Friday, 26 March 2004 - 1:53 PM EST
Name:
cwoolse
OK, here's my 2 cents... I've been thinking about this, too. Mostly I think being active promotes being active. I call it 'the parking lot rule' when you're looking for a good place to eat and don't know the area. The place with the full lot gets my business.
We've also been fortunate to have several active 'helper' posters on the tripod blog, several of whom go above and beyond the short answer and don't quit until the problem is solved. More member involvement was something I felt was important to a 'community' and have talked that up here and there on the tripod blog from the beginning. It's not a 'community' if only 1 or 2 people are willing to offer answers. We still need work on that but it's improving slowly.
I think the tripod blog 'topics' list also helps promote activity because not only can posts be sorted for easy retrieval, it's also a quick visual reference of the sorts of help the site is geared to. The problem at AF seems to be what I feared from the beginning re the community blog format... people just adding new questions to old entries here and there. Who knows if they can ever find them to return for an answer.
I've tried to discourage that and track newer discussions going on in older posts and will bring them to the front as new entries so they get the attention of others that they deserve or need. There's at least some degree of managing ... and no moderating to speak of ... going on behind the scenes.
I've been tossing around adding a topic for constructive site review to get many more members involved. Even if someone isn't a skilled builder they usually have an opinion and are willing to offer their insight if asked. We get more nontypical posters coming out when those types of posts appear.
That tripod free accounts offer more opportunity to try advanced skills through CGI also helps I think. We've had lots of posts on cgi forms and such. Also tripod seems to appeal to an older group than AF. Many tripod paid accounts include business sites rather than strictly personal 'fun' sites which seem to be more the norm at AF. BTW- Forms are often a natural part of pro sites and tripod might be wise to support them better- perhaps as an in-house form generator that members could use.
And lastly, I think a lot has to do with the quality of the AF help files and tutorials compared to tripods. People won't need to post for help if they can find the answer easily elsewhere. AF's help often seems more complete. Sometimes answers are so hidden at tripod you need a sherpa guide to find them. And sometimes when you finally find it, the answer is wrong... most notably the confusion related to cgi forms because the tripod form example is grossly incorrect... or the info about inserting form gems with sitebuilder.
I must say the tripod custom blog tutorials are excellent. I only wish the rest of tripod help was of that caliber.
that's probably more than you wanted to hear :) -chris aka doodle
quizzical