Ideas to make the forums more active?

[_____V_____]

Post them, if you have any.

Let's see if we can work on them together to make this place thriving again.

[MichaelMyers]

Free coffee/donuts?

In all seriousness: polls/tournaments/competitions tend to elicit at least some participation, including from lurkers, but the burden of setting those up and running them tends to unfairly fall on one person (with the exception of neverendingwonder's recent photo competition).

Admins may look into some ad promotion as well. Where is the horror.com facebook group? I have tried searching for it on facebook, unsuccessfully. The site might look into having a greater presence on facebook/twitter, the two biggest social media platforms.

[_____V_____]

Tournaments have been done to death, TBH. One of the reasons why I had signed off them last year. I thought the compilations might bring back some members but those aren't generating that much interest either.

Forget the admins. We are pretty much the only ones left thinking of the forums.

HDC Facebook group - http://www.facebook.com/groups/56759050462/

It doesn't generate much activity either. I have tried to advertise the BR IV, tournaments, compilations everything in there but not to much success.

[neverending]

I belong to several other horror forums, and every single one is having this same conversation. Forums just don't have the draw they used to.

[sfear]

Originally Posted by neverending

I belong to several other horror forums...

Moonlighter:mad:

[Atraxi]

I had no idea there was a Facebook group for HDC. I still feel like such a noob here.

I guess the question comes down to what everyone wants out of the forum. I find the forum extremely useful but for the most part I don't really find there's anything for me to reply to. I love the HDC lists and how organized and helpful they are but there's no back and forth available. I also know that I personally wasn't posting anything too thoughtful because of certain members so I would specifically stay out of conversations and not initiate certain ones. That issue seems to be gone now for the most part so maybe I will actually post more and invite other people.

[Straker]

Unfortunatly its kinda the way forums are going these days, most people are satisfied to consolidate their hobbies/ interests through facebook. The tournaments and competition based stuff is still the only way to really encourage posting from either regulars or new members, but I guess its hard to keep things fresh. I think the important thing with small communities like this is maintaining a positive environment and quality posters. I pop on most days even when I dont post, just to see whats going on. I value the opinions of the people that post here, even if I dont always agree with them and enjoy the diversity we have in our community. I'd like to see more of the new members that sign up stick around, but ultimately I don't think its something that is easy to control. I know in the past a few new memebers have complained about feeling isolated or not welcome or whatever else, but I think thats just a symptom of joining any new community and if anything alot of the tournaments and games openly encourage everyone to get involved which is all you can really ask for.

[MichaelMyers]

"Most users ever online was 448, 08-31-2009 at 08:29 PM."

Not as long ago as one would expect! Should have bottled whatever the occasion was for that!

[_____V_____]

Originally Posted by neverending

I belong to several other horror forums, and every single one is having this same conversation. Forums just don't have the draw they used to.

Forums have become passive, I guess. Compared to the real-time updating of Facebook/Twitter etc., plus their social interactions, forums just aren't "in" today. I still think we would benefit if we had a live chat box somewhere on HDC forums' home page, like the one I created for the bomb shelter HDC forum.

But this is one of many reasons. One other major reason was that all/most active members from those days grew up and/or moved out of HDC. They got busy with college/job/families and now have no time for HDC.

Originally Posted by Atraxi

I had no idea there was a Facebook group for HDC. I still feel like such a noob here.

I guess the question comes down to what everyone wants out of the forum. I find the forum extremely useful but for the most part I don't really find there's anything for me to reply to. I love the HDC lists and how organized and helpful they are but there's no back and forth available. I also know that I personally wasn't posting anything too thoughtful because of certain members so I would specifically stay out of conversations and not initiate certain ones. That issue seems to be gone now for the most part so maybe I will actually post more and invite other people.

It was created a long time back by HDC-ian, The_Return, just in case horror (HDC's owner) pulled the plug of the forums. But it's pretty much inactive, except from the occasional post which is few and very far between.

All/most movie topics have been discussed to death. Most current topics have been covered also. Do a search on any topic which comes to your mind and you will see that a thread exists for it. We really have reached a saturation point for all topics related to horror.

Originally Posted by Straker

Unfortunatly its kinda the way forums are going these days, most people are satisfied to consolidate their hobbies/ interests through facebook. The tournaments and competition based stuff is still the only way to really encourage posting from either regulars or new members, but I guess its hard to keep things fresh. I think the important thing with small communities like this is maintaining a positive environment and quality posters. I pop on most days even when I dont post, just to see whats going on. I value the opinions of the people that post here, even if I dont always agree with them and enjoy the diversity we have in our community. I'd like to see more of the new members that sign up stick around, but ultimately I don't think its something that is easy to control. I know in the past a few new memebers have complained about feeling isolated or not welcome or whatever else, but I think thats just a symptom of joining any new community and if anything alot of the tournaments and games openly encourage everyone to get involved which is all you can really ask for.

New members sign up because they just want the membership. Rarely has a new member stayed to post around, and most often then not it's about a movie they are looking for or to spam about their films/books/blogs. Another major contributor to this is the lack of any sort of excitement in the genre. I can only dream of what would have happened if HDC existed in the 60s, 70s and 80s. So many wonderful films, decades of cultural/technological/social revolution...so many superb topics to discuss.

Originally Posted by MichaelMyers

"Most users ever online was 448, 08-31-2009 at 08:29 PM."

Not as long ago as one would expect! Should have bottled whatever the occasion was for that!

That never happened, unfortunately. It was just a gimmick by the Administrators to get some traffic going after the latest updates to the forum had been done. Traffic nosedived after Christmas 2008.

The most traffic this forum had was back in 2006-07. That's the reason why the first edition of Battle Royale was so popular. I remember the 2nd (or 3rd) edition of the HDC Awards had 279 people online that night, out of which 100-ish were HDC members who were refreshing and replying at the same time!

[hammerfan]

I remember when a couple of members were writing a "movie" that cast HDC members as characters. I always enjoyed reading those.