How to improve activity on Zelaron (vote, discuss and ideate)

Lately, I feel that Zelaron has slowed down significantly, almost to the point of stagnation. Sometimes we get quite a few posts per day, but on other days, the forum is a virtual ghost town.

New posts almost exclusively originate from old-time members who still believe in this forum ("The Forum that never dies" has survived for more than five years thanks to all of you; our dedicated members and our staff, save tacoX). We get around 1000 unique visitors per day, but only an average of 7 of these guests decide sign up. Most of our sparse, new members never post anything at all. This needs to change ASAP, and this thread will help us ensure it happens.

!King_Amazon!, Lenny and I have listed some ways to make Zelaron a more active (and awesome) forum. Discuss the ideas listed, suggest new ones, and vote for your favorites:


Quick Signup
This should exist both in the archived section on the forum (where most guests end up thanks to search engines) and on the regular forum. All you'd have to do is to enter a preferred user name, and click an OK button. Then you're taken to a confirmation page which says something like "Thank you for registering, CreativeUsername. Your temporary password is: kr52. Please change your password and set up an e-mail in the fields below, or [Go back to the thread] to post right away."


Archive Quick Reply for guests
A quick reply in archived (search-engine friendly) threads, for guests. Posts would still appear moderated, which means more work for the staff, and easier for spambots to flood the forum, but in return, it becomes significantly easier for everyone to post. Lenny adds that we could "put a five post limit on a guest's IP, with a message after five posts inviting them to quick/full sign up."


Zelaron Shop
Active users will gain a certain amount of points per day (e.g. 5 points per day if the "Today" activity bar is full), which can be used to purchase things in the Zelaron Shop. This will work as a great incentive to stay active. Right now, the only rewards for remaining active are the new postbit and having your custom title displayed. The Zelaron Shop may allow users to purchase their own sub-forum, moderator status for a day, a Zelaron t-shirt, new arcade games, access to a "Gold Forum" and so on.


Adult Forum
Self-explanatory. For 18+ members only.


Remove thread expiration
This has been discussed before. (1) (2) Basically, old threads expire and thus become impossible to reply to. Keep in mind that a lot of visitors find Zelaron via search engines. Most of the Zelaron threads which are indexed on Google and Yahoo have expired. It is likely that a lot of our new members want to reply to the thread they found on Zelaron, as it contains information relevant to their search. At the moment, they can't.

In !King_Amazon!'s words: "It might make the difference between someone staying and someone leaving. Even if it's thread digging, it's activity, which could spark conversation (hey guys, remember when...happened?) It's an unnecesary feature that just discourages activity."


Change the rules for how the new postbit (larger avatar) is obtained
In !King_Amazon!'s words:

"Currently, to get the postbit, you have to reach 100% activity. I do not want to change that.

Once you reach 100% activity, you have to wait a month until you get the postbit permanently. I do want to change this. I think once you hit 100% activity, you should keep the postbit for good.

Currently, once you have the postbit for good, you have to stay above 50% activity to keep it. I do want to change this. I think you should have to stay above 75% activity to keep it.

Now, my reasons behind these changes. Currently, I think the postbit is out of the reach of most of our posters, and I believe they believe that as well, so I don't think anyone really tries for it. I also think that requiring the people that do have it to stay above 50% activity doesn't really promote much activity, because to be at 50% activity, you only have to post twice every day(actually less, I think, so probably a mixture of posting once and posting twice), or come and post 4 times every other day. 50% is retardedly easy to keep, and isn't much activity. 75% activity isn't all that hard to keep, either, but it's what I would consider active."


More forums/Bring back regular mods
!King_Amazon! says:

"One thing that has been changed in the recent past, is the removal of forum-specific mods and more specified forums. This kinda goes hand-in-hand with Lenny's suggestion of having a forum for each console. Back in the day, we had lots and lots of forums, some of which weren't all that active, but they were very specific(Final Fantasy forum, Starcraft forum, etc.) We also had individual mods for specific forums(RPGmaker mod, Starcraft mod, etc.)

I think that this change had good reasons behind it, in theory, but in practice I think it just lowered activity. Having less forums and less staff makes the forums look neater. Having more forums and more staff makes the forums more active, naturally. We need stuff like this. For instance, Vault Dweller, the new guy in town, really digs Fallout. Make a fallout forum, make Vault Dweller the mod, have him post strategies and story conversations and stuff like that, and you've got an active staff member and active forum to go with it.

