Topic: Why do you think NWR's forums rarely get active new members?

[Phil]

Maybe the question I am posing isn't even correct or have any truth to it, so if so, then I apologize!

Regardless, I have noticed that new users that remain active are few and far in-between.

Now, this is just my theory, which may be totally unsubstantiated, but I notice that we basically have a clique/club of personalities here at NWR's forums that are well-established. We're all pretty close for the most part (well, as "close" as one can be as personalities on a message board forum), so that might make new users feel like outsiders and make it seem hard to fit in.

In what ways could we make new users feel more like they're a part of something great instead of feel like they're on the outside looking in?

Just food for thought. I'm going to eat a sandwich now since my brain ate its food, but now my stomach wants food!

[Wah]

I think its more the fact that places like Nintendolife steal our thunder.

[Shaymin]

Forums in general are slowing down in favor of things like Twitter and (more realistically) Facebook.

[Wah]

Both yucky, i prefer forums.

[Mop it up]

I suspect this happens with most relatively small sites like this, I think these days most people prefer larger communities such as GameFAQs and the like. Some people may also seek out newer sites to support. I'm not sure if your theory is it, though it could be part of it. Wouldn't surprise me.

I was also going to suggest what Shaymin said, that social networking sites have made forums seem a bit obsolete for most people. Older folks like us still prefer forums.

[Wah]

I suspect this happens with most relatively small sites like this, I think these days most people prefer larger communities such as GameFAQs and the like. Some people may also seek out newer sites to support. I'm not sure if your theory is it, though it could be part of it. Wouldn't surprise me.

I was also going to suggest what Shaymin said, that social networking sites have made forums seem a bit obsolete for most people. Older folks like us still prefer forums.

[Wah]

I'm only 18! Old enough to drink, drive and vote, but still!

[Order.RSS]

Sooooo since I'm pretty new here I have some possibly useless thoughts? This may all sound harsh but I mean it all in constructive fashion. Also it's hella long, sorry.

1. For the amount of traffic this forum seems to get, there's way too many subforums. Now when new people (like me) check it out they see a whole bunch of dead subforums, making the whole place seem empty.
Why is there a strategy one, that fits in with gaming, why is there a hardware one, that could merge with consoles. And even there I would merge all three (handheld, consoles and general) as well.

2. General upkeep and clarity. There's sticky threads for PSN/XBox Live (no posts since 2009), "child boards" for Wii and DS friendcodes, a Mario Golf tournament from 2014, etc. While I assume most people just don't look at those, to me as a newbie who used to moderate another forum, it just seems like wasted space (especially since all these stickies and child boards are at the top of pages). I had look through every board to find the "i'm new here" thread because the Community board is, paradoxically, all the way at the bottom.

3. The main website. NWR does that jarring thing where it has a bunch of images up at the top which don't change much for weeks, and for the new content you need to scroll a bit. Spotlight the new stuff! Why do I need to press the news tab, make that front & center.
The press releases on the right are hella outdated so remove the section. I do like how the talkback is also visible on the forum since it theoretically encourages people to make an account and chat here. I understand NWR has a small staff and I don't wanna crap on their hard work, but if the site seems static and unchanging then why would anyone assume there are lively forums to be found?

4. Realise the "market position", if you will. Nintendo isn't having as many releases, this forum clearly isn't being used very much to talk about non-Nintendo stuff, and forum attendance is dwindling, possibly due to Reddit/Facebook/Twitter. So turn that into your strength! Make it a cosy, vibrant little place where the forum fits the community size/activity. Phil understandably worries about cliques, but a clique on a seemingly vibrant forum is still better than 20 dead forums with 2 sparsely populated ones.

So what would I do? Declutter the forum by having just 3 pillars: Gaming, Community and the Talkback/Podcast comments (I assume those are separate only because of a technical reason? Cos they should merge too). Harsh yeah, but Neogaf uses just 2 subforums and they're just fine.
Relegate the forum rules/announcements into a sticky atop the Community forum. The feedback category can go, that's just Community stuff anyway. Make ONE child board in the Community section for those weird Funhouse/Mafia things I don't dare click on.

I get that few of these things probably bother all of you regulars, and I don't wanna swoop in here in tell y'all how it's done. But perception is absolutely everything and when I clicked on here, my first thought was "yikes most of this board is dead."

There are people out there who want to post on forums, clearly. Cater to them. #MakeForumsGreatAgain

[Phil]

I've talked about too many subforums before and old topics being pinned/stickied, but I think that fell on deaf ears, or I guess blind eyes in the case of a message board post. I wasn't too forceful, though, so that's mostly my fault!

Anyway, you're a really awesome contributor to the forums, Steefosaurus, so your thoughts are just as notable as anyone else's. Someone will probably mention Lucario in a joking manner as not having notable opinions, but w/e.

[Order.RSS]

Thanks Phil. But yeah I don't wanna sound entitled or anything, I mean you can't just waltz in some place and start barking demands - particularly one run entirely by volunteers. But yeah if y'all are serious about either attracting more active members and/or giving the forums a "lively feel" - then I feel like downscaling is appropriate.

So many websites are trying to become "no clicks, one page shows it all" places. And while I'm not sure that's necessarily the best, it certainly optimizes the user experience - they see everything that's going on at a glance without having to search around themselves. For forums you especially want that, so people see active threads and jump in.
People's eyes start at the top of every webpage, so it's a waste to clutter that with useless child boards and outdated stickies; that's your prime eyeball real estate right there doing the exact opposite of what it should.

Again I don't wanna just criticise, NWR has a neat vibe unlike the awful GameFAQs forums (which really hold that site back) or the impersonal subReddit space, but it's just too bad to see a lot of untapped potential.

[Khushrenada]

Maybe the question I am posing isn't even correct or have any truth to it, so if so, then I apologize!

Regardless, I have noticed that new users that remain active are few and far in-between.

Now, this is just my theory, which may be totally unsubstantiated, but I notice that we basically have a clique/club of personalities here at NWR's forums that are well-established. We're all pretty close for the most part (well, as "close" as one can be as personalities on a message board forum), so that might make new users feel like outsiders and make it seem hard to fit in.

In what ways could we make new users feel more like they're a part of something great instead of feel like they're on the outside looking in?

I've talked about this before a few times at length in various long posts scattered throughout these forums. It most recently was done in the Announcements section of the We Have New Moderators thread but I can understand if you glazed over the text and didn't read it. I will show some restraint right now in answering you query but just sticking to some basic points as to why the difficulty exists.

1. Content - This can be many things. Forum topics, forum games, or news announcements for instance. If there is a lot of content to engage users in then chances are a lot more users will sign up to participate in that content creating more content and help broaden the appeal of the site for more users. It's kind of a cycle. However, there are factors that can affect it. This site is Nintendo based only so there is a limit to how many people it may attract. We are currently in a period of relative inactivity from Nintendo and news thereby making content harder. As well, with the low Wii U userbase, the interest in Nintendo products seems to have further limited appeal in coming to a site like this despite the high userbase of 3DS since people don't seem to want to talk much about handheld gaming. Not sure why but that's the way it seems to be.

2. Older Users - We are lucky to have many long term users on this site and as such we have a special community. It's great if you are a long time user since there are many familiar faces you can see over and over again and you don't feel like you are just part of a crowd like in another much larger forum. That said, if you are a new user, it can take awhile to perhaps break into that crowd because having seen so many new users come and go after a week or month or year, it's hard for older users to perhaps engage much with them because there's a high chance that user won't be around long. There's familiarity with other long time users than there is with newer users so its easier to communicate with them. They have a certain level of knowledge and forum maturity that a younger, newer user may not have. So, when a new younger user may post a crazy idea like Nintendo should buy Bungie studios to own the Halo rights to win back the market, the older users can be quick to dismantle that idea when years ago, that type of suggestion may have instead led to pages of speculation about how that could be done and what a great idea that could be. I've stated before a couple times that older users should remember that if they look back on their early posts here, they made a lot of dumb comments when they first started posting so they shouldn't be so quick to shut down and rag on newer users that do the same thing as they once did but its a struggle since you just have a better understanding and knowledge of things from following this stuff for so long that it is hard to engage in misinformed ideas. I try to always look for new users and people that might be interested in trying a game like Mafia or Safe Words because that can help a new user establish themselves with the long timers here and give them a chance to break into the long time clique as you refer to it but that doesn't work for every user and may not to be of interest to them.

3. New Ways of Communicating - This forum had some its biggest activity and more members during the end of the Cube and start of the Wii era. Part of that would be due to interest in the Wii, Twilight Princess, and people wanting to get more Nintendo news. However, that was also before FaceBook began to take off or Twitter was invented and cell phones became the mini-computers they are now or iPads were on the market. With those advances, the state of gaming has changed which gets back to the content part but so has communication. Before, it may have been harder to find people with the same interest in Nintendo gaming that you had. Thus, a site like this was great, allowing you to communicate with other like minded people. However, it also requires effort to communicate. You've got to post and engage with people in discussions perhaps through following or posting in multiple threads. You may have to check in regularly to keep up with the discussion. Now, you can create a group of friends on FaceBook and just post with them. You can follow people and discussions on Twitter. If you are posting a lot on those sites, then you may not want to come and post a lot of stuff here. It's a time thing. Plus, Nintendo has Miiverse to allow you to follow the games and Nintendo interests you have on that platform. Other sites may use things like Disqus or Word Press in which case you can have one account to comment on multiple sites and articles whereas here you have to create an account and username for the forum that is only usable on this site. Forums are starting to seem antiquated to a lot of internet users which is a shame since I think they still have some benefits not met by these new platforms but people don't seem to see that or happy enough with what they are now doing.

To me, those are the three main challenges facing Forum growth and sustainability. If you can figure out how to combat them, you could be Community Manager!

[Phil]

Phil will be Community Manager one day. He also knows how to split up walls of texts to create more readable paragraphs! :

This is all very good information. I'd love a chance to pimp the forums more often. Maybe we could have a special segment on NWR where we make a round-up of popular community topics and share them. I dunno. I'm happy 'cause I got a Skull Kid World of Nintendo figure. So cool!

EDIT: But I do think the pruning of some stickied topics to more relevant things would serve the community better. I also don't see a need for so many sub-forums when some could be merged with others.

[Khushrenada]

Sooooo since I'm pretty new here I have some possibly useless thoughts? This may all sound harsh but I mean it all in constructive fashion. Also it's hella long, sorry.

No, it is good. It is better a user tell us what they think then say nothing and disappear so that nothing changes or can be improved to prevent users from being dissatisfied. A new user that is interest in forum improvement is always welcome.

1. For the amount of traffic this forum seems to get, there's way too many subforums. Now when new people (like me) check it out they see a whole bunch of dead subforums, making the whole place seem empty.
Why is there a strategy one, that fits in with gaming, why is there a hardware one, that could merge with consoles. And even there I would merge all three (handheld, consoles and general) as well.

Some of this has been talked about before. Particularly the Strategy forum since GameFaqs has basically filled that role for a decade. Hardware varies in usage but it ultimately is very low traffic.

Personally, I like the separation of Console, Handheld and General. Right now, these boards may not have much activity but there is the outside factor of Nintendo not having a lot of activity right now combined with the smaller marketshare they currently occupy. However, up to and a little after the Wii U came out, there would be a lot of activity and topics created in all these forums. If they were all in one, there would have been a constant battle of bumping and searching for topics to reply to which I think would be more annoying or frustrating than the current system of spreading things out a bit over different subforums. We'll see what happens with the NX but it is possible that a forum merger may occur especially with the rumours of it being a console and handheld combined into one. But, as of right now, I'm of the opinion that the separation and organization of topics by these subforums is still good and something I still prefer.

2. General upkeep and clarity. There's sticky threads for PSN/XBox Live (no posts since 2009), "child boards" for Wii and DS friendcodes, a Mario Golf tournament from 2014, etc. While I assume most people just don't look at those, to me as a newbie who used to moderate another forum, it just seems like wasted space (especially since all these stickies and child boards are at the top of pages). I had look through every board to find the "i'm new here" thread because the Community board is, paradoxically, all the way at the bottom.

