A Member's Feedback about the forum

[AgnosticBoy]

On another thread, one member said this...

You ban people for the most stupid reasons. That's why people don't want to get involved here.

Here is my response...
I've been watching a lot of Shark Tank lately so allow me to make a business analogy.

If I look at the forum like a business, then I would say that good conversation/debate is like the cash flow that helps the forum run (people join forums to have debate/discussions). This is why I can not afford to have trolling and other obvious behavior that derails topics. Sure, the lack of active members is a negative. The more members we have then the more activity, of course. But on the positive side, there has been some good quality discussions/debate that have already taken place despite only having a few consistent active members.

A lot of the work for getting a forum out there is probably DIY, like through networking, engaging on social media, etc. I honestly haven't done that much so I'll have to pick up my pace.


Anyone else feel free to chime in. How else do you think I can grow the forum? Please also feel free to share if you are part of any other forum and why you like participating there.

 

[AgnosticBoy]

I'm also a member on DebatingChristianity.com and Religiousforums.com.

I like the structure of the first one, but if you're looking for a lot of activity and more diversity of views, then the second one is probably the best out there dealing with religion. So from those two, I take it that good structure and numbers can make people want to join. I have seen some decline in active members on one of those sites, probably both. So maybe the forum participation is low overall.

My aim here used to be just for agnostics, but early on I expanded it to include everyone while keeping agnosticism in the background as a theme. One thing I will double down on is this forum being a place to find an agnostic's perspective, whether it be from myself or other agnostics. I think that is very much in demand, especially when it comes to politics.

 

[AgnosticBoy]

Here are some interesting stats that covers a 28 day period using Google Search Console:
1. During this time span, this forum showed showed up about 458 times in search results. 43 of those times resulted in people actually clicking the link to browse the forum.
2. The times my site has shown up the most has been when people searched "agnostic forum", "atheist forums", and interestingly, "sister wilhelmina lancaster". That last search input is from a thread I posted on that story a while ago.
3. Most of the browsers of my site are from the US and UK.
4. The most visited discussion in this time frame was "Does secularism provide any objective moral systems? If not, is that a problem?" (esp. page 2 of that discussion). In second place is, " Is Materialism scientifically validated?". A close third is this discussion, "It's time for the US to stop supporting the war in Ukraine "

These stats can serve as a baseline. I usually look at this every 1 to 3 months to check for progress.

 

[William]

I come here now and again and have my main thread (Generating Messages) which I also share on a number of different message board sites.
Generally I find the pace here is too slow, as there are not enough agnostics being active but my own role appears to be riding the prow so I accept as a given that there will not be much feedback to my posts but I still appreciate any I do receive.
I reserve any interaction with Christians generally to the other forum you mentioned and won't often get involved with debating any Christians on this site as I think this site is better focusing its support for agnosticism and educating agnostics as to the uniqueness of that position as one of the three stand-alone philosophical ones (along with Materialist and Supernaturalist philosophies) and do not regard agnosticism as a sub-group of atheism.
I have absolutely no interest in discussing politics.