another forum gone

[decay]

the forum index is poorly organized, from a new user perspective, and is as long and boring as a Dan Brown novel. Also, we know that, as a general rule, all potential members will have shit attention spans. Good luck with that.

i imagine you had trouble with the dewey decimal system at your school library as well.
there's a robust search feature for whatever issue or task you're looking for.
it's not going to be spoonfed to you like we're all you're stepmom. that's not our responsibility.

and the bad ones can be easily remedied.

have you ever been a forum moderator, or are you just speaking to how easy you think it is and how much time you think is involved?

[Panici]

There are ways to use these sites to drive traffic here w/o becoming those sites, which is the point I've been making throughout.

Bimmers are badass. Everyone loves them. No good reason this place shouldn't be crawling with newcomers and enthusiasts alike.

I think we all would be interested to hear ideas for driving traffic to the site.

You've mentioned a need to appeal to a shorter attention span, can you elaborate on how this can be accomplished?

[AlexJ]

Duplicate Web 3.0 styling. Flarum (https://flarum.org/) is a great example of this. Minimalist, one-page content. The landing page goes straight into a topic/post/thread list (main content in center). This could be a catch-all, where all topics across all sub-forums are listed by time of last post, or maybe just the General Discussion forum. vBulletin 5.x has an add-on for tags, which is very useful and will allow users to know the thread topic at-a-glance. It add the capability to easily pull-up all content related to a specific tag, while retaining the existing forum structure (you get to have it both ways). The forum index exists as a navbar (on the left). Clicking the links in the navbar takes you to that subforum, which will perform exactly as your subforums do today.

Let the page breath, notice how Flarum allows for a lot of dead-space, uses larger fonts for thread titles, and uses smaller, faded text (the first X amount of characters from the body of the top post) to create space between topics. Also notice the font and graphical choices. These is quintessential modern web design. Now, compare to this:



Very simply, and without exaggeration, you will not attract new users this way. Call them stupid or whatever else you want to, but it is what it is, and there is just too much going on for the average internet user (consider that the vast majority of people consume the internet through phone apps exclusively). Already, the landing page is a barrier to the immediate consumption of content. You mean I gotta know what I'm looking for before I can start consuming? wtf? is it 2008 or something?

Once the site is hospitable, attracting users is a matter of getting the actual valuable content on this forum exposure on other content platforms. This is going to be Reddit and Instagram. A r3vlimited instagram could post build photo albums (hopefully well shot) and walk-arounds of member's rides, with links to the build thread located here. The build threads are the most perfect justification there is for the existence of these forums. Social media sites can't hang in that regard. Back to instagram, it is, beyond the shadow of a doubt, the absolute best method for connecting with like-minded people, businesses, organizations (etc), that has ever been created. If your familiar with how following and being followed works on this service, then you should know exactly what I mean. I don't even try to look for things I'm interested in and I find a dozen new accounts to follow every week, and my feed is nothing but exactly what I want. The point is, you WILL get exposure if the content is interesting, and the content here IS interesting, for sure.

With respect to sites like Reddit, build threads, how-tos, troubleshooting, and the like, are all fantastic content that appears often on these sites but only as links to the actual host. Very rarely is there a thousand word write-up on how to get something done on Reddit, because Reddit sucks at that, not least of all because searching for content on these types of sites is similar to having your testicles mashed to paste by a nutcracker (Merry Christmas everyone!).

Also, do something about the actual homepage. It's not doing you any favors. Maybe the opposite, actually. That domain should point directly to this forum. If your heart is set on having a typical homepage, then considering turning it into a blog (https://www.bmwblog.com/), where the posts are highlights of quality content on the forum, with links that direct to the actual threads. It's probably not too difficult to push certain threads directly to this new homepage.

That's what I've got for now. Gotta go work.

[Panici]

Thank you Alex for the in-depth reply. You've mentioned some very important points! I've replied under each quote for readability.