Not responsible for the layout and order of the subforums. I know it is based on the same set-up as the PGC forums which were converted to the current forums we have now but I'm not sure if it is easy or possible to rearrange the order of subforums as suggested or they are stuck that way from the conversion. The number one forum used is the Console Forum so its place at the top is correct. The second most used is TalkBack for the articles posted on the main page. The third is General Chat which has the new person thread. If the top three boards were put in order, it would basically eliminated the divisions of Gaming Forums, Interactive and Community. While it might not be necessary to have those divisions these days, it might be depending on the future and was useful in the past. As such, I'm not sure Forum rearranging needs to happen just yet though I'm not opposed to the idea of a subforum or two merging or changing it's original purpose.

The introduce yourself thread has become a bit of a shell of its old self. It was useful back in the high activity time of this site to merge topics created by new users introducing themselves to that thread or having them post that hello there to get it out of the way but it is hardly used these days and often ignored by a lot of users as well. I get the argument that the reason might be it is not easily found but what would be the best place for it? Console forums? Announcements? If anything, my idea / suggestion would be that a new subforum is created under the Announcements forum called Introduce Yourself and it would just be that one thread to allow new users to post their hello. That way, it is easily found and at the top of the forum page. It allows for one less stickied thread and could be a better way to alert people to a new users introduction. That requires admin level talent of which I am not but fortunately I know a guy who does so posting this will at least start planting the seed for such a thing or start a discussion on it.

As for your comments on the stickied threads, good point on the Mario Golf thread. I've unstickied that. I've never really noticed or been bothered by it but I guess it just never felt in the way of getting to the main topics under discussion in the Matchmaking forum. As for the PS/Xbos thread, the reason there are no posts since 2009 is that it is a locked thread. It is locked to prevent replies and is only meant to give links to the appropriate threads that a user needs to find to input that information. This was done to prevent multiple stickied threads for that info. As such, it currently stays but I will check and see if any of the links are still worthwhile with the PS4 and XB1 out and new revisions soon to be released. For the Wii and DS child boards, that also requires an admin to remove. Again, for me, I just don't even notice them there anymore that I didn't think having them mattered. Plus, no one can post in those threads so it is not like there is ever a new post alert / color to the child board to draw my attention to it. Not sure why the boards are being kept. That is something that also requires an admin to remove or hide and above my pay grade.

I'll check out the stickied threads in a few forums again to see if they are worth having around. Maybe this is the excuse I can use to finally unsticky the Miiverse threads!

[Khushrenada]

3. The main website. NWR does that jarring thing where it has a bunch of images up at the top which don't change much for weeks, and for the new content you need to scroll a bit. Spotlight the new stuff! Why do I need to press the news tab, make that front & center.
The press releases on the right are hella outdated so remove the section. I do like how the talkback is also visible on the forum since it theoretically encourages people to make an account and chat here. I understand NWR has a small staff and I don't wanna crap on their hard work, but if the site seems static and unchanging then why would anyone assume there are lively forums to be found?

Have nothing I can say about that. That belongs to Staff and Megabyte's jurisdiction and I'm not sure how that all works or who looks after the format and upkeep of it. Personally, I have the Main Forums page bookmarked so I'm rarely ever on the Main Site page and usually just see the articles via Talkback. Maybe that solution can help you ignore the Main Site page issues like it does for me. 

4. Realise the "market position", if you will. Nintendo isn't having as many releases, this forum clearly isn't being used very much to talk about non-Nintendo stuff, and forum attendance is dwindling, possibly due to Reddit/Facebook/Twitter. So turn that into your strength! Make it a cosy, vibrant little place where the forum fits the community size/activity. Phil understandably worries about cliques, but a clique on a seemingly vibrant forum is still better than 20 dead forums with 2 sparsely populated ones.

In some ways, that is the case. Us long time users are familiar to the less used forums being around that they have become part of the fabric and quaintness of the site and we know and mainly use the subforums with the most activity. The point on perception is a good one to consider though. For the most part, I consider the forums like a Newspaper. A Newspaper will have different sections to it which will have varying appeal. There are certain sections I'll want to check up on regularly / everyday. There are others like Automotive or Travel that I may not care about or find useless. But, once in awhile, some article may appear there of interest which I'll check out then. Reader Reviews and Hardware Support are a bit like that. I'm not usually interested in Hardware Support topics and when I'm in the Console forum I'd prefer not to see them there as I'm interested in the latest news and speculation of other users. It's the same with how I don't really listen to or follow the podcasts and am glad they are separated from the articles in TalkBack. Filtering of content can be a good thing and make a user experience more enjoyable as well even if might create a false perception with activity.

So what would I do? Declutter the forum by having just 3 pillars: Gaming, Community and the Talkback/Podcast comments (I assume those are separate only because of a technical reason? Cos they should merge too). Harsh yeah, but Neogaf uses just 2 subforums and they're just fine.
Relegate the forum rules/announcements into a sticky atop the Community forum. The feedback category can go, that's just Community stuff anyway. Make ONE child board in the Community section for those weird Funhouse/Mafia things I don't dare click on.

I get that few of these things probably bother all of you regulars, and I don't wanna swoop in here in tell y'all how it's done. But perception is absolutely everything and when I clicked on here, my first thought was "yikes most of this board is dead."

There are people out there who want to post on forums, clearly. Cater to them. #MakeForumsGreatAgain

  That's merger madness! Neogaf does have two subforums but that is also why I don't use Neogaf. I've been to their forums a couple of times and it just seems like a frustrating mess to keep up with topics or find things on it. I don't see why the NWR way has to be the same as the Neogaf way.

Again, referencing the site of Neoseeker, they subdivide a lot in their forums and I'm glad because it made it easy for me to find the information or topics I wanted on their site. Now they may have more traffic and users than we do here but I didn't really care if there Kid Icarus or Playstation forum had a lot of traffic or not since I was just there for the Animal Crossing forum. In the same way, if someone is interested in Nintendo Console discussions, then I think it would be of benefit to be able to go to the forum for that and not have mobile, PC, Xbox and Playstation discussions happening at the same time in the same forum. If I just want to engage in discussions about the NX or what Nintendo can do for the next console Mario game, then I don't really care if the Reader Review section isn't getting a lot of new activity.

Perhaps the perception image you mention is a factor in less new users showing up currently but I do think a filtering of information and topics is worthwhile and beneficial as well and the mass merging of forums doesn't appeal to me. Not sure if other users will chime in with their thoughts on that but I don't think I'm alone in that regard. A weeding out of a few forums might be in order but I'm not sure where that would fall into on priority for the staff or how much work could be involved with it.

With the podcast forums, some podcasts are game discussions which can go on for a couple weeks or require people voting for the game to choose for discussion. I think that might be part of the reason podcasts are separated from Talkback articles. It keeps the podcast discussions from constantly being bumped up and dominating the top of the Talkback forum while new articles get pushed down or missed. It allows the TalkBack section to keep moving along with the latest news without too many threads constantly getting bumped. NWR Feedback is useful in alerting various staff members to an issue whether it be technical or an suggestion like this. Merging it into General Chat means having to constantly check General Chat on the offchance a thread appears addressed to Staff and General Chat is the third most used forum where people talk about the latest shows and movies. It's constantly getting updated meaning a thread addressed to staff could soon fall down the list of topics and be missed.

The 4th most used forum is the Funhouse and is almost equal to General Chat in stats. To relegate it to a childboard in a Community Forum seems counterintuitive. Why would you take one of the most popular forums and hide it away / make it less visable? The Mafia forum spun out of the Funhouse. Mafia games used to get played there but it would create a problem of the game threads dominating or interfering with other threads happening in the Funhouse so a new subforum was created to house all the Mafia games and filter things so that users who didn't care about Mafia games could ignore them and those that did could be alerted to the latest discussions and games for it. Again, the idea of filtering information was behind that. So, you would need 2 child boards for the Community Forum. The Mafia forum is catching up to the Podcast Discussion forum after all.  I've also been stating for awhile that I think we should have a child forum or new subforum for Movie and TV discussion but nothing has happened on that yet. More filtering!

Anyways, that is a bit of information for you in regards to why the forums are organized a bit the way they are. Perhaps something can be done about the lesser used forums but there are pros and cons to any ideas I think of right now in that regard which includes merging them with other forums. I'm not trying to be difficult or dismiss your thoughts Steefosarus. I'm glad you've found your way to this site and are taking the time to post here and be part of the community and share your thoughts. That's why I wanted to take the time to reply to them and give you some insight and feedback from how a user who has been here for awhile perceives the current state of things.

[Phil]

That's really awesome of you, Khush, to do such an extensive write-up. I agree about removing some of the sub-forums at the very least. I like having Nintendo Console Gaming, Nintendo Handheld Gaming, General Gaming, and a Matchmaking forum for game-related stuff.

[Order.RSS]

Anyways, that is a bit of information for you in regards to why the forums are organized a bit the way they are. Perhaps something can be done about the lesser used forums but there are pros and cons to any ideas I think of right now in that regard which includes merging them with other forums. I'm not trying to be difficult or dismiss your thoughts Steefosarus. I'm glad you've found your way to this site and are taking the time to post here and be part of the community and share your thoughts. That's why I wanted to take the time to reply to them and give you some insight and feedback from how a user who has been here for awhile perceives the current state of things.

Thanks for the explanatory novel haha! And yeah it definitely makes sense how things grew to the way they currently are. I brought up NeoGaf mainly just because it's giant in user numbers and still only has 2 boards; by comparison this forum is pretty tiny and there's like 14.
But I totally accept that others might like super-specific filtering per category. To me a separate film/tv board seems kinda unnecessary since there's what, 6 threads max on screen-watching-stuff in the general chat section? But maybe a lot of people actually prefer as many different categories as possible.

The newspaper comparison doesn't really work for me, since you actually have to go into the subforums to see if there is that actual one new article you happen to like. Call me lazy but I'm one of those spoiled internet people who just wants to see everything at a glance. And scrolling > clicking! But yeah again, could be in the minority there. Anyway thanks for the giant reply! Hope some of the regulars here chime in with their preferences, that'd be useful data for y'all.

[Oedo]

This is something I've wondered myself on occasion because, at least to me, a forum like this does have its own unique appeal. Twitter is not a good place for substantive discussion for multiple reasons and NeoGAF has so many users that if you don't follow a particular topic or thread for a day or two it's impossible to get caught up. Forums like this have the capacity to support substantive discussion on a regular basis while remaining manageable for most forum members, so even if you haven't been posting here for years, there's still a very real appeal to a place like this that you can't find anywhere else. That's partly why I've moved away from posting in a lot of other places and have started to post here a bit more regularly. I still prefer discussing games with other people in places like this above the alternatives and I'd imagine there are many other different kinds of people out there who feel the same way. 

What I think it mainly comes down to, then, is the first point Khushrenada brought up. There's a lack of content right now and new users don't really have a reason to sign up and be active on the forums. I remember there was a lot of great forum activity around the time that Xenoblade Chronicles X came out and it was cool to read through that thread every couple days to compare my experiences with the game with that of other forum members who were playing it at the same time. In fact, I think that thread may have been the reason I decided to start posting here more. However, new games haven't really gotten talked about all that often since then. Part of that is due to the types of releases on Nintendo platforms right now. If you love JRPGs, you're swimming in amazing games this year; for me, this will go down as one of the best years in gaming. If you're less interested in the genre though or don't have interest in the particular games within this genre that have been coming out, there isn't much. Talking about new games is a big part of the gaming discussion that takes place anywhere, so removing that from the equation is naturally going to lead to the forums being less active and lacking new content on a regular basis. There are still great posts that are made in the "last game you beat" and "what are you playing threads," so hopefully when the NX comes out Nintendo can go back to a more balanced lineup of games that helps things in this regard.

