That’s a pretty broad brush. And I think this comes down to what nelliebly posted upthread: They need to identify whom they’re trying to attract, and build a site around that-- content, design, etc. If we produce stuff like Hollywood gossip and personality quizzes, yeah, our audience…changes, and probably not for the better. But if we put out thoughtful and quirky articles, reviews, blogs, etc. that you don’t find anywhere else, that are well-written with well-moderated comment section, you’re gonna build an audience that would fit in nicely around these parts. Essentially, do what Cecil did for the past couple decades (online), but expand the content beyond a weekly column by Cecil (and sporadic staff reports).
There’s a lot of people out there that fit our “mold” but don’t come here for whatever reason. We don’t have to just go after the chat-speakers and meme-posters because they’re young.
Maybe i wasn’t clear the first time. What drew the current membership to this board for the most part was well written articles with lots of factual information answering interesting questions. The problem is that the medium originally used is dying. My solution is to change the medium to something that isn’t dying like youtube and podcasts.
Initially, the original content could just be repurposed like the articles being read on a podcast or animated into a youtube video. Eventually new content would have to be developed as well. I don’t think factual and entertaining answers to interesting questions is going out of style so by changing the format will recruit people who use those mediums.
We’ve got the Teeming Millions. And the SDSAB. At least to start off.
I used to run a web magazine that started off with a flock of volunteer writers who did amazing work because they loved to write or were looking for clips/experience. As we made money, we began paying them.
To the first? No. The second? Maybe. Depends on what it is and how much.
Avatars and pictures are not “sparkle and dance”. They’re pretty much just standard on message boards. Like I said, if you don’t want those features, you can turn them off.
I think you have some good ideas, yes, great. But at the very least, allowing a few things that pretty much every other board on the internet does is also a start. We’ve had quite a few new people start threads in ATMB asking about it, so why not give it a try? If it doesn’t work out, well, then we’ll deal with it.
(People have said the same thing about every change around here, I swear)
Let’s start small and then work up to the big stuff. Not all teenagers are idiots who use chatspeak. And we’ve seen plenty of older morons here as well. This place used to have a whole range of ages, but now it’s mostly older folk. Have this attitude, “well, we don’t want a bunch of text-speaking teens!” is NOT the way to get new members.
Yeah, what she said (I’d “like” this post if I could). One thing the Dope as a whole needs to move past is this idea that we’re somehow above the rest of the internet. We obviously all care about the board or we wouldn’t be posting in this thread, but we could stand not to take it all so seriously all the time. Sometimes people just want to blow off steam and goof off, sometimes they want to have a serious discussion, and there’s room for both of those things and everything in between here. Cecil/Ed have moved on, and so should we. We can still hang on to the idea of the Straight Dope - one thing I’ve always appreciated about this place is that when you make an assertion, you have to back it up with cites/facts. I don’t think that should go away, but I do think we should catch up with the rest of the internet and not be so afraid of some change.
Not even Reddit has avatars. And, up until very recently, Reddit didn’t have inline pictures, either. Yet Reddit thrived. I don’t think that has anything to do with what we need here.
I do agree that fans of the original column can’t be the driver, because the column is gone. But I don’t think you can drive people here based on the forum, either. That doesn’t work anymore. Content brings people to forums, not the other way around. All that matters is getting your content out there to people who want to see it, and effectively monetizing that. And that, in this day and age, requires something other than just ads.
Patreon is how Internet content works now. Maybe add in Kickstarters for releatsng repackaged existing content in physical form (i.e. books). Throw in the easy merch that’s produced on demand. Get your affiliate links going (without Viglink–just push people who are already going to buy stuff to buy it with an SDMB link).
I don’t really consider it nominal, myself. It could be if split into monthly payments–e.g. using Patreon–but it makes the annual payment look too big. Also, it’s not set and forget, meaning people are going to lapse.
Plus, it seems to me, the way to make money is to allow people who want to give to give more, not to try and get the free users to not be free. And it’s good to allow even the smallest contribution you can get away with. So a fixed price doesn’t work well on either side.
Granted, I’m no expert. I’m just comparing the model to how people I know who are successfully pulling it off. Maybe I’m completely wrong.
