Moving The Forum

[JediKaren]

I've heard a lot of complaints about the forum and I have to admit, it sucks rather badly. So I present you the idea of moving to a brand new forum. Here are the pros and cons:

Pros:
1. We'll probably loose some of the trouble making members
2. We'll loose all the one timer, won't post again members that inflate the member count
3. We'll have a realistic, serious member count
4. We'll get rid of all the fights, arguments and off topic threads we have
5. We'll have no fluff to start off, aka a clean slate and a new beginning
6. The site will be better organized with less fluff and off topic posts.
7. We'll have a LOT more options like different themes, more admin powers, less hackable

Cons:
1. We'll lose our 1000 member count
2. We'll lose some good posts that won't be transfered over because they are in a thread that isn't worth moving
3. I'll have to move a ton of threads
4. We'll gain members a bit more slowly due to the fact we won't have a high member count or an active looking forum
4. Activity will be slow for the first month and we'll really have to work to make the forum work
5. We'll lose some good members

Now before you point out there are less cons than pros, understand what those cons are. This IS going to be a pain in the butt and there will be no way around it. What I'm trying to understand here is the benefits of moving the forum make the pain worth it.

So what is your opinion? Ber serious and write more than one or two sentences, aka, put some thought into your post.

[bigdognick6]

I do believe this is worth doing(I'm glad the secrets out, i was getting tired of hiding it). In my experience, if a member is actually interested in the forums they are on they will move with it. As for moving the good topics, we should get some good members to help out with that. keep only the non-fluff ones like the stories(i have a personal interest in this, but i have my story saved on my comp as back up), the logs, and some other very informative and non fluff topics.

EDIT: leave a forwarding link on the old forums so the people who dont know can find them.

[JediKaren]

If we did move I would lock all the threads and of course keep the site up, but direct all comers to the new site.

[bigdognick6]

how long would the members info be up? i don't want to lose my signature in the move.

[JediKaren]

you would be responsible for moving your signature.

[pats]

Hmm a nicer looking forum might even attract more people. They would be like Oh hey what a beautiful forum, let's actively post here!

Well maybe not like that but there's always a chance, right?

What about the "real" members here, can they preserve their nickname's for the new forum? Or else you may be talking to someone only to find out he's just a fake.

[Barriss Offee]

I don't know ... I see no reason that we should move the forums to a different domain or whatever. Proboards may be simple, but do we really need a lot of features? And is it worth moving the entire forum just to get rid of a few "trouble-making members", when the cost includes losing who-knows-how-many useful threads and posts, images, good members, etc? The admin and mods can still get rid of lots of the fluff and trouble-making members without having to switch the whole forum. As for a new forum being less hackable ... well, has anyone ever really tried to hack PsiWorld?

[JediKaren]

Of course you could keep your screen name. You all would have to register again and would have a post count of 0.

My account got hacked some weeks ago that made me very nervous. Proboards is really not all that safe or well done. We are missing a ton of options that I would really like to have, like be able to see more than 40 posts back on a profile, view statistics on the forum, and so on (sorry, a bit sleepy here) The members that do transfer would be encouraged to move any thread they started or start a thread with a really good post. Articles that did not the main site cut would be transfered, but the comments wouldn't. Good, popular threads would be started again.

[GEOvanne]

well, it depends, what would the new forum look like? and will it have the 'watch this thread' feature? that notifies you when someone replies in it?

i agree that some stuff will be lost but it will all even out eventually.

also, what about protecting our logins? someone could easily use another persons user name.

[psidan]

I think this would be a great idea. While your at it you could maybe think about restructuring...

[Barriss Offee]

I am and will remain opposed to this idea of moving the forum until people can offer more pro's to overrule the con's. Here's how I see it:

PROS
-MIGHT lose some of the trouble-making members
-MIGHT lose some of the fluff threads
-New forum would be less hackable
-New forum would have more options and admin/mod powers

CONS
-Lots of good threads lost
-Lots of good members lost
-People can steal our usernames
-All members start over again with post count of 0
-Forum starts over again with 0 posts and 0 threads
-Might take weeks or months of updating to get a new forum how we like it

[AnimalGurl]

I'm for it, even if only for better security. This thing has gotten big enough that admins need more power to control it. Not to mention it would be nice to have a fresh start. I would be willing to move with the forums.

As for the post 1 time and never log on again types, maybe you could have an activity sweep a few times a year.

[Barriss Offee]

Well, if we move the forums, you will more likely than not lose me as a member. (Or at least as an active member.)

[Fearn]

New forums are a great idea. I'd like to bring you over to the dark side Bariss:
PROS
-MIGHT lose some of the trouble-making members
Few trolls will take the effort to move to another forum. It would be much easier to just go troll somewhere else. Even if we don't lose them, we wont be any better off than before. There will be less that come over.

-MIGHT lose some of the fluff threads
We will lose ALL of the fluff threads. By going to a different forum we are starting from scratch. 100%. If they bring the topics over, they will be easier to squash, rather than be overwhelmed with fluff as we are now.

-New forum would be less hackable
This one depends on the forum we get. Someone (aka not me) should answer this question...

-New forum would have more options and admin/mod powers
Yep, I know from experience that Proboards is annoying to mod.

CONS
-Lots of good threads lost
They aren't "lost" per se, if you have a thread that you like, just post the link on a new post and keep the conversation going from there.

-Lots of good members lost
Our really dedicated members will move. It's really not that hard to set up an account on another site.

-People can steal our usernames
For some reason I never thought of this. Does this happen, seriously?

-All members start over again with post count of 0
I see this as a non-issue. Does anyone look at post counts? I judge a person by activity, not by post count.

-Forum starts over again with 0 posts and 0 threads
I see this as a non-issue as well. They are just meaningless numbers.

-Might take weeks or months of updating to get a new forum how we like it
Would you rather have a never-ending fluff problem? I'm willing to sacrifice YEARS to get rid of this fluff epidemic.

[Barriss Offee]

Well ... Fearn, I see that you have really thought this out. I don't know that fluff is really an epidemic; I mean, I don't see a whole lot of fluff posts on this forum, since they're mainly old ones that nobody even looks at anymore. Also, I see your point about "meaningless numbers", but search engines and everything else group sites by their popularity, and guess what? The more posts/threads/members/etc. that we have, the higher our popularity rating. So if we switch forums, PsiWorld will fall down to the bottom of the list, and who knows how long it will take to get back to up to the top. Not that I really care about how popular we are, but people who otherwise would have liked to join might never even SEE the new site.