Beyond that, I think community events and feature discussions are important for driving forum activity as well. Phil's idea for a game night is great and I'll definitely put forth an effort to be part of it (both this weekend and in the future). If that becomes a semi-regular thing, it can be a lot of fun for existing forum members and it may give someone who may just browses the forums from time to time a reason to sign up and start posting. I also really liked the idea behind the "Run the Series" feature. My experience with 2D Mario is limited as someone who grew up with the 3D games, but that topic got a lot of activity and I enjoyed reading the thoughts of forum members who are veterans of that particular series of games. I've put off sharing my thoughts in the Pokemon thread for a while so maybe this isn't the best endorsement for what I'm about to say next, but I think regular features like that are a great way to increase activity and constantly give forum members something to post about. It's difficult to keep coming up with good ideas for topics like that on a consistent basis though, especially when it's only a handful of forum members coming up with the ideas. To that end, I've had a specific idea for a while now and if you don't mind Khushrenada, I'll send you a short message about it later (I would have made the topic already, but I suspect you've already thought about it in some capacity with your Run the Series threads).

I'll share some thoughts on other things mentioned here too:

I do think that having separate Console, Handheld, and General sub-forums is a good way to organize discussion. Console and Handheld could be merged into one (though I like it the way it is now), but you'd definitely need a separate General sub-forum since there are a lot of people here who are multi-platform gamers. Matchmaking probably needs to be its own sub-forum too, or you'd risk just totally screwing any possibility of that happening here. Strategy and Support do seem superfluous though and, while I don't put a lot of stock into these things, I think it does give the forums the appearance of being less active than they really are (and that likely will turn off some new users). Those could be rolled into the General sub-forum or have their own sub-forums in Console and Handheld, but I'm not sure how much work that would be for the people who handle the behind the scenes stuff.

I think you're probably right about cliques Phil, but that tends to happen on any forum. To this forum's credit, I can't ever recall anyone going out of their way to make a new forum member like me feel like an outsider. There are probably ways to make things easier for people looking to sign up like your game night idea or making the new members thread more visible, but in general these forums have usually seemed like a pleasant place to me.

[Wah]

I am not reading that . Jesus that's big! like my kak!

[Khushrenada]

To that end, I've had a specific idea for a while now and if you don't mind Khushrenada, I'll send you a short message about it later (I would have made the topic already, but I suspect you've already thought about it in some capacity with your Run the Series threads).

Go ahead. Glad to hear that others are interested in that feature. I've been meaning to post another entry for the past 10 days but it turns out Nintendo characters and what makes a series with them can be hard to determine. I didn't want the next feature to just be Zelda so I was looking for some other entries and it seems like some of the other options can be mixed bags as to whether a game belongs in a series or not or whether I should post it in Console or Handheld because of the amount of games that could be included in the series appearing on those two different platforms. I was leaning towards Donkey Kong and the Country type series as the next entry and I guess I'll just post something on that and let the community argue my definition of what games make up that series but maybe your idea will be better.

[ejamer]

Lots of good ideas posted above.


I always felt like NWR Forums have a couple of key issues that prevent them from being more lively.
(1) Focusing on Nintendo content means they'll naturally ebb and flow with Nintendo's success. 3DS and Wii U have been pretty niche systems, so fewer people have been seeking out places to talk about Nintendo gaming.
(2) Age of core user base seems higher than average which often affects rate of posting, type of discussions taking place, and participation/availability for community events. (There are some benefits to having an older user base, but when I look at forums that are more active or "successful" they are almost always dominated by posts from younger users.)


Those ideas were already mentioned, along with many others. Only posting to show support for the thread, because I'd love to see more traffic at NWR forums - even if I am an old crank who would probably complain about all the kids who need to get good or go home.

[Mop it up]

Yeah, I was also going to mention the lower popularity of Nintendo products as of late, but forgot to. Plus, their systems don't have as much of a strong online interface as other systems, so there are less reasons for users to seek out other online players. Also, I think more of the writing staff used to visit the forums more than now, maybe that helps too.

As far as organisation goes, I agree that could be better around here. However, I do not think all forums should be combined into only a couple categories, as that gets really cluttered really quickly. As someone who does not visit every day, it would be a pain to sift through all these random, unrelated threads, trying to find the ones I want, which could have fallen down to the second page or farther, causing me to miss them.

I actually hate modern website design, it's very messy, cluttered, and unfocused. No offense to its designer(s), but I actually don't even visit the NWR front page anymore because it's just too much of a mess, and read everything through the forums. Maybe this is better for phones and tablets, I don't know, I still use a computer to browse the Web. I also know that a lot of people these days have really short attention spans, so this probably appeals to them also.

That said, there are certainly more forum categories than needed and some should be merged or done away with. Plus, stuff like the NWR March Madness board is still there despite serving no function and unlikely that it will again. Forum descriptions are also grossly out of date: the console one for example still mentions GameCube and Wii, but not Wii U. It does not give the impression of an upkept forum, for sure. It's also interesting to see this talk before the Switch reveal, as it means that the console and handheld sections should probably be merged now...

[ejamer]

(Just thought it funny to see how many people are chatting at NWR forums today due to today's announcement.  I really do think that lack of exciting Nintendo-specific news to talk about is part of the reason for forum slowdown.)

[Mop it up]

Sure, but other good points were brought up as well!

[Stratos]

Good conversation going on about the layout and organization.

The biggest offenders for unnecessary child forums would be the Friend Codes and March Madness boards. Can we at least make them hidden? Is there really a reason to keep them up?


Some changes to the boards is probably needed, but should probably wait until we know more about Nintendo's future. Sure, the NX may be the console/hybrid everyone thought it would be, but what about Nintendo's growing collection of mobile games? Should those be lumped into one Nintendo Games board or will it turn into an NX board and a Mobile board?


And really, there is only so much that can be done with the current software. What are the chances of getting an upgrade to the forum software?

[Mop it up]

Correct me if things have changed, but last I heard, there was only one member with the forum privileges to actually change anything about the forums, and it's someone who barely visits anymore. I don't think either Insanolord, Khushrenada, or UncleBob actually have the ability to make changes, and I also don't think the NWR writing staff post on the forums (or at least not outside of the occasional podcast or Talkback thread). So, I think one problem may be that anyone who can actually upkeep the forum, doesn't visit / pay attention to it.

[NWR_insanolord]

That used to be true, but then I annoyed Aaron enough times asking him to change stuff that he gave me admin powers. I can make changes like a lot of the ones proposed here, I'm just not sure how much of an effect they'd have. I don't want to just wholesale delete sections of the forums, but I'd be open to reorganizing things. I thought I'd already hidden most of the child boards, but if you guys are still seeing them I can go back and figure out how that didn't work.

[Khushrenada]

I've got a re-organization proposal going on in my head since discussing this. Give me a day or so to celebrate the Cubs World Series win and then I'll post it here for others to provide their feedback and for you to mull over.

[Wah]

Hey giving me and Khush mod powers is the best thing that has ever happened!

[Phil]

I've got a re-organization proposal going on in my head since discussing this. Give me a day or so to celebrate the Cubs World Series win and then I'll post it here for others to provide their feedback and for you to mull over.

Probably forgot about this, which is 100% A-OK, but any ideas on improvements to the forums?

[Khushrenada]

No, I keep telling myself I should post this but haven't worked up the energy yet. I know it's going to be a bit of a lengthy post and lengthy posts take time to type.

[Phil]

That's me when I try to will myself to do a long post on my blog. I put it off, and put it off, and put it off. haha No worries, Khush!

[Mop it up]

That's me when I try to make a post that's more than one sentence.

[Phil]

Bringing this ultra-important crossroads for the NWR forums up!

[Khushrenada]

Alright, since I have a bit more time to post on these forums, let me throw out some potential forum update pitches and see what the reaction is.

At the top of the forum, we have a no-name section with the topic of Announcements. I propose some slight expansion of this section. Name it "Forum Info" (Or "Forum Information" if you want to get fancy and formal).

The first subforum for it would be titled "Forum Rules" or "Forum Code of Conduct". The only thing in it would be the Forum Rules and it would be a Reply Only forum although if wanted to lock the thread and prevent any replies to keep it static that might be best to prevent the spambot menace from entering there. Plus, if people do have questions about forum rules, there is the NWR Feedback Forum to ask them.

The second subforum would be "Introduce Yourself" or "New Member Introductions". For this forum, we move the Introduce Yourself thread in General Chat into it and Rename it if necessary to the new Forum name used to house it. (Or just lock the old thread. Unsticky it in General Chat and start a new one by a moderator to prevent a S-U-P-E-R type situation of hijacking the thread by the original poster. Although, I don't think we have to worry too much about a sageprotector threat) It would be the only thread in this subforum and it would also be a Reply Only forum for new users to post their hello message and other users to reply hello back if they wish.

The last subforum would be the current Announcements Forum as the usual way to alert forum users on any news they may find significant although its usage seems to be decreasing. However, a forum revamp would definitely be a good way to get some activity in it again.


After that section of the forums, the next more radical idea would be to then move the NWR Interactive section above the Gaming Forums. For the most part, this subsection would still be the same with Talkback followed by Podcast Discussion and then NWR Feedback. Reader Reviews would be removed from it, however, and moved to the Gaming Forums subsection where it really should be.

The only possible change or expansion that may be of benefit is to divide up the Podcast Discussion forum in between Talkback and Feedback. Maybe it might be useful to users if there is a RFN Forum, a Radio Trivia Forum and a Famicast section for better ease of use / cataloguing. Replacing the Reader Review's section, it might be an interesting idea to create a subforum after the different Podcast forums with an "Forum User's Podcasts" or "Forum User's Content" section. This would provide a spot for the Radio Free Nintendo podcasts to go and be easily collected/grouped. I've always thought it a bit of an awkward fit for them to be grouped in the General Chat forum. This "Forum User's (Something)" forum would be an open forum unlike the other Podcast forum(s) and Talkback which are Reply Only. This way, if other members want to create a podcast, they have a vehicle/section to promote and place them. Plus, we sometimes get a person creating an account here to make a topic in General Chat or Console gaming in order to promote a YouTube video/channel they have or website they've created only to disappear after. Now those lowbrow marketing attempts could be moved over to this subforum and help keep the other forums free of it. As well, if our users want to link or post things like websites they've created, YouTube videos/channels they have or Let's Play links/videos along with Podcasts, this would be the section for it. That's why User Content might be a better catch-all name for it but it is just hypothetical at the moment.

After the NWR Interactive Subsection, we would have the Gaming Forums subsection. The usual three would be at the top of Nintendo Console, Nintendo Handheld and General Gaming. Now, with the talk of the Switch being a hybrid, there has been some question of whether the Console and Handheld forums should be blended. Right now, I'm leaning against that because right now, Nintendo is still committed to keeping the 3DS alive for awhile alongside the Switch. While the Switch is portable, it is still Nintendo's next console offering. If one wanted to update the names to be super-specific like Switch Forum and 3DS forum with the description underneath detailing that past consoles could also be discussed in the Switch Forum and past handhelds in the 3DS forum to clarify things, I don't see the harm in that. If the 3DS ends and there is no handheld successor moving forward but Nintendo sticks with hybrid systems moving forward, then a merging may be warranted although Nintendo is dipping their toes into the Mobile gaming market so that might still be considered Handheld. And on the subject of renaming, perhaps General Gaming should officially become Non-Nintendo Gaming as a better catch all for that forum.

(Stay Tuned. More to come.)

[Stratos]

Good thoughts Khush, I like the general order you have in mind. Also agree that we should keep Console and Handheld separate for now. Even once the 3DS ends, there will still be the apps, which best fit into the handheld catagory (maybe rename it to mobile or portable?)


I especially like the movement of the introductions threat to the top. It is not prominently displayed and people may miss it buried in a sub-forum. You should also add the Birthday thread to the Introduction sub as that is a welcoming feature for new folks looking to connect. I believe it drew several people out of lurker status when Maxi wished them a happy birthday.

Something we should also consider building into this reorg is all of the "networking" threads. Gamertags, NNIDs, Friend Codes, maybe unify it all, or just place the "master" thread in a prominent place linking to each different type of specific tag group.

