Activity at an all time low?

[Ben]

This year seriously feels to be the least active summer I ever had the (dis)pleasure of witnessing.

It's not just here, it's everywhere. iSoaker.com's seeing it too. I can tell you for a fact that we were more popular last winter than we are now. There's no "n00b invasion" in sight either (and please don't bring that up, I have it filtered).

The real meat of this post is this: we need to be more popular! I'm not going to ask everyone to make water fights an international phenomena, just to help us out. You should notice that registrations are happening nearly every day, but finding a member who posts doesn't! Let's give people something to talk about.

We also need more websites, not more forum-only sites. Forum-only sites fail for one reason - they don't give anyone any reason to come back, they don't usually have very interesting content. The site has been the backbone of this forum for all of Super Soaker Central's existence.

Three years ago, when I first came onto the online water gun scene, nearly everyone had a website, and there wasn't just a few good ones, there were many. AquaZone, Water Battles, Aqua-Nexus, and GNG are just a few I can throw out. All of these sites had great content, and focused little on fluff such as forums, unnecessary graphics, and politics. I think the lack of quality sites is a major fault in this year's popularity.

Admittedly, I haven't updated Super Soaker Central once this year. I won't say that's not a problem (because it is) - but I am working on our next update which should be very major (mostly from the huge cache of submissions that 7 months will get you). Also, I personally am looking forward to Wild Boys' site because I feel (or hope) he'll do a great job.

It's not a real hard concept to understand, but make a good site to help out everyone! Write a good article a day - it can be about most anything, it can be about the battle you had today or an interesting idea you had. You can churn out a lot of reviews in a short time as well. Just make sure to do something unique or interesting to ensure that people come back.

I'm thinking of continuing this thought in a new TechLog entry... it should go without saying that I've been working on a few to get back into the flow of things. B)

[DX]

Just give things time. Wild Boys is starting up a site, Super Soaker Central will have a big update, SM has a gigantic update in progress, ... One of the major factors that influences forum activity is the creation of new topics. The iSoaker boards are red hot because of all the new topics. The effect of creating tons of new topics has had the biggest effect at the SM forums, where activity is limited in the first place. When we made new topics there, activity shot up and stayed high for a while.

[Ben]

I've been waiting for time to do something for a while actually. We just need someone to point out that we're sinking and need to do something and then time will work (at least in my mind).

I'm trying to go for posting to be as natural as possible here. Creating a lot of threads gives people things to talk about, but we already have plenty of threads to discuss here! If people got over the thought that we'll yell at you for bringing back an old thread, we'd be better off. I only bring that stuff up when the thread is obviously ancient, historical, or the post was poor.

Another technique forum administrators use to create a false sense of activity is "dummy" accounts which the admins actually use. They go on a dummy account, post a thread or two and then either answer it with their admin account or answer it with a dummy account. I'm not for that at all, but I suppose it can work.

We're not doing too hot right now, and I think I can speak for everyone in that we're not doing as well as we could. I have my ideal water gun message board in my head - people organize large wars, discuss past ones, build water cannons, but most importantly, have fun in the process. The only thing keeping that from happening is our current lack of popularity.

I know I've said this before, but from simple SEO keyword research, one can simply see that we're simply not picking up even half of our potential visitors. There's plenty of "secret" popular keywords that have just been skipped, forgotten or were never known in the first place! A lot of people think SEO is all about meta-tags, but those actually have little to nothing to do with it. Content is king, as many have said.

Lately I've been writing legal crap for Super Soaker Central and working on a database powered administration for our site (based upon an old CMS/blog that Neuro wrote). I have shown the CMS to several people, mostly because I am proud of what work I have done (no fake CMS URLs!). Most of our content is pretty good, so I'm not worrying about that aside from more editing, combining and deletion of redundant or unnecessary content. I plan on writing an article every two days once the new site is online.

I look back and I see that getting here wasn't too tough. Maybe it's just that I feel more experienced now, but before I was focusing on quick solutions and short cuts - did they really just slow me down? I think so.

I'd love to see more sites. We could easily have another iSoaker.com or Super Soaker Central any day. That's no lie either. The general idea behind this is that with more content-rich sites, the greater chance of water guns being popularized. People have said in the past that the more sites we have, the better, but it's only content-rich sites that help.

I'm losing all allegiances except for the one that keeps me here working and writing for Super Soaker Central. I'm cutting that political shit out because it only gets in the way. Yes, this probably is one of those threads, but I feel it's actually doing some good.

I'm talking about so many things at once that I don't even know what I'm talking about. The problem is a lack of popularity, my solution is creating content-rich sites to give people something to remember and do. How many times have you saw something interesting out on the street or TV and looked it up?

I'm just ranting a little at this point and starting most sentences with "I", so I'll quit this post right now. Everyone should get the point - don't just sit there, do something!

