Lack of activity on the forum

[Bondi]

Haven't seen much on Tumblr. The problem with Discord servers that I've been on is that a lot of them just end up dead or with very little activity.

[peach2218]

9 hours ago, gingerdean said:

 The format here is great in my opinion, but I'm old school, lol.  If something works well for me, I see no need to move on 😅 Other than that, I stay in touch with people that I've befriend here in other ways. 

Maybe I’m just nostalgic from the times when I was 12-13 and lurking around in here, but I agree that the format is great. I’m mostly interested in the obs and general discussion boards, and the lack of new content and engagement is depressing. Seems like the forum’s glory days are behind it and we’re lucky to get new content. Probably just a sign of the changing times, but still disappointing. 

[Skylacticon]

I feel like it fluctuates. I used to only hang around the Stories part of the forum until I was comfortable enough to branch out, and there have been periods of time where new members arrive and so does content/engagement, and then times when certain people leave and it changes the atmosphere greatly. On the other side of the planets aligning for those good times, it’s also the balance of life and this site existing the way it does because of people choosing to contribute.

I agree with the points @Chanel_no5 made. A thing that made me want to contribute more here was the engagement I got (also considering I joined relatively young - like, right before I turned 15) and the way this site is specifically dedicated like @Inducer mentioned. The want for engagement is, to a certain degree, a personal thing, but a lot of people share this content for free and in their own time.

I’m not really sure. Whenever I come across a post that says that the forum is dead, I don’t particularly agree - it’s just the level of activity that changes overtime. But I haven’t been here as long as other members, and I still have space to branch out. I’m just someone who’s stayed because it’s where I’ve felt most comfortable expressing this part of me.

[Chiguy]

8 hours ago, Shining Light said:

a validation process in general is a good thing even if it's poorly implemented nowadays due to lack of staff.

Don’t know on what you’re basing that, or even how you think you have the wherewithal to attempt the evaluation.
As with your claim we don’t protect minors, it’s more of your uninformed opinion that seems to stem from your general dissatisfaction with how the site his run.
Since most members are happy, and want more here rather than less, perhaps the problem is with you?

 

Edited November 30, 2023 by Chiguy

[aggedy_ann]

I agree with what @Skylacticon said.    Ive been here a very long time, and even since the beginning, activity waxes and wanes over time.   It’s just the nature of things, I guess.  
 

As there are now other avenues to get content, I feel like it’s more in a wane state more frequently because people are elsewhere.   The forum, YouTube, tumblr, and discord are all very different ways to get content, and they can’t entirely compete with each other.   People go where they are most comfortable.   I stay here because it’s familiar, and tbh, this is my fetish “home.”

 

That being said, the forum is only going to be as active as we choose to make it.   As others have said, life and such gets in the way and they can’t be as active as they’d like.   Happens to me quite frequently.   Ask interactive questions; leave comments that encourage a response.   Post!   
 

It won’t be active unless we make an effort.   

[Inducer]

I have other stories, observations, thoughts to contribute, but can't because they venture into the adult/NSFW side of things.  So, trying to contribute something meaningful, that isn't repetitive sometimes seems like a challenge.  I'm just curious if people feel like activity as a whole is down, or just on these general boards.

Things fluctuate, and there are time where I've noticed not much being posted for several days, and then all of a sudden I log on and there's a bunch of new posts.  But, that's true in the "real world" of daily life too in friend group chats and such.  Maybe with the holiday's approaching, we'll all be catching colds or have some great observations at those holiday parties.  😉

 

 

[Likesn]

21 hours ago, aggedy_ann said:

I stay here because it’s familiar, and tbh, this is my fetish “home.”

I can really relate to this.

[peach2218]

22 hours ago, Inducer said:

I have other stories, observations, thoughts to contribute, but can't because they venture into the adult/NSFW side of things.  So, trying to contribute something meaningful, that isn't repetitive sometimes seems like a challenge.  I'm just curious if people feel like activity as a whole is down, or just on these general boards.

 

 

I take it you aren’t fully validated yet/unable to post on the adult boards? 
 

There’s even less activity over there. Maybe one NSFW observation every few weeks, if that. It’s definitely not as active as the main boards, probably because a lot of users don’t have access to it. 

