13 replies to this topic

[nirmaldaniel]

Dear Mods/ Admins,

I am just wondering these days, no shouts in the shout boxes and nothing that much interesting over here as it was a couple of years ago. I remember the day when i stepped into forums. I didnt know what to do and what not to do, but learnt it slowly and i got it right and i am really thankful to trap17 for that, on the other hand i see today people leave Trap17 just like that. I am very sure they also had learnt many things from Trap like me, still they choose to leave. For example the removal of edit forced few people to leave. I mean few good people left. So practically checking out this issue, what can be done for this ??

People dont leave any forum just like that. Either they must not have got what they wanted. For example some come here for knowledge, like they raise a question and they expect people to answer, if they find there is none to answer them they just leave.So others leave the forum if some exisiting feature is removed from the forum like the removal of edit button. There are others who come here just for the offers which the forum gives. They leave once they ind it is hard to hit that offer and get things out of it . I find these are the 3 main issues which makes people leave the forum.

So what can be done to resolve these issues ??

Issue 1 : People leave trap17 Just because they dont get answers for their questions

My suggestion on how to resolve this issue is that, if some question remains unanswered for over a period of time by the forum members, then that question should be answered my some of the mods. Now one can say that if the mod had known the answer for that question well before then he would have answered that . What i conclude here is that some one must take pains to find the answer and give it to the user so that he does not feel that he was left unanswered . Just imagine who else will take this pain of going and finding the answer and giving it in the forum. I personally feel that the Mod should take this responsibility.

Issue 2 : Removal of certain features

When i say this every ones attention goes to the removal of edit button from the forum. Yeah may be members dont understand why it was removed, but on the other hand there might be some reason why it has been done . Those reasons the Admins can bring it to light so that the users will understand why it is done and they wont grumble over it.

Issue 3 : People come here for the benifitial offers given

One such thing is the awarding of My Cents which inturn can be used to buy all hosting related stuffs from XISTO. If some one is gonna feel that getting My Cents is too difficult then Trap17 can always give some thing extra occasionally for its regular users which will give them a boost. Like just 3 or 4 $ into some ones My Cents account who feels that he cant push on might encourage him to stay with Trap ( On the other hand there might be drawbacks here, he may get the 3 or 4 $ and remain idle, for this i am very sure Trap17 can design some methods )

Full filling the above issues will give its users a feel that they would never want to leave Trap17 Hope every one who steps into this forum remains here life long.

[webishqiptar]

I don't see anyone leaving from here. Maybe I'm not old enough to notice that, but it seems like lots of people join everyday. In my opinion trap17 forums is maintained by some people who write continuously and contribute to expanding forums. And the way our hosts are sponsored is by thousands of guests that can click ads and maintain our hosts. This is what I think about users here. But trap17 is perfect for little websites with no big traffic at all, so if you get lots of traffic and get some money from that it would be easier to pay for hosting rather than write for hosting.

It seems a good debate but i prefer to say, that a nicer debate would be how to make it easier to get involved in trap17. I mean that I found it harder to write and make fun here. I find it difficult to get some real time here except for myCents.

[anwiii]

well the last regular member to leave was watermonkey. he addressed several of his issues in a thread he started. from my experience here, people come and go just like anywhere else. it's no different. even if people are getting what they want here, there is more to life than just trap17 and the world offers much much more.

as far as trap is concerned, they cannot please everyone. the edit feature was taken out because people were abusing it and supposedly "stealing" from old posts they would edit. this is unacceptable. although i feel there is a way to resolve this through compromise, taking it down is the quick fix. you still get 10 minutes to edit though and i have used that time many times to edit my poor spelling and grammer and to delete some of my thoughts or add a few more lines.

i agree though. not only does trap need to focus on bringing in users, we need to focus on keeping them here. i like this place and i would like to see it grow in to a more regular member base where i can see 20+ active memebers on at any given time....instead of always less than 10. this figure should be at least DOUBLED. but, even if it's not, i still like this place and i don't plan on leaving anytime soon.

i do like your suggestion that no question should be left unanswered. if people think they are being ignored, then i can see that as a reason to leave. but then you have to think that if a question isn't being answered, nobody really has an interest in answering since maybe people don't know the answer and the answer lies somewhere else besides trap. what would be better for the person asking a question? a forced answer from trap that barely touches on a true answer, or finding it somewhere else where they specialize in certain areas and can give a much more appropriate answer? trap is a general forum and not really specific to any one area of expertise.

anyway, i do see the point you are getting at. hopefully we can make this place "the place to go".

webishqiptar, on Feb 15 2010, 04:37 AM, said:

I don't see anyone leaving from here.

