Increasing Engagement and Contribution to the Forum

Quote from Lucio Buffalmano on February 13, 2021, 3:02 am

Hey Matthew,

Approaching this with the perspective of the "zombie idea", such as purposefully attacking to see if it stands.

What if it's February and one has little to say about social circles, but broke up and is back dating, and/or moved to a new job with lots of politics and has much to ask and share about that?

Then the system would either restrain him, or he'd break the rules.

In terms of priority of increasing participation, you guessed it already, it's a risk.
If the participation is increased by lots of random questions from true beginners, or wrong analyses and suggestions, then... You see the issue there.

Quote from Matthew Whitewood on February 13, 2021, 4:41 am

Approaching this with the perspective of the "zombie idea", such as purposefully attacking to see if it stands.

I think it's a beneficial approach.
We may end up with potential, tangential ideas.

What if it's February and one has little to say about social circles, but broke up and is back dating, and/or moved to a new job with lots of politics and has much to ask and share about that?

We can keep organic posting and participation.
This would be to attract people who are doing long-term studies on assertiveness, manipulation, etc.
Or they would like to consolidate their knowledge and exchange on this particular topic.
They may be a beginner but on the upward trend towards contributing value to the forum.

I think the monthly is too long.
Maybe weekly would be better.
This gives less significance to the theme but, at the same time, people with a "barrier" towards contributing value can do so.
As such, people don't feel that it's awkward to post about things other than the theme.
We don't have to announce the theme.

Maybe what we are doing in the private section is already kind of theme-like.
For example, John's thread around manipulation.
This is a more organic approach.

The theme-like nature in the private section is because of questions related to Power University.
This happens less often on the public side of the forum because people use it more for gaining personal feedback on circumstances.

Rather than forcing out themes which I feel it's from the business/forum-admin to the consumer, the other approach could be done.
User feedback to the business/forum-admin.
There is a weekly thread which gives people an outlet to say which areas of Power University or power dynamics they are most interested in.
Then people may spin-off threads from the posts in that thread.

In terms of priority of increasing participation, you guessed it already, it's a risk.
If the participation is increased by lots of random questions from true beginners, or wrong analyses and suggestions, then... You see the issue there.

I think the issue is starting new threads with bad titles and not giving sufficient context.
This clouds out the "Activity" in the forum.
But this brings about another potential idea but could be formulated better.

What about a thread with short questions in the beginner forum?
That way, people can put out short discussions there, and we are aware that those may not be the best formulated.
Occasionally, one of the more advanced members can take a look, group all the questions together and point at a certain direction.
It can even be a single sentence like pointing to this or that thread.

The worst outcome is that we have a thread full of "random questions".
Then we close this down.

The best outcome is that some of the beginners end up feeling great about the community and become more active members.

WHY I AM ADDRESSING THIS - Between Beginner & Advanced

I agree that the beginners should spend more time reading your articles and studying Power University before posting.
Because these give them the framework to bring value to the discussions.

And the advanced people don't really need any sort of framework to contribute to the forum.
John has been coming out "theme-like" threads which naturally link a lot of other threads together.
This helps build the knowledge framework of power dynamics.

I wouldn't call this group of third people, beginner or advanced.
Rather they contribute useful perspectives but probably don't post as often.
I thought that this is a potential segment of users, which could potentially add to the crowdsourcing nature of the forum.
They realise more of what they can get out of the forum, and they contribute to the forum.

My Final Thoughts

I like to write, and I write fast.
I throw ideas out in the open frequently.
So no big deal if this is not useful.
Ideas come to my mind organically as I am doing things.

Quote from Lucio Buffalmano on February 13, 2021, 5:49 am

I need to preface this saying that I personally see the forum functioning quite well so far.

It's generating good strategies, advancing power dynamics knowledge, and even functioning as an advanced self-development tool -plus the "social function" you mentioned.

And it does so at a pace that I can control and read.
More threads than this, I'd struggle to keep up -and much of that time would come away from other areas of improving the rest of the website-.

Also, I'm not personally a big believer of enticing people to do things.
It's also a power dynamics thing: the more you need to promote, to lower the bar, the more you're investing, and the more you're chasing.

Instead, you do your thing, and those who like it and see the benefit in it, can come along -on their own volition-.
The advantage of this "strategy" is that it's low investment, and win in any case: if some people write, great. If not, great, more time to do something else.

That being said, of course one can always do better.

What about a thread with short questions in the beginner forum?

Two points on this:

1. Correct if I'm wrong, but there doesn't seem to be a major issue right now of too many beginners questions
2. What are the chances that a newcomer would end up finding and using that thread?

One could write about in the "start here" forum, but almost nobody visits that section.

I wouldn't call this group of third people, beginner or advanced.
Rather they contribute useful perspectives but probably don't post as often.
I thought that this is a potential segment of users, which could potentially add to the crowdsourcing nature of the forum.

True, there is a large "in-between".

Yet, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I still prefer 1% of that upper layer, to 50% of that middle of the road.
That is the real differentiator / USP I see here.

For volume, there is Reddit "social skills", "seduction", "48 laws of power", or StackExchange.

For quality... You know where 🙂

Quote from Lucio Buffalmano on February 13, 2021, 6:07 am

Quote from Lucio Buffalmano on February 13, 2021, 5:49 am

I need to preface this saying that I personally see the forum functioning quite well so far.

It's generating good strategies, advancing power dynamics knowledge, and even functioning as an advanced self-development tool -plus the "social function" you mentioned.

Plus: one thing I like a lot about it is the interaction among members, especially if compared to some other forums.

All nasty, social climbing, and value-taking behavior that plagues a big chunk of online communities is extremely low or absent, and it's a good representation of how real-life, value-adding, and high-quality behavior should be.
And that "feedback and clarification" thread turned out to be a gem: not only it serves to keep the community healthy, but it also helps to increase people's emotional and social intelligence.