Virtual Dr. seems more than a little sick: "Member Participation Issues"

Mods & Senior Members ARE Looked upon to know a bit more (even lots more) than a normal member or Newbie....Therefore the Answer that is Given by the Mods n Seniors is taken as more or less 100% True n Good...Now to my view of things, the Majority of you contributeing to this Thread are the ones that's Looked upon to give most of the Answers....(always more than 1 answer to a question) I know what I know through you lot within this Thread and the answers I give to someone could be missconstrued to be not quite correct because of the way i put it over, even if it is correct..(hope ya followed that)!!LOL. I can give Good True Answers to 99% of Photography questions, but most of the time they been answered before I seen em...I do give Help if n when i know the answer I'm giveing is Correct...
Have too many IT Professionals in here n Newbies will go elsewhere because what Professionals sometimes say can be OverWhelming, Confuseing & Boreing....(to say the least)

Things, they are a Changeing....Not just here, but EveryWhere..
I would say that by the end of 2005 most Sites will either Dissapier or just trickle along...Why, you ask!?
This==ISPs (here in UK at least) are changeing the way we SURF the NET...It's called USAGE...Now I never knew till yesterday that Normall surffing is part n parcel of the USAGE....Surffing, Email etc.,
We are being Curtailed to either 3Gbt, 15Gbt or 30Gbt a month..Now 30Gbt sounds Brilliant to 90% of peeps..(I thought it was) till I read about the USAGE..So if you be a Manager of more than one site or a Mod in upteen sites then by Golly that 30Gbt will be gone in a Week...I can use it in a Fortnight..Less if i doing my Photos into my Sites and Elsewhere...
Just Something Else for you to Think about!!!!!!
I like VDR the way it is, but would like to see some changes,what that'll be will be left upto whoever does em...Do it Wrong n VDR will go quicker than before end 2005....

On the number of forums, we actually have quite a few less than the sites that are really heavily visited and growing well. Of the sites that I have been monitoring over the last few months the smallest number (on a site which is very nearly dead, I might add) has 14 forums, and the largest number is 47 forums. We have 22 (excluding the read-only SpywareDr forum). I'm unable to discern any correlation between the number of forums on a site and activity or growth.

Whether our forums are as well named and described as they might be, is something that we should look into though, I think. I personally would also like to see the site expanding into areas that we haven't previously covered before as well.

I think that bringing IT professionals to this site is a big mistake (sorry Linda). As has been already said, it will simply drive the newbies away. The number of IT professionals who use help sites is much lower than newbies, so we would see a drastic decrease in membership.

With more forums (47, SuperSparks?? You gotta be kiddin'...) you risk the danger that KatMac mentioned....the site becoming compartmentalized into cliques, eventually not communicating with each other or not crossing over into "territories".

Pretty soon site members start wearing distinctive hairstyles and clothings to mark out which forums they "belong" to, start carrying weapons, robbing convenience stores....it can get pretty dirty.



:rolleyes:

Are you saying you dont like my hair :rolleyes:



http://www.imagestation.com/picture/...6/f4d44e60.jpg

:D :D :D

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The number of IT professionals who use help sites is much lower than newbies

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They do use "help sites" (just to pick a generic term) Usil in quite large numbers. They have a need for information resources and exchange just like others. It's just what they are looking for or need from/in a site is different.

I know they (we) use sites but not nearly as much as newbies do.

By the way, even if perhaps the idea of trying to shoot for topics/members of the more (or real) hard core nature is not appealing to people, that does not mean that maybe something a little more down the scale (so to speak) wouldn't work.

I'm curious to know what the % breakdown would be between tech and non tech for a successful board?.........poppy

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Originally posted by poppy4
DrMDJ quote:
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Will members kick in?
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Doc, if the members don't, then the board is doomed, as the mods IMO, couldn't handle the volume ......but the track record here is such that I believe they would.

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Again, not to dampen your spirits or to shoot down your ideas poppy4 (or say they absolutely won't work), but... I think there is evidence to at least question your "believe". If we step back and look at this thread here we see how relatively few people have actually participated (and it's everyone's complete right not to participate). Now here we're dealing with a case of people needing only offer opinions and suggestions, no real requirements, no minimum word requirements, etc. Contrast that to some of the things you are talking about where it could/would actually take more (real) work and effort. So I think there is a basis for some scepticism in terms of expecting enough people to be willing or able to help out.

We have three forums that link to more narrowly focused forums. Why shouldn't they be here?

As it stands right now we only go so far up the IT ladder. So does it not stand to reason we will lose members from an active participation when they go higher than VirDr does?

Here is another thought. We could break VirDr into three main boards.

1. Help site section for beginners with problems and questions.

2. Intemediate Section for competant users ( They have paid their dues by learning.)

3. An Expert section broken into the more narrow fields.

These can interact. I purposely did not spell out the breakdowns of each. The only reason I mention this is as our members get more experienced they just shift inside of VirDr in stead of looking and going elsewhere elsewhere.

Even simple programming forced me to go somewhere else.

And this idea would take some study. Longer term planning certainly does not hurt.

But one thing that does not change is change itself. Constantly in flux. We have to allow for change. :)

DrMDJ.....appreciate you clarity and candor.....I tend to be , shall we say...'optimistic'........and my ...'believe'.....comes from not knowing, necessarily what category the poster falls into....poppy

I must say that this thread is fascinating....:D

Goose,

Hmmm. Some interesting thoughts there. Need to mull that over a bit.

Poppy4,
As I say, I'm just raising some food for thought, not trying to squash any of the ideas.

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Originally posted by DrMDJ

Poppy4,
As I say, I'm just raising some food for thought, not trying to squash any of the ideas.

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I completely comprehend your position and do appreciate it, and am truly feasting on it....:D .....like 'squash'..... must be dinner time;)
poppy

Not to divert the current direction or lines of the thought in the thread, but let me just say something while I'm thinking of it.

My anticipation is that some good things will come out of this thread at the end of the day. And one of the things I hope might come out is that moving forward we can adopt a strategy of trying to be more pro-active. I think one of the problems we've had to date is that we have for some time operated in a re-active mode, and often reacting late. In thinking about the changes in the last couple or so years here (structure wise, operationally) there really haven't been many. Recently things like the Hijack/spyware/security forums were opened, but this was a re-actionary move. We weren't ahead of the curve on this stuff by any means. Most boards had long since had such things. And now we will be upgrading the board software, but again we are way behind the curve on doing so. Other than these things we kind of have just rolled along. When things are going good and/or you're riding high ya can get by doing this (for a while) and its an easy pattern to fall in to. But times change, member needs and wants change, competition grows, etc, etc. So to stay ahead of the game (even stay even in it) ya really need to be forward-thinking, anticipatory, experimental, etc. Not something easy, not something that doesn't take work, but...