Observations Of A Net Surfer

[Zarn Ishtare]

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I've been surfing/trolling/hanging around the Internet since I was fourteen years old, and there's a great deal of content, of pure information...as well as a massive amount of nonsense. So, I've decided to help sort through the confusion and mess and post a few no-nonsense, simple observations as a career Net-Surfer...hopefully this works out! For the moment, my topic is forums.

Observation One: The Forum Standards


I would like to explain here what the principle pillars of any standard, successful operating forum are here.


1. Draw
2. Flexibility
3. Stability
4. Moderation
5. People.

We’ll start off with Draw, based on an observation I made some time ago:

“One problem I see with alot of fledgling sites is a lack of Draw. I mean, yeah, a fellowship group is all right, but what is the initial Draw, or hook, that brings you there in the first place? What is the founding principle of your site? For example, the most thriving web-forums I've ever seen were built around web-comics, especially those like Penny Arcade, CTRL-ALT-DEL, and others who’ve achieved that amount of success…their primary draw is the comic, which allows them a steady inflow of people.

A web-comic forum also allows for the symbiotic Artist-Fan cycle, which encourages the Artist to draw while giving the Fan something to enjoy. Most successful rock and roll bands that came up through the bar/club scene made it because of those few hard and fast people who said “You rock, keep doing what your doing.â€

[KeybladeWarrior]

Good job. I am for sure to come post next week.

[Dunedan]

how is that writing forum you were setting up going?

[mitsuki lover]

One of the problems with discussion forums is getting enough people to keep it
going.Another is finding a good host site.It's not enough to have a good topic
that will interest people in coming and registering,you also have to have a host site that will be good at giving you good back up and is there for when the forum
expierences problems,etc.Sometimes this means you have to change host sites.

[Zarn Ishtare]

Dunedan, it's still in beta. Trying to figure things out...