Ok. You're asking for the help and advice, but not taking it. You think you know what you are doing with 53 forums, but you just admitted that you can't keep a board running. Something in there is messed up.
1) I just got rid of about...5% of the forums. 2) I didn't say I wasn't taking it. Go look at the board yourself. The moderator section is now only for moderators to post in.
I am open to any suggestions that Zarko has because he obviously has some experience with this stuff, and I want this board to be successful. I know that saying this is like my baby isn't an excuse, but I could be a lot more immature and say "shove off, I know what I'm doing". -Shrug-
The best advice you've gotten you haven't taken. You're entire Fan Fiction section, for example, can be condensed into two forums: Fiction and Discussion. You don't need a whole forum dedicated to Contests - use sticky threads in the Discussion forum (I'm assuming php has sticky thread options...).
Likewise, you could add one more forum to that section for original fiction. But even that isn't neccessary. Have users include the type of story it is in their subject.
i.e. (SW) Rise of the Empire i.e. (LotR) Arwen's Journey i.e. (ORG) The Abyss
Have them include a short summary with details like the genre at the beginning, so a user can easily browse through and find something they think sounds interesting.
If the forums become super active later on, you can add forums for individual genres or fandoms - but at this stage it's far from neccessary.
Almost all of your General/OOC forums could be combined into one, as well. Keep rules in a single sticky post in the forum if there are seperate rules for each forum. The first three forum could easily be combined into a single forum, with rules and announcements stickied.
I, personally, have never been a fan of forums for specific planets. What if users want to RP on different worlds? More importantly, what if they travel during the course of the RP? A single "Battlegrounds" forum is the most common and most successful method in my experiance.
Simply put, too many forums is the mark of a "newb" admin. I've found that out in running communities, and the fewer the forums the more focussed the members are - there's no browsing through dozens of places to find a thread. TRF only has three major forums, when you get down to it: Rebel Cafe, for banter; OOC, for RP discussion, qustions, etc.; and the Battlegrounds for IC RPing. When you get right down to it, we could probably survive as well with just those three (granting that the Jedi Order is a GROUP, and therefor would have a group board).
Arts, IC Propaganda, Astral, and the R&D forum are luxuries. We have the member base to support them. You, at this point in time, don't have the base to support too many forums. Cut it down to the CORE forums, and no more.
You know, I'm all for the -suggestions- and stuff (I will get to replying to Demosthenes at some point), but I didn't post the link to the board asking for a critque. I posted it hoping to get more members to join because the ones I have now -barely- ever post anything. I have put a TON of work into that board, and deleting half of those forums would just be stupid and would basically mean I should just start it over, which is not going to happen anytime soon. I realize that it might seem a little bit disorganized, but one thing you mainly look for when looking for a message board to join is what it offers. Mine offers RPG, which if you've been in Yahoo! chat lately, there is NO Star Wars RP left other than newbs, and it offers stuff for writing. There aren't many boards that offer that kind of thing. So, forgetting the tonage of boards, just...look at the board as a whole and see what it has to offer. If you do not feel you should join because you're busy with this one/others, that's fine, but please spread the word and keep in mind that it's still new and I hardly have anyone helping me with it. Maybe once the web site is made, I'll be able to get rid of some of the forums and make it look more organized....
If I wanted a critique, I would have gone, "hey, anyone want to read my Star Wars stories?" and gave you the link, but that's not what I did.
I'll post more later. It's too early for me to be arguing. :P
Clearly you've put lots of work into your board. But you say you want members to join, but you're ignoring the advice of a number of people who do have experiance running a successful message board. You're only reason to not want to delete forums is that you spent time creating them.
That is, I'm sorry to say, stupid. If you want your forums to be successful, then you have to do what needs to be done. Whether or not you like it is irrelevent - it's needs to be done.
You're basicallly saying that if it's a choice between starting over and not having a board, you'd rather not have a board.
I'm not saying that I'm going to ignore your advice. I sent a message to one of my members who has a lot of experience with web design/successful message boards hoping to see what she thinks. If it comes down to it, I'll get rid of most of the forums and try to make it look more organized.
Forgetting all this, though, is it something any of you would be willing to join, and maybe help out in any way possible? I need more Star Wars RPers. We have a few, but not a ton. There's probably enough to start some sort of RP, but it's more of a matter of getting them to post, and I have a feeling that if any of you guys joined, you might be able to get them more active somehow.
As I said, I didn't post the link to get critiqued, I didn't want to start an argument about it, so if you want to discuss it further...IM me on one of my messengers or something. Otherwise, I'm not ignoring your suggestions, but I'm not saying that I'll definately use any of them. There are ways I'm going to want to set my board up. I thought the way I had it was fine, but apparently not...though you guys didn't see it before I had the general RPG section and the multiple planets and all that, so...
