Just a thought...

[Phridae]

I noticed we have exactly 600 members, but only 150 are active.
I hate when people join something just for the heck of it, and never do anything. Can't there be a grace period where if you don't become active, you're membership is gone?

I also noticed lots of people introduce themselves, and thats it.
I say if you sign up, be active.

 

[VinBin]

Eh, the way I see it, it doesnt really matter. Some people enjoy just reading the posts and such and dont care much to respond...and others dont have the time to check in every day(week, month...) so anyways...who knows they might eventually become active after a few years...

 

[JJR512]

It's not that they sign up and do nothing. I operate a vBulletin message board myself, and that's not what "Active Members" refers to. From the vBulletin administrator's control panel:

If a user has visited the board within the past number of days you specify, they are considered 'active'.

The default time cutoff is 30 days.

So this doesn't mean someone registered and never posted. An inactive member could have 10,000 posts. It's just that they haven't visited during the last 30 days. And because any number of factors can contribute to a lack of visiting (personal problems, work schedule, in a coma, etc.), you wouldn't want to just arbitrarily cancel the membership of members who become inactive.

The administrators of this message board (of any vBulletin message board) have ways to search for users based on various criteria they can specify. For example, it would be easy to find all members who registered over a year ago and never posted. That would be a good way to find people whose memberships you want to cancel, if you want to cancel memberships at all.

 

[MMiz]

Our forum is much like many small forums, where a small number of members are responsible for a majority of the posts.

While we have over 600 members, I think it's safe to say that many have forgotten about the forum. This is partly due to my hate of spam and advertising. Since we've started the forum I've only sent out a single site-wide email, and that happened when we moved to the new forum software. Other forums send our regular "Look, we have some insignificant new thing to bug you about" emails. I just don't want to do that.

In the upcoming months I'd like to add a monthly community newsletter that will showcase our most talked about threads and discussion topics. Until that it set up, I don't want to start bugging people.

While we have the option to prune inactive members from the database, I don't want to do it. There are discussion forums that I've been a member of for over five years, that I visit daily, but that I don't post in. I think it's safe to say we have quite a few lurkers at EMTLife too.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how we can get more active members? It really all comes down to what kind of discussion we have. The best part of the forum is that you're literally in control. You can post whatever topic you want, and others can jump in as they want.

Any ideas on how we can grow our community and encourage discussion? Contests? Features? What do other forums have that you'd like to see at EMTLife?

 

[JJR512]

You have a narrow but well-defined target audience. The best way to increase activity here is to target that audience directly. There are probably many ways to do that; however, finding free, or low-cost ways, is probably the trick you're looking for. I don't have any ideas for you at this time, but I'll keep my brain turned on.

As for features, there are a lot of features for vBulletin that I'm aware of that make the board easier or more fun to use. I myself own and operate a vB BBS, and have for over five years now. I've actually created new features for vBulletin, which have been published on the official vBulletin "hacks" (add-on features) website. I'd be willing to help out here in a technical capacity, if you'd like.

 

[Wingnut]

Truly the only thing that's going to bring more active members to this board is the people already here. And quite frankly we have an amazing group of people here.

The only thing I could suggest is making it easier to find this site and I wouldn't know the first thing about doing that. The thing with EMS forums is that we're a very specific group, Usually only EMS people are going to be looking for something as specific as we are, and many don't have the time to post.

Personally I wouldn't cancel any memberships, it's just a number on the board and if someone hasn't posted in a while, they probably wouldn't come back if thier membership was canceled at any point.

Hope this was a little helpful at least.

 

[coloradoemt]

Site membership is like anything else, you are not going to please or interest everyone, and I am sure you know this. This site is never going to have enough features, interesting topics, free stuff B) etc. to please everyone. I have tried other chat forums and choose to post on this one. I like this site, it "fits" me. If I remember right there were approximately 150 members when I became one. So this site is up to 600 now. I think this is pretty good concidering what I have already said here, regardless how many of them post or choose not to.

 

[TTLWHKR]

What happened to our Member Number's?

 

[nyc.ems]

hey i would like to stay home too,but theres bills to pay.staying home all day online wont pay them......

 

[TTLWHKR]

hey i would like to stay home too,but theres bills to pay.staying home all day online wont pay them......

Who said stay home, on line all day?

I've been working on these numbers since June 2004. During that time I was off work for five months with a fx'd leg. It wasn't that bad... The site was growing, changing, interesting... Like a love child.

 

[squid]

I check in and read about twice a week, but post less often. I just soak up the .... um... atmosphere There are probably quite a few lurkers who are doing the same thing.

 

[emtgirl_in_training]

And because any number of factors can contribute to a lack of visiting (personal problems, work schedule, in a coma, etc.), you wouldn't want to just arbitrarily cancel the membership of members who become inactive.

i'm really glad that if i lapse into a coma, i know that i have some place to come, if and when i wake up, to discuss the pre-hospital care I received.

 

[az_emt18]

About the whole active thing..

I go to school and I work a lot of hours.. I don't usually have time in my day sometimes to get on.. But for the longest time my computer has been down, so that is another reason I haven't been on, but now that it is up and running, I will be on the site a lot more..

 

[emtkelley]

I usually lurk here a few times a week. I don't post much but I enjoy the atmosphere here. Very quiet and nonjudgmental. I also like the fact there are fewer rifts here, so I visit this one and another one.

*makes a mental note to put in my .02 more often

 

[Jon]

I usually lurk here a few times a week. I don't post much but I enjoy the atmosphere here. Very quiet and nonjudgmental. I also like the fact there are fewer rifts here, so I visit this one and another one.

*makes a mental note to put in my .02 more often

It makes me feel warm and gooey inside to be part of such a place....

My "county" has an unofficial "b**ch forum" that has alternated between good and bad several times over the last 2 years... it was drastically cleaned up about 6 months ago, and it is time for some more clean-up... too much backstabbing and personal attacks.....

Jon

 

[TTLWHKR]

It makes me feel warm and gooey inside to be part of such a place....

That's great...