Lastly, we should look at having a place for online matchmaking and smaktalk further up, so more people use it. I would also hope we begin trying to get some new tournaments going as well, which could go with the smaktalk thread.

[Khushrenada]

Alright. Continuing on, after being so rudely interrupted by Stratos (    ), from the main 3 Gaming subforums mentioned (Console, Handheld, General,) I was thinking that would be the spot to put the Reader Reviews forum. Follow that with Matchmaking/Smack Talk. However, take the Wii and DS Friend Code child boards and stick them in this subforum now. Or just move all those threads into the forum and delete the child boards. We don't really need them anymore but if you don't want to lose that bit of forum history right now, that would be the perfect spot to stick them. I was also thinking that you may want to move NNID and 3DS Friend code threads to this forum and sticky them at the top of it there freeing up space in the Console/Handheld forums. Conversely, if we wish to broaden out the purpose of the forum a bit, it might be worth renaming the thread to something like "Online Connectivity" or "Internet Gaming Matchmaking" and allow for any kind of Network ID trading and meeting on other systems besides Nintendo which could mean moving the Xbox Live and PSN code threads to this forum as well. In any case, it might be worth losing the Smack Talk part of the name at this point too.

Although, Stratos's comment has me wondering now about the placement of that forum. If it is going to contain all the Friend Codes / ID Codes for connecting users on various systems, maybe it should be the first forum in order of the Gaming subforum. Yet, Console Gaming is still the biggest and more popular forum on here and I don't want to bury it too low or make it hard to find. As such, I think it should keep its spot at the top of the Gaming Subforum but it is something to mull over. Due to the fact that user connectivity on these forums isn't that big a situation right now despite some recent efforts to jump start it, I do think it's lower placement is still correct. It's just a matter of keeping new users from posting their ID Codes in the Console forum because they don't see the "Matchmaking" forum right away.

Finally, the much discussed merger of the Gameplay Strategy and Hardware/Wi-Fi Support forums could happen. I would just name the new forum the "Gaming Support" forum with the description "Stuck in a game? Need help with your hardware? Looking for the right bra size? Post here to get some support." (Ok. Maybe not the bra part. That one's just a joke.) It's probably not going to see much posting anyways but at least it combines that stuff into one unobtrusive forum at the bottom of the Gaming subforum instead of two forums.

This brings us to the hidden gems of the Forums, the Community Forums. Not much would change here. The order is still good. However, perhaps some addition should be done here as well. I've floated the idea of adding a Movie Forum and a TV Forum to this section. Now, those could be shown on the Forum index between General Chat and the Funhouse or they could be done as child boards within the General Chat forum. It's something I'd really like to see and other users have commented on it as well. There have been times I was trading some pm's with Dan Laser as we discussed a couple shows and Dan Laser wished my idea of a TV forum would get implemented. I think they are popular enough topics to warrant their own space these days.

Finally, there is one more forum that might be worth adding. Whether you'd want to add it to the Community Forum or create another subforum for it altogether is your call but it would be the very bottom and last forum. I'd call it something like NWR History or Previous NWR Content. This forum would be a static forum. No topics created or replies allowed. The point of it is to just toss threads / concepts no longer relevant on NWR but that the site may not want to lose the history on. For instance, the March Madness child board attached to Talkback could be tossed here. Remember Hot Topic? To my knowledge, all those threads were deleted when that forum eventually ended. If we had this Previous Content forum, the threads could have all just been tossed into here. If you don't want to toss the old Wii and DS Friend Code child boards into the Matchmaking forum, here's the place to toss them. This way, these old concepts or outdated applications can still be kept around without cluttering up and bogging down the other forums.


And that is my current state of my mind on forum reorganization. I resisted the urge to include a "Post Why Khushrenada is Great" forum because I realized that's what all these subforums do already . And although Steefosaurus started this re-organization conversation a bit on the idea of decreasing the number of subforums, my plan is going in the opposite direction with the intent of increasing them albeit I recognize that some of these new forums aren't really designed for much user by users and to better categorize and organize some of the content we have here.

[NWR_insanolord]

I resisted the urge to include a "Post Why Khushrenada is Great" forum

We've got enough forum sections nobody's posted regularly in for years as it is.

[Khushrenada]

Oh, good! You read my post all the ways through.

And we both know I'd be regularly posting in that forum so it would stay active!

[NWR_insanolord]

I did. There are some good ideas in there. I don't agree with all of it, particularly the way you drew up the Forum Info section, which seems overly complicated and unnecessary, but merging Hardware/Gameplay Strategy makes a lot of sense, and sticking the friend code boards in Matchmaking is a good idea.

I'm hesitant to mess with Talkback and Podcast Discussion because I don't want to screw up anything with how site articles are automatically posted in there. Having Aaron around for this would be great, as he knows the technical side of these forums better than anyone. I also think having them below the gaming boards is a good thing, because it draws attention to the gaming boards, which should ideally be the focus of these forums. Talkback and Podcast Discussion are probably the most active boards, but they're also available directly in the articles on the front page.

In regard to splitting up the community boards, I'm not sure. I think it might just make more sense to decentralize the TV megathread we have right now a bit, and have separate threads for prominent shows that generate a lot of discussion but still within the existing General Chat board. Adding an entire board just for that seems like overkill.

[Khushrenada]

I did. There are some good ideas in there. I don't agree with all of it, particularly the way you drew up the Forum Info section, which seems overly complicated and unnecessary, but merging Hardware/Gameplay Strategy makes a lot of sense, and sticking the friend code boards in Matchmaking is a good idea.

Yeah, the "Forum Info" subsection was one I wrestled in how that should look and work. I guess the way to best describe it is much like how in many of the forums like Console Gaming or Podcast Discussion we have stickied threads at the top of the first forum page. Well, the Forum Info subsection would act like the stickied threads at the top of the Main Forum Index. Hence why the Rules, Introduce Yourself and Announcements are all separated like that and the first two are kept very basic. However, if that seems overly complicated or unnecessary (and I do think the Introduce Yourself thread is rather unnecessary these days but that could change depending on the Switch's success which might draw more people here) then perhaps just a change to the Announcements forum into "Forum Rules and Introductions" with the description that it is the Forum for new users to introduce themselves, read the rules and where staff will make any announcements about the forums themselves for all users.

I'm hesitant to mess with Talkback and Podcast Discussion because I don't want to screw up anything with how site articles are automatically posted in there. Having Aaron around for this would be great, as he knows the technical side of these forums better than anyone. I also think having them below the gaming boards is a good thing, because it draws attention to the gaming boards, which should ideally be the focus of these forums. Talkback and Podcast Discussion are probably the most active boards, but they're also available directly in the articles on the front page.

I forgot about the links to the articles. My plan didn't really involve any re-organization on Talkback aside from moving the March Madness Child Board. With Podcasts, you may have more of an issue. However, if you look at the link to any thread, you will notice that it never contains the name of the subforum it is in. It references the main index and gives the thread a number at the end like 50711 for this thread. Thus, I don't think re-organizing the Podcasts into specific forums for them would ruin the main links because those links will still contain the thread number that thread has been designated with.

I mentioned the NWR Interactive as being moved above the Gaming Forums because I was viewing it as following the order as listed by the main page of Home to News to Previews to Editorials to Podcasts to Forums. (I skipped a couple subheadings in between.) Thus, the Main Index would then follow that pattern a bit of Home - Announcements, News - Talkback, Podcasts - Podcast Discussions and then Forums - Gaming and Community Forums. However, if Gaming Forums are to be the focus than I can understand wanting to leave them at the top of the Forum Index. With my idea of the User Content Forum, part of me wonders if this isn't going to be more of the future for sites and forums like ours so trying to jump ahead of the curve was another reason for maybe moving that subsection ahead but I could be completely wrong on the popularity of such an idea too.

In regard to splitting up the community boards, I'm not sure. I think it might just make more sense to decentralize the TV megathread we have right now a bit, and have separate threads for prominent shows that generate a lot of discussion but still within the existing General Chat board. Adding an entire board just for that seems like overkill.

I don't think it is overkill at all. Let's say we shut down the TV Show Megathread or start slicing and dicing it. We could have topics then for WestWorld, The Flash, Arrow, Agents of Shield, Mr. Robot, Legends of Tomorrow, Supergirl, The Walking Dead, Stranger Things, Sherlock (New Season coming up) and Game of Thrones. I'm sure we'd see those all sprout up right away. So, we'd have all those threads jostling around along with different sports threads, the movie thread, previews thread, cellphone thread, music thread, Marvel thread, DC Thread. It's going to become a bit of a traffic jam. Moreover, with just those 11 shows listed, if they've all got threads and are hanging out on the first page of General Chat, the forum is just going to look like a TV Chat forum anyways. If we are going to start creating threads by TV Shows, how long before we see people posting about some classic stuff like The Office, Futurama, Breaking Bad, The Wire and others?

That's why I think a subdivision is the way to go whether it be a child board or forum of their own. A TV forum and Movie forum would probably see more life and activity in them in one year than the Gameplay and Hardware support forums combined have seen over their entire lifespan on these forums. At least by number of posts. Thread titles created may take longer. It's an experiment I consider worth trying. If after 3-4 months it appears to be a low activity board and the threads would be fine on their own in General Chat, I'll take on the work of moving them all into General Chat and you can just delete the forum but I'd be shocked if that was the outcome.

[NWR_insanolord]

Maybe I misread your proposal for Forum Info. I thought you were suggesting separate boards for all those things as a part of it, which is what I was calling overly complicated and unnecessary. Accomplishing it through stickied threads is a lot more doable.

TV as a child board of General Chat might work, just to keep everything organized. I'm still not sure it's necessary, though.

I'd like to hear more feedback on this, so anyone who could bring themselves to read everything Khush posted there and has thoughts about his proposals or ideas of their own, please share them here.

[Khushrenada]

Maybe I misread your proposal for Forum Info. I thought you were suggesting separate boards for all those things as a part of it, which is what I was calling overly complicated and unnecessary. Accomplishing it through stickied threads is a lot more doable.

No, you read it right. I was suggesting separate boards for those parts but was comparing them to the principle of stickied threads in a forum as if those separate boards were stickied threads for the Main Forum Index. However, I also amended that in my reply to you by stating that if it seemed unwieldy or more complicated then to just re-do / rename the Announcements thread to include all those things in one with the Forum Rules and Introduce Yourself threads stickied to the top which seems to be the way you would go if you were to update the Main Index Page.

[UncleBob]

Since someone thought necessary to spam my mailbox... figured I'd reply.

I'm for merging Console/Handheld forums.  Have a Nintendo Gaming and a General Gaming forum.  We're low-end activity, so nothing would be lost by combining them and it'd open up the ability to create mega threads when things like Mario Maker, Hyrule Warriors, Smash 4, and Yarn Yoshi get cross-ported. And Swiitch, of course.

[ShyGuy]

How did I miss this thread?

Make the forums great again! I vote in favor of consolidation.

[oohhboy]

Finally all caught up.

I am in agreement we need less sub-forums/consolidation. The original concept for the forums was designed for *A lot* more traffic. What the freak is March Madness?

Gameplay, tech support merge into general support. Match making is comatose, maybe change it to "Other" other gaming like dice games, ccg and the like if you don't want to kill it.

The Friend Code child boards should go away replaced by the sticky in their respective sub-forums.

Podcast and Talkback is ripe to merge although that looks likely to break the site.

NWR feedback should be a child of Announcements/rules which stay as is.

Keep the 3 game sub-forums as is.

All 3 of the community forums stay as is. You could child Mafia to the funhaus.

Reader reviews is a weird one. While it is nice having it's own space, I can't remember the last time I have gone in there for a review. If I did read a review in the it was in the "what are you playing" thread or the "Last gaming purchase".

You could re-purpose it into a writer's testing ground where people can post their reviews like they do now, but if it is good enough it gets posted on to the main site under guest reviews. If the quality goes up I might read them for fun/curiosity. if they are really good you can bring them in as staff.

