Kaolian wrote:
Forums are cyclic in nature, especially computer game forums. As the popularity of a game waxes and wanes with time, so too do the forums associated with it. Such forums often turn to other topics and posting habits to keep their regulars interested. The smaller the forum population however, the more difficult that often proves to be.
I have been an active poster on this site for 6 years now. almost since the beginning of these forums. I am the exception to the average posting cycle, one of approximatly 6 posters that are still here from that time. Your average forum poster lasts no mroe than 2 years. They go in stages. You have your newbie posters, they can be annoying, but the more of them you have, the better the overall health. A fraction of your newbies become regulars, usually lasting until around 500 posts or so. About a third of those regulars go on to exceed the 1500 post mark, or approximatly 1 year. Those people form the backbone of your forum. Once they begin to leave, if there is no ready replacement source, the forum will die. Slowly, but inexorably. That is the situation you find your server forums in today. With the release of WoW, a percentage of your hardcore FFXI players decided to switch games. The same thing happened to the EQ server populations when FFXI was released, and the same thing will happen to WoW when DDO or whatever ends up being the next major game is released.
I took a look at the Unicorn server forum. I moved a few off topic threads, removed the rape thread since it was somewhat unnecessary, but realistically, if i were to go in there nad heavily moderate it, it would not help that forum, it would kill it completely. Besides, even on the rape thread, there were no rateings one way or the other. As an admin, that tells me that no one cared one way or the other. You yourself didn't even rate it.
Shapeing the destiny of a forum is difficult to do. it takes a strong personality, patience, and perserveriance, and most importantly, allies to your vision. Start rateing threads you dislike down, replace them with on topic threads. Gather people you know from your server into the forum and stage a coup. Even if you fail, you will suceed in gettting people's attention. The onhly question is how much you are willing to devote to it. I don't play FFXI, I don't know the unicorn server, anythign us admins did to alter the balance in there would ultimatly cause more damage than good at this point. Its your forum, make of it what you will.
See you leader himself said your time is over, and it's our time now.