Hari's Corner

6 comment(s)

1. Hi Hari,Thanks for your own thanks ! It is always a great pleasure for me to share with other book-enthusiasts the thoughts that such or such literary work has inspired me, although I must say that little feedback has been provided to show whether the reviews have enticed any potential reader to have a go at a reviewed book. Well, it's true that among the hundreds or so that did read a review, some may have actually done so. Anyway, as I go to some other literay forums and see a growth in the number of registered members, I am not a little puzzled when you say that there has been an increase in traffic and so few new subscriptions. Even though, for some of them, the people online when I visit is lower than on Literaryforums.org..And worse of all so little active participation from the newly-enlisted members, which is easy to check even for me by just having a look at the 'last visit' part in the members' list or at the respective post numbers.However, since you are requesting members' feedback on how to modify this situation, I would be quite blunt and say that the proposal you make about the site content being accessible only to registered users sounds like a desperate attempt. The forum accessible to registered users only is probably the one with the fewest posts and views.. I would say that the opposite could be a solution.I explain : now that the site seems to have numerous regular visitors, why not making a test : i.e. granting unregistered guests the right to participate freely in the forums for a month, should we say, as a token of the willingness to listen to everybody's opinion. Once people are "baited" and have begun expressing their views, the next step is to register when they are denied the right after the first month's freedom of speech. That would increase floppy's and xavierp's work but if it is for the better, why not ?Otherwise, as you say, people will continue acting as consumers, just reading and not contribute at all. Contributions from unregistered guests, on some sites, are even better than the regulars' ! Some people are shy or don't bother registering but do contribute. This from a site called debianhelp.org on which a regular unregistered guest made this comment, after answering a question from me, that he should register, having contributed quite a lot. And he did so, because he let everybody know it by creating a funny thread.Regards.
   
   Comment by azrael26 (visitor) on Tue, Aug 2, 2005 @ 15:42 IST #
2. azrael, thanks once again for your insightful views.About guest posting. Now I know that this is possible, but there are quite a few technical problems with allowing guests to post. For example due to an SEO technique I used sessions aren't preserved for guest posters and it might lead to some problems. Another problem is the problem of identity. It's a difficulty to keep a tab on guest posting history because you cannot search by username as with registered members.Another thing I have in mind is to shorten the current registration form and allow people to sign-up more easily. This is definitely more practical, but how much this will directly affect participation remains to be seen.You're right though. It does help to allow guests to post. I'll see what can be done at present to allow this.
   
   Comment by hari (blog owner) on Tue, Aug 2, 2005 @ 15:49 IST #
3. I reckon ....just leave it as it isdon't try to figure why or read peoples mindsit will grow in timefloppy
   
   Comment by floppywhopper (visitor) on Tue, Aug 2, 2005 @ 18:15 IST #
4. Thanks for the encouragement floppy. But I think that we really *do* need more activity. I think a lot of the problem is that people who register don't post at all and there are so many guests who don't register. That's too high a percentage and I would like to see it reduced. It's almost ten months now since the site was started and even with my low expectations, I couldn't really think it would take so long to reach 100 members. 10 new members/month is not really that great especially when 8 out of 10 never post once. It's becoming more and more obvious to me that the situatin cannot be left to cure itself. I've been waiting for a long time now but while there has been a rather drastic increase in site traffic, there has been no increase in community participation. And believe me, we are growing as far as traffic is concerned (I can see it in my site stats package).Sorry for ranting on...But would you suggest opening up the forums for guests to post in?That *might* help although it may be harder to moderate in the long run without being able to track individual user's posting history.
   
   Comment by hari (blog owner) on Tue, Aug 2, 2005 @ 19:13 IST #
5. Hi again,When I suggested that guests should be allowed to post for one month, I was meaning that you decide that, let's say, all guests would be given the chance to do so during September or October, and that you revert to the current situation just to experiment the feature, now that the traffic has increased, perhaps not necessarily making it permanent.I believe that there are now mostly regular visitors who come because they think the contents is of good quality, perhaps would like to make comments without it being necessary to register.In that case you won't need to 'track' down posts by unregistered members and see if there's a significant increase in participation. It would just be a sample period of time, so that you can judge the validity of the process.I must say that I quite agree with floppy as far as the number of guests is concerned : I don't mind to see few people if the contents are good. I think that seeing you are anxious to do well in this regard prompted me to suggest this solution... It is your thing and you have put much work in it, in the long run it will 'pay off'.cheers
   
   Comment by azrael26 (visitor) on Tue, Aug 2, 2005 @ 22:03 IST #
6. Thanks azrael. I think that we shall try this out at some point of time this month (enabling guest posting).Regards.
   
   Comment by hari (blog owner) on Wed, Aug 3, 2005 @ 07:01 IST #