There isn't enough material to make dedicated sub-forums for TV and movies. The current mega threads cover it pretty well and diluting that would just make me stop reading. Look how dead the anime thread is as an example.

Clean off some of the sticky. Why is the bloodworth thread doing at the top of the funhaus? It should be a Khushrenada thread

The forums as they are is as they are because it is gated by the small inconvenience of signing up which I am fine with. More people coming is balanced out by the fact you are going to have to deal with a lot more low effort people making a mess. As many people Steam forums, GameFAQ and the like has, it is bedlam.

The number of people we have here is a direct result to the traffic the main site gets. No amount of shuffling the forums or social engineering is going to change that. You want more forum members while keeping the quality of the community we have here? Get more site traffic while maintaining the quality of content as people will self select into the forums based on it.

One thing that might help site traffic but can take up a fair bit of work is doing short regular top#/list video regularly with a Nintendo related focus. People like them as it is bite sized chunks of very digestible information. It doesn't even have to be information, just Top # ways to die in mostly Nintendo video games. Please choose an arbitrary number other than 10 or don't have a fixed number at all for maximum flexibility.

A quick and dirty thing you can do is to export all the current podcasts onto youtube. Once you have done that for your future *casts you can have spilt screen talking heads if done live or add some related information on screen post edit. You can still have your podcast in audio files etc just that now you will have a much wider audience that you can filter to the site instead of hoping they will come to you randomly like I did because Big N got popular.

You have plenty of content on the main site, just very little visibility now days since you rely directly on Nintendo to be visible so directly. The primary problem NWR has is marketing, not content.

How did I miss this thread?

Make the forums great again! I vote in favor of consolidation.

*Visibly unsheathe knife.*

[Lemonade]

I agree that combining handheld and console pages is probably a good idea. There is no real reason for them to be separate, especially now with the switch.
The only other place I go is talkback, so I have no opinion the rest of it.
I dont think a movies/tv/music/whatever group is worth it. Probably wouldnt be very active. This is a place for games.

[Stogi]

I say we close it down. It's had a good run.

[Stratos]

I agree that combining handheld and console pages is probably a good idea. There is no real reason for them to be separate, especially now with the switch.
The only other place I go is talkback, so I have no opinion the rest of it.
I dont think a movies/tv/music/whatever group is worth it. Probably wouldnt be very active. This is a place for games.

Lolmonade, the threads for movies and TV shows are some of the most active threads on the site. A lot of us old dogs have consolidated there because it seems to be one of the more unifying things we do outside of gaming. Some people are exclusive to these threads now.


Look at our activity numbers. Besides some of the ancient bastions of activity from the glory days, who stay in the top out of the sheer volume it used to do, and the current forum institutions of Sales data and the rumor mill, the most active and rising threads are about movies and TV shows.


That is also not counting the "spin-off" threads for the MCU, DCCU, and Star Wars, among others. I am for creating a new separate space for non-gaming media discussion.

Top 10 Topics (by Replies)                           
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The OFFICIAL Big N rumor thread *bring your own salt* - 8215 (active)
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Rate the last movie you've seen - 5397 (active)
Official Avatar Discussion - 4311 (inactive)
Rate the last TV show you've seen - 4031 (active)
Official Australian PGC visitors disscussion about anything thread - 4020 (inactive)
New Movies/TV Shows we should keep an eye out for! - 3652 (active)
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Official DS Sales Thread - 3251 (inactive)
               
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The OFFICIAL Big N rumor thread *bring your own salt* - 1369342 (active)
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Rate the last movie you've seen - 545496 (active)
Rate the last TV show you've seen - 419659 (active)
New Movies/TV Shows we should keep an eye out for! - 417946 (active)
Official DS Sales Thread - 365728 (inactive)
Official Virtual Console Mondays Thread - 350238 (inactive)
XboxOne ~News/Rumor/Speculation~ Biggest Console Released This Gen!! - 347597 (inactive)
Sony getting hit Hard lately - 343016 (inactive)

[Phil]

"Reader reviews is a weird one. While it is nice having it's own space, I can't remember the last time I have gone in there for a review. If I did read a review in the it was in the "what are you playing" thread or the "Last gaming purchase".


You could re-purpose it into a writer's testing ground where people can post their reviews like they do now, but if it is good enough it gets posted on to the main site under guest reviews. If the quality goes up I might read them for fun/curiosity. if they are really good you can bring them in as staff."


Phil helps to keep that section active, but there's been an awesome Pokemon Moon topic in there recently.

[Lemonade]

Lolmonade, the threads for movies and TV shows are some of the most active threads on the site. A lot of us old dogs have consolidated there because it seems to be one of the more unifying things we do outside of gaming. Some people are exclusive to these threads now.

Honest mistake, Im sure, but Im not lolmonade.

Ok, you have proven me wrong, thats ok. Having those topics in the forum is perfectly fine, I just meant it probably doesnt need its own sub group.

To answer the question of the topic title, I think social media has killed forums almost everywhere. There was another gaming forum that I would post on all the time. It slowly got less and less active and then a bit over a month ago, the website shut down. That community moved onto a Discord chat and facebook group.
Thats part of the reason why I started posting here on NWR.

[oohhboy]

We don't actually know if Nintendo is going to release a proper handheld. It is too premature to merge them only to have to unmerge down the line. The Switch is portable, but I don't classify it a hand-held like I wouldn't classify an iPad with a cellular radio link a phone.

There doesn't seem to be any rumblings of that "Third Pillar" stuff we heard back with the DS which was a hedge just in case the DS fell flat and they needed another Gameboy.

Plus the legacy handhelds aren't going away, there is plenty of activity and a merger down is still on the cards if required.

[Caterkiller]

I guess I would love for a bunch of the sub forums to be just be combined.

Nintendo Console & Nintendo Handheld become one. Nintendo Gaming. Within Nintendo Gaming would be all the original topics that people create about the games and all the help and matchmaking would be held there as well. Just being under the same roof seems like people would notice matchmaking or help requests even more.

[ClexYoshi]

Hey, I'm over here thanks to Khush's push that was sent out en masse to the forums. I don't pretend to know the sort of analytics that go into getting people to sign up for a forum, but I imagine it may be that newer forms of social media appeal to folks far more than a place like this.


As for changes, this place could REALLY use for some clean up. we're not going to need a friend code forum any more. heck, depending on how long the 3DS lives independent of the Switch, we may no longer need a Console or handheld distinct forum unless we're talking about retro hardware.

That being said, Archival would be a big (and likely epic) part of this cleanup task.


Anyhow, didn't sleep last night. just got done shoveling. gonna crash. zzzzzzzz...

[Evan_B]

I am for the idea of a united Nintendo gaming forum- as it stands currently, the handheld forum does not get enough traffic. Likewise, is life to have a strategy/matchmaking subforum more closely tied to the Nintendo forums.

Even though there's more discussion of tv/films and sales going on, those threads are absolutely massive, and there's a ton of gaming content still being made on the site.

[Stratos]

Do we really need to keep matchmaking and the game discussion separate? Typically we discuss game right before they release and for a short bit after release. After release and most everything is known about a game it turns into a mix of strategy and design discussion along with some matchmaking arrangements.


With Monster Hunter, I've gravitated towards just having a single thread for all aspects of the game instead of a separate thread for arranging matches.

[Adrock]

I only regularly go into Nintendo Console Discussion, General Gaming, Talkback, and General Chat. If anything is reorganized, I'd figure it out. The only thing I really want is a tap-to-reveal-spoilers option like on Neogaf (since I browse the forums on mobile more often than not), but that's software related. A girl can dream...

[UncleBob]

I click the 'unread topics' link at the top.  I forget how badly organized the forums are, really.

[Shaymin]

I click the 'unread topics' link at the top.  I forget how badly organized the forums are, really.

Same here.

[oohhboy]

I click the 'unread topics' link at the top.  I forget how badly organized the forums are, really.

I am worse. I use e-mail to get alerts to new comments from topics I sub to. It doesn't encourage much exploration.

[rygar]

I also primarily navigate the forums through the 'unread topics' function.

[Order.RSS]

It's cool that y'all are thinking about this, but I don't think I'll ever be sold on creating even more clutter. Why create three subforums that are essentially just 1 or 2 threads each? (announcements, rules, introductions)

I would say have 3 or 4 forums: General chat, Gaming, NWR interactive (if merging talkback & podcasts doesn't crash the site!) and maybe the funhouse (child the mafia). Stick the forum rules & announcements as two or even one combined stickythread at the top of General, second sticky for new members, third for NNIDs/PSN/etc.

Ideally, I would make Funhouse & mafia a combined childboard to General Chat; they look alienating if I have to actively venture in there. I keep missing matchmaking posts from Phil because they're in that dumb subforum. Similarly, I don't currently have a handheld so never go there - as a result I missed out on Khush's thread on Warioland. See a pattern? People only go to subsections they feel are relevant to them. Having fewer of them means they're gonna see more of the active threads.
Consolidating all of these would make sure that when I go to a board I see all the new active threads at once and can pick & choose from there.

Gameplay, strategy & hardware should just merge into gaming for sure. Far too little use to warrant cluttering the forum index.

Extra TV and film boards sounds like even more unnecessary clutter to me. They would only become relevant if that many threads on different shows/movies do indeed crop up (they currently don't). It's a bit like solving a problem that isn't there (yet). Besides, a full page 1 of active threads in the general chat section would be a great "problem" to have - itd mean the forum is active!

I think it should be crucial to downsize to the current userbase, you can always add forums again where necessary if Switch grows the userbase again. In the meantime, those new members will then find a small but active forum, rather than a giant one with only very limited use in but a few subsections. Much more inviting. It's a public forum; perception should be the prime concern when wanting to attract new members!

Hope this doesn't across as know-it-ally, or pooping on ideas. But I think further categorisation is the exact opposite direction a forum with a small userbase should head, because it splinters those users further from each other. If you only have X amount of members, fine, but make sure they're running into eachother as much as possible to keep things lively.

[Khushrenada]

Sounds to me like you all need to start taking a page from the Indians Native Americans and start using every part of the buffalo forum. I know I do. So much waste and neglected posts. It brings a tear to my eye as a stand and watch over this part of the information superhighway.

[Phil]

I guess since I started the discussion on this, I should post my thoughts. This is my last week of school, so I'll have to be brief.

I was thinking some arrangement like this (names just give a general idea of what they're for):

NWR INTERACTIVE (moved to top of forum)

Site Announcements
Talkback (get rid of the NWR March Madness)
Podcast Discussion (I wouldn't mess with the first two of these forums too much, as it seems to be working for the site at the moment)
NWR Staff and User Interaction (child boards: user feedback, reader content like reviews, editorials, things like that maybe)

GAMING

Nintendo Gaming Discussion (no need for child boards, maybe pinned topics for NNID names and 3DS friend codes?)
Non-Nintendo Gaming Discussion (pinned topic for PSN, XBL, Steam, and more: all in one topic)

Gaming Strategy and Hardware help-related things can be posted in these two above forums. I also think matchmaking could be used in those forums as well, if we really wanted to cut down on clutter (i.e. ghost town and less active sections of the site).

COMMUNITY

General Discussion (maybe the TV and more popular topics could be pinned?)
Funhouse
Mafia Games (could also be a child board of the Funhouse)

[Mop it up]

I'm afraid I'm also on board with the idea of merging into as few forums as possible. This place just doesn't get enough traffic for anything else.

[King of Twitch]

Sign o' the times. Right now there ought to be absolute wild speculation since the Switch is being kept totally secret until the last possible second. I wish there were more reader reviews so I can get different perspectives, but it seems like the in-depth stuff now gets tossed into personal blogs. The chat room has been dead during E3 for awhile, so youtube must be a part of the problem. But there have been live youtube shows so idk what's up.

-Outside of the awesome annual charity drive, I haven't seen any contests for awhile. Maybe I just missed them.
-No karma upvote appreciation for posts like this:

With very few exceptions, anytime someone starts a sentence with "I'm not a *blank*, but..." that person is most definitely a *blank*.

It's like Red Delicious Apples.  If they were really delicious, they wouldn't be the ones who have to tell you.

