Discussion on forum! + Barbara Dunkleman photo Mandatory posting requirements might not be the best

[testfeet]

So I overall understand and empathize with the idea of having people post stuff in order to keep access, I totally understand not wanting a majority of the users to just be lurkers who never give back. But I feel like the actual reality that puts us in isn't really that great. One because it created a weird cycle of posting initiations over and over, but also do we really want every person to post at least once a month?

Sure on paper thats a good idea, but in practice all it ends up really doing is having a bunch of low quality posts get put up every few days or so, which personally I feel doesn't really add anything really

Like hey I know I'm not one to talk, I've barely posted anything on this forum(though I do hope to change that soon), but still

I genuinely feel like overall, the forum would be better without any revoking of access. It would probably even encourage a lot more posts from people if it was just a casual place to post whenever they felt they had something nice, or hell even just as a spur of the moment thing. Plus like, is it really beneficial to anyone to just revoke access of like a hundred people every few months? I feel like that just hurts the forums growth

Obviously I'm not trying to arm chair or anything, these are just some of my thoughts. I'd love to have a discussion over this

Thank you for reading! Here's a photo for your time

 

[Luzik]

Hello @testfeet !

Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us.
We appreciate your feedback and understand your concerns regarding our rules on posting in order to maintain access.
We believe that encouraging active participation from our users helps to create a vibrant and engaged community, but we understand that this approach may not work for everyone.

Our current mode of operation is inspired by other forums that have a more or less closed community to ensure a private, free, and secure environment, subject of course to rules.

While making the forum public could potentially attract 10x more users, it would also risk losing the magic of being part of a small community, a big family.

Moreover, changing the rules would require us to reevaluate our current economic model.
As it stands, the forum, servers, licenses, services, and all expenses are funded by the Leech and VIP grades. We are confident in the future with this setup.

If we were to remove this system, the forum's self-financing would be in jeopardy, leading to its closure. Although we could fill the forum with advertisements with the growing high user traffic, we do not want to go down that route.

The numerous partnership requests we receive could be a potential solution, but I don't like this idea.
I am not a merchant and cannot see myself recommending or selling products for the sole purpose of making money to fund the forum.

If the community decides it is necessary, we are a democratic community. We will listen to it and think together about what changes need to be made and how to achieve them.

So, we are waiting for more opinions and reflections on this subject and following the debates closely.

Thank you

 

[testfeet]

Thats completely fair! You make a lot of great and important points, I totally understand.

Thank you for taking the time to make such an elegant and thought out response, I really appreciate it <3

 

[Show Feet]

This post is just my personal opinion, and I'm not part this community I don't see the forum from your perspetive but I'm a regular poster on different forums.
I'm trying to be helpful that is my goal with this, but it will may sound very critic. Don't take it as an attack or something.

So please bear that in mind and don't take it very seriously.

We appreciate your feedback and understand your concerns regarding our rules on posting in order to maintain access.
We believe that encouraging active participation from our users helps to create a vibrant and engaged community, but we understand that this approach may not work for everyone.

Our current mode of operation is inspired by other forums that have a more or less closed community to ensure a private, free, and secure environment, subject of course to rules.

I don't like this system. I saw it failing more times on different forums.
I think the only one advantage of it: It helps to stay low, it doesn't attract harmful attention.
But in many times it means the forum just dies.

The initiation doesn't give any quality to the forum. You can easily copy the content of your one initiation post from other forums, reddit or from anywhere. It doesn't require any effort.
After that you just need to leave two spam posts every month. "Nice feet" comment or you can just repost the same photo nobody will notice because the forum is badly organized (no specific themed threads, threads for models).

And lots of those users who get in they just try to trade here. And personally I strongly against allowing traders on community based forums.

While making the forum public could potentially attract 10x more users, it would also risk losing the magic of being part of a small community, a big family.

You already have the VIP section, that alone can keep the core community together. Adding non-vip top posting users to it, would help it to grow.

Moreover, changing the rules would require us to reevaluate our current economic model.
As it stands, the forum, servers, licenses, services, and all expenses are funded by the Leech and VIP grades. We are confident in the future with this setup.

If we were to remove this system, the forum's self-financing would be in jeopardy, leading to its closure. Although we could fill the forum with advertisements with the growing high user traffic, we do not want to go down that route.

VIP could stay next to the ads. You could give other benefits to VIP users. VIP section, no ads, special title, animated avatars, name effects, etc.
I rather support a place where I'm already a community member to keep the place up than paying to get in somewhere unknown.

Yes more users means more idiots more leechers. But also means more people who willingly post quality content, more people who wants to be part of the community.
And having leechers doesn't necessery a wrong thing. They bring ad money, they show interest, they like posts. When people see there is interest in speific type of content or thread, they will post more.

I'm regular poster on other forums but I definetly lost interest posting here because of these reason.
You can say we have a very different preference about forums I'm okay with that or you can consider to make this place more attractive to people who prefer things like me.
I'm definetly fine with both option, and if you need help or want to discuss it this more just drop a DM.