Perhaps we should pause and take a look at the SDMB’s competitors? Who are they? What do they offer that the Dope does not? What does the Dope offer that they do not? What is the Dope’s Unique Selling Point?
They filled a niche. Where was the freely available encyclopedia before Wikipedia?
Also, they’re donation based. They were ahead of their time on that.
Oh, and so I don’t make a fourth post:
There is a reason to release operating expenses now: they are crowdsourcing ways to keep the whole thing afloat. If they need our help, they’d get better results the more information they can give us. Even if it’s somewhat obscured.
It’s possible that the reason none of our ideas are good is that they wouldn’t put a dent into the operating budget, and efficiency is actually the big change needed.
Waving cane You darn whipper-snappers get off my lawn!
I hope that’s not who we’ve become. I’m guessing those who dread an invasion of twenty-somethings have limited contact with them. They’re not all sparkly avatars and Who’s Hot lists. Someone said something about Dopers thinking they’re better than the rest of the Internet. I’d argue they are in that they demand cites, trustworthy cites, for claims and are quick to point out poor logic. That’s definitely not the way the other sites work. There’s integrity here you don’t see elsewhere. There are a lot of potential Dopers out there, and they don’t all know who Jerry Garcia was or remember Eugene McCarthy or Spiro T. Agnew.
But perhaps I’m wrong. Maybe the target is not young potential dopers but the over-50 crowd. Maybe the target isn’t potential Dopers; maybe it’s potential new-catchy-namers. Much as I appreciate and applaud the opportunity to sound off here, I think Tuba Dancer, Ed, and the TPTB need to mull things over and make some basic decisions. Since they’re the quintessential Dopers, I’m confident those decisions will be fact-based and logical.
Two things. One is that having them on is the first impression that the board gives would be one that is not work appropriate and so if I was someone new coming her, just like the ads give a bad impression, the pictures and avatars would give me a bad impression since my primary message board time is while I’m at work. Two is that even if i turned off the ‘feature’ there would be inevitable comments and then those of us who turned them off would be excluded so it creates people with different experiences this is the main reason I’d be against a members only forum.
I’m 35, so while not the youngest person here I’m hardly in the old fogey get off my lawn group here. Maybe if avatars were allowed but turned off by default or only viewable by members that would be a good middle of the road solution.
Reddit has a lot more features and voting. It’s easier to find what I consider quality content on that site. When I come here I just skim most of the posts and try to find something interesting; sometimes I comment but most of the time I don’t want to read pages of posts just to make a comment that won’t be redundant or breaking some threadshitting rule. But then again I never post on Reddit at all.
I’m in the same position. Was a member once but let it lapse.
A 'Members Only Forum" would definitely make me pay for a membership again. Someone upthread suggested that non-members could read it but not post but if they read something in there, they can just post a thread about it in the main forum.
If I knew that members had a super secret forum, I’d be too curious not to pay.
I’m with you that I don’t like avatars (especially animated ones!!!). On other boards that have avatars, I either turn them off in the options or disable them through my own custom javascript so I don’t see them. However, it’s extremely rare that someone makes a post that refers to someone’s avatar, and even then it’s usually some comment that can be ignored (Is that your cat in your avatar?).
Even though my personal choice is not to have avatars, enough people want them that it seems like it would be worth adding. I feel it would be one way for people to feel more tightly connected to their account, and hopefully that means they return more often. And as long as there is an option to turn them off, that will likely make both camps happy.
As for images in posts, how about if images are only allowed in certain forums? I would propose just in GQ, IMHO, CS, MPSIMS, and Marketplace (or maybe not GQ). I’m leaving out the game and pit forums, since it seems like images there could lead to a lot of bandwidth or content problems.
It serves the same purpose as this board. I mean you could think of this board as Myspace and think of Reddit as Facebook. Maybe the dope should just be a Facebook page, or like Giraffe boards or something. It seems to be a more intimate place so not really something that is easily scalable. I can’t really wrap my head around why there needs to be a change. Sometimes things just fade away, is it really all that bad? You either have to go really big like Reddit or 4Chan or Quora or just accept that you have an intimate group of like minded people who want to chat and keep a few contrarians around just to keep things interesting. You should really look at some of the forums on Reddit, they are very precisely moderated and yield very good content.
And how would advertising help? Out of every 100 people that visit the site, maybe one retains any interest in it IIRC.