Seriously, is this forum dead?

[Btaylor]

I also agree with Billysinc, sdways01 and Snow Miser. This forum has been slow, I am waiting last 7 days for activations mail.

[billysinc]

If either Bill or Bob can't and if needed I would be willing to be a moderator. I've been a moderator on a large automotive forum (over 100k members and 1.3 million posts) since 2004 so I'm familiar with what goes on in the background. But with the traffic this site sees I wouldn't anticipate you needing more than a couple of mods.

[KathyC]

Thank you Snow Miser for taking this one, and everyone else that will help to keep these boards going.

[crudio]

Thanks for everyone's enthusiastic responses! With the addition of Snow Miser (thank you!) we now have five moderators (Bill O, fifteendays, h2oeco, Snow Miser, and I), so we should have our bases covered. Per Snow Miser's request I am about to send out an email to all moderators with a quick review of what's entailed in being a moderator. If you should have any questions or suggestions for me (since I'm a new moderator, too!), please feel free to reply to that email.

Thank you all again! It's great to see a continued interest in this community.

[bikehikeskifish]

We've recently had this conversation over on VFTT, which has lower than historical participation, but much higher than this forum. The end result really is that content is king. Without content, there isn't anything to draw people to the site. The forum has to decide what its mission is and then find contributors (not necessarily moderators -- we have only 3 on VFTT and have much higher traffic) to produce the content.

The forums, vBulletin in particular, have to compete with other mediums which are better suited to the current sharing preferences of users - blogs, wordpress, facebook, etc. I know there is a cycle with VFTT where a new user comes along, wants to find people to hike with, gets involved for a while, finds some friends, and then they disappear to private channels like facebook with that set of friends.

Tim

[andrej]

Look I wanted to contribute to this forum but every single time I wanted to post, I had to keep waiting for my posts to be "approved" so I couldn't contribute.

Edit: Wow, looks like I can post normally, finally! But it took 2.5 months to get my account fully operational.
Is this normal? Has anyone else had problems like these?

Alright give me some time to get back into "ambitious posting mode" and let's see what I can do.

[Snow Miser]

Welcome andrejfavia! I just reviewed your profile, and everything shows you're good to go. Not sure why you had some difficulty posting, but do apologize for that. We on this forum look forward to your participation. Thank you!

[Bill O]

Nobody is posting anything, that is the problem. A good example was a question I just answered in the weather forum. Original poster never even acknowledged my response, which makes me not want to respond.

I'm still confused how a thread on a recent trail you just hiked can be replaced by facebook posts?

The facebook updates provided by the MWO staff are great, and clearly get many viewers. But the comments posted are almost unbearable to read. They are as bad as the comments posted for an online news article.

[bikehikeskifish]

I'm still confused how a thread on a recent trail you just hiked can be replaced by facebook posts?.

Easy. I post a 2-3 line report with a link to photos on my timeline and all my friends and contacts (people I collectively 'care' about) can see it, comment, like it, etc., and I feel good about sharing it. It's all just a few quick buttons, and I can control who sees it, and I am already on FB anyway.

(culled from similar discussion on VFTT recently)

Tim

[Gorque]

Great Googly Moogly!! I'm gone for a little while and the forum goes down the ......

So what's new?