Several months ago, I installed discussion forum functionality on our site.  In my opinion, and that of our board of directors, it would be a great benefit to the visitors if they had a space to air their questions, comments, and in general have a space they could construct with the topics that are important to them.

Our forums aren’t as successful as I had hoped they would be.  To date, we’ve had almost 425 views on 6 topics, and no posted replies.  That’s very puzzling to me so, I will come to you with some changes and questions:

• Our forums are “open”, meaning that anybody can read them, and you don’t have to register as a user to post.  With all the concerns about information access, should they be a closed-format?
• I can lock them down with no effort at all, and that would mean that people would have to register to post or read them.
• Should our forums have more categories?  If so, which ones should be added?
• If we go to a closed-format, when you register you’ll be required to pick a user name and enter your email address.  Once you complete the registration process, you’ll be taken to a profile screen where all the fields are optional.  You input only as much information as you want.  Your privacy is assured, and your email address is never made public.
• We hate spam as much as you do, so logging into the account does not mean you will receive emails from us.  We have a separate process to join our mailing list so if you haven’t completed that page, you will never have anything in your email with our name on it.  Full details of our mailing list are here.
• I have code packages to add to our site that will give it group chat and instant messenger capabilities.  I’ve been hesitant to add them to the site because I’d like to make sure there is an interest.  Should I accelerate that process?  Would you use them if they were installed?

Once we can get the participation levels up on our forums, I will be on the lookout for a forum moderator to help things along.  I will also publish criteria that will need to be met, as well as some general information for those that participate.  Those will be posted in the open discussion section.

So, a lot of questions that I need feedback from you on.  Please respond to this post, either in the comments, or in the forum topic I started on this subject.  If you’d prefer to respond to me privately, you can contact me here.

Thanks!  I look forward to hearing from you!

Daniel MacDonald

Director of Development/Public Relations – BTTBP