100 replies to this topic

[Hothkinstroy]

Removing subforums will do nothing to make the forum more interesting nor elevate the content.

 

Although it may not bring new content, It allows for more concentrated attention if we remove, lets say, all unused channels. It can also help newbies easily navigate the forums.

[Serafine]

This is Formiculture. It's geared towards ants. If it was Hymenopteraculture I'd understand but bees in an ant forum that is starting to wane wouldn't help a lot. By the way. This is just my opinion on the matter from having arrived near Formiculture's peak.

The termite and bee people won't hurt you by posting in their own sections (as won't people keeping ispopods should they get their own section, and yes, the isopodkeeping community absolutely dwarfs the antkeeping community, it's not even comparable).

It's not like FC has an overflow of people and needs to reduce postings, in fact those groups may actually cross-pollinate - most termite keepers i know do keeps ants as well (or did so at some point) and there's quite a few things there that are applicable to ants as well.

Edited by Serafine, January 18 2023 - 6:13 AM.

[Serafine]

 

Removing subforums will do nothing to make the forum more interesting nor elevate the content.

 

Although it may not bring new content, It allows for more concentrated attention if we remove, lets say, all unused channels. It can also help newbies easily navigate the forums.

 

A dedicated knowledge base would be nice, preferrably broadly sorted by topic (not a wiki, more like a curated collection of guides).

 

One distinct advantage a web page has over social media applications like Facebook, Reddit, Discord, Instagramm etc. is that those all absolutely suck at displaying static information in a way that enables people to actually find it.

Broadly spoken - make this forum a useful, easy-to-navigate source of valuable information and more people will use it.

[NicholasP]

 

This is Formiculture. It's geared towards ants. If it was Hymenopteraculture I'd understand but bees in an ant forum that is starting to wane wouldn't help a lot. By the way. This is just my opinion on the matter from having arrived near Formiculture's peak.

The termite and bee people won't hurt you by posting in their own sections (as won't people keeping ispopods should they get their own section, and yes, the isopodkeeping community absolutely dwarfs the antkeeping community, it's not even comparable).

It's not like FC has an overflow of people and needs to reduce postings, in fact those groups may actually cross-pollinate - most termite keepers i know do keeps ants as well (or did so at some point) and there's quite a few things there that are applicable to ants as well.

 

I never said they'd hurt your or anything along those lines. I'm saying that at the moment this community should kinda be more geared towards ants as the name would imply.

[antsriondel]

Also shouldn't we remove the Antscanada subforum, because he has not been online in a few years, and prefers YouTube anyways.

[LowQualityAnts]

Also shouldn't we remove the Antscanada subforum, because he has not been online in a few years, and prefers YouTube anyways.

His store is still active even if there are no updates to his products and the GAN project still seems to have people using it. It doesn't really make sense for the marketplace section to only have stores with people using the forum since not everyone with a store uses formiculture for advertisement and a list of stores for newbies is still useful.

Edited by LowQualityAnts, January 18 2023 - 7:35 AM.

[Canadian anter]

For me, using the forum less is primarily just that I've had a lot less time than before, but also that other platforms like discord have just been more convenient for me. There's a greater degree of functionality for just volume of discussion in discord, although the forum posts are typically better for keeping information in a stable state.

 

That said, I don't think the ant-keeping hobby is waning, but primarily that newer people going into the hobby are going to platforms like discord or facebook. I was most active on formiculture end of middle school/beginning of high school, and just having my schedule catch up to me means I've had less time to spend here (To my knowledge this was also the case for several members at some points)

[dspdrew]

Oh, one more thing. I'd recommend removing ants emporium. Garret has officially left the ant keeping community from what I've heard. His website is no longer functional either.

Yeah, from what I've heard and what he's told me, I think that is true. I can't even get a response from him on Telegram anymore.

 

 

Removing subforums will do nothing to make the forum more interesting nor elevate the content.

 
Although it may not bring new content, It allows for more concentrated attention if we remove, lets say, all unused channels. It can also help newbies easily navigate the forums.

 

Yeah, it removes the noise.

 

 

Also shouldn't we remove the Antscanada subforum, because he has not been online in a few years, and prefers YouTube anyways.

His store is still active even if there are no updates to his products and the GAN project still seems to have people using it. It doesn't really make sense for the marketplace section to only have stores with people using the forum since not everyone with a store uses formiculture for advertisement and a list of stores for newbies is still useful.

 

I agree.

