Loading ...Again. Forum. Yes or no?
November 13, 2009 | 
Author So. Again it has come to this. I’m entertaining a semi-active forum on my page. The forum idea and functionality has been on RotR for two years.
In this two years I’ve scrapped one forum completely and migrated the current forum twice. I’ve always looked at it as a I need to have a forum feature, not as something I like to have.
My caveats with it:
It does not integrate nicely.
it doesn’t look too good with some of the themes.
It is horribly slow.
It’s pretty inactive.
There is one much more active community available.
There are alternatives available like IntenseDebate, which features discussions integrating all major social networks and seamless integration into WordPress. I should add that I’m not looking for alternative forum frameworks here.
So, you see I’m biased towards removing it altogether. Your take? Please comment away.
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The forum must stay! its useful, very useful. Also, if you are worried about the community on it, use it as a meeting place or something. Forums have various uses. Also, people who have ideas to save the forum, comment immediately!
It would be silly to get rid of it IMO, but it does need a revamp, it’s horrible.
Plus, it really needs to reach critical mass, and now is a particularly good time for that.
for instance, we’ve seen some people recently who post quite a lot, but they just need to join/be on at the same time.
And personally, I don’t think you really want my type on your forum, what with my trolling and all
Thats true, (the posting). Im not too familiar with your trolling! But i believe your reasons back it up well.
I think since you now have one of the best (the best IMO) MH sites, Your forum will eventually grow to a decent size. but its not like it being there is going to help the main site a whole bunch. So its up to you.
If anything i believe the hunters map goes unnoticed, so remove that. Patience is the key to a thriving Forum. You just need more members
I voted to take it out, there is already a forum at gamefaqs and another at minegard we don’t need another here.
Here’s my thoughts.
GameFaqs and Minegard are perfectly reasonable options, though I find both have some level of group dischord which is difficult for players to reconcile. They tend to move things from legitimate games discussion to something more divisive. You’ve even posted a cartoon about the disruptions that occur regularly on GameFaqs.
Additionally, RotR offers features that many of these sites do not and offers them more comprehensively and in a much more user-friendly way.
Therefore, I have voted to keep the forums. But I do agree that their inactivity and speed is disturbing. So what do we do? There’s a lot of options, I think. Work with those of us who are coming to the forums and those who are coming to the page to find why they don’t use the forums. If it is truly because GameFaqs boards are sufficient or that Minegard is reasonable enough an alternative, then sure, get rid of this forum.
But if the visitors to this site do not use the forums because they are slow or poorly-integrated, why not put some effort into fixing those issues. I really do feel, given the quality of the rest of the content on this site, that a RotR forum would do very well if the right measures are taken to improve integration, speed, and activity.