Board Activity Level, Jonesing, here.

I noticed this on the main page the other day:

On Sep 21 2007, 08:10 PM, Arrakeen had 93 members online, our current record!

Damn! I missed it.

What was the occasion, by the way? Or was it just fortuitous happenstance?

Anyway...I was wondering if anyone had any ideas about how we could increase the level of board activity?

Over the last year, I built up quite an addiction to the DN BBS. And while I've broken the habit of actually accessing that site, at the moment Arrakeen isn't giving me the fix I need. And the other Dune sites out there seem pretty dead. (Or braindead? Is the "Genetics and Population" thread over on FED2K any indication of the general level of posts there? There were a few people who made sense, but with that OP it really felt like I'd wandered into a conclave of the village idiots.)

Oh well...what's a malcontent to do? ;)

No idea what the big deal was I missed it as well, but there was a lot of stuff hitting fans at that time, no? The Spanish FanFic, the DN BBS affair (your banning and the new rules n stuff), and a lot of peeps were going off on one about the latest book from B&K.

That aside though it could have all been serendipity


I’ve not read the "Genetics and Population" thread but I’ve a bad feeling that in years to come Idiocracy may be seen in the same prophetic light as Orwell’s 1984.
:are

This post has been edited by Inhuien on Oct 20 2007, 08:54 AM

I've been pondering that anomaly ever since I noticed it (quite awhile ago), and while there were probably more lurkers than usual, I must sadly conclude that we were visited by an unusual number of bots. InvisionFree/vbulletin seem to be the most-targeted forums for various kinds of bots and spiders (bots are usually bad or at the least, nuisances; spiders are the ones that can be beneficial to our ranking in Google/Yahoo! searches). So when we have such an anomalous number of visitors on any specific day, we've been targeted in some way.

Considering that there have been a couple of instances of more than a DOZEN spambots I've had to clean out of the validation queue lately, I suspect the bots. :(

Not sure, but I'm considering dropping both Arrakeen and DNBBS to be honest. The DNBSS has become a haven for worthless posting. Sole Man, sunnypuck and Arnoldo have become driving members of that forum and each time I visit it's more indecipherable posts and agenda driven garbage. On any other forum these members would have been banned for intentionally wasting bandwidth with such drivel. I've stayed because of Byron, film stuff and some interesting news about the upcoming Dune movie. Arrakeen has been all but dead for weeks and is still simply too massive to navigate for the amount of members or activity. It's becoming a chore just to surf here.

I figure I've probably got about another month and then I'll likely fade.

This post has been edited by TPOG on Oct 20 2007, 05:33 PM

I've been thinking about poaching some of the more interesting conversation topics I've seen at some of my other forums/lists.

Also, please understand that forums have busy times and not-busy times. In our case, the latest book has been out for awhile, we've mostly trashed it to death, and now we're casting about for the next set of hot topics.

Streamlining the navigation here is an ongoing project. Please let us know what changes you would like to see, and we'll try to accommodate them.

In the meantime, I am still testing the IPBFree software for an eventual move (in the New Year, most likely). Moving to that host would mean that we would have more flexibility and more features -- and a functional Search capability. There are other nice goodies included in IPBFree, such as the ability to embed YouTube videos (we wouldn't need to go offboard to see them).

So we ask for patience through the slow times -- they will pick up. In the meantime, if there is something you want but it isn't here, just start it (if it's not against forum/InvisionFree rules!). If it works, wonderful. :) If not, it's a Learning Experience. We won't know until we try. ^_^

Please understand that this wasn't a complaint about the boardware or the administration. I've complained about the search feature before; the Google thing now seems to work well enough when I've used it...at least, I've been able to find the things I was looking for. My only real, remaining complaint is the lack of a "show posts since last visit" feature...but since I visit pretty much daily now, the new topics thing works OK.

I guess I'm just wondering why this place isn't more active, given that the "official board" has become the haunt of idiots.

I think we need to start another advertising push -- not spamming, but simply letting people know we exist. I found a Dune information site and got us listed in their website links (still need to add their banner to our affiliates at the bottom of the forum). I've also added an Arrakeen link to my Yahoo! email sig, and will put one in my Gmail sig. I've got a link at CivFanatics, and keep meaning to put one in at Big Boards (that's the InvisionFree resource/support forum I use the most now).

I need to find out the rules for the Yahoo! Dune PBEM list I belong to. That group plays the board game via email, but I notice they've been discussing other topics a bit lately. I'm just lurking there most of the time, since I'm not involved in any of the current games.

Gotta dust off Edric's newsletter files and the forum blog project, too...

I'll try to invite more people.

I can work on that too. The truth is, there really isn't much debate on topics over here. What we need are some more preeks :fire:

Would people be interested if we held some writing competitions? Those can be as fun or serious as we want.

You make a good point about the lack of debate. The majority here are Orthodoxe and basically agree on the same things...

Without resorting to hire professional trolls, we need something to spice it up...good, clean...CONFLICT !!! :mob1:

Maybe I should invite the barbarians over at Chronicles Network here. They have the audacity to post that Frank Herbert's books shouldn't be treated as holy! :o

Powindah scums !!!....Yes, invite them !!! :mob2:

How odd again. I just joined over there earlier tonight.

I'll have to find out if I have enough of a post count to qualify for advertising a non-commercial forum. They're godawful strict there -- Baron tried to advertise us over a year ago and they basically told him to shut up and quit posting garbage. :mad:

And they don't allow sigs. :sigh:

BTW, Omphalos -- I go by the name Timewalker there. My avatar is Carl Sagan sitting in front of a radio telescope. :)

Hmm. Some spammer put a link up to a site called Arrakeen.nr in the Dune forum a long time ago. The link is dead, but the post is still up.

I think I saw your avatar in the "Help! What book is this" thread.

Saw Tanzleet over there too and one other.

That's not a spammer. Killer Mouse is one of Baron's alternate usernames.

I guess he didn't read the rules carefully enough before posting that. :( And since the post was made around the time when our old URL went wonky, that's why the link doesn't work.

You need people who disagree with other passionately to get this place firing on all cylinders.

One of the site's I'm a member of was invaded by a load of Michael Jackson fans, who are as disturbed as their idol. That created a lot of activity and heated discussion. Kylie Minogue fans are a good target as well, especially when you call them al-Kylieda.

Other than that, I have no idea how to get this site more active. It's hard when you have a site where everyone is of the same opinion. Maybe you should encourage more discussions in the off-topic site on controversial subjects.

Something like "Research has shown that a liking for the Prequels and Pre-Prequels and Sequels and upcoming Interquels is highly correlated with underdeveloped genitalia and a propensity to sexually abuse small furry animals"? That kind of thing?

Oh. Sorry Baron, if you see this. .nr is Dutch, right? I guess that's where the site used to be.