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Forum Attendance

Started by William Grim, 2010-03-12T01:21:57-06:00 (Friday)

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William Grim

Anyone else notice that since moving the forums to being a second-class citizen, activity has dropped?  Only thing I really notice on my Google Reader these days are spam and a few random posts here and there.  I recall it being much more active in the past.
William Grim
IT Associate, Morgan Stanley

raptor

There is much less exposure period of the caos.siue.edu domain.  Most of our viewers used to come from the lab machines, but we believe the drastically increased usage of student laptops has reduced the number of viewers
President of CAOS
Software Engineer NASA Nspires/Roses Grant

Jerry


Yeah, the attendance is down.

While some of it may be due to more laptop use, I suspect a good part of it is lack of forum exposure on the front page - the CS open lab is still one of the busiest labs in the building.

We could experiment - put the forum posts as the most prominent item on the page - front and center, above the fold. Then let's see if business picks up after a couple of months. or so.

We could also explore other ways of making the forums more prominent.
"Make a Little Bird House in Your Soul" - TMBG...

Gary Mayer

Per Scott's suggestion, we've had the news feed put onto the Moodle page. I think this is a good first step. The new officers have given me the impression that raising awareness of CAOS on campus is one of their primary concerns. Improving the Moodle feed, etc. is amongst that. Regular in-person meetings is another thing (AND IS STARTING THIS WEEK, MARCH 18TH, FROM 5 - 6 PM!) .

The forum is just one aspect of the sysytem. I think that if awareness is obtained and the interest is there, the forum usage will naturally pick up as people discuss what is and will be happening.

- GM
-- Malekith

The higher, the fewer, Doctor. The higher it goes, the fewer.

William Grim

I agree with Jerry's assessment.  I think putting links to the most recent X posts on the forums above everything else on the current main CAOS page will help a lot.  Another thing I'm sure is adding some annoyance for people that get to the forums from the main page is the redirect; I think it should be a direct link instead.  This will avoid the additional wait, which causes people to navigate away from websites.
William Grim
IT Associate, Morgan Stanley

Mark Sands

Officers have been talking about this. The mailing listserv hasn't been used in a long while, so we may just resurrect that for major meeting alerts and move the forums back to the front. I'm open to suggestions.
Mark Sands
Computer Science Major

zeis97

I know personally I don't read or comment on the forums because they're no longer listed on the front page when I log on to the computers.  I still see the labs packed everyday, so I personally don't see laptop use as having much (if any) affect on the forums.  Discussing it with others in the lab, the majority agrees that having to go that single extra step to see the posts has cause a loss of interest.  Also, even when you go into the forums there's only 5 "new" posts listed so even then your chance of further exploring is limited by the odds that 1 in 5 posts may interest you enough to dig deeper. 

But this is just my 2 cents.

William Grim

I agree with zeis97.  No one wants to put forth the effort, as many of us feared when the new site was put online.  Is the mailing listserv the one for the entire CS department?  I guess that could help a little, but why don't we just go after the obvious bottleneck and fix it?
William Grim
IT Associate, Morgan Stanley

Tangent Orchard

I must say that while I used to see people log on in the lab, open the internet, notice a topic on the front page and click it and/or reply to it before going about their business, now they just go "Ooh, Mars Rover, neat; oh well." and go off to Google or MSN or whatever.  Being in the computer lab as much as I am, I do think that the new front page is actually probably a big factor in decreased forum activity.