[NiborDude]

Originally posted by Ben@Jul 25 2005, 10:23 PM

I've been waiting for time to do something for a while actually. We just need someone to point out that we're sinking and need to do something and then time will work (at least in my mind).
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I've been saying for quite a while that everything seems so dismal. I said it on soaker media about a month ago.

I think it's a combination of things.
1. A lot of Veteran members are gone, and I mean a TON of members who have been part of the soaker scene for a while.
2. Not that many inexperienced users are coming onto the forums
3. Last year, WWn sunk, I think because it's gone it had a huge effect on soakerdom in general
4. Large sites dominate soakerdom. No one is making their own site because the sites they find first are large and over whelming that they figure it's just not worth making their own.

I have a prediction though. I believe late august and on, we are going to be swamped with a huge inexperienced user invasion. This year's line up of soakers is going to spark major interest and once people start getting into colder weather, they're going to spend more time at the computer than outside soaking. They'll search for super soaker on the internet and find their way here.

[Monsoon]

In reaction to your concerns, I've started to consider putting effort into making a good soaker site. However, I will not be here for all of August (trips, etc.). But come September, I'll put aside some time to come up with a good site to the best of my abilities. I'm going to use the resources I already have, including my free webspace (it's popup free). It will have good quality content and lots of pictures (every good site needs lots and lots of pictures). But a link to my site from the main sites would be nice to boost popularity once it's finished. I know I'm not the best member here in terms of activeness or anything, but I still want to make a difference, so I think this idea is going to be successful.

[MilkMan]

Yeah I've been noticing it too. I remember when there used to be new replies in every section more than once a day. It's a bit sad. I've been trying to participate as much as I can but I'm not really as interested in soakers as much I used to. Not to say that I don't like them anymore. I was also at camp for a month. That could be a reason why some of our members are inactive. I'll also be leaving on a ten day vacation this coming sunday.

[Monsoon]

We're just going to have to cope with this inactivity until the site updates. There really isn't much we can do until then.

[DX]

I think activity will pick up later in the year when 2 large sites update and 2 new sites come online. If that doesn't do it, I don't know what will.

[Monsoon]

My site won't be online until next year in spring, I haven't even thought up of a name for my site yet. I need ideas still!

[NiborDude]

If you want more activity on the soaker boards, the best thing you can do is create more topics. There has been little to talk about, so the best thing to do is to create discussion.

[DX]

That method has been proven to work based on activity levels on the Soaker Media forums. A string of new topics always brought about higher activity, and when less topics were made, activity started to drop off again.

[Ben]

Good to see that there's a large interest in helping out! Remember, first and foremost is content. You don't have a website without content. Under construction pages and such are disappointments as well.

A great free image editor is the GIMP, which is actually what every single image on Super Soaker Central was made on. It basically is a free Photoshop. You won't get as many filters, but it's perfect for website work and you can't beat the price.

Here's something reproduced from a thread along the same lines as this one at iSoaker.com:

This goes to everyone: If you don't have anything else, open up Frontpage and make something quick! Just make sure it's not ugly, has clashing colors, and most importantly make sure it is navigable. Content is what'll help us out the most, so make sure you write 5 - 10 articles from the start and add articles each day. New content is most important too, but essentially write how you normally carry out everything - your site is an expression of how you do things.

Don't care too much about your site becoming popular (like RAK for example). Some of the best sites aren't popular, which is a shame. Also remember that it can and will take a year or more for your site to appear in Google thanks to a restrictive policy that some call the "Google Sandbox". Super Soaker Central is actually in it right now from the domain change - you'll notice we're nowhere in any real searches which makes me wonder how we get visitors in the first place.

I'll do all I can to help everyone out not just because this is a big problem, but because I really like helping people out. Remember, if you have questions or need help, feel free to ask someone, anyone! If you'll need hosting for at least a while, I can help (though admittedly we can't be a home to everyone because that wouldn't be right).

Another very important thing to remember is that this is your website - you shouldn't expect or rely on any submissions. As many sites can attest, submissions can help, but they should never be where most of the content of a new site comes from. Admittedly, we receive an enormous amount of submissions, but that also doesn't mean that we'll publish anything we receive. Quality is important.

I'm trying to do all I can to take us from this recession or whatever it is. I've done the research and I know for a fact that we can be far more popular (here's a hint: Google should receive at least 300,000 water warfare related searches every summer month, and I'm making that a very conservative estimation). 50% or more of those searches come from simple obvious keywords such as "super soaker" and "water gun", but the rest are far more targeted which usually means more likely to interact. B)

[RadeonMaster]

The lack of interest may be due to the consistent decline in Super Soaker quality . Many of the veteran members played with super soakers in the days you could buy a CPS 2000 at Wal-Mart. New members, like me, have to buy these classics at high prices on Ebay.

[Monsoon]

I would have to disagree with you, because Super Soaker Central was "officially" created in 2003, which is still way after the CPS 2000 was common enough to buy at a Wal-Mart.

[RadeonMaster]

Yeah, I probably should have seen that Doom was the first member and he joined in 2003. I just assumed it had started earlier.