[rptraut]

Can someone please explain the difference between a forum like this and a discord site. Thanks

[Full_Frontal_Yeti]

Can someone please explain the difference between a forum like this and a discord site. Thanks

I'd describe it as forums tend to be a long standing/running series of discussions that may carry on over lengthy periods of time. While tools like discord tend to be more around the in the moment stream of consciousness discussion.

Edited by Full_Frontal_Yeti, January 18 2023 - 8:20 PM.

[rptraut]

So, like a big chat room?

[T.C.]

So, like a big chat room?

 

Yeah, pretty much.

[rptraut]

When I first read the original question, I thought it sounded like someone trying to stir up shite and maybe attract a few users to his struggling discord site.

  

Having said that, it is always a valuable exercise for any organization to periodically evaluate where they've been, where they are, and where they're going.  I am only a recent user of this forum but I think I see it evolving as many things do in a supply/ demand situation.  There is a service, say ant keeping websites.  At first there are only a few, with few followers.  But over time, interest grows and the few websites that exist have huge increases in followers (and I assume advertising dollars) and others take notice and similar web sites start popping up around the globe.   The number of people interested in such web sites is limited to a great degree and they are spread thinner and thinner.  It is logical to assume that people will gravitate to the web site that appeals to them most.    Discord sites are another new place for people to participate and thereby reduce the  number of users of other sites.  I have been watching the Ants Canada forum and there aren't very many new questions per day posted there, and usually only one member who responds to the questions.  This forum is very much alive by comparison.

 

If a discord server is much like a big chat room, I can see it appealing to people who have a phone at the ready and can participate in these types of on-going "conversations".    I can't believe that the kind of information, photos, and detail that can be found in this forum is achievable in a chat format.  One of the reasons I write for this forum is because I know the information will be available now and in the future.  I don't believe that's possible in a chat type format either.  

 

Lastly, I think this forum should maintain a standard that provides quality information on as wide a variety of subjects as possible.  That is how an organization maintains and builds a user base, despite the syphoning off of some users to other web sites.   We may lose members because of the format, we won't lose them because of poor information.  Formiculture is not dead or dying, it is merely evolving and changing as the number and interest of ant keepers changes and the number of sources of information changes to satisfy them.

[Flu1d]

So, like a big chat room?

It's like a chat room, however it's far more organized. Posting images and videos is hassle free. Its easy to navigate as well, so finding posts from the past isn't too hard.

[LowQualityAnts]

This is slightly related but the search feature could use some reworks because it usually just gives me random stuff instead of what i searched for. I assume it has to do with comments messing with what pops up.

[Manitobant]

Discord is much more fast-paced compared to forums. One of the reasons I think FC is dying is because noobs join and treat this place like a discord server rather than a slow-paced forum. Its a completely different experience.

[Reacker]

I don't know if the forum is dying out or not, but looking around at the recent posts and threads it doesn't look too bad for January on an entomology forum.

 

From my own anecdotal experience: Online communities seem to have a lifespan of enthusiasm of under ten years, and typically closer to 4 or 5 years of peak activity. The main players do the bulk of the interesting things they wanted to do in the first few years, then switch to maintenance mode or wander off altogether. As the most invested people doing the most interesting things leave or become less active, less people are attracted to join. Or sometimes the value and activity created by the initial enthusiastic quality people attracts parasitic users that change the overall tone of a community to one that drives away old users and discourages new users of quality from joining. Failure modes abound. A community staying active and in similar character for 10+ years is the very rare exception rather than the rule. The two examples I know of from my own perusing have at least one paid full-time administrator each, though just paying someone to administrate is not itself a sufficient condition for longer-term survival. The surviving communities have a very strong community norm of encouraging high quality contributions and demoting low quality contributions. This only works if the vast majority of the user base is invested in the community quality norms; a top down administrator cannot impose this on a community at large that does not already have this norm without killing the community(US ant keeping has seen a version of this), though they can (and aggressively do) eject new users who do not contribute to quality and so maintain a high standard in a community that already values it. The administrators and community elders also tend to have put a lot of thought into what makes for good and bad community moderation.

 

I think the people pointing out the role of competition from Discord are likely to be correct. I use Discord for a few other interests and while it doesn't replace one-to-one the benefits of a forum, it provides a ton of value that forums don't provide and does it well. Younger people getting into the hobby who would otherwise be the feed stock for Formiculture are going to end up joining and forming communities in Discord servers. If they learn of the existence of old school forums like Formiculture at all it's going to be because Formiculture is search indexed and the Discords aren't. Discord for their part recognizes this and has added a persistent forum thread feature, and I think they even said something about making Discord channels publicly searchable in the near future though I may be misremembering that. This leaves Formiculture and legacy boards like it in the position of being niche communication methods in an already niche hobby.

