Stimulate the Forum

[Vanhelsing]

Sure would love to hear any actionable suggestions, of course.

As a member of a few expat online forums within the region it's my experience the more successful sites have very pro-active owners/admins/mods who generate multiple topics consistently on a daily basis whether it be news, events, videos or items of general interest. I appreciate this can be seen as a time consuming chore and admin/mods have lives outside of Expat Indo, but the method works!! It greatly improves reader retention, participation and as a consequence increases new membership.

A "Build it and they will come" approach isn't enough.

 

[jstar]

To @Davita I can say it is not becoming boring..,

And I really disagree with a certain person’s perceptive and expectations above; if a member comes by every once in a while just to show off with pictures he makes or posts old news video clips without any comments or interesting insights, for me that is completely irrelevant and adds no value whatsoever.

Also, I have had it with those one-liners just to ridiculize a previous post. Esp. if you tried to put in quite some thought and effort; then you get a reply with no argumentation whatsoever, great.

Now this is not a flounce but like Fastpitch, Tihzho, Maria and many others, I really don’t feel like posting anymore if it always becomes the same (boring) circle, with been-there-done-that topics and people reinventing the wheel. So once in a while I will open the forum, and might react. We’ll see.

 

[vocalneal]

The above is the most discouraging post I think I've read on this forum and is the opposite to what I'd hoped the majority of members would wish.

Why is it discouraging? You wanted discussion?

Why come to an Indonesian based forum to get news from the West? One can get that from CNN/BBC/CNBC et al. Or even Thai based forum for that matter.

Opinions on the news? OK one may have opinions about Gazza/Syria, but why waste time . Its been going on in one form or another for hundreds of years. Nothing anyone on here can say will have any effect whatsoever.

Chinese imperialist expansion? Chinese /US imbalance of trade? Who gave all their Walmart money to the Chinese in the first place.

I find world news quite disturbing and depressing so rather than get more upset I simply ignore it. Most of my friends do the same. I am happy to hear good news or happy news or even comedic news.

Maybe it is hereditary. I once asked my father, who is now deceased and spent the last period of his life in the UK , if he was worried about the increase of terrorist bombing in the UK his reply was that he had just bought a new car. Ergo it didn't effect him and what could he do. As the shirt says? (Keep Calm and Carry On)

I came on here because I am moving to Indonesia so thought there maybe some people living nearby who might like a beer and to get up-to-date on stuff in and from Indonesia. What is the purpose of the forum if not for that? If no one lives close then this should be like a text based version of the local pub where people go to chew the fat but no one goes there to get serious.

If this is also discouraging then I am at a loss how to contribute or stimulate

 

[atlantis]

As a member of a few expat online forums within the region it's my experience the more successful sites have very pro-active owners/admins/mods who generate multiple topics consistently on a daily basis whether it be news, events, videos or items of general interest. I appreciate this can be seen as a time consuming chore and admin/mods have lives outside of Expat Indo, but the method works!! It greatly improves reader retention, participation and as a consequence increases new membership.

It boils down to one thing, VH. Does the owners/admins/mods see their forum/website as a potential source of income worth spending the time necessary to generate it. For my personal case, definitely NOT.

If I consider my target when I decided to co-found Expatindo.org, I consider it is almost achieved. I had three goals mainly:

• Creating the most up-to-date resource for the community in order to help it accessing valuable information on many different topics concerning Indonesia.
• Continuing a hobby I discovered ten years ago: sharing the experience and knowledge I may have about Indonesia, without interference from incompetent Admins.
• Keeping a GREAT team altogether, a team made of people I may have never interacted with otherwise considering that our difference of age, origin, background, language, living areas (...etc) would have made it difficult to even meet. Thank you my fellow mods for these years spent raving in our mod channel.

I have never seen this forum and website as a potential source of income. I mean real Income, worth spending hours to generate it. Not to be arrogant or whatever, but any money that I'd be earning from Expatindo will always be peanuts compared to the money I may earn from my day work here. It just doesn't play in the same league, VH, and therefore there is no way that I spend more time than I do in Expatindo. I am a trader and therefore think as a trader. I just go for the product which will bring me the higher profit, and in this regard, Expatindo will never be my priority product. By far.

My teammates will answer for themselves if they want to but at least I hope it clarifies it to you for the next New Year Eve should you have a random urge to call us out about it in the middle of the night.

I consider that I have done my job. Along with D, EG, JM and P., I have put money and time to create the frame, and will continue to do so whenever needed, but now it is to the Community altogether to fill it. You are part of this community, as much as I am part of it, and though I don't expect you to create more content than I do, you shouldn't wait for me to create more than you do.

If the community as a whole decide to desert the place and make it a boring one, I don't really care. I will not regret to have initiated the adventure and will certainly not consider it as our (D, EG, JM and P) failure but as a sign than the Community didn't/doesn't want such forum anymore and that FB is the favored place. No problem to me. I'll find another hobby. Fishing, I got told recently, is pretty cool.

