Increasing membership participation
 

Tog brought up the question in another thread about why so many forum members are inactive. Among other reasons, I think it's a common "problem" with many forums. Unless someone is looking for information, they might not think of checking out bananas.org. One very large (several hundred thousand members, I believe) sends out an e-mail about once or twice a month with the subject line of something such as "Hot Topics at Bananas.org". This obviously is being done to increase participating by members and I know it must be somewhat successful as I'll often see something in the e-mail that interests me and then I get browsing there and get involved in the forum for at least a while.

I just thought we might want to try that out here.

Best wishes, peace, love, happiness, etc.*

Harvey

* No Sam, I'm not doing dope! :P

Re: Increasing membership participation
 

When the subject of the common thing that people post about changes on a daily basis you will have more of the membership getting involved. The problem here at Bananas.org is that banana plants just don't change fast enough. I'm a member of a few message boards that have so much traffic I have hard time keeping up, well actually I can't keep up. I'm not so sure we can do anything to bring out the lurkers and keep them posting unless we start creating more drama. People love drama!

Hey Harvey, get a clue would ya!:ha: :drum::drum::drum:

Re: Increasing membership participation
 

Are you picking a fight, buddy???!!!! :ha:

Re: Increasing membership participation
 

Oh don't buddy me, I'll buddy you!! :nanawhopp:

Re: Increasing membership participation
 

oooh, drama!

:twonanners: :lurk:

Re: Increasing membership participation
 

Let me eat my popcorn and watch this fight! :lurk::lurk:

Re: Increasing membership participation
 

I got my feet up for this one too:nanadrink::nanadrink:

Re: Increasing membership participation
 

Maybe some members just joined out of the need to solve a problem they were having. I don't think you can really get in depth in the threads unless you're a member and possibly they weren't interested in anything else. But they'll remember to come back to where they got their information.

I'm hoping my mother will join sometime this summer. She lives across the US from me in Oregon and I talked her into buying her first nana at the end of last summer and she never took it out of the pot. She's got it sitting outside in the shade now and said she'll plant it in the ground so once it takes off I think she'll be really impressed and get interested. I need to move my cannas and will send her some of those also. I bought those from a member here. I know she'll love them and will compliment her nana.

Another idea... maybe if we do some PMing to some members that we might have had some contact with in the past with buying, selling or whatever that hasn't posted in awhile... to just say hey, how is your garden growing it might brighten their day and get them going again. Sometimes, life just gets in the way!

Re: Increasing membership participation
 

That's a good idea!

Re: Increasing membership participation
 

I think this is a great idea and on top of that maybe a We miss you at the Forum Mass PM when a member is inactive for 6 months or so.

As it is, the regular members who login are having a lot of friendly fun meeting whenever they can for the company and knowledge. Taking this point into account, we should build up the group further by being more friendly towards the new members who try to participate in the forums. I am saying this cos when I first joined, I found it hard to break in to the action but being thick skin and persistent I finally did. However, when someones gets into a friendly group and tries to be too much, I feel we as a friends thingy should tell that person off nicely or through a moderator.

Being a large group is great, but then as in the world, it takes all kinds to make one. Some of the kinds will also try to break one too. We can't please everybody as we can see we do get some friction every now and then. So it boils down to the people who want to learn and have fun here. Let's just have fun and see big it will get. :ha:

Re: Increasing membership participation
 

Interestingly, a local garden group I'm in that focuses on growing trop and semi-trop plants here in the Wash., DC area was started as a Yahoo group. Now it is growing substantially, and even with people applying from Indonesia! So there is the opposite problem of trying to keep the group manageable in size and focused on our home location.

Re: Increasing membership participation
 

Here goes my big mouth - do you guys know what is the main problem from this whole forum from an international point of view?

Here's my initial experience when I first joined;
I was looking for info on the Ensete genus, the forum looked real good up front. When I really dug in, I found not much which I can use. Besides this, all the talk is about cold growing, wintering and technical stuff on the actual fert feeding. No, this is not bad. But, it will not appeal to the people from the far east where the musa species and cultivars originated.

