Ideas to make the forums more active?
 

Post them, if you have any.

Let's see if we can work on them together to make this place thriving again.

Free coffee/donuts?

In all seriousness: polls/tournaments/competitions tend to elicit at least some participation, including from lurkers, but the burden of setting those up and running them tends to unfairly fall on one person (with the exception of neverendingwonder's recent photo competition).

Admins may look into some ad promotion as well. Where is the horror.com facebook group? I have tried searching for it on facebook, unsuccessfully. The site might look into having a greater presence on facebook/twitter, the two biggest social media platforms.

Tournaments have been done to death, TBH. One of the reasons why I had signed off them last year. I thought the compilations might bring back some members but those aren't generating that much interest either.

Forget the admins. We are pretty much the only ones left thinking of the forums.

HDC Facebook group - http://www.facebook.com/groups/56759050462/

It doesn't generate much activity either. I have tried to advertise the BR IV, tournaments, compilations everything in there but not to much success.

I belong to several other horror forums, and every single one is having this same conversation. Forums just don't have the draw they used to.

Moonlighter:mad:

I had no idea there was a Facebook group for HDC. I still feel like such a noob here.

I guess the question comes down to what everyone wants out of the forum. I find the forum extremely useful but for the most part I don't really find there's anything for me to reply to. I love the HDC lists and how organized and helpful they are but there's no back and forth available. I also know that I personally wasn't posting anything too thoughtful because of certain members so I would specifically stay out of conversations and not initiate certain ones. That issue seems to be gone now for the most part so maybe I will actually post more and invite other people.

Unfortunatly its kinda the way forums are going these days, most people are satisfied to consolidate their hobbies/ interests through facebook. The tournaments and competition based stuff is still the only way to really encourage posting from either regulars or new members, but I guess its hard to keep things fresh. I think the important thing with small communities like this is maintaining a positive environment and quality posters. I pop on most days even when I dont post, just to see whats going on. I value the opinions of the people that post here, even if I dont always agree with them and enjoy the diversity we have in our community. I'd like to see more of the new members that sign up stick around, but ultimately I don't think its something that is easy to control. I know in the past a few new memebers have complained about feeling isolated or not welcome or whatever else, but I think thats just a symptom of joining any new community and if anything alot of the tournaments and games openly encourage everyone to get involved which is all you can really ask for.

"Most users ever online was 448, 08-31-2009 at 08:29 PM."

Not as long ago as one would expect! Should have bottled whatever the occasion was for that!

Forums have become passive, I guess. Compared to the real-time updating of Facebook/Twitter etc., plus their social interactions, forums just aren't "in" today. I still think we would benefit if we had a live chat box somewhere on HDC forums' home page, like the one I created for the bomb shelter HDC forum.

But this is one of many reasons. One other major reason was that all/most active members from those days grew up and/or moved out of HDC. They got busy with college/job/families and now have no time for HDC.

It was created a long time back by HDC-ian, The_Return, just in case horror (HDC's owner) pulled the plug of the forums. But it's pretty much inactive, except from the occasional post which is few and very far between.

All/most movie topics have been discussed to death. Most current topics have been covered also. Do a search on any topic which comes to your mind and you will see that a thread exists for it. We really have reached a saturation point for all topics related to horror.

New members sign up because they just want the membership. Rarely has a new member stayed to post around, and most often then not it's about a movie they are looking for or to spam about their films/books/blogs. Another major contributor to this is the lack of any sort of excitement in the genre. I can only dream of what would have happened if HDC existed in the 60s, 70s and 80s. So many wonderful films, decades of cultural/technological/social revolution...so many superb topics to discuss.

That never happened, unfortunately. It was just a gimmick by the Administrators to get some traffic going after the latest updates to the forum had been done. Traffic nosedived after Christmas 2008.

The most traffic this forum had was back in 2006-07. That's the reason why the first edition of Battle Royale was so popular. I remember the 2nd (or 3rd) edition of the HDC Awards had 279 people online that night, out of which 100-ish were HDC members who were refreshing and replying at the same time!

I remember when a couple of members were writing a "movie" that cast HDC members as characters. I always enjoyed reading those.

Yeah...loved them too. Massacre Man & FC both were exceptionally great in those sort of creative works. Highly entertaining!

Anyway, I'm not sure how many female active members we have at the moment but I think a 'Wet-T Shirt Photo Tournament of the HDC Hotties" can bring some sparks again in the board!;):D :D

I don't think people want to see 53 year old boobs in a wet t-shirt. :rolleyes:

And before anyone tries suggesting a wet y-fronts contest let it be known i am against it.:D

This incident generated a lot of activity: http://www.horror.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1916

Unless that person happens to be a 54 year old guy:D

...and a guy who just loves boobs!:cool:

I used to love those live events, the HDC Trivia Contest and Awards Ceremonies, with everyone tuned into NEW and NE announcing.
Hard to believe I joined this place over 7 years ago.

:eek::eek::eek:

I was actually thinking the same thing. I also liked how MM tried to do a movie night (I think V did too?)... We could potentially try to do it again but it's a nightmare with the timezone differences.

Yeah, I tried to do the one that MM did, but I can't even remember now why it didn't work out. I would love to do another live event; try and get some of the older members to show up, maybe. Of course, it's another thing entirely to actually make it happen. Although personally, it'd be enough for me just have people like NE, V, Chrono, Hammerfan, newb, etc. hanging out.