Make Bluecube the RPGmaker forum mod(or someone else who's more active, perhaps), have them post guides and tutorials, places to download RPGmaker(host it on Zelaron if we have to.) Have newbie guides so people who dont even know anything about RPGmaker might be interested in getting into it. I've never used or tried using RPGmaker, but if there were some sort of guide for starting out(what all you need to use it, what you need to download, good websites to get these things) I'd maybe be interested in trying it. If other members have that same thought process, we've suddenly got a forum that is possibly growing in activity."

Wow this is a nice list, and yes I'm sure most of the people that still hang around here have noticed that the activity spikes around, like Chruser states.

I remember wayy, wayyyy back when I joined these forums, and was mainly here because I had seen some D2 Hacks advertised somewhere, so I surfed for a few days, and eventually signed up on here. But what got me to stay posting here wasn't the actual gaming itself, but the other members and personalities that filled these forums, so many viewpoints, dicussions taking place.

I really do like what has been changed around here lately, but I'm supposing there still more that needs to be done.

The Adult Section may not even have to be Porno entirerly, as I suggested in another thread possibly throw up a Babe of the Day/Week or something along those lines, Along with keeping anything 18+ in that section including drinking/sex/etc. EVEN THOUGH adding more forums doesn't look as good, it shouldn't really be all that bad.

I'm sure anything erotic will bring much activity to these forums, along with members that'll actually sign up and /discuss random topics.


There just needs to be more members, I believe that is all the real problem is, not enough consitent people that come on here every day and feel like discussing, I know personally I hardly ever get on here on the weekends, and i'm sure other people have other things to do as well, but there just needs to be more members, more view points, more discussions and personalities, so maybe if everyone could try and get their friends, coworkers, people that play video games with to hop on here and register there may be a brighter future for these forums.


Another thing that would probably make most of the members that just come on here for Diablo2 games / the Arcade is MAKE THEM REGISTER, Now this shouldn't just be done, but discussed, if you make everyone register before they can view the boards it may discourage them from even coming here, but if you implemented the quick signup then maybe not, and they might actually spew out some posts from this change.

I'm against the adult forum, and a bit iffy about the last two. I would be enthusiastic about the rest.

I think the Adult forum would be corny, I would suggest however just a sub-forum that people could throw up Just random pictures of chicks/dudes NSFW type of material, like basically make another sub-forum under the Chatterbox .. or something.

Also, perhaps a pop-up to inform those in the arcade about the forums who have not posted yet. That, and I think that after playing the arcade for a bit you should be required to sign up...say after 3 games or so.

Making Zelaron shirts is an awesome idea. That's not only an incentive for points, it's also advertising.

Could we not do something like troll forums, or advertise with somethingawful like you did last time for the activity?

I was considering tossing up this website on a few of the Car Forums that I post on somewhat regularly .. most of them have Gaming/off-topic sections, but they are highly moderated .. they could have a great place to vent here at Zelaron

Do eet!

I brought up zelaron on this basketball forum I go to (insidehoops.com) - it's got about 500 active members. We'll see if anybody makes the transition.

Edit: I'm also against the Adult forum. There's no need for it. It will just bring in teenage idiots like kyeruu, not respectable, intelligent members. I can only see it working against us.

Damn, good point .. But having more iditos does make it more fun sometimes to bash on them, but in the end the quality of posters goes way down, and that sucks.


So Chruser, when should we expcet to see some of these changes implemented?

I think an adult section wouldn't be bad. Not necessarily porn or whatever but to talk about experiences and such.

I don't really want people I know to get on here because its where I bitch about them and tell stories about them lol.

And i think the store is a great idea.

It's not like we can't talk about sex in a general conversation forum. It's porn that is 18+, everything else should be fair game in the general conversation forum.

True dat. The only purpose the adult forum would serve would be to post NSFW pictures which could get most people on here in trouble.. (me, D3V, klo, KA, etc). If you do decide that it would be best for Zelaron, make it so you have to subscribe to view the adult forum. I'd still be against it, but it's only my lone opinion.

I think the best idea up there is the Zelaron Shop. That could be really entertaining.

Yeah i'd have to agree.

Remember that search engines will provide us with visitors interested in the particular content we have on the forum. If we have lots of nonsensical chatterbox spam threads, those will attract plenty of members interested in posting more of that kind of content (because they searched for "brain fuck", "Europe could as well be a country" or similar things). If most members would start posting informative, content-rich, useful threads... I think you get the idea.