 

[Luzik]

This post is just my personal opinion, and I'm not part this community I don't see the forum from your perspetive but I'm a regular poster on different forums.
I'm trying to be helpful that is my goal with this, but it will may sound very critic. Don't take it as an attack or something.

So please bear that in mind and don't take it very seriously.

Hello @Show Feet,

Thank you for expressing your opinion.
Don't worry, I won't take it badly. On the contrary, it encourages thoughtfulness

I don't like this system. I saw it failing more times on different forums.
I think the only one advantage of it: It helps to stay low, it doesn't attract harmful attention.
But in many times it means the forum just dies.

It is true that with this system, the growth of the forum is slower. However, I find that the quality of the forum is better. Rest assured, the forum is far from dead with this system, we may be growing slowly, but we are still growing.

The initiation doesn't give any quality to the forum. You can easily copy the content of your one initiation post from other forums, reddit or from anywhere. It doesn't require any effort.
After that you just need to leave two spam posts every month. "Nice feet" comment or you can just repost the same photo nobody will notice because the forum is badly organized (no specific themed threads, threads for models).

I do not disagree with you, except that it conditions people to share or pay for VIP. Overall, you are correct. Also, I must admit that I am not too fond of revoking access every month. I am not very strict on the quality of posts to maintain access, generally, if the person is simply active in reactions (likes), I let them keep access.

VIP could stay next to the ads. You could give other benefits to VIP users. VIP section, no ads, special title, animated avatars, name effects, etc.

I have to admit that I don't like advertisements, adding them for free users bothers me. Moreover, some users appreciate the fact that the forum is generally safe-for-work (SFW), unless they access a specific thread. I don't think they would like to see ads for dicks and pussies everywhere. We should think about where to integrate advertisements, perhaps placing them in between messages rather than on the forum's homepage, for example.

For the benefit of VIP users, we should consider the advantages. I do not think that simply having visual effects is sufficient. I am not the type of person who purchases skins on video game, but I understand that it can be pleasing.

In conclusion, I would like to thank you for your message. It has allowed me to reflect more on this subject and I realize that there are still many points to consider!
I will soon ask some loyal users for their opinions on the forum: why they are here and not on another one, what they like the most and the least, etc. This will help me better understand the improvements and changes that need to be made. In the future, I may also conduct a poll to obtain a more overall view from our members.

 

[Sonya_Shinhouin]

I hardly know this place, so I cant speak to the the community.
Instead, what I will speak to is what I see as someone who has frequented forums of some kind or another since the early 2000's. The lack of bots, due to the initiation set up (and I am sure a myriad of other factors) is really appreciated. The overall manners of the members, and the rules to help structure that are also wonderful. I like how as a woman, I (thus far) haven't had someone push boundaries I set if we converse, but also know, I just like them, just want to talk about our shared fetish and feel comfortable doing so. Finding places like this is hard, maintaining them even harder. Ive been a forum moderator more times than id like to recall, and the close knit communities that have the slow growth and selective membership additions do indeed maintain and develop more stably than those where there are hundreds to thousands of users and the only thing holding everyone together is that said forum is an umbrella for smaller communities to form under.

I do see the merit and concern in people simply re-posting approved content. "shit posting" and "r3pts" and "reposts" have been an nagging issue on this kind of online community for decades. The best approach I've seen in use is a character limit, and given the nature of what were discussing here and what's commonly posted, A photo minimum makes some sense...I Also see the incomprehensible amount of effort it would take a whole hoard of forum mods to just verify this picture wasn't a reupload from a prior initiation.

Instead of going the road of "no reposts" but also keeping in line with "a minimum contribution for initiations to be approved" Could we instead have member accounts on a timer, X hours days a warning that further lack of posting can result in a soft removal (ie a logout and a upon logging back in they receive a prompt to maintain activity or their account could be closed/ deleted) and a follow up warning were a soft ban (2 days?) is put on the account for inactivity/ some sort of final strike where their account is deleted/ closed?
To pair with that, you could make VIP access a activity awarded incentive upon x many posts in a timeframe (1000 posts in a month ect. Something reachable but lofty.) Giving the paid option to just keep that and potentially dodge the inactivity filter??(I'm sure with proper coding permissions could be amended to make this work.) and or further incentivization like was mentioned above for active users...as we do want retention, but we want retention of the most active users as they foster growth of the community in a given forum.

This would in theory, augment your existing method of attaining funds, but if you also have active forums that are not VIP locked, and you couple it with your ads-in-threads idea, you can make your active public user base become a means to fund add revenue, and offering a "paid opt out" in the form of vip also ensures people still post actively ads or not, depending on preference. Activity based incentivization also pushes people to interact more in their forums in my experience.

It's ultimately not my call, but this in my opinion, would at least in part quell some of Show Feet's concerns, and structure a way to implement some of their solutions, whilst also working towards your obvious necessity to keep this place going Luzik.