[sheepdog]

Silly me, I hadn't even noticed the edit button was gone! But that is a bummer, I do use it occasionally to edit bad spelling and or grammer after I make a post sometimes. My spelling leaves a lot to be desired.

The only real problem I have here is I suppose, related to the generation gap and general lifestyle between myself and the vast majority of the posters here. It is really hard for me to reply to so many of the posts, when you guys get to talking about computer stuff most of the time I don't even know what you are talking about. But the free web hosting is great, so I do my best to tough it out and reply to what I can and also I try to start topics that I think might be of interest from information I hear on TV that I think is newsworthy. It isn't easy. I wish we had a few more dog breeders or goat farmers here. I keep hoping we will get a few.

[knoppixusr]

Life has allot of things that come your way and i think one should make the most of them. This is my general view on trap17. Just like life there are some good and bad factors for instance the removal of the edit feature or just plain disrespectful people are two factors for me personally but in life there are also those factors and more. I like to look on the bright side and that is that trap offers some good hosting for posting.

Trap is not the best community to get an answer to some technical questions, and I think this all comes down to numbers.... trap is not as big as reddit for instance... But i would like to see people being offered an reward for answering an important question to a particular member. Now i know im just shooting in the dark here, and talking is easy for me and everyone else here. But the person who is in charge and actually has to modify the whole system so that the changes may be implemented will probably just grunt at our suggestions that we post. But who knows perhaps there is an easy way to do it ;-)

Personally i have posted a technical question and no one has given me any useful answer to my question. Now at the moment this question is not so important to me but if i was really desperate for an answer, it would be cool if i could add some reward to my question and then if the advice i receive actually works i could pay from my account mycents to the person who gave the answer. That way i would trade mycents for good advice. It would open a market for technical people to answer questions on trap. Currently people just post to earn mycents but if they post to really help others and earn rewards this would improve the quality of the forum i think.

Just a though...

[rob86]

I'm kind of losing enthusiasm to post here for a few reasons, one because I got distracted from my web design hobby because of the Christmas season and never got back into it, so I don't post for $$. Another reason is that I can't count the number of times I replied to someone's thread who didn't even acknowledge that they read my reply, or sometimes they just disappear. I'm admittedly guilty of this too, maybe we're too busy or something. Sometimes I plan to write a real reply and wait until I have time, and totally forget about it. I can't help but get the feeling that most of my posts aren't really read, so I don't feel much like posting and the quality of my posts gets less. Why bother writing a nice reply to someone who's just going to be a one post wonder and leave the forum? People leave after their first post more often than stay, from what I can tell. Even some threads from the mods and only get a few replies, if any. I think that's why they don't start too many threads. I could post the same posts on another forum and get pages of replies. Seems like the only threads that get very many posts these days are either 1) Ancient 2) "What's Your Favourite" Polls 3) Arguments (like people fighting over religion) 4) Tech support questions. Nothing 'wrong' with posts like that, but they don't capture my interest unless it's a question I can answer that isn't already solved.


There are a lot of 'regulars' leaving too, like Simpleton and Namelesss who I replied to on a few occasions. They used to post a dozen things every day, now they disappeared off the face of the earth. Maybe they're busy or just bored of the forum, but it sure is less active since they went quiet. Their posting enthusiasm added something to the forum anyway. Watermonkey? I had no idea who that was I just know he left in an overly dramatic way. I don't remember a single post from him.