[Chiguy]

If people have suggestions, but don't feel comfortable posting them, feel free to PM me and I'll get them heard.

We did discuss this recently. Actionable ideas were elusive. 

To my mind, we need some way to reward quality content creators. Not sure what that is with no budget. 

[Inducer]

49 minutes ago, peach2218 said:

I take it you aren’t fully validated yet/unable to post on the adult boards? 
 

There’s even less activity over there. Maybe one NSFW observation every few weeks, if that. It’s definitely not as active as the main boards, probably because a lot of users don’t have access to it. 

Exactly, not yet fully validated.  Soon, hopefully.  I lurked for years before making an account and got brave enough to post.  

I was just wondering if once people were validated, they put more of their attention into the adult side of things, since this is a fetish site, after all, instead of the general stuff.  But, interesting that it doesn't seem that's the case!

[Bondi]

3 hours ago, Chiguy said:

If people have suggestions, but don't feel comfortable posting them, feel free to PM me and I'll get them heard.

We did discuss this recently. Actionable ideas were elusive. 

To my mind, we need some way to reward quality content creators. Not sure what that is with no budget. 

If it costs too much money or you're not able to install mods or whatever on the forum, then this suggestion won't work, but maybe if there was a system of giving a "like" to obs, stories, artwork or other content that people post, and in addition to that people could still post comments if they want to. 

[peach2218]

7 hours ago, Inducer said:

Exactly, not yet fully validated.  Soon, hopefully.  I lurked for years before making an account and got brave enough to post.  

I was just wondering if once people were validated, they put more of their attention into the adult side of things, since this is a fetish site, after all, instead of the general stuff.  But, interesting that it doesn't seem that's the case!

We definitely need to figure out a way to liven up the adult board. I, for one, don’t have a lot of adult obs because my husband and I haven’t explored my fetish yet. 

[Chiguy]

5 hours ago, Bondi said:

If it costs too much money or you're not able to install mods or whatever on the forum, then this suggestion won't work, but maybe if there was a system of giving a "like" to obs, stories, artwork or other content that people post, and in addition to that people could still post comments if they want to. 

I like this idea. 

[webmeistro]

5 hours ago, Bondi said:

If it costs too much money or you're not able to install mods or whatever on the forum, then this suggestion won't work, but maybe if there was a system of giving a "like" to obs, stories, artwork or other content that people post, and in addition to that people could still post comments if they want to. 

I'm personally not a huge fan of a Reddit-ish 'karma' system, it generally leads to people gaming it.

[Plop68]

In my opinion, I think by lowering the validation requirements more people that might be better at and/or prefer writing NSFW content rather than writing SFW content.

[MyOwnPrivateSFC]

8 hours ago, Bondi said:

If it costs too much money or you're not able to install mods or whatever on the forum, then this suggestion won't work, but maybe if there was a system of giving a "like" to obs, stories, artwork or other content that people post, and in addition to that people could still post comments if they want to. 

I feel like we sort of accidentally tried this once (I think a software upgrade added it automatically, and it took a bit before Staff figured out how to handle that?), and it did not go well. It ended up turning people’s posts into popularity contests…which was bad enough overall, but awful considering it applied to stories and obs, as well! IIRC, I think it even led to a temporary drop in posts, because some people were “liking” instead of replying, while others—those whose posts weren’t getting “likes”—just stopped posting altogether.

So, yeah: for as much as I’m a big fan of being able to “like” posts when I can’t find the words to reply to them, I don’t think that’s a good solution for this particular situation. 😞

[Reader]

What does the validation process have to do with the forum having a lack of activity? 
 

If you can’t make 50 posts or it takes you months to make 50 posts, how would that help the engagement issue which involves making consistent posts? 
 

And I understand those who said they feel they would have more to contribute in the adult board which fair play, but also that doesn’t generate engagement on the main boards which is what the discussion is about. 

[peach2218]

11 minutes ago, Reader said:

What does the validation process have to do with the forum having a lack of activity? 
 

If you can’t make 50 posts or it takes you months to make 50 posts, how would that help the engagement issue which involves making consistent posts? 
 

