07-27-2021, 11:21 PM
(07-27-2021, 09:48 PM)GeneralGuy Wrote: There are a lot of different events and circumstances that contributed to the the demise of traffic and activity on MFGG's forums. Some of them are the baffling decisions made by the administration here. The first one is abandoning the IPB forums. Right off the bat you have lost a lot of people because: a) they don't feel it's worth the effort of making a new forum account, and b) people who don't even know about the new forums. But that wasn't enough. So afterward we have the second thing that really killed the MFGG forums: The Split. Where the MFGG administration actually wanted to kill the activity on the forums by making it strictly about fangames. So the community is fractured even further. Making Mario fangames is a niche interest, so you want things to be as inclusive and accessible as possible if you want a lot of activity. Speaking of niche, MFGG failed to capitalize on expanding our growth by not including ROM hacks and non-Mario fangames sooner. In fact, we still haven't included a Super Mario Maker level database on the main site, A huge missed opportunity that would have skyrocketed activity here and introduce that demographic to fangames, which gives them far more creative control and customization than a level editor.
Another thing is that nothing fun happens here anymore. There hasn't been any Sprite, Drawing or Minigame competition here in ages, and the new admins don't do any fun stuff anymore like randomly changing the forum skin and embedding music. Coins have absolutely no use, so there's not much incentive to earn them by doing the things that would make the forum more active. There needs to be an appealing incentive and exclusive reason to use the forums over something else.
There were two schools of thought to the IPB ship-jumping: at the time, a lot of the member base saw it as a big positive. Finally, MFGG is getting away from that dinosaur of an Invision Power Board and moving on to greener pastures! Of course, those green pastures happened to be the obtuse phpBB board system which, per the opinions of many former staffers (so it's not just me speculating), was an absolute pain to work with and add new functionality to. But hey, it sure beats working with that ancient, obsolete IPB software, right?
Well, in comes the second thought process: IPB was already actively being patched even at the time, and this very well could have continued as new exploits were being discovered and just as necessary. The problem there is that inevitably, IPB would need to have a massive backend overhaul to keep it running more smoothly. Realistically, it's probably not worth keeping that up forever. I can see why they moved on from it, in that case. But I do miss the IPB boards... I don't think there's a single person on MFGG from 2004-2009 who doesn't. Except maybe Henry the Horse. But he was a horse's ass, so screw him. That old rotten loser.
The Split was a very complicated issue and I really don't think you can just say it was the site choosing to annex the community for no good reason. DavidCaruso cruised by here a couple of years ago and gave some valuable insight into what the staff were even doing at the time. Things were pretty chaotic, the member base was barely even interested in fangaming (which I believe was the primary justification for The Split), and a lot of staffers were straight-up quitting because of the experience being so negative. From what I've been told, The Split was an attempt to reign back in the fangaming part of MFGG. But perhaps it was done much too well and it alienated everyone for a while. But the truth is, post-Split, MFGG was... largely fine. When I came back in 2012 after several years of not really browsing anymore, I was surprised to find that the community was largely all right. They hadn't gotten the General Chat back yet, but things were fine. A bit quiet, but fine. I guess that's how these things go.
Now, do I think The Split was executed well? Ehh... probably not. But that's the past. We're looking at over a decade since that happened. We can dwell on it all we want, but there's really no point to it. It's time to look forward!
One point you raise that I think is excellent is that forum events are basically at a standstill. It's disheartening to see the current-day staff not even bother with competitions anymore and - hey, I get it, user turnout was getting really low by the end of it, but it's still really unfortunate. The most that happens these days are the Game Jams; those admittedly still yield some pretty remarkable activity, but all of that activity is thrown off-site onto Discord or itch.io. C'mon guys! That's exactly the kind of thing you could put on the forums! What's the big idea? Who knows.
I think that's your main problem: if you want the forums to thrive better, you're gonna need staff participation. You've gotta show them there's still a clock tickin' on here. Either that or we abandon ship again and go back to the IPB boards, which we'll declare re-opened. Hahaha. I mean why not? If the forums are barely being used, who cares right? I'm mostly joking of course... but think about it