 

[atlantis]

the cage is not a bad idea but does restrict forum members using it by the initial 200 post requirement, perhaps open that a bit more to more forum members,

This is an idea I have been giving a thought for quite some time. The Mod Team needs to discuss it and assess wether or not a high threshold level of posts has been an incentive to post more or not. It was the initial thought and target. Putting a requirement of a high number of post to push new users to post frequently to be admitted in this special part of the forum. If it hasn't, then we should review it and put it down to a more easily reachable level, me think.
Also one of our concern was to make sure we wouldn't allow in trolls whose aim would be to only generate negative emotion. This, we have multiple ways to deal with it should it happen so we shouldn't fear it.

 

[Anglian]

Nah, fishing can be very boring, especial if you don’t catch anything, I don’t think the forum is boring, it might go a bit slow from time to time, but it does buck up, so don’t despair

 

[El_Goretto]

I agree with Atlantis (thanks for the kind words!), but I gotta say I have been waiting for more positivity around here to be more involved in posting on the forum. This thread may be it, let's see which direction it will take.

I think we can all agree that we need new blood. What do you think would be the best way to do so? To make non-registered readers want to sign-up and start posting? And then to make them want to stick around?

 

[El_Goretto]

By the way, we do have plans for the forum and website.

Most notably, we are looking at moving from Xenforo 1.5 to Xenforo 2.0.

We are also planning on something brand new for the forum and website but we are waiting for the developpers to make a version compatible with Xenforo 2.0. This is something that will help in bringing new users.

 

[jstar]

My idea would be ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’. So in case of FB, it would be possible to combine/embed its Indonesian ‘Craig lists’ which are heavily used by expats for personal ads; the Jakarta Buy and Sell and the Balinese counterpart. And Upper Crust of course. That would generate more visibility and traffic.

Now I just saw that esp. with the younger people, FB is losing big time to Snapchat and Instagram (the latter not really being ‘losing’ of course). I don’t know what possibilities there are with these Social Media platforms, esp. since the target audience is rather different. And I don’t see most of the posters here very interested in celebrities and influencers.

Of course you’re also rather dependent on clickbait like “Ahok”, Rizieq, “Asian Games”, “Bomb Jakarta”, “Jokowi vs Prabowo”, “crash Air Asia”, etc. Especially in case of major events in (the Indonesian) society, that will trigger a lot of new interest.

And from me no bad word on the Mods; they’re doing a great job.

 

[El_Goretto]

How can we compete against FB buy & sell groups though?

Kaskus, OLX, are all losing to those FB buy and sell groups. In fact, the latest update on FB has a dedicated button up top to go straight to buy and sell groups.

I honestly don't see how.

With FB, just click join, bam you can sell your stuff. No need for registration. No need for complicated image upload systems, photos can be taken straight from the app. And then all the notifications come straight through FB, in a way that they are already familiar with.

 

[Daniel50]

This is the 2nd forum I have joined. I initially joined the old, or other forum. I clicked the old forum lately and there were over 1000 people viewing but no real recent posts. If this forum had greater visibility, more viewers, there is a lot of up to date current info.. Also, there are current posts.

Personally I joined to get some help/info on visas etc.. I have not been a poster on other forums. I can see that some people could pose more of a challenge then others. Also, people have a variety of ages, and backgrounds, so may not always connect. But, again the old forum seems to generate a lot more views.

 

[Daniel50]

Am I wrong or is this forum becoming boring?
It used to be full of interesting world and local dynamics that everyone could have a say about but lately seems to become a bulletin board.......https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_forum

I try to keep up with news, etc.... and present what may be appropriate for forum members to be informed, hoping to have a debate.
However, it seems to me that conversations thereafter go amiss. It is fine to disagree, and I personally welcome that, but short simplistic (facebook-type) responses do not permit reasonable conversations that I would wish to engage in, and continue the thread, so maybe it's my fault.

Any-one agree or disagree please comment ...I have enough clicks to last a lifetime.

I can see/read that you like informative discussions or a debate. I have seen you try to provide these. Sometimes these have been perhaps misunderstood, or interpreted a different way but I see you trying to provide some interesting/helpful discussion and you also have a sense of humour.

I don't see anything wrong with someone posting on a variety of topics provided it gets people interested and talking. What I don't always appreciate are some of the short rude/or dismissive comments of some posters. But it is a public forum and there will be some challenging people and indeed some people may enjoy or feed off this.

 

[dafluff]

As a member of a few expat online forums within the region it's my experience the more successful sites have very pro-active owners/admins/mods who generate multiple topics consistently on a daily basis whether it be news, events, videos or items of general interest. I appreciate this can be seen as a time consuming chore and admin/mods have lives outside of Expat Indo, but the method works!! It greatly improves reader retention, participation and as a consequence increases new membership.