[anwiii]

we already do get rewarded with mycents everytime someone replies to a topic

as far as adding a feature to pay a person more mycents, that system will be biased since some people have mycents to spare and some don't. so it wouldn't be fair for the users with very few mycents, that has a question that isn't being answered. so with your system. the only people who would get their questions answered would be the already rich with mycents people.

also, what if their were more than one reply to a question or what if 5 people contributed to the full answer where no one person answer the question fully.

i like the idea, i just don't think it would work here. too much trouble to impliment for something where people can find the answers elsewhere if nobody responds or doesn't know the answer. usually, people are pretty good at responding to questions too so you are talking about the minority of the topics or posts.

knoppixusr, on Feb 15 2010, 11:38 AM, said:

Personally i have posted a technical question and no one has given me any useful answer to my question. Now at the moment this question is not so important to me but if i was really desperate for an answer, it would be cool if i could add some reward to my question and then if the advice i receive actually works i could pay from my account mycents to the person who gave the answer. That way i would trade mycents for good advice. It would open a market for technical people to answer questions on trap. Currently people just post to earn mycents but if they post to really help others and earn rewards this would improve the quality of the forum i think.

Just a though...

[Soviet Rathe]

I have been finding it a little hard lately finding good topics that interest me :I but sometimes when I see a question I do try to research the answer.

The reason the edit feature was taken away isn't really a mystery. it was being abused and something had to be done.. like anwiii said, it was a quick fix, but there are better solutions to this and there has been enough time to put them in affect.

Bottom line.. ITS SCHOOL SEASON! any forum is going to be less active this time of year, as soon as school let's out I guarantee this forum will pick up.

[Zagubadu·]

Yea I know why the Edit button was made to only be available for 10 minutes after you make the post. I have a good idea on how we could get the edit button back and also not have that problems arise again. Make it so a certain amount of posts on your account must be made and you have a good history, etc. Then you can get your Edit button back. I just think the Admins think it will still happen again. I figure if they found out it was being abused in the first place they must be able to tell who did it? So if they did it again Ban them.

[truefusion]

Losing the edit feature isn't something that is significant enough to have user leave or not want to join. I remember when i first joined, when Credit System v1 was in place. The edit feature was disabled since the Credit System didn't have any means of adjusting credits when people edited their posts. Those who abused the system would prepare their actual response, grab some huge random article from anywhere, post it, then edit their post with their actual response. They would get credited for their huge post rather than their credits being modified after editing their posts. And so the edit feature was disable completely (no time limits). This allowed admin and moderators to catch these abusers.

Then v2 of the Credit system was introduced. This brought back the edit feature, as whenever a post would be modified (edited, deleted, et cetera), the user's credits would also be modified. The hosting offered during that time was not the same as today. You could not get gigabytes of space (unless you went for paid hosting), you could not get a domain name for free (unless perhaps you took OpaQue's offer), and other things. The system was fitting for the current plans at that time. You would only lose a credit a day, and you could share credits if you wanted to. Since the hosting packages weren't as full as they are today, sharing credits and losing one credit a day was reasonable for the services offered.

Now a lot of resources are offered for virtual money (though you can pay it off with "real" money). For that reason, while sharing credits may seem like a nice thing by members, it is not reasonable from a business perspective. Likewise, just simply giving away myCENTs for anything is not reasonable. Due to the way the Credit System is observed to work i can see why the edit feature was reduced. I also understand that there are other reasons (though i may not know what they are) for why the current system works the way it does. But because myCENTs may be offered before someone editing their post, and due to past issues where people would lose Xisto dollars (not myCENTs), therefore not reducing the money earned from the posts but just placing people in the negative myCENTs, the past is being brought into the present—it is the same abuse from Credit System v1.

If you can understand that, you should therefore be able to understand why OpaQue said please not to request for any further increase in the time limit. It is understandable why OpaQue would (has) not mentioned anything more than what he has already mentioned about the system. But from the things we do know we can still make suggestions on how to avoid this abuse from users. Why anyone would seek to be so selfish in their ways, which not only affect other users but the entire business itself, is beyond me. But the edit feature was restricted as an attempt to avoid any more unnecessary financial losses. This financial loss is supposed to inform staff members that we should be more strict on those who choose to disobey the rules—though some may not like it.

Yeah, we'll try to help out new members by informing them of the rules, but if they get scared off because of punishment they receive for not following the rules even after being informed of them, then Trap17 is not to blame for loss of users.