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

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Originally posted by KatMac


And a P.S. We should always, without fail, make every effort to greet a newbie with a "Welcome to Virtual Dr." and a :). A warm greeting and a friendly, helping hand reaching out goes such a long way!

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I've only gotten as far as Katmacs post on the first page, so I may comment more.

But as the the person who has probably posted the most if not all "Congratulations on 10 billion posts" I find it funny that showing appreciation for staying and posting is not seen as necessary but welcoming a new member is.

I take it as given that a new member is always welcome and can always find help here at Vdr, but I would rather seem them stay and participate by learning more and helping others than posting once or twice, welcomed by 3 or 4 people and then never seen again.

In fact the "Welcome to Vdr" line is probably one of my pet peeves" so maybe that's why I like congratulating people on their post count achievments birthdays etc.

Guess it just goes to show people can have completely opposite views on things.

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Originally posted by hongman
And also, this the only forum I know that has 'Happy Birthday' posts! :D

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A couple of sites I frequent sent me emails on my birthday - system generated but still I thought that was impressive.

Ok a few more comments in no specific order of importance:

Seems there is a division on whether we keep existing members or aquire new ones - if you look at the members list there are 1000s of members with 0 posts - why did they join, when will they post are they skewing the statistics.

emailing old users won't work as there are literally thousands of them, 10s of thousands even, most with 5 posts or less ??

A few people have discussed entry point, personally I use http://discussions.virtualdr.com/sea...etdaily&days=2 and almost never go to the home page.

Talk of an "Enter Here" makes me shudder as to me if you go to a home page you don't want to have to click "Enter Here" to really get things started you want to get into the thick of it right away. Besides sites that usually have an "Enter Here" or redirect you to a page that does usually have some other motive to prevent you from getting directly to the info you want, ie they want you to pay a fee. eg Porn Sites and Online Casinos, is that the sort of association we want even if we weren't actually charging people ?

I used to have VDr permanently open in a window in the background somewhere, lately I'll visit once a day if that - just seems the quality of threads have deteriorated, nothing juicy to get stuck into.

Every second thread seems to be to do with HJT.

Rough sums based on setting 200 members per page:

74,275 Members as per top left on http://discussions.virtualdr.com/index.php?s=

Approx 28,600 members with 0 posts or 38.5%

Aprox 69,000 members with 5 posts or less (inclusive of the 0 posters) or 92.89%

Hmmmm, JPNYC, you certainly seem very resistant to what most of the posters here are saying (few though we may be) . . .

The ad design is extremely slapdash, in my book. It's the kind of thing that makes me totally uninterested in clicking on a link. Ditto with the headlines at the top. They seem rather random. As Linda was saying, start with the most newsworthy, then go from there. Inverted pyramid.

It would be better, however, if a lot of the ads could be put at the side.

You seem to be saying, well, these ads are not a problem on my computer. But of course, users have somewhat of a range of monitor sizes/qualities/resolutions. So give some thought to what your users are saying, and what the consensus seems to be is that the current design is not pleasing.

If the point of having ads is to be able to tell your advertiser you have a certain number of eyes (which you certainly do, but unwilling eyes it would appear) and that out of that X number of readers will click a link, then the strategy is probably not helping the advertisers or Virtual Dr. You can't promise them the kind of success they want with the current design (I say this, of course, not knowing how well or poorly ad revenue may be here, but it's my surmise that it's a mixed bag).

Design, attractive design, can make a huge difference. I think it is not enough anymore to focus only on content (of which there is a huge amount). Given two sites, one with loads of content but poor design, the other with loads of content that draws the reader in, makes things easy to find, makes you want to click a link and arouses your curiosity, not your annoyance), guess which one wins?

It's all very well for a certain segment of the forum to say they want more really technical threads for really really professional IT people. I don't know if this is the place for it, at least in the main part of the forum. You could have your own segment, your own board within Virtual Dr. But quite frankly, though I'm something of a geek, I would be totally turned off if this place veered toward the professionals among us as a main focus.

Cheers
Wendy
:cool:

here is a well laid out forum (IMHO).

Good Morning Hongman,

I agree with you. The link that you provided is a well-designed website.

This site puts the content first and makes it convenient for the web surfer. I could only see the top of an ad but I wanted to see who was advertising. I ended up scrolling down the page.

The website did something very critical, IMO. They worked to establish the website's credibility with the visitor. Without clicking on anything, this credibility was established with me, which is why I scrolled down the entire webpage.

This is marketing 101; i.e., they fishing pole has a hook and juicy bait for all of those fish swimming in the vicinity.

I bet this website revenue stream is growing too.

Cheers,

Linda

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Originally posted by user595212
Hmmmm, JPNYC, you certainly seem very resistant to what most of the posters here are saying (few though we may be) . . .

The ad design is extremely slapdash, in my book. It's the kind of thing that makes me totally uninterested in clicking on a link. Ditto with the headlines at the top. They seem rather random. As Linda was saying, start with the most newsworthy, then go from there. Inverted pyramid.

Cheers
Wendy
:cool:

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His higher, who dictates, probably is the one who's ear you really need to get a hold of.
We have all been there.

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Good Morning Hongman,

I agree with you. The link that you provided is a well-designed website.

This site puts the content first and makes it convenient for the web surfer. I could only see the top of an ad but I wanted to see who was advertising. I ended up scrolling down the page.

The website did something very critical, IMO. They worked to establish the website's credibility with the visitor. Without clicking on anything, this credibility was established with me, which is why I scrolled down the entire webpage.

This is marketing 101; i.e., they fishing pole has a hook and juicy bait for all of those fish swimming in the vicinity.