Let the page breath, notice how Flarum allows for a lot of dead-space, uses larger fonts for thread titles, and uses smaller, faded text (the first X amount of characters from the body of the top post) to create space between topics. Also notice the font and graphical choices. These is quintessential modern web design.

A platform change from vBulletin is a definite possibility.
In your opinion, from a web design standpoint, how does Flarum compare to something like Xenforo (www.jeepforum.com for example).

With respect to sites like Reddit, build threads, how-tos, troubleshooting, and the like, are all fantastic content that appears often on these sites but only as links to the actual host. Very rarely is there a thousand word write-up on how to get something done on Reddit, because Reddit sucks at that, not least of all because searching for content on these types of sites is similar to having your testicles mashed to paste by a nutcracker (Merry Christmas everyone!).

Agreed that we need to leverage the depth of knowledge on here.
It's kind of like the difference between a magazine and a hardcover book. Book goes more in-depth, and keeps information around for longer.
The trick will be accessing the forum (searching or otherwise) so the content is available. Like a table of contents or index in a book.

Once the site is hospitable, attracting users is a matter of getting the actual valuable content on this forum exposure on other content platforms. This is going to be Reddit and Instagram. A r3vlimited instagram could post build photo albums (hopefully well shot) and walk-arounds of member's rides, with links to the build thread located here. The build threads are the most perfect justification there is for the existence of these forums. Social media sites can't hang in that regard. Back to instagram, it is, beyond the shadow of a doubt, the absolute best method for connecting with like-minded people, businesses, organizations (etc), that has ever been created. If your familiar with how following and being followed works on this service, then you should know exactly what I mean. I don't even try to look for things I'm interested in and I find a dozen new accounts to follow every week, and my feed is nothing but exactly what I want. The point is, you WILL get exposure if the content is interesting, and the content here IS interesting, for sure.

I like the idea of an official forum instagram. We could start with the "Car of the Month" threads. Post a highlight picture and have a link to the forum thread.
Could highlight DIY threads, or maybe pick a few of the most recent/active threads?
I'm not a social media wiz so I don't have these answers at the moment.

Edit: It seems there is an R3VLimited account, but last post was in 2019.
I wonder if it's run by someone official on the forum?
Somehow I wasn't following the account, so it goes to show you that it needs curation/active posts to stay viewable.

Also, do something about the actual homepage. It's not doing you any favors. Maybe the opposite, actually. That domain should point directly to this forum. If your heart is set on having a typical homepage, then considering turning it into a blog ([/FONT]https://www.bmwblog.com/[FONT=Lucida Sans Unicode]), where the posts are highlights of quality content on the forum, with links that direct to the actual threads. It's probably not too difficult to push certain threads directly to this new homepage.

Pretty sure everyone can agree that a static homepage is nothing but an obstacle at this point. People want dynamic content on the front page.

[Digitalwave]

I believe that we all agree that there are aspects of the site that can improve. There's really no need to pile on and call anybody's idea dumber than another.

The site isn't going change overnight into Reddit. That doesn't mean that there are no good aspects of Reddit (and Facebook, Instagram, et al) that can be used for guidance or inspiration for the future of r3v. I actually think that AlexJ's suggestions have been some of the most helpful in this thread, even if I don't agree with all of them.

The attitude that the forum as it stands is perfection that shouldn't be messed with is 100% what will condemn it to obscurity and total irrelevance within the next 5 years.

[rturbo 930]

Also, we know that, as a general rule, all potential members will have shit attention spans.

Meanwhile, they can't figure out why a bunch of middle aged men and geezers treat them like shit, lack all patience for the fact that they're just kids who could benefit from some guidance.

The forum weeds out people with short attention spans? Sounds like a feature to me. Why would I want to attract people from the bottom of the barrel? Quality>quantity. Maybe the forum could use some improvement, but we don't need to pander to teenagers who are used to instagram and reddit, new users can spend some time learning to adapt to the forum layout.

Also you make it out like the average person here is 50-60, when it's really more like 30-40, and with E30s going up in price, parts going up in price, and cars becoming harder to find, it's not like there's tons of 16 year olds buying them up anyway that we're missing out on. The average E30 buyer is going up in age as well.

