Kill the forum
Our community is on Discourse and Zoom. We're using a Discourse forum for asynchronous convos and Zoom for live convos.
Live convos are at the core of what we do, the forum then is competing with the live convos.
Do you think it'd be a good idea to kill the forum so our members can only have access to the live convos and the 'competition' would cease to be a problem?
Edit 20/10: We are building a web-app with DMs and group chat features. We also want to create wiki-like pages (with Notion x Super) so ressources can stay and still be commented/edited/discussed.
I'd consider keeping both and use the forum for summaries of the live events to benefit those that can't attend. I do this for Rosieland meetups, I actively encourage people to take notes as we go, then we share the notes for others to scan/share afterwards. Not everyone wants to sit through a recording.
I agree with keeping both too.
Getting two/more people on Zoom may not be possible always due to time constraints. But anyone can start a thread and fellow members can respond at their own time.
You can consider other text-based solutions like chat (Discord/Slack) so all your channels are live conversations. I do respect your decision tho! What have your members said about this topic @LVRSNFRNDS ?
Thanks for your insights. We can create as many Zoom events as we can so the excuse of the time constraint becomes less and less valid.
We can certainly ask the community about this but we also have the numbers to back our assumption : engagement is declining on the forum, and is made by an infinitesimal part of the community.
Finally, we are a bit afraid of using instant messaging like Discord or Slack as you quickly losing track of the exchanges.
But... We are building a web-app with DMs and group chat features. We also want to create wiki-like pages (with Notion x Super) so ressources can stay and still be commented/edited/discussed.
True, that is something we should encourage before killing it :)
Forums aren't dead. It's always good for a community to have something where they can read and discuss things. I'm sure Live convos are your core but then what will happen after your Live zoom calls are over?
Where would they go to talk about what happened in your Live zoom calls? If they have questions who would they ask?
That was our assumption : they would use the forum before and/or after a live convo. In practice, the threads related to live video convos are barely used.
Because we want them to create new live video convos when they have (new) questions, we think think the forum is competing, not completing.
Some people (like me) are just not visual and synchronous and prefer text-based, asynchronous tools like Discourse and discussion boards.
Of course, I understand your point. Sadly, we can't be another FB group/Reddit/Quora.
This comment was deleted 4 years ago
Thanks Primer! The forum is not that popular, hence the project to kill it.