-Some of the headings could be more clear; "community forums/interactive" -- isn't everything on the forum an interactive community? I'd be ok with not calling things "child boards"

Just make 6 headings:
**Nintendo
**Non-tendo (PS4, Xbox, movies, comic books, sports)
**Talkback
**Podcasts
**Youtube
**Funhouse

[Stratos]

I click the 'unread topics' link at the top.  I forget how badly organized the forums are, really.

I am worse. I use e-mail to get alerts to new comments from topics I sub to. It doesn't encourage much exploration.

I have noticed that with only checking the New Replies to My Posts page. I have missed a couple big conversations due to this and by the time I find them most of the talking has been done.

[supermario2k]

I will write a truly heartfelt and really serious reply, no drama, no false characters, just the truth, if that is okay.


I love this site, and the people. Why else do I keep coming here? But I have to say that the one thing that turns people off is also the one thing that makes this community work, the funhouse.
Newbies come here and can be turned off by the funhouse because it can be intimidating. When I was new I was confused, as was Lucario and I know others who have had a hard time adjusting. When you get it in your head everyone is a jackal who is sometimes kidding, and sometimes serious, it makes for a weird personality mix where you have trouble separating the two.

I had a hard time adjusting for the longest time, the aftermath is still present in totally inncent posts being taken as rants when they are not meant to be, and the real rants being taken too seriously. I tried working through that, but I lost interest. As I stated, the bullying turned me off. What some didn't realize is they might not have been intending to be bullies but newbies don't know when you are being legit and when you are being asshats for the fun of it, because like it or not, it's hard to post in the funhouse as a goof ball not to be taken seriously and then leave that behind in the funhouse. Either you make it anything goes, freeforall no rules, or you get rid of it entirely as there is already a general chat forum and the fun house is the thing that turns the most people away.


The long time community is also a big part of it. When I came here I was a newbie but I fit in early on with friends who looked past the rough exterior and helped me grow as a person, but it took several resets because the bullies dominated the site. Most of the real bullies are gone, moved on, grew up or realized they were in the wrong. Most of the people *I* mistook as bullies, to be honest, weren't and I see that now, which is why I am trying real hard to be positive and engaging, at least when I care, which is the point. I lost interest in caring because of the damn funhouse and all the shenanigans. It's something the long time regulars don't get because they are used to it.

So my first piece of advice is either reform the rules to the fun house to make it CLEAR to newbies what it is, after all there is not post or thread that spells out the rules or the intent it's just the wild west in there and newbies can be confused, easy, and then when told it is a fun house but the name changes all the time it can also confuse newbies.


Either make it clear it's a place where the rules are loose or be VERY clear that the shenanigans that take place in there are NOT to be spread across the rest of the forum. Or get rid of it entirely as it really serves no useful purpose. It used to be the forum for Mafia games and now there is a Mafia section which also confuses people and reduces the need for the fun house. Make a 'forum games" section and dedicate it to that but make it CLEAR that is what it is.


Next up, I concur general house cleaning is in order. I would suggest getting rid of sub-forums that aren't used as often or do it like www.blu-ray.com does, check out how clean their forum is and how very active their community is. Blu Ray is a little more mainstream than Nintendo as a whole, but it's also very niche in a lot of ways. That is a very active community, yet it is hyer focused on ONE topic, Blu Ray movies, and it attracts movie lovers of all walks, this is a Nintendo focused site, but Nintendo is not as small as people might like to think, at least the core fan base. Many of them have moved on to social media, so let's address that.


Social media is a tool, not a platform. Use it. Use it extensively. Maybe have the writers or the mods who post stories to the site Tweet links to those stories on their twitter feeds associated with the site.


Those are some of my suggestions. But the real reason this site has trouble keeping new posters is trouble-makers like me. So consider this my farewell once and for all. No big blow out, no rant, no "meltdown" just a subtle, I am moving on in my life to better things. Yes, my final answer and a true good-bye to those that care and a good riddance to those that don't.

No I am not angry, or hurt, or depressed, or anything, I just don't care anymore. I literally found a happier life elsewhere and I only came here to rant because I wasn't happy in my life. I don't suffer from depression anymore, I am a more well rounded person and I have a good job, a very good prospect and I need to cleanse myself of this old life. Thanks to the friends I did make and everyone else, no worries, I forgive you all and I beg your forgiveness those I was a true jerk to. Thanks for the memories, good and bad. No need to ban my account but if you decide to, that would be fine. I truly won't be back. Ever.
 Good luck in the future.

[Stogi]

Cool man. Sorry to see you go. Peace and Love.

Reading his post, I realize I've been here FOREVER. You guys are my fray frays, my crew I get to geek out about Nintendo with. While I have friends I play games with and converse about games in general, it's never as contemplative as the group here. Videogame Economics is fascinating and I learn a lot here.

I think the main reason why this place isn't as upbeat is because times have changed. Forums are old and the users that are here were here when forums were popular. Most people now, including me, use Reddit or FB as a way to find and discuss topics and information. It's easy and there's a lot of excitement and different opinions. Heading into a forum sounds counterproductive.

However, one thing forums have over social media is personality. The limited nature of a forum allows us to each have a personality that can shine through. There aren't one-off conversations between people; usernames matter here. And that's why the funhouse was/is genius. It allowed us to get to know each other without the need for a topic.

I'm not sure what can be done to inject this place with new life. I think simplifying the forum is a good idea and I wouldn't mind karma (or at least a way to thumbs up a post) coming back, but those are small fixes. The real issue is that new people have to find this place, specifically us, compelling. And are we?

[Phil]

Aw, no, Rat! See what this topic has done?! NOOO, I created it! I'm the reason Rat is leaving! WHHYYYYYYY!!!? 

[oohhboy]

I still think it is far too premature to merge Hand-held and console. You can update/re-purpose Hand-held to include mobile games. It can carry on in that way and I don't think Nintendo is going to stop mobile gaming any time soon.

[Adrock]

I'm not sure what can be done to inject this place with new life. I think simplifying the forum is a good idea and I wouldn't mind karma (or at least a way to thumbs up a post) coming back, but those are small fixes. The real issue is that new people have to find this place, specifically us, compelling. And are we?

The problem with Karma is that some people took it really seriously. It turned into this weird economy of popularity which is counterproductive for encouraging new members to stick around. Karma got so out of control that I don't think it's worth having. At one point, I requested to have my smite count listed as one billion because who cares? However, trying to explain to people that Karma ultimately didn't matter was much more difficult than just not having it.

An applaud/thumbs up system for individual posts is a better solution as long as it isn't accompanied by smite/thumbs down. It should be about fostering positivity than reintroducing a system in which people feel like they're being judged. One potential problem is it may discourage discussion. Instead of responding to a post, someone may just +1 and move on. Well, that's the opposite point of a message board.

The biggest issue is what I actually like about NWR. The long time forum members all "know" each other. We can make jokes at each other's expense and just have some good discussions. At the same time, it's hard for new forum members to break through the collective comradery and feel like part of the group. It's like going to a party where you don't know anyone.

[Phil]

Maybe the question I am posing isn't even correct or have any truth to it, so if so, then I apologize!

Regardless, I have noticed that new users that remain active are few and far in-between.

Now, this is just my theory, which may be totally unsubstantiated, but I notice that we basically have a clique/club of personalities here at NWR's forums that are well-established. We're all pretty close for the most part (well, as "close" as one can be as personalities on a message board forum), so that might make new users feel like outsiders and make it seem hard to fit in.

In what ways could we make new users feel more like they're a part of something great instead of feel like they're on the outside looking in?

Just food for thought. I'm going to eat a sandwich now since my brain ate its food, but now my stomach wants food!

We've finally gone full circle, dear friends!

[Stratos]

Well, good luck in life Rat! I hope the best for you. And you know where to find us if you even find your way back here.


I thought karma was fun, but then again I took it as a joke too. I do remember a few new folks asking about it and at least one person was driven nuts because of it.

[King of Twitch]

One potential problem is it may discourage discussion. Instead of responding to a post, someone may just +1 and move on. Well, that's the opposite point of a message board.

This is a good point. And this:

It's like going to a party where you don't know anyone.

We have to make it more like Cheers but it's impossible if ppl aren't signing up in the first place. How does Scientology keep getting great numbers year after year? Should look into that

[Khushrenada]

I keep asking Tom Cruise to sign up here but he always says he's too busy because he's making a movie or communicating with other Thetans via telepathy or testing couches for furniture stores. But I'll keep on him for the good of these forums. One day, it'll happen, I tells ya. One day.....

[King of Twitch]

I heard he was busy brainwashing and extorting people out of their money.

[pokepal148]

A lack of explanation on the funhouse in general has been a point of contention around here. Oblivion mentioned at some point that he felt the Funhouse wasn't very beginner friendly and even SUPER suggested using custom backgrounds for the funhouse which would help establish a different tone for the funhousem

This thread was created by TY when the funhouse was created in an attempt to explain it's purpose. I suggest it be brought back as a sticky thread. i have the OP posted below with a few suggested edits in bold.

Rules: We're not holding anyone to high quality posting like the rest of the forum. In fact, if you're looking for serious discussion, this forum is not for you. OR IS IT???

WHAT'S OKAY: Dumb posts, non-sequitor posts, making fun of things, being obnoxious
WHAT'S NOT OKAY: Gross pictures, posting of personal information, computer-breaking links, bandwidth leeching, serious discussion, serious racism, political discussion, or personal attacks, taking the forum seriously, serious anything

If you have any questions about the funhouse or it's purpose please bring it up via PM to our community manager or post it in the thread below.

I also agree with making the Mafia Subforum into a general Forum Games area, a dedicated subforum for TV and Movie discussion, and probably merging the console and handheld discussion area and removing the hardware and matchmaking areas. And for god sakes get rid of the March Madness subforum.

[oohhboy]

I also agree with making the Mafia Subforum into a general Forum Games area, a dedicated subforum for TV and Movie discussion, and probably merging the console and handheld discussion area and removing the hardware and matchmaking areas. And for god sakes get rid of the March Madness subforum.

TV and movie discussion threads doesn't have enough traffic to warrant their own sub-forum. Even with huge movies it doesn't exactly explode.

This is a Nintendo site, we should have a sub-forum for consoles and hand helds. It would be really weird for a Nintendo site to have only one forum to talk about Nintendo games. If the Switch really is it, maybe then we should revisit the question at that time.

Making Mafia into a catch all Forum based game thread would be good. Continue to have it moderator controlled to keep it tidy. Having a sign up thread each time for each new game would work quite well in there as you can set the forum to notify you of new threads without flooding your activity/inbox. It might save some people the trouble of PM spamming for people which is for me anyway, the number #1 method for me when it comes to finding out if there is a game or not.

Hardware/matchmaking/**** talking sub-forums should merge into General Tech support/misc forum.

• Of course none of this will actually change how many new memberships we have. That is a function of how much the traffic the site gets not how the forum is laid out.

Changing the structure of the forums is changing where the existing traffic goes through each sub-forum and the structure of those threads. If we had 10x the traffic we have now then yes, having more sub-forums would be good to manage it.

Example, having a dedicated forum for Movies/TVs means people will start making individual threads for individual shows. The problem is that each show doesn't have enough traffic to keep going so it burns out too quick because it was too specialised. It is why the current mega threads work as it concentrates that traffic.

Look how little even the biggest show gets talked about in the TV thread, have a look at how little traffic each individual reader review gets and how quickly it burns out compared to the "What is your last gaming purchase" "What was the game you last beat". They became de-facto reviews which has more traffic than reader reviews could ever hope to have.

The key thing about this discussion isn't about how to get new members into the forums, it is about how we want the traffic to flow, not how much. Changing the structure doesn't change how many new members we get who stay on.

[lolmonade]

If I were granted Mod God powers for a day, i'd suggest the following:


Obliterate the following subforums:
Gameplay Strategy
Hardware & Wifi Support
Matchmaking & Smack Talk


Consolidate the Announcements & NWR Feedback subforums


Close the Podcast Feedback subforum and just move the posts in the Talkback subforum.  They appear as articles on the front page of the website, anyway.  It doesn't appear there's enough article volume to hide podcast discussion as it is, anyway.