And I understand those who said they feel they would have more to contribute in the adult board which fair play, but also that doesn’t generate engagement on the main boards which is what the discussion is about. 

That’s a good point. Maybe some people are losing interest before they become validated, because they can’t access certain parts of the forum? 
 

But then those people probably aren’t the ones who would be posting quality content anyway. 🤷🏻‍♀️ It’s been a while, but I do remember the validation process almost made me give up. Glad I didn’t though. 

[Likesn]

Personally, I would not recommend a "like" button. There are some advantages to it, sure, but like people said above it has the added risk of turning posts into a popularity contest. Furthermore, it's more likely that comments will decrease rather than increase. If you want an example you can check out Tumblr, where comments tend to be few and far between and people tend to like or reblog posts rather tan commenting on them.

As for the validation process and the adult boards: Consider the fact that some people are only active until they are validated and get access to the adult boards and then their activity greatly decreases. Not all people are like that, obviously, but some are. The adult boards, as mentioned above, tend to be even less active than the general ones. Maybe giving more people access to those boards would change that and maybe not. I do think that this post (originally at least) is about lack of activity on the main boards. If so, giving more people access to the adult boards probably won't solve that issue.

[Reader]

5 hours ago, peach2218 said:

That’s a good point. Maybe some people are losing interest before they become validated, because they can’t access certain parts of the forum? 
 

But then those people probably aren’t the ones who would be posting quality content anyway. 🤷🏻‍♀️ It’s been a while, but I do remember the validation process almost made me give up. Glad I didn’t though. 

I would agree with you that part of the problem with lack of activity on the forum is lack of excitement. And it’s true that excitement can wane if there is a difficult validation process. 

And in the recent past, like a year or two ago, there wasn’t a good system in place because it would be one admin that had the authority to do everything and mods that just did the basic stuff with little authority. But then the admin got burnt out and left which stopped all validations for a long time. 

Then Cake stepped up, who had been an admin previously and knew how it all worked, and she did the admin stuff and got rid of the backlog but it took a while so those at the end of the line, meaning those that signed up the latest, waited a long time. Months and months. Which you probably got caught in that. And then we managed to catch up. 

Then we added more admin and more mods and Mr. G set up a system to generate all the unvalidated people in a list that we go through monthly. Perhaps we can go through it twice a month. If done right, the validation process should take anywhere from 10 days to a month to get the 50 posts. 

So currently, there shouldn’t be any issues now where a person would wait months unless they just don’t reach the 50 posts, which we’ve said doesn’t help engagement anyways.
If someone has the 50 posts and they’re not validated, it’s because they have a warning on their account, or they exhibited some unsettling behavior that added time to the validation process, or they post padded, or they just slipped through the system and staff missed it. And usually those people send us a message and say, hey I think I slipped through the cracks and we immediately validate. 
 

I think lots of members want the forum to be active again and hopefully we can all put our minds together and come up with solutions. Perhaps themed writing stories or more topics that produce engagement like book clubs, or movie night discussions, or coming up with topics that bring about more meaningful, deep convos, etc. 

[sneezysunshine]

17 hours ago, Inducer said:

I was just wondering if once people were validated, they put more of their attention into the adult side of things, since this is a fetish site, after all, instead of the general stuff.  But, interesting that it doesn't seem that's the case!

I thought the exact same thing before getting validated, and when I joined I think there were a bit more activity on the general board too (rn I feel it's a bit slower compared to even only a few months back so I'm guessing it alters). I even had some NSFW stuff that I intended to post, but with the lack of activity there and having a bit of a hard time getting a grip on the level of where people put their NSFW material, I got shy and just never ended up posting it due to the fear of putting it out there and no one giving any feedback or interact with it. 

I feel like everyone sort of needs to start commenting more, setting an example for newer members that this community is engaging in the content, since few comments leads to a bad spiral and the activity will decrease even more. And the general feeling here at least is that we are a lot of people that miss it, so I guess we could take some responsibility for it and just start. But, with that said, having some change of system to hurry that change along and make it be more implemented would not hurt. However, as people have said I don't have any good ideas of how to improve it though. I am not super familiar with how it works since I haven't been here that long, but I read something about the writers group for example. Perhaps frequent writers could be displayed somehow, in a list or something, and making it easier accessible to reach their old stories in collections or something similar (just brainstorming, might not be possible but I'm thinking aloud). Cause when I find an author I like it can sometimes require some digging to find other works in their activity, which you cannot even see until you're validated (I think??). I'm also super aware that there might be functions that make it easier and it's just me not having found them yet, so I'm sorry if that's the case haha. I also sometimes feel unsure of whenever I do find something that was posted a while ago, if it's still okay to comment on it, so most of the time I just don't since I don't want to break any rules on accident. 