To get some kind of idea of what topics are popular among users who ultimately find Zelaron on Google or Yahoo, here are last month's top 20 search terms, listed by usage:


3.15% zelaron
1.13% starcraft no cd hack
0.95% guild wars access key
0.57% cd key grabber
0.53% funny ascii
0.53% funny asian names
0.53% rm2k3 download
0.47% wow lag
0.37% rpg maker 2003 download
0.37% zerg build orders
0.35% wall papper
0.32% debockle
0.32% scrolling pics
0.31% pindleskin
0.30% brain fuck
0.30% cd-key grabber
0.30% starcraft hacks
0.29% rtpe.exe download
0.28% suped up cars
0.27% starcraft sucks

So Chruser, when should we expcet to see some of these changes implemented?

The Quick Signup and Zelaron Shop would take a while to develop (we have to write new code, come up with t-shirt designs and so on), but the rest are fairly straight-forward and could be added really soon.

True dat. The only purpose the adult forum would serve would be to post NSFW pictures which could get most people on here in trouble.. (me, D3V, klo, KA, etc). If you do decide that it would be best for Zelaron, make it so you have to subscribe to view the adult forum. I'd still be against it, but it's only my lone opinion. I think the best idea up there is the Zelaron Shop. That could be really entertaining.

It would be a hidden forum, and most likely be by usergroup only or perhaps have a password to enter or something. WW was working on developing something with cookies but I don't think he figured anything out. Pretty much, at home you could have a cookie to let you see it, but at work you wouldn't, so depending on where you are, you would/wouldn't be able to see it.

If we have lots of nonsensical chatterbox spam threads, those will attract plenty of members interested in posting more of that kind of content (because they searched for "brain fuck", "Europe could as well be a country" or similar things). If most members would start posting informative, content-rich, useful threads... I think you get the idea.

Get rid of Mantra.

Adult Forum sounds like it'd be fun and Peta-Sucks did the shop thing (a lot of us enjoyed it, but some people were too immature to handle it) and it was a blast. Also, implement a Karma system. How it works is if a member likes your post or dislikes it, they can give you a reputation/karma point for it or smite you for it. You'd have a little +/- below your name and stuff.

Being the new guy, my opinions should probably be taken with a grain of salt, but here goes...

I'm with Thanatos on the adult forum. While it could potentially increase activity, it wouldn't necessarily be the kind of activity this site is looking for. At the same time, I guess it could be good for a laugh.

I'm definitely down with the Quick Signup and Archive Quick Reply ideas, as well as removing thread expiration. I know that I've found lengthy signup processes to be a deterrant in the past, and when stumbling across random, archived threads, occassionally want to throw in my two bits, but don't get the chance because of expiration. I do agree with Lenny's idea of placing a limit on the number of posts available to "guest" accounts. There needs to be some form of structure.

I have no particular problems with any of the other ideas. Sorry Chruser, not entirely sure I'm ready to be a mod just yet, but I'm more than willing to start (what I consider to be) stimulating threads. In case anyone was wondering, I'll be sticking around. I like the atmosphere here, which is more than I can say for most other forums I've checked out.

First, all I read was the first post. I will read the replies after I post this if I have any further input to add to a post.

Secondly, I actually like a lot of the ideas. I don't really care about the Postbit, so I'm impartial to that change (I didn't vote for it). I like giving Guests the power to post, then after 5 posts (or whatever), they get a message to sign up. Great idea. The only weird thing will be replying to these posts, because you never know when or if the person will reply, or if the reply is even coming from the same person. Not like it will be a big deal or anything, but it would be strange at times trying to keep conversation up "imaginary" people.

I do not see anything positive that could possibly come out of a having an Adult Forum. I mean seriously. That would just be a very bad idea. Plus, other than taking someone's word for it, are you really going to put in security measures to makes sure no one under age can view it? Bad idea.

Again, I'm impartial to new forums and more moderators. There just isn't enough activity to really warrant new Moderators, but it could spark an initial activity spike when people are trying to kiss ass and show they should be the next Mod of a new forum, "because they thought of the idea for the new forum!!" I didn't vote for it, but I don't really care either.

Basically, I like the Quick Register, Guest Posting, Shop, and Thread Expiration ideas because they will certainly promote positive posting. I'm very against an Adult Forum, and impartial to the rest.