In regards to boosting forum membership and retention?  That's a harder nut to crack.  This is a specialized community, and while the podcasts brought me here in the first place, it was deciding I enjoyed the community of people here that kept me involved, even though it's been less so lately than it used to. 


There used to be things like game nights and community organized events that would happen every so often, and those were fun when my scheduled aligned with them.  I think it starts with the website generating content that compels people to view the site or listen to the podcasts. 


Beyond that, I think the follow-up questions are "how much evangelizing does the NWR staff do for the forums?" and "Do NWR staff consider the forum community an important pillar of the website in general?".  I know several contributors pop-up in the forums to comment occasionally, but in the current vaccum of Nintendo news and activity, it seems to me it's a little bit on NWR to keep the devoted engaged in a way that gives the impression to newcomers that this isn't a forum ghost town.


We can talk about how changing forum structure, clarifying the intent of the funhouse can help clear up confusion, whether or not karma is value-add, or how make the website more efficient to navigate, but that doesn't solve what I think is the core problem of the forums, which is the impression to newcomers that there is barely a community to engage with in the first place.  This wont change unless NWR staff make it a priority, and supermario2k hit the problem on the nose when mentioning that social media (facebook/twitter) should be used to drive conversation back here, not to be the home for conversation.

[Triforce Hermit]

I agree with getting rid of Gameplay Strategy, Hardware, and Matchmaking. Most of that is discussed in the mega threads for a particular title anyways (think Xenoblade and Mario Kart). Hardware isn't used very often that one or two threads every once in a while won't destroy the forum.

Also the Nintendo Gaming idea, just fuse Handheld and Console. Ditch the child boards for friend codes. Wii and DS friend codes are phased out.

As for forum traffic, I just say go ahead and try to keep the forum more up to date. As of now it appears dead, old, and poorly managed. It gives off a bad first impression. Work on that and it might be better.

[KnowsNothing]

Okay, I've skimmed the thread, and determined this really isn't the place for this post.  But I typed it up anyway.  I doubt I'll post much more here so I might as well leave in, like, the worst way possible  : .  And this is definitely coming from the wrong person, I know that.  Feel free to skip it.

I don't really know what the overall goals for this site are.  It seems to be in a sort of weird limbo between a blog shared between friends and an actual serious enterprise.  The founders of this site certainly used it as a stepping stone to other careers in the industry, but maybe you guys don't have those same aspirations.  That's perfectly fine if that's the case.  Without knowing that, I can safely say that most of this post will be nonsense.  It certainly won't be productive, in any case.

Reorganizing the forums is an entirely separate issue from why this site doesn't attract new members, and why activity down.

I think there are some hard truths you guys need to face about how much the internet has changed in the past few years.  I’ve been here since 2003 (I think?) and while the site has undergone some cosmetic changes it ultimately functions the same way it always has.  While that might make the old-timers feel more comfortable, the reality is that people these days use the internet very differently than they did over a decade ago.  The industry is also exponentially larger, so competing sites have a lot more resources to throw around in designing their website and producing content.  Small forums ARE dying.  It sucks, but it’s true.  My guess is that larger communities like NeoGAF attract the few remaining people looking for that type of online interaction.  (I have no idea if that site even exists any more, just a guess!)

I wish we could go back to the old Planet GameCube days, but I don’t think that type of fan site can even exist anymore.  (For what it’s worth, GiantBomb does the best job of straddling the line between big content producer with a fan-site feel.  They do a hell of a job of somehow being a profitable enterprise without showing it.)

Maybe I’m just out of touch, but that’s what I see.  And there’s nothing wrong with wanting to keep the site functioning the way it does now, just don’t expect your membership to suddenly start growing.  I’ll admit it’s nice to come back after all these years to see this place close to how I left it.  It’s also a little concerning.

The other elephant in the room is reddit, which is overall just a much better source of news and community interaction for ANY topic, not just limited to video games.  Social media is an issue as well, but in my mind you are really competing with reddit. 

(I will admit, however, that you out-lived Digg, and reddit is ultimately bound for the same fate. So you have that going for you  : : )

And I know some of you are thinking I’m even crazy to suggest NWR compete with GiantBomb and reddit, but if that’s where people are going to talk about games, then that’s who you’re competing with for users.  I know you guys don’t want to be THAT big, but at the end of the day you need traffic, and revenue, and a reason for people to volunteer their time making this place run.  Good old Billy Hamburger spun his time here into what I imagine was a few good years at Game Informer, G4, and EGM.  Sure, he bounced from dying-medium to dying-medium, but you get the point.  It’s not just the forums that need to be strong, it’s the entire site.  It’s the motivation of the staff.  It’s a reason for people to spend time HERE, not THERE.

I also saw some people saying that social media (and reddit) can be used as a tool to draw traffic to these forums, and while I agree I think there’s a VERY important step in between those two things: content.  The whole point of social media is that it’s a place to have conversations with people, so it’s a really tough sell to go there and say “yeah, but there REAL conversation is happening over HERE.â€�  There needs to be another reason for people to come to this site.  Why would anyone from reddit ever come over here to start talking about games when they can just to to /r/games, or /r/Nintendo, or /r/3DS, etc.?

My point is that the forums aren’t going to draw in users, content is, and that’s going to be a really tough nut to crack.  The forums on its own just isn’t going sustain itself independent of the rest of the site.  The main page is honestly a disaster, and it has been ever since the NWR re-branding.  It looks like an ad-spam link aggregator designed in Frontpage.  The forums aren’t much better.  Articles are short.  Podcasts are long.  Editorials are infrequent and not compelling.

And I get it, this is a site run by volunteers.  You use templates for site design.  You don’t have professional podcasting equipment.  You’re not familiar with producing video content.  You have other careers to focus on.  I’m certainly not going to spend my free time producing content for this site for almost nothing in return.  The real issue is that in 2003 you didn’t have to have a good looking site, or a podcast, or any video content at all.  You just needed a place for people to read and talk about video games, because there weren’t too many places on the internet for people to do that.  And the people that did want to do that were really dedicated members, because it took five minutes to load a page and you couldn’t use your home phone while you waited.  Things are so, so different now.  There’s so much more money in this industry.

The one positive is that with so many people interesting in gaming it's easier than ever to carve out a niche, and it's even possible for that niche to sustain your website.  What's NWR's niche?  Nintendo?  That's not enough.  You're stuck between being too focused to attract a general audience, and too broad to attract people away from other sites. 

I don’t know what the solution is.  I’m not sure there is one.  Maybe you just need the bare minimum amount of traffic to keep the forums up and hope a few people stick around.  But major changes in the health of this site, and by extension these forums?  I really don’t know.

Edit: I would also like to add that I'm frankly shocked the site has survived as long as it has, and I don't mean that in a derogatory way.  It's a testament to the dedication of the staff that this site is still generating original content and has ventured into podcasts/videos.  It's certainly a lot of work that often goes unappreciated.

[oohhboy]

It's pretty clear we know what the problem is: Main site traffic.

Forget about missing with the forums as that is really shuffling the deck chairs.

Ask yourself, how many man-hours does the site get from it's volunteers and how much can they be reassigned to more "Profitable*" content. You might look into expanding the amount of work done by more aggressively looking for new talent. I am sure a number of people in the forums would like to see some of what they wrote become fan/guest contributions.

One really quick and dirty thing you can do for the main site is to have a weekly article pointing out the best discussion in the forums each week/fortnight. The problem I see with this is the loss of editorial control.

Either way KnowsNothing is right, whatever needs to be done it has little to do with the forums.

*page views

[Stratos]

The site did once have a running series highlighting some of the top posts of the week. Would have to ask a staffer how well they did though. Don't remember it generating much discussion.

Also, the one piece of site content that seemed to consistently generate forum users was the podcast media. A lot of people were drawn to the site through those. RetroActive was big with user participation. I have not listened to a game podcast in years though. How big are they now with users?

[oohhboy]

I am surprised the podcasts are still aren't uploaded to youtube.

[rygar]

Also, the one piece of site content that seemed to consistently generate forum users was the podcast media. A lot of people were drawn to the site through those. RetroActive was big with user participation. I have not listened to a game podcast in years though. How big are they now with users?

RFN was how I found NWR. I've also found other sites that I actively read through Nintendo related podcasts, but this is the only community I've joined.

[pokepal148]

RFN got me in as well.

[Phil]

The forum cleanup idea is more interesting to me just to consolidate and make the forums look nicer, more streamlined.

[BlackNMild2k1]

I have't read all the responses, nor do I remember if I've responded to this thread before, but to answer the topic question directly:

Q: Why do you think NWR's forums rarely get active new members?

A: Because these forums are practically dead.
when someone can post something, and sometimes there isn't a response across the whole forums for several hours, to what may be days in some sections or topics, it's not going to draw a lot of attention from anyone looking for a place to hold a conversation on the topic, unless they are ok with fly-by responses and checking back next week to read the 4 replies from 4 of the same 7 people that always respond.

So the catch 22 is that you need more active people to draw more active people. and since the people here are not that active, the forums are not likely to attract any new people to be active with.

[Stratos]

And that brings us back to the discussion of social media's evolution. Forums are an antiquated setup for the most part. And the few that have endured for 10+ years have whittled down to a few die-hard members. I visited a few other forums I used to frequent and most seem to have fallen into similar places. Some of us are too old (forum age-wise) to move on and just sit here.


Who was the last new visitor that really worked his way into the "core" group? Lucario comes to mind, and he seems to have done it through sheer will and persistence.


I would also ask if we are an open group for new comers? If a new person joins and posts a commonly discussed topic, do we embrace that person and fill him in on our discussion in a positive way, or direct them to one of the other threads about said subject? Or do we bite of heads and behave in a hostile manner?


This is probably in part a responsibility for the mods, staff, and community manager, but we all as members need to play our part in showing newcomers patience, guidance, and understanding.

[rygar]

OT but tangentially related: if you are a long term member, and support the site via patreon, but don't have a banner, maybe consider using one. New members become aware of the regulars and popular posters relatively quickly. If they don't know you are contributing, they may feel less inclined to do so themselves.

[Triforce Hermit]

Speaking of social media, it can work both ways. You can use social media to draw people to forums. It may not have as big a draw as social media, but it can bring people in. This year is going to be a big one for Nintendo. Update the site, promote the site and forums through social media, and give your best shot. Now would be the best time.

As for the forums feeling like a hang out for a group, yes it does feel that way. Especially when you are new here. I thought the forums was a group hangout before I ever made an account. I lurked for what, 2 years at least? It does heavily give that impression.

[Phil]

I think it'd be cool if NWR posted about a topic on its Twitter channel, asked Twitter users to comment on it, and then have an article that shares the most interesting tweets about that, as a way to get the social media account and site to interact more with its users both usual and uncommon.

[Mop it up]

I think a lot of us are calling for forum cleanup since it would at least help those of us who are here.

[Phil]

Will there be a forum cleanup, or was all this discussion for naught?

[NWR_insanolord]

It's in the works. I still have to nail down exactly what I want to do and then get approval for it.

[Phil]

Okie dokie. Was wondering if anything was happening or would happen. Thanks!

[Khushrenada]

I also agree with making the Mafia Subforum into a general Forum Games area, a dedicated subforum for TV and Movie discussion, and probably merging the console and handheld discussion area and removing the hardware and matchmaking areas. And for god sakes get rid of the March Madness subforum.

TV and movie discussion threads doesn't have enough traffic to warrant their own sub-forum. Even with huge movies it doesn't exactly explode.

Example, having a dedicated forum for Movies/TVs means people will start making individual threads for individual shows. The problem is that each show doesn't have enough traffic to keep going so it burns out too quick because it was too specialised. It is why the current mega threads work as it concentrates that traffic.

Look how little even the biggest show gets talked about in the TV thread, have a look at how little traffic each individual reader review gets and how quickly it burns out compared to the "What is your last gaming purchase" "What was the game you last beat". They became de-facto reviews which has more traffic than reader reviews could ever hope to have.