 

To compete with Discord I think modern forums need to leverage their less casual and persistent nature to present high quality content and accompanying discussion. The quality of the content has to be so high that quality people are motivated to leave the convenience of Discord and conform to the community norms around discussion. This is achievable but also fairly difficult. It's also in contrast to the historical nature of many forums where total novices (often literally children) were, if not encouraged, at least tolerated and expected to post novice level comments everywhere. I don't know if there's a sufficient cohort of well-resourced hobbyist ant keepers to produce the content and discussion commentary necessary to achieve this.  Or forums could stay as they are and accept that they'll be comfortable bastions of the old internet with an accompanying aging user base. There's nothing wrong with this approach, and it's way less hard than trying to fight the current for questionable gain.

[Serafine]

Can someone please explain the difference between a forum like this and a discord site. Thanks

Discord is a chat client, kinda like a Whatsapp group or IRC.

[Flu1d]

I don't know if the forum is dying out or not, but looking around at the recent posts and threads it doesn't look too bad for January on an entomology forum.

From my own anecdotal experience: Online communities seem to have a lifespan of enthusiasm of under ten years, and typically closer to 4 or 5 years of peak activity. The main players do the bulk of the interesting things they wanted to do in the first few years, then switch to maintenance mode or wander off altogether. As the most invested people doing the most interesting things leave or become less active, less people are attracted to join. Or sometimes the value and activity created by the initial enthusiastic quality people attracts parasitic users that change the overall tone of a community to one that drives away old users and discourages new users of quality from joining. Failure modes abound. A community staying active and in similar character for 10+ years is the very rare exception rather than the rule. The two examples I know of from my own perusing have at least one paid full-time administrator each, though just paying someone to administrate is not itself a sufficient condition for longer-term survival. The surviving communities have a very strong community norm of encouraging high quality contributions and demoting low quality contributions. This only works if the vast majority of the user base is invested in the community quality norms; a top down administrator cannot impose this on a community at large that does not already have this norm without killing the community(US ant keeping has seen a version of this), though they can (and aggressively do) eject new users who do not contribute to quality and so maintain a high standard in a community that already values it. The administrators and community elders also tend to have put a lot of thought into what makes for good and bad community moderation.

I think the people pointing out the role of competition from Discord are likely to be correct. I use Discord for a few other interests and while it doesn't replace one-to-one the benefits of a forum, it provides a ton of value that forums don't provide and does it well. Younger people getting into the hobby who would otherwise be the feed stock for Formiculture are going to end up joining and forming communities in Discord servers. If they learn of the existence of old school forums like Formiculture at all it's going to be because Formiculture is search indexed and the Discords aren't. Discord for their part recognizes this and has added a persistent forum thread feature, and I think they even said something about making Discord channels publicly searchable in the near future though I may be misremembering that. This leaves Formiculture and legacy boards like it in the position of being niche communication methods in an already niche hobby.

To compete with Discord I think modern forums need to leverage their less casual and persistent nature to present high quality content and accompanying discussion. The quality of the content has to be so high that quality people are motivated to leave the convenience of Discord and conform to the community norms around discussion. This is achievable but also fairly difficult. It's also in contrast to the historical nature of many forums where total novices (often literally children) were, if not encouraged, at least tolerated and expected to post novice level comments everywhere. I don't know if there's a sufficient cohort of well-resourced hobbyist ant keepers to produce the content and discussion commentary necessary to achieve this. Or forums could stay as they are and accept that they'll be comfortable bastions of the old internet with an accompanying aging user base. There's nothing wrong with this approach, and it's way less hard than trying to fight the current for questionable gain.

Well put. And to add onto what you said, I think I actually found Formiculture through a Discord channel if I remember correctly.. It was listed as one of the resources, it was the first day I got into ants and started looking for communities.

[Reacker]

When writing the above I took some time to browse through one of the bigger Ant discords that I saw an invite link for on another thread. The content looked good but one thing that the discord didn't seem to do so great with was presenting ant keeping journals.

I've just taken a look at half a dozen random journal posts in the Journal subforum and they're all really high quality. Quality of the average journal is way higher now than forum journals have been historically even on this forum I think. The page is full of journal updates from the last week too.