Anybody have any ideas on bringing new members to these boards?

If you know anybody, invite em over!

__________________
ActiveTuning - Partner & Director Of Sales & Marketing

Allright, will do.. however I guess I would just suggest advertising at every possibly opportunity.. signature of emails.. signature on other forums.. hang posters around your school.. all the normal stuff..

Ryan

I know this is a sorry way to get people to join the System Logic Team, but giveaways do attract people. I know everyone is not made of money, but if you can get someone to donate say some ram or a heatsink etc.. for a review then have a giveaway like the GeForce MX giveaway then System Logic and the company that donated the product will gain from the advertisement. A lot of the sites post info on the current giveaways and that will bring people here. Hopefully most will stay when the contest is over. I am going to post a link to the contest on some sites to see if I can bring in some new members.

Yeah.. that's definitely true.. (actually, that was what originally attracted me to SLN in the first place (if i remember correctly), was a contest/giveaway..)

Ryan

Actually Ryan, I think I told you about said contest. One thing about posting on forums is that you only really want to do it if it wont take too much time. It's taken me about 8 minutes to get to writing this because of all of the load time of the forums. This is from clicking on the topic, reading, signing in and starting to write, and I know that reading was only about a minute, max.

If it is a slog to get to the point to where you can post, it doesn't make sense to post, you're spending more time waiting for the page to load then it will take you to write your response.

But then, maybe that is just my impatience kicking in

Theoretically, it's a good idea, but the GeForce2MX giveaway isn't attracting as many people as we'd like. I'd really like to see more people on the boards, though. I've always felt that personal involvement would keep the boards active, and as long as the content isn't stagnant, people will come here and stay here. The problem is that the influx takes a while to get to an appreciable value. The HardForums at HardOCP have over 15K members, while ours just topped 250. But, in contrast to that, I feel like I know most of the main posters here...Ryan, Darth_Vader, InTheWayBoy, Funkey, Skarn, Kel'Torak, Ben, the ever popular Mr. Unregistered...You're all what makes this board a wonderful place to be. I think that just as long as we keep things going here...and we start ramping up the content, people will start joining the boards.

Dave, about the "Post your Comments" section on the main page - Shouldn't that be linked to the messageboards?

__________________
"And knowing is half the battle!"

Yeah.. I definitely agree. Though we might not have the massive amount of members found at hardforums, anandtech, etc.. the sense of community is still evident.. (which is why I go here for my forum-fix, as opposed to the bigger ones.)

I actually used to live off the anand forums, but i hated the fact that if you're post wasn't replied to within a few minutes of posting, it would work it's way off the page of the most recent twenty posts.. (god.. there are 300+ people on at one time.. you can't keep any good conversations going!

Ryan

How about a computer mod forum and submit your pictures.Maybe even a contest from time to time with best of the best.Most radical, best innovation,best paint job OCing, things like that!!!!!!!!!!:]

It's Kel'Torak :þ

Anyways ... getting more people is good and all, but we don't want to attract just anyone ...

Those who know of Anand and AGN (sad that those died) must have heard of Paulson, Nick Caputo, AirmanV, etc.

I doubt those are the kind of people we want. Paulson for one was incredibly unstable (talking to him on IRC for a few months taught me that)

Contests will bring the greedy users that will rack up an impressive 10 posts usually. You need people to want to come back. That means having something special to offer. Something that most other tech forums don't.

For one thing, I'd merge some of the forums back together. We have nowhere near the traffic that would warrant so many forums.

Processors and motherboards could easily merge

Same goes for Video Cards and Audio/Sound

Tech support and general hardware should be merged. I mean, once you've got all those categories set up, what the real point in having a General Hardware category ?

Content Feedback and Suggestions could also merge quite well together.

B/S/T and The Word On The Streets could be one too. We don't have the huge traffic that AnandTech, etc get. We'll never move topic fast enough to warrant those 2 to stay.

As for the new thing ... lots of people seem to like talking about cars. So, why not make a Car section ? or, if that's too specific, make a forum about outdoor activities.

lots of possibilities out there ... just have to find one that fit well

__________________
§

Yes, compacting the boards will definitely concentrate the posts.. giving off an appearance of more activity.. (which is more appealing to guest visitors.. (at least it is to me when i see boards..)).

Ryan

Paulson......oi.....*rolls his eyes*

A perenial thorn in everyone's side.

I'm "BurntKooshie" over at the AnandTech forums...and he annoyed me to no end.....he got a little better at the end, but then was banned. Oh well....


But, seriously, I think if we updated ALL THE TIME, like [H]OCP, and other sites, that would be what would get us big with forums.......just because enough people would stop by the site.

Paulson used to be ok ... then he got his satellite connection and somehow became "bad".

Spamming AGN to no end, eventually getting banned.

Then the worst thing happened ... he did a 180 and went all the way. YES, he became a "holier than thou" freak.

I could live with what he was before, given that he was younger and fscked up to start with. But his holier than though change completely pissed me off. [ He promptly got banned from even our chan ]

Compacting is a real good idea IMHO.

The updating thing could be done, but everyone would have to work a LOT to achieve any decent result. We'd still have to do things differently. There are so many hardware sites out there, you gotta have an edge to stand out and be chosen by visitors. [ Not that it matters to me ... I stick to the forums, very rarely the front pages ]

__________________
§

Spraypaint the SL logo on the road of all major intersections in your town! That'll attract attention!

__________________
"And knowing is half the battle!"

Weird...I've submitted this once, and it showed up, and then went away when I made my second post...
I agree, especially with the forums box on the main page. When you show the five most recent topics in a thread that's hardly been touched recently because the posts are going to a similar thread, it doesn't look too good. I think that subdivision is good, but when you've taken various peripheral categories out of Hardware as well as Technical Support, what's left in Hardware? Now, Software is still there, but that can be whittled down into Operating Systems and Games. Good point, Kel. Oh...and I fixed your punctuation in my post up there...
Heh...we're working on it. Unfortunately, starting a site up is a lot like applying for a loan. Nobody wants to give you any credit until you've already gotten credit, but it you don't have credit, how can you ever get credit? We're trying to get some content together, and we're working with a lot of different companies out there to try to get some product reviews going. It's all in the works, guys.

__________________
"And knowing is half the battle!"

Dave, is there any way you can change the forums status box on the main page (www.sl.net) to only show the five most recent threads in one of the major categories, such as "SLMarket" or "Software"? I think that would give the impression of more activity than the existing system can sometimes convey.

__________________
"And knowing is half the battle!"