Did you notice that whoever joins from my region just comes and peek-a-boo and not seen again? I guess, they find it too orang puteh and not so friendly when they try to get into the discussions. This is my observation from the various posts. Fyi, this is the only forum I am with. Did try 2, but gave up. I find myself repeating what I have said/shown here and on the selfish side, I am not learning anything from them. So I went MIA. I like the camaraderie here and being a loyal kinda person, I am too lazy to start all over again at some other place.

Look at the members' activity here, what do they really do? It's a bad habit that I will put the cursor on the ones logged in and see what interests them. Hey, no invasion of privacy here, it's part of the forum's public access. Here's what I gathered the people do;

Go to photo - I guess visuals do interest people and we have a huge bank of pix.

Searching Forum - By referring to the name, I know these people have an interest to learn more by searching the older threads.

PM - Friendly chat, but mostly looking for opportunities to get stuff thru trade or what not.

A quick assessment of the above activities shows that the members like to See, Learn and Acquire. That is what a society is all about rite, to see new things and learn about them and hope to get new things. If these basic needs are met and kept well, the membership should take care of itself.

Look at this thread, there's only a 110+ views even though it should be an important thread for the benefit of the .org. But not many people are interested. Some take a peek and see the normal guys in it will just go away after reading a bit as it looks like the gang's chat house. The average member only have 1 thing in the head, amuse me not defuse me.

No forum can whet the needs of all the members. So coming back to my earlier post about the friends thingy, it's a great place to hang out and learn. All we can do as the current group of active members is to be responsible towards any untowards incident which may crack this beautiful fabrigege egg.:ha:

Re: Increasing membership participation
 

Doctor Guru Tog, you are correct. :)

Re: Increasing membership participation
 

Agreed .......except that it's: Faberge'

Re: Increasing membership participation
 

Give me a break, Orang Puteh....that's why people from SEA run away...

Ask Lorax to make you a new spell check editor job, you'll do fine. You can even use me as a ref. I think since my Fruiting Drawf incident, you been putting me on spelling surveillance... Time to get out and join another Bob-less forum. :ha:

Re: Increasing membership participation
 

Tog you are not allowed to leave, your kind of like the gene in the bottle.

Michael

Re: Increasing membership participation
 

The funniest is I got a super dwarf cavendish recently to keep in a pot and really did label it "super drawf". It kind of sticks.:ha::ha::ha:

Re: Increasing membership participation
 

Better patent it and gimme 50% on it. :ha::ha::ha::ha::ha:

Re: Increasing membership participation
 

In keeping with not derailing an important thread like this one so obviously is - I love the mass PM idea (although it has to be one of the Mods or Jarred who does it) and I also love the idea of sending emails to inactive members. I think the key will be try and engage them on what they're currently growing - you know, come for the bananas, stay for the community, kind of thing.

Re: Increasing membership participation
 

Not me! It's Orang Puteh! Ok, I have vented and I am cool..now to serious business..

Beth, the 2 things you mentioned are doable, let's keep that in mind for the proposal to Jarred when he's free to come back.

The other thing I have noticed is that being this is a polite, non-vulgar site, the folks here are very polite. So polite to the point that even though they know a couple of folks in a discussion, they won't join in cos they feel they don't know the others. Now, this idea is a little difficult but it can work;
Each of us do have our own circle of friends from the different forums where we are active. We can use PM to alert them to get into a topic. This will increase the participation. On another level is that we should have spotters who think which are the new members we can get to come in.
I am saying this cos, there was more than once I PM Beth to join in an ass kick. I did PM others too for similar reason, and it worked. This takes a bit of work, but if each does a little, it can go a long way.

In all, it should be our responsibility as the regular core members to do it. Besides roping in others, it goes for the regular gang too. PM each other to join in if a particular person is missing. So...in future, if there's even a very tiny opportunity of a Thread Wreck, don't bloody forget me! :ha::ha::ha: I just had to say it. Can't let things get too serious cos the room will seem to get darker.