The forums are stagnating - what should be done about it?

[Shinobi-san]

I think there are other reasons that are more prominent than the ones you mentioned that causes posters not to post and lurkers not to join.

With regards to interesting discussions, i think there is a good amount of interesting discussions just not as much as there use to be. I agree with you in that this does affect regular or non regular posters from posting. I know for me i only post in threads i find interesting, or threads that i can add value (liking helping someone), or just to share my views and experiences. But that's just me some posters will post in almost any thread.

Other reasons for posters becoming less active would be a general shift in generation of users. Every once in a while large established members leave or become less active, and in this in turn makes discussion less interesting and can leave a void in the forum community. I remember arguments or discussions that would span pages and pages, interesting arguments, these usually included established members. It wasnt very long before i knew who CGI was in this community :D as well as other established members. Its the established members who make the community what it is...they are almost like the role models of the forum. When they leave then who takes over?

Another reason for posters not posting is thread rules and moderators are to stringent (i think this is a big one). I find the system to be broken. Too often are members banned! Lurkers and moderate posters or noobs like me think twice before voicing there opinion as not everyone wants to check and recheck if their facts are right just to hold up an argument or not get banned because they by mistake trolled a company by being slightly pessimistic. Saying things like xbox360 has a high failure rate and ps3 was overly priced are valid and are not always used to troll. Moderators need to look at the context in which statements are made, as well as the users who make them and see if this is ban worthy (my examples might have been off but i think i made my point).

For lurkers theres just not a big enough reason to make the change from lurker to poster. For me (and like many others have said) the main reason why i joined was to see the top 200 sales charts as oppose to the top 50. I find that this also has had an impact on weekly sales discussions: less data = less opinions (something like that I just made it up :P ). Most of our favourite games or games whose sales we find interesting we simply cant easily access that data anymore. We could manually track it i guess but that's a lot of work. In previous weekly sales discussion threads, you would always find someone mentioning san andreas and how it never dies, that doesnt happen anymore.

And i find that these issues with regards to sales carries a lot of weight specifically for this site as its always been the main differentiator from other gaming sites.

I would also say that the gaming industry in general doesnt have as much buzz as what it did two years ago. I'd imagine the console wars spurred many fanboys to join this site and well the war is kinda irrelavent now (well it always was) or just less interesting. However since other sites are stil picking up im not sure about this. i think sales figures are maybe less appealing to gamers now than what they were 2-3 years ago.

:)