TASA Members Participation and Retention

Yip, people should simply join because they love fish and want to share this with other that do the same and the neighbour only knows a good snoek recipe.

Keep it friendly and show genuine interest in what somebody is doing and I will guarantee that nobody will leave after they stopped here. Everybody wants that recognition for something they did or want to do.

 

i joined TASA because it was a South African site that could help me with problems that we get in the hobby in this country. i also found that the members were positive with their critism and friendly and very helpful. i belong to another forum i think based in america and whatever i posted about they always told me i was doing something wrong but didnt offer alternative advice, it was almost a holier than thou attitude which i didnt like. Tasa is a awesome forum i find people knowledgable and friendly who make genuine helpful comments, most of the time.

i think we could improve it by having a directory of fish and plants easily available as i stil go to the other forum to use their directories. we could include water parameters and possibly members experiences with each fish and plant species. it would be useful to the newbies and to some of the oldies as well im sure when they starting out with new species they'v never had before.

 

This thread has grown nicely today, have not read all the comments as I just returned from a graduation in PTA...

Something from the grad I'd like to share with you that one of speakers said:

"knowledge not shared with the community is no knowledge" or something like that...

That I suppose is the main purpose of this forum, to share knowledge!

 

A nice prize can be something like a Certificate maybe?

Gold framed
Loser of the Month!

?????

 

Dolphin, you never thought that by starting this thread, that you will ever have well over 100 reply's/post within 24 hours!
Now, if anyone say that we could not agree to disagree, and have such a live forum/threads, they probably have not switched their PC's on, or they have been capped by their ISP!

Thank you all for the nice contributions!
Gert.

 

I was not able to reply for the whole of yesterday as I was away from an internet connection. I am very glad that there has been such a huge response to this topic.

It was interesting to see what happened to Nimsy, who I had never seen posting before, make one fairly offensive comment and then have all subsequent posts get deleted owing to offensive content. It is this kind of person who damages the forum, not the moderators being stricter. I fully support the actions taken about this member.

More on topic: most of what I might have suggested has already been discussed yesterday. However, what I can gather from this thread alone, is that an interesting and valid topic is what keeps user activity and interest high, both from what has been said and the phenomenal response to this thread itself.

I personally believe that a successful method to retain members significantly more than we are is almost impossible to implement. This is because many people are just not "forum people", and a greater number of people are just not "fish people". Those that stay are a mix of both. People that stay have, more or less, a passion for the hobby as Zoom eloquently put it, and generally a respect for knowledge and the sharing of that knowledge. This particular characteristic can develop in some cases, but I think it is a personality-based trait that is generally fixed. Thus, the only true way to retain members is through knowledge on the forum and a healthy dose of mutual respect.

Advertisement will definitely get more members; we certainly do have a healthy stream of new members already, and I think that this can be taxing on the moderators and can disrupt a forum. However, new members are not a problem per se; their presence must be encouraged, it just means that everyone must be extra careful with decisions and their tone towards new members. Also, new members are not necessarily inexperienced fishkeepers, which seems to be the general assumption.

 

Yes, sometimes life gets in the way of your Hobby and forum! :bigsmile:

 

New Member Mentorship Programme

I'd like to suggest that we create a New Member Mentorship Programme...

This would entail that the more experienced members take under their fin (wing) a newbie and guide them through all of their issues and help them get started. This process can be done privately so the new member is not made to feel silly with their questions.

Combined with this, perhaps create a forum sub-category for New Members and under that category have New Member Introductions, New Member Mentorship Programme, etc etc (related topics) as sub forums.

This obviously needs the more experienced members to volunteer for this programme and the mods/admin can approve the mentors and set the guidelines...

When I first started keeping fish, I read in an American fish magazine...
There are three ways to learn something:
- You can read about
- You can have someone teach you
- You can learn by trial and error

So this programme would be having someone teach (guide) you...

Some might say that this would mean that questions that a newbie would ask would be repeated because its a private dicussion, well as time progresses a knowledge base of Q & A's can be setup and added to the FAQ.

I learnt the hard way... trial and error or as I'd like to call it, trial and success...for the most part until I had a much more experienced hobbyist teach me tons about fish keeping, including how to build tanks! Lets do that here...

Hope this is usefull!

 

I like that idea a lot!

 

One should just be clear on the experience part.

I know a few things about keeping fish but a lot of my knowledge is intelectuall knowledge of how things should be and work.
I have some reall experience though keeping and caring for bettas.

So one would have to look at a mentor for something specific. Unless you are like the Prof with loads of first hand experience in various departments.

But this sound like a very good idee.

 

That sounds excellent Dolphin.

 

I think the site hosting a fish database or instructions on keeping the fish will be a good idea to make the site more useful to people searching the net for info on fish etc, but then again, the idea is almost redundant as there are so many specialised forums already that do have these databases already set up so referrals to those sites are almost easier.

I would however like to see people take the initiative to just quote the necessary details from other web sources and add the url in the quote. Reason being, credit is given where due, AND the data is easily accessible on THIS site while you are reading the post related to the data. Rather than having to be redirected to said specialised site where you then have to read up or find the data yourself, defying the purpose of supplying info to our members ON-SITE.

In relation to the idea of prizes, I think there are some good ideas on other sites regarding giving recognition to member inputs like having a "shout-out" tipe topic where the "Member of the month" gets announced, someone who made some note-worthy contribution or gave a very helpful tip or some advice to a member etc. with a small thank-you written, or "member with most progression in the hobby" recognition etc to said member in a specific topic for it, rather than some obscure little green box rating in your profile stating
"soanso is really on their way"
"soanso has a spectacular aura about"
"soanso likes long walks on the beach and chick flicks with marshmallows"

Just a random thought on elements from other forums that I've seen and read through with interest.

Regards
W

 

I will start to go through the members list, and see who I can entice to post and also the old members with very low or no activity.
Maybe there are some that need clarification, on how the forum works!
Sometimes a new member is very shy or reluctant to post and ask questions...

 

If the admin and mods are keen on this idea, then perhaps announce it to the member database by way of an email to everyone that will:
1. invite back old newbies to this new forum offering
2. invite experienced members to participate
3. invite inactive members back to forum

Wording and Packaging of this email is everything and will be a good tool to get members back and participating...

 

You will be amazed at the number of oversea's visitors/members we have just on page one! - under "A"
I've send them the following:
Welcome!
I have noticed that you have joined our forum, and have not posted, as yet!
Is there anything that we could help with?
Hope to hear from you soon!
Gert Combrink
TASA moderator.
gertjc@telkomsa.net

 

sounds good gert

 

I have been doing that for a number of weeks already behind the scenes. Basically when I see a name on the "online users" who I recognise, but see they aren't posting much, I've sent them a PM just encouraging them to carry on reading, and to feel free to post when they want to.

Some members I recall as being very active, and suddenly gone silent, and also sent them PM's.

Most of the people all had similar "excuses" or reasons.

The people that use to post a lot have mostly moved to other forums, and some have come back after I've chatted to them. Some don't have access to the site at home, and can only access from a phone, which is why they mostly read a lot.

And a huge number of people are just reading quietly in the background and learning.