This forum is rather inactive

It appears that this forum is rather inactive in activities. How much traffic does the Quantified Self site get, exactly? If it’s large amount, but people don’t visit the forum, then maybe somebody should make the forum more prominent.

This is a general problem with forums. Few people want to participate in inactive forums, even if the main website gets a lot of traffic.

I know that it is a problem. I am interested in making this community an active place.

[quote]I know that it is a problem. I am interested in making this community an active place.
[/quote]There are mainly two things you can do:

  1. Start threads with interesting questions. At best questions where people tend to have an
    opinion that they can share.
    To make a community more active it’s important to make it easy for people to participate.
    Questions that target very specific topics are also welcome. Questions that are easy to
    answer are however more likely to increase participation.

  2. If you know someone who doesn’t participate yet and who’s opinion would make a great
    addition to a thread that exists tell them. You could write them an email and say:
    “I’m thinking that given your expertise you could provide great input on topic X, here’s the link”.

Of course you don’t want to do this in a way where it appears that you are spamming the other person.
You can approach someone you know in person differently than somebody that you don’t know.
If you don’t have a relationship with the person, ask yourself: “Do I think this person would appreciate
if I tell them about this thread?” It also becomes more important to personalize your email.

Otherwise thank you for participating in the forum and making it more active. Thank you for wanting to make it even more active.

I was thinking more about getting the owner to a/b test and figure out how to make the forum more visible and more visited, like showing the latest 10 topics.

But thanks for the suggestion for starting new threads. I just created two thread on different topics.

Referring people to the forum is a great idea, and I knew of a guy who conducted several self quantification experiments on himself. I am going to see if I can get this person to join.

EDIT: And I got him to join. Well, he’s already registered here, and his name is gwern.

[quote]I was thinking more about getting the owner to a/b test and figure out how to make the forum more visible and more visited, like showing the latest 10 topics.[/quote]I would support such an effort but you should keep in mind that the promotion of the forum isn’t a huge priority for core people who make a decision about how the website looks like.

If you want them to change the main website it might help to have a wireframe of how you want the website to look and a link to the forum plugin that would show the latest 10 topics.

Then either Ernesto or Alexandra is your best contact person.

Dan started the current version of this forum by saying:
“He it would be cool to have a forum. I’ll do the necessary work”
This forum isn’t a priority for the QS Labs team. This get done by someone
offering to them.

Before this version of the forum lunched I told Dan, that it will be hard to get it going and that I don’t believe that it will become active.
Dan tried to get it started but after it didn’t get going I think his focus is now elsewhere.
The last login to his account was in May.
Maybe he does a bit of Spam deletion under the Admin account but I don’t think he posted anything in the meantime.

To try to get this forum restarted we need to it easy for people to participate.
That means having interesting discussions where people want to join and trying to involve key people who make valuable contributors.

[quote]But thanks for the suggestion for starting new threads. I just created two thread on different topics.[/quote]Congrats.

[quote]EDIT: And I got him to join. Well, he’s already registered here, and his name is gwern.
[/quote]The world is small, isn’t it?

As Christian mentioned, I’ve been super busy with Blueseed (the visa-free ships for startup entrepreneurs anchored in Silicon Valley’s international waters), but lately I’ve found some time to participate in the forum.

In the meantime, the forum has surpassed 1,000 registered users (even excluding spammers).

One issue was that Facebook login wasn’t working (Facebook changed their API). That’s fixed now so signup should be easier. It’s important to minimize friction when joining a forum.

Another thing - I added an SSL certificate so you can login securely at https://forum.quantifiedself.com.

Today I’ve also announced the forum on the discussion boards of several Meetup.com QS groups around the world (London, Berlin, Austin, NYC etc.), but 12 hours later, only two new members joined.

I see two ways to improve activity on the forum:

  • Technical
  • Community building. Random idea: if we have a really cool thread, posting about it on Hacker News on Reddit could bring lots of new users.

Suggestions for both are welcome.