What is the future of our forum - slow death?
Posted: Sat Sep 09, 2017 10:09 am
OK folks as I commented on this thread: [url]http://www.eaglesinternational.net/test ... 1da162866e[/url it really hit home how "fragile" the future of our forum is.
Without question, our forum contains an amazing amount of Eagle technical data. It is reasonable easy to find good technical information via our search engines.
That said, it takes a pretty good effort to keep this forum operating at a decent level. That does not include the daily effort to weed out large amount of spam applications and approve legit applications.
So, here are some simple thoughts about the status of our forum:
1. The various bus Facebook sites are pretty active. Bus forums, in general, are less active than they used to be. I, like many of you, monitor the various bus FB sites. They tend to be more social than technical. I think that is a general trend. Folks seem to enjoy the social aspect of FB and only seem to seek technical help when they are in trouble. Some of the technical comments on FB make me cringe, but they often get "corrected" and the end result is some useful information.
2. Our traffic is down considerably from years past. We are kind of the opposite of FB. We are much more technical based and don't have a lot of social exchange. That was the concept when we created this forum in 2008. We still have new folks registering for membership to the forum. That said, folks seem to be more intimated about posting questions here than on FB. We still get some decent technical questions, but they don't always get the technical support we were so famous for in the past.
3. Many of the great information resources for our forum no longer participate. Many now concentrate on FB. That is probably the tend for most forums. Over the years, we have all seen communication technology change. Newsgroups are mostly dead. Yahoo groups are much less active. Now forums seem to be going in the same direction.
3. I am 75 and have no help with this forum. When I can no longer keep this thing going, it will probably die.
4. I have asked for help in the past and get no response. There are contract resources, but they would not have the same desire to keep this going as I do. Sadly, many of the folks who love Eagle buses, and have technical expertise, have moved on to FB.
So, our future does not look good.
Jim
Without question, our forum contains an amazing amount of Eagle technical data. It is reasonable easy to find good technical information via our search engines.
That said, it takes a pretty good effort to keep this forum operating at a decent level. That does not include the daily effort to weed out large amount of spam applications and approve legit applications.
So, here are some simple thoughts about the status of our forum:
1. The various bus Facebook sites are pretty active. Bus forums, in general, are less active than they used to be. I, like many of you, monitor the various bus FB sites. They tend to be more social than technical. I think that is a general trend. Folks seem to enjoy the social aspect of FB and only seem to seek technical help when they are in trouble. Some of the technical comments on FB make me cringe, but they often get "corrected" and the end result is some useful information.
2. Our traffic is down considerably from years past. We are kind of the opposite of FB. We are much more technical based and don't have a lot of social exchange. That was the concept when we created this forum in 2008. We still have new folks registering for membership to the forum. That said, folks seem to be more intimated about posting questions here than on FB. We still get some decent technical questions, but they don't always get the technical support we were so famous for in the past.
3. Many of the great information resources for our forum no longer participate. Many now concentrate on FB. That is probably the tend for most forums. Over the years, we have all seen communication technology change. Newsgroups are mostly dead. Yahoo groups are much less active. Now forums seem to be going in the same direction.
3. I am 75 and have no help with this forum. When I can no longer keep this thing going, it will probably die.
4. I have asked for help in the past and get no response. There are contract resources, but they would not have the same desire to keep this going as I do. Sadly, many of the folks who love Eagle buses, and have technical expertise, have moved on to FB.
So, our future does not look good.
Jim