I bet this website revenue stream is growing too.

Cheers,

Linda

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And I thnk they use V-Bulletin software too?

Anyways, we have pretty much established that a big part of bring new people in is the software/search engine thing, which we have expanded on.

Does anyone have suggestions for keeping existing members, well, existing? Like the Dr said, more and more of the core posters are dropping back to lurking, or not even at all (myself included).

Anyone?

Hi Hongman,

Quote by Hongman

"Does anyone have suggestions for keeping existing members, well, existing? Like the Dr said, more and more of the core posters are dropping back to lurking, or not even at all (myself included)."

Why are you dropping back? Satisfied at the level your at? Or have enough knowledge to go on you own? Or are the subjects you see not interesting? Or are the questions you have asked in the past being repeated? Or is their not enough discussion type threads that would give you additional knowledge. Or would you rather be doing something else? Or is this the first place you want to be when you wake up in the morning?

Put another way - What would get your blood pumping at VirDr?

:) :)

To answer both the questions posed by DrMDJ and Hongman:

All of the topics covered in the Most Recent Threads and the Most Active Threads all revolve around spyware, virus, and my computer is dumb....

IMO, for regular members to continue to come to VDR and to post requires a much greater diversity of content. I have made numerous posts to help these users but the featured topics are no longer providing me with an educational benefit. Does this that I know everything about computers. Certainly not. It just means that all of the threads being featured are narrowly focused.

I have been in a leadership position for my local PC user group. Here is what I have found. Our membership is 75% IT professional, developer and small business owner but 90% of our new members are also in this category.

When I first took over the UG leadership, I discovered that there were a lot of misperconceptions about the UG's demographics. Having this diversity in our membership benefits our end-users as well as other IT professionals. This diversity allows a lot of syngeries to develop.

When I started to schedule vendor presentations on a number of Microsoft products such as MOM 2005, Virtual Server 2005, 4 Active Directory training sessions, and ISA 2004; I was told that no one would attend these meetings. After all, our user group was end-users and hobbyists. .... but they had not analyzed the membership stats. At everyone of these presentations, we have had at least 30 - 50 people attending.

When I started this program, we were getting 1-3 new members per month. Now, we are getting 7-10 new members per month and it is continuing to rise.

We are upgrading our hardware and software to Windows SharePoint Services 2003 and SharePoint Portal Server 2003. Does everyone want to know how to develop SharePoint applications. No. But one of the driving reasons to be in a user group is learn about technology's leading edge. Lots of people want to know what the trends are and understand from an overview perspective.

What I have also found is that the 75% of our membership is the most generous in sharing what they have learned with other user group members.

If JP and VDR decide to go this route, I think that it is what they will also discover. This diversity of registered members and featured content will also make for a more enriched experience for everyone. It will also tell visitors that there is something for everyone.

Cheers,

Linda

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Seems there is a division on whether we keep existing members or aquire new ones

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Nix, to some extent you may be right. But if so, this need not and should not be the case. I am one of those that happens to fall on the side saying our most numerous/severe problem(s) relates to exisitng (or former) members, particularly the more experienced/knowledgeable ones. Nonetheless, there is no reason this needs to be or should be approached or addressed as an "either, or" thing.

Question Linda, how do you propose we can change the questions that new members post to make them more challenging to the current members? BJ

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Why are you dropping back? Satisfied at the level your at? Or have enough knowledge to go on you own? Or are the subjects you see not interesting? Or are the questions you have asked in the past being repeated? Or is their not enough discussion type threads that would give you additional knowledge. Or would you rather be doing something else? Or is this the first place you want to be when you wake up in the morning?

Put another way - What would get your blood pumping at VirDr?

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GreenGoose:

~Nope, not satisfied at all!
~Nope, dont have enough knowledge to go on my own- not the way I do things anyway!
~Subjects are getting more repetitive, although i am not sure how much we can influence that right now.
~Not enough discussion type threads: definately. I love those deep type threads that explore each and every detail...leaves you feeling like you have learnt so much!

But the main reason, as I have stated before is I no longer run Windows at home, I run Linux. So I am concentrating a lot more of my time at Linux forums, since the Linux section of Vdr is...not so good.

What gets my blood pumping at Vdr the most is the discussion type theads. Browsing thru problem & answer type threads are OK to pick up some general knowledge, but it can get repetitive.

Hope this portrays my views accurately.

Hong

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IMO, for regular members to continue to come to VDR and to post requires a much greater diversity of content. I have made numerous posts to help these users but the featured topics are no longer providing me with an educational benefit. Does this that I know everything about computers. Certainly not. It just means that all of the threads being featured are narrowly focused.

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Linda, I believe your statements are pretty much right on target. There are or maybe other issues/problems, but this is certainly one of them, a core one. VDR (at its best) is (needs to be) a mixed community in terms of the knowledge/experience/interests of its members. Let me be clear in saying (and I'm sure you and others agree) that no one is saying that the needs, questions, wants or presence of the (if you will) lesser experienced/knowledgeable members are to be dimissed, are not important, etc. But the more experienced/knowledgeable member need to get what they need as well.

BJ, the issue is not one of changing the questions new members ask. People need to ask the questions they have. I think it simply boils down to the fact that there have to be enough (what ever that means) questions/topics of a sufficient level/type to provide a balance that will keep more knowledgeable users engaged/interested. It's not that anyone has any problems having what might be called lower level questions asked or answering them. But when these become too predominant it becomes a problem. People get bored, burnt out. They need things that will stimulate and challenge them, are more in line with their interests, provide something that will contribute to their growth.