Website/Forum problems from a community perspective?

[LP-Trel]

I've been brainstorming over the last few weeks with various people about the problems with the forum here and what can be done about them.

There are several realities we have to live with for the time being:

1) The forum software cannot be upgraded to phpBB3 or other forum software right now. This is a project for later this year, but there are several other major projects to do before that.

2) A website redesign is outside the scope of this forum project. I am looking for minor or incremental improvements that can be implemented without a significant amount of time to implement them.

3) The points system integrity must be maintained with these improvements.

With all that in mind, what improvements do you think need need to be implemented to the L2P website or forum to bring it up to 2008?
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[ruyss]

Maybe some more interactivity would be cool, some more ways for the members to interact with each other. More things like the WorldCommunityGrid or Whatpulse LLP team so that we come forward as a community.

Or maybe some forum games or competitions (all vs. all or in teams) and let people earn VSP with those things. In my opinion the biggest problem with the forum at the moment is the fact that the community is falling apart and people just post for the hosting.

So maybe things that make us compete or work together to reach something might get us to be a community again? It's just something that I would find fun to do, I don't know about the other members or if it's even possible to do because that would probably ask a lot of time and we all know you're short on time .

EDIT: I just noticed that the Lifelesswiki is down, maybe that could be fixed?
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.// Proud to be Lifeless for more then 4 years \\.

[LP-Trel]

The LifelessWiki is going to be moved to a new home on a separate account and upgraded as soon as I get time.

The L2P Whatpulse team has been disbanded due to lack of participation. The idea was fun while it lasted though.

The LifelessWiki is definitely a good project and will be brought up as a separate project. I'm thinking points for edits or something like that.
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[Jacky]

Do something about the LifelessPeople website.
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[LP-Trel]

[krt]

How about letting anyone interested help? I've been neglecting volunteer work and even my own pet projects lately but I could surely find some time to help, at least in return for the service you have provided for the last 3 years. I would think a few others would express interest.

As for specifics regarding the home page, some copy would be nice. With a name like "lifeless people", it would help to improve on the first impression that is currently given - a fairly dull colour scheme and a "todo" message mentioning overhauls. Making the sidebar links more prominent would also help. Maybe moving them into the main content section? This applies to other pages such as the hosting page. The visual flow detracts users from the sidebar and the subtle buttons don't help.

I'd like to suggest some value for VSP again but that is mostly relative to the number of active users. I guess that applies to most issues as well.

Trel, what is your stance on increasing members who use hosting? It seems you are reluctant to opening up the site to too many users which is understandable. But there isn't much choice, word of mouth doesn't apply too well to services paid for by contribution.

For example, in this case, there are many clients, fellow developers and friends with a small interest in web design/dev but I assume most would not be comfortable with the idea of posting for it. Actually, they may not necessarily mind, it doesn't take long to realise that getting the required points isn't that hard, especially when you drag on like I am now! Sorry, I'll stop now.

[elven]

in my opinion the only thing that this community lacks is... members
so might be interesting to see more advertisement for LLP on the net to get more people to come here
in this current state it's pretty impossible to get any of the higher plans due to lack of posts to reply to (withouth spamming (which results in a ban anyway)

advertising on freewebspace.net etc is bound to generate a few extra members
which will make the forums a bit more active again

(website redesign won't help get more members anyway if they don't know this host exists)
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[mcwkm]

I would agree with the idea that more members are needed. I happen to get busy and not have the time to view forums for periods of time so i actually never applied for hosting but lately there has not been anywhere near the participation so the community suffers and you are just dishing out webspace for the members posting the minimum.
I don't think a site redesign will help the community and one thing I have enjoyed coming back after not viewing for awhile is that a site redesign hasn't occurred which seems to happen at other sites I am a member of. A redesign may be nice but if the community is indeed dieing out it won't make much of a difference now will it.
And I would like to see the wiki up. To be honest I never visited it before but I tried to this week and noticed it was not working which was upsetting

[Scar]

The reason We barely have members is because the account activation has been taking way too long in the past year and they give up and leave. As soon as that is solved = more active members.
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[Desbrina]

Improving the speed of new account activations and support i think is a good start, and it may bring new members in. I know that the response times in both new accounts and support have gone down since i joined 2 years ago.

I like the current style of the site, but it does need updating. Theres no direct link from the home page to anything about hosting (that i can see). Theres a page about what you get, and a separate section for points. It might be good if they were one page, or linked from one page to another
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[packagedeliverer]

Maybe a dashboard of what the users are up to would be an idea. Also, there currently isn't anything that makes the forum really 'stand out'. Anything custom about the UI would be nice and give lifelesspeople something more characteristic.
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[Jacky]

Re-do the whole site except the forums, and keep the skin.

The front page lacks a lot of information, and to a new guest it just looks like a failed attempt to make a website, when in reality the forum is full of activity.

That's what I meant by the "Do something about the website" which I posted here months ago.
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3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592307816406286208998628034825342
11706798214808651328230664709384460955058223172535940812848111745028410270193852110555964462294
89549303819644288109756659334461284756482337867831652712019091456485669234603486104543266482133
9360726024

[Scar]

I really think everything is fine. We just need a new moderating team, and the applications needs to be processed alot quicker as i stated.

The forum cant grow because we can gain new members due to their accounts never being created. <-- main cause of the sites decrease i think.
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[linuxdoctor]

The only real problem that I see on LP is the PBPP points not being processed on time. Perhaps some attention could be made to automating the process by putting it into a cron job or something similar. It is a bit disconcerting when the PBPP calculations are continually late. It makes one feel that maybe Lifelesspeople is about to disappear.

It can't be that difficult to do can it? If you need some help with that I'd be happy to put some time into it myself.

Also, there are about 5000 users on LP. It's obvious most of them don't post anymore some perhaps for quite a long time. Maybe it's time to delete the unused accounts those being people who haven't posted in a six months or a year?

As for new stuff, well that depends what you hope to happen here. I can see that the place needs a fresh look. Some adjustment to the "look and feel" wouldn't be out of order. If you wanted something completely different perhaps you might want to think about community portal software a la Facebook (facelesspeople?). Is there some Free/Open Source facebook-like software out there? If not, would you have the interest or inclination to start such a project or host it's development? Is there still such an interest in this sort of stuff or is Facebook just a fad that has run its course?
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[Jacky]