To explain it all I will have to take you back in time. When I was a young, well younger, lad and internet was not as common as it is today I was a member of the Iron Maiden BB (that’s bulletin board, though at the time it already was a forum)
though the music wasn’t really my thing anymore the forum was all kinds of awesome and I spent hours a day there (on a dial up connection, imagine my phone bills). We were a tight knit community and I met some really great people there, among who one of my great loves (Thrice loved) Some time later I came to the After Forever forum, again I spent many hours there, this time on a broadband connection, and if it wasn’t for the people I met there, especially my wife, I might not even have been here today. We became a group of good friends in real life as well, meeting at concerts and festivals and visiting each other all over the country and though it ended in a weird way I still look back at that time with a smile on my face reaching from ear to ear. 
Some time ago I joined my wife on the Twilight lexicon forum (yes Twilight), where I once again met some great people, many of who I still see posting daily on facebook. And even though I left the forum, I had some problems accepting the rules they had there, I still regard the lexilly (lexicon family) as some of the greatest people I know online. So thus far forums, or fora, have been places for meeting great people, making awesome friends and sharing bits of your life. And silly me tried to recreate that. Off course I should have known that without a band or book or even anything remotely interesting I would not be able to draw in people. Maybe forum posting is becoming somewhat outdated with all the new social media like facebook and twitter out there. But I hoped.
And now that hope is almost gone, I have become somewhat more realistic. I did some remodeling and editing, trimmed down the forum and for now I will let it be. I have one last card up my sleeve to try and instill life in this forum and I will launch it today. The first person to reach 150 posts on my forum will receive a free Crowley Toth Tarot deck.
That’s right…
A FREE CROWLEY TOTH TAROT DECK For the first person to reach a 150 posts on nltarot.forum2go.nl
Single word or emoticon posts, copied or double posts and posts containing little more than just a quote do not count. This contest will run till the end of may.
If this works out and the forum will come to live and become the awesome online place I envisioned it to be, I will do something like this again, if it does not, I will pull the plug end of May. So as it has always been, it’s up to you.
Forums, imo, are a tricky thing in our (lexily) position. We all met at the Lex, bonded and all and slowly we moved to FaceBook. There we had a kind of interaction that was far closer than the one we had on the Lex. Our friendship grew tighter and slowly we kind of moved on from the lex. It was kind of an evolution.... Every now and then some of us come back and stop by to rant, maybe meet new ppl, and just keep the thread alive. There, the birth place of the lexily is kind of ground zero for us.
ReplyDeleteI must say, I love FB and I rarely check on the lex. On FB things are quicker, we discuss things the same way and have a lot more privacy to do that.
There's also the deal of having more than one place to check a while back I had the lex, FB and Orkut to manage. Some ppl have FB, twitter... some even used to have MySpace. Having all these places to check and participate and be active with is kind of time-consuming and repetitive. So, honestly, I rather make a note on my FB and Invite ppl to discuss there than post it on a forum.
Of course you can't meet new ppl doing that, but, the thing is, I, in this case am not a social butterfly. I like the amount of friends I have now and tho more are always welcome, these are all that I can manage right now. Who knows, maybe in the future, the cycle will start again and another lex will come alive.
What don't you agree with in the Lex forum, may I ask?
I say all this for myself, of course. Others might have diff opinions.
I am on facebook because many people I love to keep track of are there, but it doesn't work for me, 2/3rd of the posts people make go unread. Sometimes I see posts made a week ago, now irrelevant on which I would have wanted to react.
ReplyDeleteMy problems with the Lexicon come from feeling to controlled and constricted, rules that in my opinion made no sense and the overall feel of a group of adults sitting in the middle of a children’s playground.
For me a forum with minimum moderation (mainly flame wars and illegal posts being moderated ) is the ideal way to get an online community going… that is when it works.