I believe that we all agree that there are aspects of the site that can improve. There's really no need to pile on and call anybody's idea dumber than another.

The site isn't going change overnight into Reddit. That doesn't mean that there are no good aspects of Reddit (and Facebook, Instagram, et al) that can be used for guidance or inspiration for the future of r3v. I actually think that AlexJ's suggestions have been some of the most helpful in this thread, even if I don't agree with all of them.

The attitude that the forum as it stands is perfection that shouldn't be messed with is 100% what will condemn it to obscurity and total irrelevance within the next 5 years.

I don't think anyone here would say that the site is perfect and can't be improved, especially after the problems of the last few years. We all know that it can, and the vB forum style is dated, even the current version. The other forums I post on use Invision, which is definitely more modern. James was working on changing over to something like that at one point but I guess he abandoned the idea. What we ARE saying is that we like the organization of the forum layout, and we have no interest in making it into another facebook or reddit with a single infinite scroll page. And if you want all the topics laid out by what's most recent, we have that, it's the 'new topics' button. Not saying that it couldn't also be improved or better integrated, but it's there.

Also I think it'd help a lot having someone running the site who has time to actually work on it. It doesn't seem like James does and is just keeping the site functional, rather than improving it.

[decay]

if you really need a reddit-style feed of what's being posted to the forum, click New Topics, right there under the banner. it's not that fucking hard.

[ForcedFirebird]

^^^That's exactly what I do. Hit "New Topics" and you have all posts starting with the latest regardless of sub-forum.

[Reichart12]

Once the site is hospitable, attracting users is a matter of getting the actual valuable content on this forum exposure on other content platforms. This is going to be Reddit and Instagram. A r3vlimited instagram could post build photo albums (hopefully well shot) and walk-arounds of member's rides, with links to the build thread located here. The build threads are the most perfect justification there is for the existence of these forums. Social media sites can't hang in that regard. Back to instagram, it is, beyond the shadow of a doubt, the absolute best method for connecting with like-minded people, businesses, organizations (etc), that has ever been created.

There is a r3v Instagram page but the guy who previously ran it has not been active there or here (has been on FB though) and is not interested in transferring the ownership of the IG page to anyone else. We tried to get back in control of it in the past year but it was a no go.

On a side note, I actually like the format of this forum mostly. I have popped on to other forums for other car brands/models and out of everything I've seen, r3v is the most intuitive and straightforward version. Not that I'm scared of change but I would be sad to see a wide revamp. But also my main use is to log in and click on new posts and just move through those unless I am looking for something specific.

[ForcedFirebird]

I have 4 kids from 16-24yr old. I can certainly tell you we (e30 enthusiasts) are a small slice of the entire demographic. Lol. Of all my kids and all their friends, not a single one is into cars really. Kinda amazes me a little, specially since I would gravitate towards cars with my friends parents/elders.

[ForcedFirebird]

I feel like driving a green Grand Torino right about now.

[decay]

I feel like driving a green Grand Torino right about now.

hahahah remember how i started a meme about 10 years ago about luke, the guy who built e30 subwoofer boxes, and how everyone needed to get off his lawn? good times.

[ForcedFirebird]

hahahah remember how i started a meme about 10 years ago about luke, the guy who built e30 subwoofer boxes, and how everyone needed to get off his lawn? good times.

Luke is 59 right now. Had to look up his old profile lol.

Maybe as old as an uncle's, far cray from a parent lol.

[Digitalwave]

Let's get back on track with discussion and ideas about how to revive/improve/save this forum, and stay away from the personal attacks. Otherwise this thread has run it's course.

[2mAn]

Deleted a bunch of sh!t probably shouldve deleted more, but if y’all want to let loose and call each other’s nazis or libtards head over to P&R where you can get buck nasty

Im genuinely happy that after enjoying a weekend off, I figured there would be a bunch of spam and there isn’t