A discussion on the forums has made me reflect recently on the state of said forums. And, the fact that the thread in question is the only active thread outside of the comic threads is rather telling.
Turns out that, Surprise! No one uses the forums anymore!
Just for clarity, that "Surprise" was sarcasm, as it is not a surprise to anyone at all.
Anyway, I've got a few options in front of me to deal with the problem, one way or another. I could:
- Leave it as is, and hope people start using it (or, Laissez-faire administration)
- Trim the forums of dead weight, and brand it as "Super-Awesome Forums Lite 2.0!" or something
- Close the forums entirely, because they add little value.
I can assure you that the last option is unlikely, since the main comic archive relies on the forums, and to snip that bond would be a tremendous endeavour and would consume all my free time for a month (or so).
And, I can't really leave it as it is now, since it's clearly not working. If you look at the
stats page for the forum you can see that usage dropped around 50% each and every year.
I know why, too. My long hiatuses have alienated any readers I had (who weren't part of the old core fanbase carrying over from the FFQ days), and they've jumped ship without anything to attract them here.
Anyway.
The last option is what I will likely be doing. I am going to vastly reorganize the forum structure to consolidate related forums together, and hopefully concentrate what activity there is into a smaller space. Forums that remain would be justified for one reason or another, and the structure would look something like this:
- Site Stuff
- Tale of the Cave News - Stuff in here goes on the front page
- Tale of the Cave Comic Archive - These are the comment threads
- General Discussion
- General Discussion - This would be the "off topic" board, as well as general comic discussion
- Introductions - I don't want introductions clogging up other boards
- Forum games - Ditto.
- Creativity - This would be a combination of all the "art" forums (Writing, Art, etc)
I'm not sure what to do with Showcase, since it doesn't fit in that structure, but no one really uses it. Maybe I'll just roll it into General Discussion with everything else. Same with In Real Life (although that hasn't even seen any activity since the 2008 United States election!)
Just as a reminder, no posts will be lost in the transition. All the existing posts will go somewhere, all the links to posts will still work, etc. Don't worry about that. All that is changing is the organizational structure of the forums.
Anyway, let me know what you think. If you have a favourite forum you want to see kept separate, nows the time to voice your opinion! Just, be sure to back it up with reasoning!
I will give this until the end of January before I make a final decision. Comment away!