V, I don't know if this is a viable or even good idea, but what about taking the forum to Facebook? I know there's this: https://www.facebook.com/appcenter/f...ref=ts&fref=ts
which I believe you can also tie to a group. Might be more convenient to consolidate? Again, I don't even really know if that would work, but it's just an idea. It would definitely take some more looking-into.

There are certain members of the forum who actively despise Facebook...

Well, you can't please everyone, I guess.

I'm still relatively new here. But when I joined things were pretty slow. I remember posting about it once. I just joined the HorrorDVDs forum recently too. It's slow over there as well. There is a videogame forum called Neogaf which I'm not a member. But they have an off topic section with horror topics that seem to get a lot of posts. I don't know if it's from the same group of people. But they have yearly Halloween movie watching things. And other "what horror movie are you watching" type of topics too.

I thought this was the go to place for horror. I think I saw a person from horror.com on one of the Starz horror specials once. I don't use Facebook so I don't know what's going on there. I only check it for company news on rare occasions. For personal stuff, it seems to be full of the look what I did, saw, got type of posts. Same goes for twitter. Forums still seem to be a good place. Provided they don't get out of hand with irrelevant posts.

Maybe this forum just needs some new advertising to let people know this is the place for horror chats. Perhaps people don't know which forum to join or something. I know I asked about that Lovecraft complete book a few days ago and no one got back to me here. I had to search for comparisons on a few Lovecraft forums. You would think people here would be more into this stuff. I don't know.

I agree that forums are kind of an old medium. I find most people go to forums when they have questions or want recommendations.

Someone comes in and posts, "what movie is this?", they get their answer (or they don't) and then they don't come back.

I was over at Bloody-Disgusting for many years. I only visited this forum because the Bloody-Disgusting forum changed designs and I hated it. I still wanted to occasionally discuss films and look for recommendations, etc. so I started an account here. I actually like it here more than I ever did at Bloody-Disgusting.

I honestly love the polls and tournaments here and how much work V puts into a lot of that stuff. I wish more people where here and participated.

But I don't think anything is really going to make things more active.

I agree with V that it doesn't help that the genre doesn't have much going for it right now. I'm so sick of the whole "reality tv" style movies with "lost footage". The franchises are all pretty much dead in the water right now because of the economy and financial issues. I end up watching SyFy Channel movies just because at least a Giant Shark jumping out of the water and eating a plane that's 30,000 feet in the air is laughably entertaining.

But back to the forums, they're a lot like life. People drift in and out of our lives, much the same way users do on forums.

I admit I do it. I go a few months on some forums and then come back for a while and post everyday, then I get busy with life for a while and disappear again.

I honestly haven't been watching many horror movies these days and when I do, it's usually old ones I've seen before. I like to look through the "recently watched" to see if there's something that maybe catches my eye, but I don't have any real "questions" about horror movies to post about. I've been trying to come here everyday just to vote in tournaments and the like because I think they are a lot of fun and I know V puts in a lot of work and time putting them together.

^ I agree.

I think a lot of it is that the site owner has pretty much gave up. Horror.com hasn't been updated since Halloween. 3 months and nothing new.

I agree about the Tourney's. I always like seeing whats the next round picks.

Also, I think that after about 3 pages it seems like every new post dies.

advertising....advertising....advertising...

Yeah, maybe we can start small and then expand it if people are interested... I think that part of the problem was the timezone thing...

Yeah, the timezone thing was definitely the biggest issue.

Personally, I think the issue is getting a critical mass of folks on at the same time. When I was much more active - probably 6 years ago or so - I could pop on while at work and the second you would post, someone wouldp post back. There were lots of "This or That" threads and you could almost always get into a conversation. Now, I pop by when I can (busier, older, etc.) but if I post it languishes for hours or when I see threads they are from days ago. That's why the tournaments still work - you can post on them every once in awhile but not really need to have any immediate responses. When HDC was rocking, it was more like a chat room than a forum -that's what i miss about the place.

You hit the nail right on the head!

A lot of people here do seem to be from overseas. But I doubt that's a big reason for not posting.

Maybe people are moving towards forums that aren't so focused on one theme?

"Bump"....

two words - strip poker

http://6esand7sjob5.files.wordpress....ards.jpg?w=193

I'm afraid there's not much to be done about the forum activity.It's been in a steady decline for years. Just the way of the internet, I guess. That and the realization from posting here for many years....seems like 80% of horror fans are bi-polar.

Maybe some sort of Straker appreciation day is what we all need.... We could all get together and take it in turns to talk about how awesome I am and why I'm so loved. Maybe if any of you can bake you'd like to take the opportunity to bake a cake for me.... Doesnt have to be anything fancy, I dont want you guys going to too much trouble, a nice chocolate cake perhaps? I'll leave it with you guys anyway, its your special day to honor a living legend. :cool:

this......

Two words: Chuck Norris

http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q...dc/chuckth.jpg

There should be a General chat forum where people can talk about everything. Not just horror related, though this is a horror film, sometimes people want some random stuff.

This thread is in the general section of the forum... Threads don't have to be horror related. ;)

Anyway, we are getting sidetracked from the real issue. Someone mentioned something about some sort of Straker appreciation day earlier in the thread, sounded like a fine idea to me.

Time to shoot a Horror.com "Harlem Shake."

See:

It would be helpful if this site settings didn't log us out so quickly. Seems like it must be set to log one out after 5 or 10 mins. That's way too short. It's a hassle to have to constantly log back in. I'd suggest changing the setting to no time limit, but at least an hour. thanks!