It isn't so much about potential activity for me as it is about better organization and reference. Take Mafia games. We have the Hall of Fame thread which lets us find and navigate through all the past games that are spread out through the Funhouse's forum as well as some of the early games in the Mafia forum. But at least as you scroll through the Mafia forum all the recent past games are grouped together because of having that separate forum making it easy to look up and review or find a certain game. The Mafia Forum may only get major use about one week per month (if even that these days) but by being separate it makes things very easy to sort, reference and to review.

It's the same with the Movie and or TV forum. Recently, I started watching Orphan Black and have gone through the first 2 seasons. I remember for years seeing either you or Plugabugz (can't recall exactly now who) always bring this show up and talk it up which always kept it on my radar. Now that I am watching it, I'd love to be able to find the comments that were posted about it but that would require searching through the Rate the Last TV Show Megathread and who knows how long that would take. If we had a Movie or TV forum where things were separated individually, it would be a lot easier to find previous posts by users on a show and get to join in the discussion. It's like if I want to read past reviews on a movie or show, I can search it up online for a site and easily find it that way. Sometimes there is a comment section below where one can read more thoughts on it. NWR doesn't have a movie and TV reviews for the obvious purpose that it isn't in the site's purpose to cover them. That said, at least if we had a forum where it would be easier to search via title then we could still look up other users opinions on that media. Truth be told, it sort of helps form a bond with other users if you like or dislike something they do which can help build up more forum connections and further the community. Even if a person were to watch something and not want to contribute further to a thread on that media, I'm sure they'd still probably like to read what others said on it and look it up.

That's why my earlier proposal involved a sort of expansion of sorts. It was more just about organizing the forums to better group and find information regardless of activity it might receive. That said, I'm not opposed to the forum reductions people want in eliminating GamePlay/Hardware Support/Matchmaking and just having those topics exist in Console/HandHeld/General and fighting for space there.

But I still think a creation of a Movie Forum and TV Forum would be worthwhile and the one change I most want to fight for. Truth is, while I sort of war over myself between wanting to spend some time playing games or watching movies or TV, I generally land on the movie/TV side of the argument since they can require less time and effort than a game. As time marches forward, I think a Movie and TV forum is where I'd probably spend more and more of my time posting as I get closer to a forum retirement.

Making Mafia into a catch all Forum based game thread would be good. Continue to have it moderator controlled to keep it tidy. Having a sign up thread each time for each new game would work quite well in there as you can set the forum to notify you of new threads without flooding your activity/inbox. It might save some people the trouble of PM spamming for people which is for me anyway, the number #1 method for me when it comes to finding out if there is a game or not.

Anyone hosting a game is giving the moderator abilities to post their Sign-up thread in the Mafia Forum and that is where it usually is always posted now. It still seems that people miss that thread and a PM is actually the way most learn about it or know a new game is happening. I'm not sure people are aware that they can be notified of new threads in it or not or if anyone wants to take advantage of that feature. The forum is currently controlled so that only a person with moderator abilities can create a thread in it but if we were to turn it into a Forum Games catch-all forum then that probably needs to change in order to allow other users to post their ideas for a forum game like 20 Questions or Password or Safe Words or propose something totally new. It could probably work but I don't see an issue with the current set-up where Mafia games are separated and kept organized while the Funhouse handles other games like Safe Words and whatnot. The Mafia Forum and Funhouse forums aren't really a huge issue in the forum reorganization talks and not many people are suggesting much change there aside from possible relegating them to child boards instead of main boards.

The key thing about this discussion isn't about how to get new members into the forums, it is about how we want the traffic to flow, not how much. Changing the structure doesn't change how many new members we get who stay on.

Yeah, the original point of this topic has sort of changed when it was brought up that tidying the forums could help with the appeal/look of the site to visitors but even before this forum reorganization discussion started, it was widely acknowledged that there are a lot of outside factors at play in keeping or increasing members here. Knowsnothing mentioned some of this, you've mentioned it, I've talked about different factors. I think what's led to this focus on the forums is that it is something most everyone acknowledges could use some refreshing and it is something that we can do and change unlike a lot of these other outside factors that are mentioned.

[King of Twitch]

The “like� button ruined the Internet
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/03/how-the-like-button-ruined-the-internet/519795/?utm_source=feed

Some good anecdotes, but depressing implications

[Stratos]

I like that article.

[BeautifulShy]

To answer as best as I can the thread question I will say that I think a lot of it has to do with social media and how it has grown in the past 10 years or so. Social media I think can cover most if not all what a forum provides but in different segments.   Facebook is good for long form posts about something, Twitter is good for small updates and to bring people together or apart over a common idea. They also depending on who your friends are can be insular in that they can be their own islands. Sometimes that happens with forums where people get into their own cliques and it is hard for new people to get involved.

[Phil]

It's in the works. I still have to nail down exactly what I want to do and then get approval for it.

I am going on a hunger strike until this matter is resolved!

[BeautifulShy]

It's in the works. I still have to nail down exactly what I want to do and then get approval for it.

I am going on a hunger strike until this matter is resolved!

Please get this resolved so Phil doesn't have to leave his cool website in his wake.

[Khushrenada]

It's in the works. I still have to nail down exactly what I want to do and then get approval for it.

I am going on a hunger strike until this matter is resolved!

Please get this resolved so Phil doesn't have to leave his cool website in his wake.

Well, if it doesn't get resolved, I can always take over and make it into a hot website!

[Phil]

Hold it. Eating some chips at the moment. Please get this resolved, though!

[King of Twitch]

Maybe the forum is dead because people don't pick radical handles any more?

Here are a few listed in the upcoming birthdays section:

Dancing_Robot
pandaradox
Vollmernator
rmorrison100
evolution4life
SuperCube
Smakian
Gamer Donkey
tekkenlover
MisterE13
jaz013
Happy Masks
dj51c488
coolchick555897
wrizzle88

YEP THAT'S PROBABLY ALL IT IS

[Phil]

I don't think we should divert into comedy for this super serial topic that has focused on making the forums less messy.

[King of Twitch]

Personality is the spark of any lively forum discussion.

[Phil]

Not when it's super serial like this. Then it's straight laced the whole time, and not the fun laced like laced with cocaine.

[lolmonade]

Maybe the forum is dead because people don't pick radical handles any more?

Here are a few listed in the upcoming birthdays section:

Dancing_Robot
pandaradox
Vollmernator
rmorrison100
evolution4life
SuperCube
Smakian
Gamer Donkey
tekkenlover
MisterE13
jaz013
Happy Masks
dj51c488
coolchick555897
wrizzle88

YEP THAT'S PROBABLY ALL IT IS

Whatever man, my username is totally tubular.

[Evan_B]

I think it's because everyone is SO DAMN NEGATIVE

[Phil]

I thought we had moved on to cutting out the extra forums, but you guys keep bringing me back in to the original purpose of the topic. How dare you stay on-topic.

[Phil]

It's summer, so I must bring this back to the foreground. It's so empty seeing rarely used gaming boards like Hardware and the like. At least Matchmaking could be in General Gaming as a sub-forum or something. And all those long-expired and obsolete forums for friend codes and no mentions of the Switch. This makes me sad. I hope I typed this without errors because it's hard to see currently through my tears. 

[Mop it up]

Insanolord's too busy watching baseball, probably.

[pokepal148]

Maybe the forum is dead because people don't pick radical handles any more?

Here are a few listed in the upcoming birthdays section:

Dancing_Robot
pandaradox
Vollmernator
rmorrison100
evolution4life
SuperCube
Smakian
Gamer Donkey
tekkenlover
MisterE13
jaz013
Happy Masks
dj51c488
coolchick555897
wrizzle88

YEP THAT'S PROBABLY ALL IT IS

Whatever man, my username is totally tubular.

Agreed.

[Order.RSS]

Did anyone compliment the minor changes to subforum descriptions yet? At last it says Switch, Wii U and 3DS in the console and handheld sectons!

[Khushrenada]

Way to go, Insanolord. Pretty sure it would have been him since he had moved the forums around during Khushrenada Week. It was something I felt like pointing out since Console discussion only mentioned GameCube and Wii as systems when we've moved on to Wii U and Switch already. I did make a point about the Nintendo Wi-Fi connection description in Tech Support so perhaps that was enough to cause him to look carefully at all the descriptions. Either that or when he was putting the regular descriptions back to the correct forums, it may have seemed silly to report that out-of-date information.

In any case, it's still a good job Insanolord. At least some forum improvement was able to be started from the madness. The first steps have begun, right?

[NWR_insanolord]

Yeah, I did it when I was renaming all of them back to what they originally were, and it was prompted by your Wi-Fi Connection comments.

[BeautifulShy]

Yeah, I did it when I was renaming all of them back to what they originally were, and it was prompted by your Wi-Fi Connection comments.

Yay progress.    So I take it we can request improvements to the forum and you will look into implementing them?

[NWR_insanolord]

I don't know how many of them I can realistically accomplish, but sure, if you've got ideas by all means let me know.

[BeautifulShy]

I'll PM you them later.

[Mop it up]

It's nice to see some change, but what's a Wii U?

Hmm, should the Switch be listed in both Console and Handheld forums? After all, it's both, right...?

[Phil]

Ch-ch-ch-changes.

[ThePerm]

We should just merge the categories and call it System Discussion

[Arbok]

1. For the amount of traffic this forum seems to get, there's way too many subforums. Now when new people (like me) check it out they see a whole bunch of dead subforums, making the whole place seem empty.
Why is there a strategy one, that fits in with gaming, why is there a hardware one, that could merge with consoles. And even there I would merge all three (handheld, consoles and general) as well.

Kind of amazed this was brought up back in 2016... and that was the last time the strategy board was posted in too. I concur that the strategy board really needs to go, and in general any efforts to consolidate would help. Not just make the boards feel more active, but would probably get new posts in front of more eyeballs as well.

[Arbok]

...and the strategy board along with a ton of others are gone for a much more streamlined look. Kudos to whoever on the staff did this.

[NWR_insanolord]

I'm glad you like it. It's been in the works for a while, I took a lot of the suggestions from the thread and discussed it some more with Khushrenada. I got the final go-ahead a couple days ago and just got around to implementing it. All the threads from those old boards were moved into the new Nintendo Gaming board, so they're still there and those kinds of posts are still welcome there.

[ThePerm]

If you want the site to pick up than you need to return to being the forefront of Nintendo gaming news.

NWR is  an excellent forum.

Also, links and advertising are probably deficient.

NWR is still better than Facebook and always has been.

Years ago I thought it would be great if there was a website that was a forum much like NWR is, but didn't focus on a single topic or subject. That was about the year reddit was formed. Well should have did that.

[Stratos]

What would be the pros and cons of doing a more "reddit" style forum, or even using a sub-reddit dedicated to NWR?

I've still been playing around with making my own forum software as a way to learn some of these newer dev tools. Its nowhere near ready to be tested, since it is more for me to learn than anything else, but I have entertained offering up a finished product to use to overhaul the forums here.

But it would be a fun way to try out some alternative setups for message boards like this.

[pokepal148]

Can we merge the sales and amazing deals threads in Nintendo Gaming?

[Khushrenada]

No but we could probably un-sticky the Sales thread from the top. I had done it once over a year ago and then one day Insanolord decided to resticky it. I didn't want to start a sticky / unsticky fight so I've left but, boy, there are many times I've wanted to unsticky it. Like right now.

[NWR_insanolord]

I'm pretty sure it wasn't me who did that. I'd be fine with making it not sticky anymore.

[Khushrenada]

I also say that if no 3DS games are announced at E3 then the 3DS Friend Code thread also gets unstickied. No one's posted there for a couple years already and that will be acknowledgement by Nintendo that the system is pretty much dead.

[Phil]

What did you people DO?! Everything was perfect the way it was!

...

[ShyGuy]

WE FIXED IT

[Phil]

Haha. I like my new tag. It's ironic, which is the funny part.