserved to hear more, but to the casual bystander it seemed that there was a "because I said so" attitude with several of the mods. In particular the episode with carbon use/HLLE/Jay Hemdal sticks in my mind. Again, I could only see what was public, but it appeared he got railroaded for having a debate where a mod disagreed. I have communicated with him since and I can tell you a couple years ago he still didn't feel he was treated fairly. The rules have always seemed pretty tight here too. All that said it is forum leadership's prerogative to run it how they wish. Please don't take this as an opinion you run the forum wrong, but there has been a lot of chatter at other forums over the years about it, and I suspect that is because no one was comfortable talking about it here fearing being diciplined or banned.
I frequent the other "big forum" and as it grows (it is very active lately) it is showing some of the same issues. First and foremost I am still a member of my local forum, and it remains my highest priority. That forum does not put up with "too cool for the room behavior" and to be honest I like communicating with people I will meet at our local expo. I agree Facebook is a factor, but I don't and won't use Facebook. I like I can search the forums anyways so I'll use them until they disappear!
I frequent the other "big forum" and as it grows (it is very active lately) it is showing some of the same issues. First and foremost I am still a member of my local forum, and it remains my highest priority. That forum does not put up with "too cool for the room behavior" and to be honest I like communicating with people I will meet at our local expo. I agree Facebook is a factor, but I don't and won't use Facebook. I like I can search the forums anyways so I'll use them until they disappear!
I would be 99.9% certain that:
The way for traffic to increase is for more people to be online and for more people to post more. That was Jesse's point (Misled). Simple, but the reality of the situation.
- We aren't going to pay for content
- We aren't going to have contests
- We aren't going to have changes to the forum interface or page design
- We aren't going to have all the little add-on features
The way for traffic to increase is for more people to be online and for more people to post more. That was Jesse's point (Misled). Simple, but the reality of the situation.
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