And like @Chiguy talked about minors not being allowed here, I think it feels very good to be on a space that tries so hard to keep minors away. That's my main issue with places like Tumblr that I don't want to produce NSFW fetish material for minors or interact with minors in fetish settings whatsoever. Then, it's also unavoidable to completely have that under control since people have access to internet and all, but the hard core stuff and the communication should be shielded away if it can and I appreciate it so much that this site tries to do that. 

Edited December 2, 2023 by sneezysunshine

[Chanel_no5]

3 minutes ago, Reader said:

 

I think lots of members want the forum to be active again and hopefully we can all put our minds together and come up with solutions. Perhaps themed writing stories or more topics that produce engagement like book clubs, or movie night discussions, or coming up with topics that bring about more meaningful, deep convos, etc. 

Five prompts five authors!!!!! (or as many as want to join in). I was just thinking about that the other day! 

Pleeeeeeeaaaaaase can we do that again???? 👀🥺 

[SleepingPhlox]

4 minutes ago, sneezysunshine said:

That's my main issue with places like Tumblr that I don't want to produce NSFW fetish material for minors or interact with minors in fetish settings whatsoever. Then, it's also unavoidable to completely have that under control since people have access to internet and all, but the hard core stuff and the communication should be shielded away if it can and I appreciate it so much that this site tries to do that. 

It's very important, and a really good thing about here.  Other places around the internet, you get minors completely disregarding adults' boundaries and following or interacting anyway, and it's frustrating to catch them and block them.

3 minutes ago, Chanel_no5 said:

Five prompts five authors!!!!! (or as many as want to join in). I was just thinking about that the other day! 

Pleeeeeeeaaaaaase can we do that again???? 👀🥺 

GOD YES that's such a fun thing.

But the thing about events or trying to start things to get people involved is that it can be SO disheartening when people don't join in.  Or say they are going to join in and then don't follow through (I was thinking about restarting the Secret Santa this year, but then I remembered how much it sucked when SO MANY people flaked the last year I did it, how many people diligently worked on a story only to be screwed over.)

You get out what you put in, y'all.  A community is not a community without people.  There are a few enthusiastic and active people but they only stay that way if they get engagement with what they put out.  You want stories to read? Comment on the stories that people do post! You want media clips? Thank the people who hunt them out and post them! Connect! Talk! Share! The advantage that a place like a forum has over other types of sites is that you can dip in and out when you have time and mental space, you don't need to be fully present all the time or you'll miss out.  You can find cool stories from a month ago, or a topic from a couple weeks ago.  (Just don't comment on something from two years ago, or we'll all scream ) 

[Reader]

@Chanel_no5 Ohhhhhhhhhhh that would be a great jumpstart! Okay I’ll put something together very soon!
 

Oh my goodness, for those that want to see the forum rise up like a Phoenix again, we should have a committee of a few people who come together in the pms and discuss how to increase activity on the forum and then once a month or once every two months bring an idea for an event to the forum to participate in for example, like the writing event mentioned 1 prompt, # of authors. It’ll be spread out enough and varied enough that people with little spoons can sometimes participate as well. 

[sneezysunshine]

19 minutes ago, SleepingPhlox said:

It's very important, and a really good thing about here.  Other places around the internet, you get minors completely disregarding adults' boundaries and following or interacting anyway, and it's frustrating to catch them and block them.

Definitely, I feel like I have to go through my Tumblr interactions and followers frequently to try and minimize it, but that also feels like a chore and not at all what you want to be doing when you come on there. So, yeah. Just wanted to say big thanks to the people running this site because of me not having to worry about that here. Or at least worry about it a bit less. 

Edited December 2, 2023 by sneezysunshine