Have to make a confession

Part of my resolutions for the new year are to be more honest, so here goes...:frown:

I am spending less and less time on LMF and more and more time on TBN. Hate to gripe, but to be honest, the threads here seem so stale and mundane and very few members seem to have any interest in posting, When I logged in a few minutes ago, there were 90 members of this forum online, but what are they doing? There are practically no new threads or replies, what is the purpose of logging into a forum unless you are going to say something?

TBN, by contrast, has a very rapid turnover, when I leave this forum in a few minutes and return to TBN there are going to be an entire group of new threads and replies for me to follow up on. The one here that interests me the most is the snow removal forum, and TBN currently does not have one of those, although it is being considered.

Come on, LMF members, start showing some interest here, I am not planning to leave like some people have because I am feel some of the threads are dumb, but many of them ARE boring.

There, I got it off my chest, will now climb down off my soapbox, siddown, shuttup, and head back to TBN.

I think one of the things to keep in mind is that TBN has been around for going on 13 years, and has a massive following. LMF has been around for about 7 months. In the early days of TBN we had less posts than we have here now.

New members are joining here regularly, but still only at 1/10 the rate of new members than TBN gets.

Having said that, we plan to continue to promote LMF and in fact have some plans to add some things soon that should draw more new people in.

Muhammad said:

I think one of the things to keep in mind is that TBN has been around for going on 13 years, and has a massive following. LMF has been around for about 7 months. In the early days of TBN we had less posts than we have here now.

New members are joining here regularly, but still only at 1/10 the rate of new members than TBN gets.

Having said that, we plan to continue to promote LMF and in fact have some plans to add some things soon that should draw more new people in.

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Thank you for that, I am not being critical of LMF because I realize it is in the early stages of growth and it takes time to generate a following, but wanted to suggest (politely) we could post more threads. I have tried, numerous times, to start new threads that I hoped would bring many responses, without success. One of the things I sincerely enjoy about TBN is that many folks there seem to enjoy controversy, I might not agree with their opinions but sincerely welcome reading the opposing viewpoints on a topic. Here, it seems to be somewhat mild mannered in comparison...few people seem to disagree, which isn't always a bad thing....:thumbsup:

You say TBN originally had fewer posts than LMF has today...boy, I missed a lot more of it than I thought...gotta give myself a pat on the back for being on this one from nearly the beginning...:biggrin:

I, too, will be coming here less and spending more time at MTF. MTF is so much more interesting and everyone there displays at least the state they are from.

indypower said:

I, too, will be coming here less and spending more time at MTF. MTF is so much more interesting and everyone there displays at least the state they are from.

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Can you tell us what MTF is? Thanks. Could it be Machinery Talk Forum? Just guessing here.

Perhaps we could come up with a limited number of "threads of the week" that are more thought provoking and stimulate opinions on a variety of topics related to lawns and lawn mowing, equipment, etc. In fact I have some ideas already...

What do you think about threads of the week? Might not be "threads of the day" as we have on TBN (~100 new threads per day) but it could/should get some more interesting conversations going, especially if we promote the threads via e-mail to all members (which we would do).

JDgreen said:

...When I logged in a few minutes ago, there were 90 members of this forum online, but what are they doing?

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This is a rather new forum...
With a LOT of new folks coming on all the time. I am sure there are many reading past posts and "catching up" ...
You could never do that on TBN it's been around too long, you could never hope to read all the old posts.

As this site gains more members from all around the world... we will see various things come up that will be new...
In a way this is just the opposite of the complaint generally posted on TBN... (That has been covered many times in the past. Use the search function). Some day that will happen here and at that time we will need to remember that the new folks have not seen all the posts over the growth of the forum...
I'm sure that the winter slow down in mowing has created a shortage of 'problems to post about. And we have not had a lot of snow related 'problems'... YET. :smile:KennyV

JDgreen said:

Can you tell us what MTF is? Thanks. Could it be Machinery Talk Forum? Just guessing here.

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MTF is MyTractorForum.

JDgreen said:

Thank you for that, I am not being critical of LMF because I realize it is in the early stages of growth and it takes time to generate a following, but wanted to suggest (politely) we could post more threads. I have tried, numerous times, to start new threads that I hoped would bring many responses, without success. One of the things I sincerely enjoy about TBN is that many folks there seem to enjoy controversy, I might not agree with their opinions but sincerely welcome reading the opposing viewpoints on a topic. Here, it seems to be somewhat mild mannered in comparison...few people seem to disagree, which isn't always a bad thing....:thumbsup:

You say TBN originally had fewer posts than LMF has today...boy, I missed a lot more of it than I thought...gotta give myself a pat on the back for being on this one from nearly the beginning...:biggrin:

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I just checked before I came here to post, they're 6 members and 84 visitors on line and only 10 new postings today so I can agree there's a lot of slumming going on. With that many people sitting back watching it can only mean there's not enough interest in the discussions or topics available as you say the threads here seem so stale and mundane.

I think for a forum to succeed there has to be some kind of controversy to keep things going, but I also think that the forum has to continually change and be upgraded to keep things interesting and I don't see that happening here, that's why people are leaving and going to other forums.

I have been watching for a while and request have been made by people for certain things and have been basically ignored which Imo isn't helping things out. I also see a lot of things missing which would define things a bit and possibly make things more interesting.

Don't get me wrong I know how hard it is to have a successful forum, I've built several and am in the process of building one at the present, some have worked out well and others have bombed, it can be a lot of work keeping up with a forum and the people on the forum so I wish the owners luck, but changes need to be made.

Hey Ric,

Thanks for your comments. Some of the suggestions for forums are for brands that might have one or two members who are owners. I don't see the point of having empty sections that nobody uses as on TBN we are running into the issue of "too many forums" (although over there most forums are active).

I will say that some major additions are coming soon... things we've been working on for a while. And while they actually might not stimulate more discussions per se, they will provide valuable resources to the visitors of the site and ultimately bring more members.

What specific suggestions do you have? Say you were the admin for a day... what would you change? :biggrin: