2O2Play Topic of the month
2O2Play Topic of the month
As some of you know after reading a few areas on the site there might be winds of change happening here on 2O2Play.
Please note this mainly affect the shooting guys BUT any changes that are put through will affect us as well!!
The jist of it is this.
Quick Answer =
No one is posting in the pubic forums enough and everyone is posting in there respective clan fourms.
Long Answer =
2O4Forza is just one clan in the middle of a lot of others. (You can see the full list of clans above in the groups area)
The main issue is all of these clans are closed unless you join one. In turn that means you cannot post in any other clan forums.
So pretty much everyone is just posting on there clan forums all the time and not talking to anyone else or posting in the public area.
The issue this is causing is when someone new comes on the site all they can see is the public forums. As everyone is posting in there clan forums the public ones look dead and as such most of these new people bugger of to find somewhere else to play. and we are non the wiser.
As this trend continues we don't really get any new people on board and we don't have anything to combat natural play drop off.= and eventually 2O2P will die with the lack of players.
The solution?
I don't know this but there are 2 main ideas flying around.
1. Make every forum / Group here on 2O2Play public so everyone can see what everyone is talking about and post comments to said topics anywhere they want (Be carefull though as some people get real twitch about this .gif "45"){kind=small}
)
2. We all start posting shit on the main forum and start using it more often. My be use it for site wide events etc.
If you want to voice your opinion on this situation 2O2Play is in right now please visit the following forum - http://www.2old2play.com/forum/talk-back/topic/do-clans-help-or-hinder-2old2play-498413
BUT please read all (or most) of the comments in that topic first.
Me and Knight have also put to Doodie that we want 2O2Race as an open forum where anyone can come and talk about racing ect and we will then direct Forza players to here. We hope that this plan will keep 2O4Forza closed even if everything else opens.
Cheers.
The public forums are located here if anyone was unsure:
http://www.2old2play.com/forum
Also if you just click on the Forums tab on the top it will take you to the above link.gif "10")
Trouble is some folk out there are right dicks, sad but empirically experienced, by restricting views and posts to members, we can easily deal with the very very rare dick that get through the gates, I can think of only one in the time I have been here. Yes we are all capable of being a temporary dick (I can see the hole I'm digging) but on the whole this is a special place that should stay as it is, protected like a world heritage site LOL...It's an opinion only of course.
Is the issue Money?
Not really Wheels, though I can see a need for 2O4F as a group chipping in to the general cost of running the site. A small amount from each member per quarter for example would cover that. But that is down to the club leaders to get together and chat about. It is more that the Site Model is flawed. As a prospective new site member arrives they cannot see the activity going on, the open forums are dead, with very few posts. This is because we are all behind the walls of our forums. Now that in itself is not a bad thing, it gives us a sense of community and a safe environment free of every Tom Dick or Harry commenting on and posting about stuff irrelevant to us. Okay, from our point of view the new 2O2Race open forum can have a Forza corner where we can create a shop window for what happens here. An outline of the series to be found, a profile of our various organizers, tuners and painters example and pictures to really show what we are up to. Once done it does not need to be constantly added to in any day to day dynamic way, just monitored and kept up to date. So for the Racer side of things we are ready I think for whatever changes are to happen in the wider world of 2O4F
We as a group are quite safe, there are no moves afoot to disband us or drag us kicking and screaming in the the bright light of day and hopefully 2O2Play can make a better job of getting the new members the site as a whole needs.
Yes we have nothing like that at the moment, the open threads are unfocussed and contain nothing because no one wants the bother of trying to keep track of a topic that is split between two different places. The active posters here are the minority, as is the norm on every forum. Most of the members pop in see what's happening and pop out nary a word typed. Those of us that do post regularly tend to be the same guys, this means a kind of clique who have developed a short hand that new members have to be around a while to get the hang of. The Church maneuver for example. This is meaningless outside this forum.
Hence the new forum, it will have it's own admin so Cotter does not have the extra work that bringing in a whole new set of people, threads, sub forums etc will entail. Series organizers need only make sure their events are featured on the new forum and information is kept up to date. This ensures people coming to the site can see what is going on, see there is an active race scene being run by this group, and apply to join if Forza is their thing. Something that is not easy to see at the moment,.
We have the advantage of our members actively pointing folk in this direction from other forums, and as there is just one Forza group here, we are perhaps one of the easiest groups to join and that also means although Racing in the wider world of gaming is one of the smaller gaming genres...around 5% according to one of the posters in the original discussion on the blog, we are the biggest single group on the site. So we are getting it right, we just need to show we are getting it right to the site in general.
Im not against a small donation on my part but to be honest the best way to make money is open the club forums to all and make sure there are embedded ads to generate added revinue. No one likes ads but they do bring in a stedy income to keep a site like this running. I have also seen forums have perks for donators like flash games with leaderboards and special titles and things like that. In any case I Feel it should be more of sub forums on the main forum but still viewable by all 202p members. To post youd need an invite. That way your still getting higher hit counts on ads but still maintaining control of the community.