Too many forums

Hi, I'm glad to see that you have the new forums up and running. It is all looking very nice and while the whole Macintosh theme doesn't really make sense, it's looking fine.

I think there are WAY too many forums. Right now there are 57 forums and you only have 145 members. Now, at the bottom, it says the most users online at once is 7 users. My guess is that right now there probably aren't nearly enough users online to fill these forums with topics. So, it would probably benefit you GREATLY if you condensed these forums. Only have about 15 forums. These forums can be really GENERAL subjects. This will help your community grow since users don't have sift through random forums just to find the category in which they want to post their topic.

For example, just make the "Entertainment" category ONE forum. Make ONE graphic arts forum. No need for those three "Competition" forums. Just put some kind of topic about a competition in a general forum. Make the "Gaming Technologies" one forum. Compress "Handhel Gaming and Gaming Consoles", "International and Import Gaming", "Retro Gaming" and "Next Gen Gaming" into just one Gaming forum! Also, News and Views. Have MAYBE one news forum, and instead, make it a subforum of the General forum. It's annoying to have to sift through a dozen forums just to find the right one.

Having a ton of forums is a problem because users have to sift through the 12 gaming forums to MAYBE find a topic which interests them. Or, maybe they aren't interested in a specific topic and just want to BROWSE. I find myself browsing all the time, not looking for something in particular. I wouldn't want to have to go through all those forums.

Now, when your community grows, definately add more forums! But only if it's necessary.

I know you probably won't do any of these things, but I have seen communities not go ANYWHERE because of things like this. I'm speaking from experience and basically what has worked for me in the past!

Good luck!

Okay so heres the offical response from iVirtua.

First

Clearly you are taking offense to this instead of considering some of my points. The points that matter.

I'm not going to sit here and debate this. My post was intended for the benefit of the administrator and the possible success of this forum. It was not intended to bluntly attack and tear it down.

I have owned a message board for a good 5 years and am just trying to offer some helpful advice.

Wil no one has taken offence to your post,you have made your points in a decent manner and Applet has merely answered your points individually,with his answers as he is entitled to do so,and has then given you and everybody else the right to add by the way of a debate.

Chill my friend-You've put your points over

We like to be a unique forum, and we want to have the capacity for ove 10,000 members, and thats our target... We like recieving comments and strive to achieve a diverse and contempoary online community experience...

Seems very similar to the point I made in the beta thread. It does seem like way to much to me as well.

Yes there are quite a few forums, however they cover alot...

I have to agree with Wil in the sense that alot of forums are blank and don't have any topics yet, but I do have to disagree also to the fact that in order to grow and cover everyones needs there needs to be alot of subject matter to make everyone happy and stay with this community. In my experience as a co admin for 2 other forums besides this one and also as a member of several forums like this ive seen alot of communities go flat and stale in a matter of a few weeks. I don't think anyone is trying to tare us down as it is so called In other words I see a great potential in what we have hear but everyone is intitled to there own opinion on things and I and other staff hear would love to hear others input on this and other things to help make us better. Enough said for now.

I agree with you we need alot so people stay intrested in the forums

Well said Jay Well said. Like they always say the more the marrier.

Please refer to Applets response regarding out official policy regarding this matter. We are intent on providing a unique community, with a large reange of topics. We have many exciting and innovative developments to complement these descisions, which will be made public after the release of these forums out of Beta 2.0.

How big is the games section annyway?

Take a look Jake17...

I think this site is to big

We may have future dvelopments in iVirtua 3.1 Such as iVirtua Lite 3.1
this would be an optional cut down version, such as "Switch to iVirtua Lite"

We are coming out of Beta 2 2.0 Today, as release of iVirtua 3.0 is coming today.