A "Build it and they will come" approach isn't enough.

This is a valid point, and you have already identified why for me this is not possible right now: time. Personally I wanted to set a target of about 5 hours on working on Expat Indo per week, but even that I can't meet.

Then if I do have that much time, from a whole website perspective, it would be better spent to write an article for the main website. Those get more views, and stay up longer.

That said, any forum member has the ability to contribute like this, so it's not something that only Mods can do.

 

[El_Goretto]

This is the 2nd forum I have joined. I initially joined the old, or other forum. I clicked the old forum lately and there were over 1000 people viewing but no real recent posts. If this forum had greater visibility, more viewers, there is a lot of up to date current info.. Also, there are current posts.

Personally I joined to get some help/info on visas etc.. I have not been a poster on other forums. I can see that some people could pose more of a challenge then others. Also, people have a variety of ages, and backgrounds, so may not always connect. But, again the old forum seems to generate a lot more views.

Not trying to put the other forum down but there is something that needs to be understood: we have worked hard to optimize and protect this forum. Very early on, we noticed all the bad traffic that we got from spammers and bad robots. So we put in place measures to block them from accessing the forum. As such, our traffic looks much smaller because we only have real traffic as opposed to "robots" and spam traffic.

Here's an example to prove my point. Look at our robots.txt file which gives instructions to crawling bot on who's allowed and who isn't:

https://forum.expatindo.org/robots.txt

And now look at there's:

http://www.livinginindonesiaforum.org/robots.txt

Oops, there isn't even a robots.txt file!

And that's only the lowest hanging fruit so you can be sure they haven't done anything further.

I could go into much further details to show how badly run that other forum is (lack of SSL, security vulnerabilities due to out of date forum software, no SEO, etc).

The only reason that forum ranks higher than us on Google is because they've been around longer. But we've closed the gap now and we are essentially just below them in Google ranks.

 

[steveandpenny]

I appreciate all the work that goes into this forum. This forum and the old one were invaluable when making our move here. It was full of answer to question I had and even answers to questions i didn't even know I needed.

I don't know if it's me or not but it seems that this forum has slide a bit off track. I kind of thought the main point of this forum should be about life as a expat in Indonesia. I looked at the general forum and out of the 20 thread only 5 had anything to do with Indonesia.
Now here's a stupid idea , we have the cage for the lively (yeah right) can't we have a similar section for all those threads about world news , executions, flying , Donald Trump, and anything that happening in the UK? That way general topic would have to do with stuff here in Indonesia or expat Info about life here.

And while I'm on a soapbox I'm a bit sick of the personal attacks that are thinly veiled with hurmour. Case in point the comments about badass...I've had the honor to meet her and she's a strong beautiful women who will go out of her way to help you...she did for us and would for anyone how asked for help.
Now I've tossed a few stones that should have been done in the cage but that doesn't mean it was right. Let's keep it in the cage.

 

[Anglian]

I agree with Steve, personal attacks aren’t on, that’s why I dislike the cage, I feel that we shouldn’t have a thread where contributors with 200 or more posts can start threads which are considered offensive or over the top for normal viewing, also being used for personal attacks, I’m sure the moderators didn’t intend it for that purpose, but on occasion that has happened

 

[atlantis]

I looked at the general forum and out of the 20 thread only 5 had anything to do with Indonesia.
Now here's a stupid idea , we have the cage for the lively (yeah right) can't we have a similar section for all those threads about world news , executions, flying , Donald Trump, and anything that happening in the UK?

I like the idea. I admit that I am not very interested to know what Donald has had for breakfast or what is last or next silly thing he has/will say. Quite a few World News threads are interesting but should perhaps be kept in their own channel, separated from News strictly concerning Indonesia. If I were a fresh off the boat expat I surely would like to have a specific channel about politics and general affairs which concern the country I am about to live in. Matters concerning security for example, matters concerning next to come elections and the impact it may have on my life...etc. We need to make these threads, which are essential, easily available for readers.

 

[Gratilla]

If any of my comments (ab)using the Bad_azz name were seen as personal attacks, then I assure you that they definitely were not. And I unreservedly apologize if they inadvertently came over as such.

 

[atlantis]

Case in point the comments about badass...I've had the honor to meet her and she's a strong beautiful women who will go out of her way to help you

You may have gotten that wrong, Steve. If you refer to this post and the subsequent, none are personal attacks in my opinion, but are tongue-in-cheek. I also doubt that BA would see them as personal attacks.

I can't talk on behalf of BA and Gratilla but if memory serves well they have barely interacted in the old forum and it was 7 or 8 years ago. One ended his participation in the forum when the other registered. I think it was in the very same period.

 

[atlantis]

If any of my comments (ab)using the Bad_azz name were seen as personal attacks, then I assure you that they definitely were not. And I unreservedly apologize if they inadvertently came over as such.

You beat me to it.