When is it too big?

[Polaris Overland]

Let me start by saying Michael, Corrie and all the team have done a great job getting all us like minded people all together and created an outstanding community.

It is no mean feat to get over 10K people to sign up and support each other in the pursuit of heading out into the wilds in our various vehicles so before I go any further I want to be sure you all understand I am not complaining about Overland Bound or the teams.

But I do wonder at what point the membership will become too big and in doing so the forums less and less productive.
Since I became a member it seems threads have become somewhat diluted with too many to follow and not the same take up and support that there was when there was only a few thousand members.

It is very similar on Facebook where groups start out useful and pertinent to the subject but slowly as the popularity increases the subject matter becomes repetitive and not pertinent. To the point that original members leave and start up something else.

So hence my question, When is it too big and what can be done to avoid the same pitfalls of other facebook groups, web communities and web resource centres?

A quote from Wikipedia

"When only a few persons are interacting, adding just one more individual may make a big difference in how they relate. As an organisation or community grows in size it is apt to experience tipping points where the way in which it operates needs to change".

I think in some ways OB HQ have started to recognise this issue (maybe I'm wrong) hence setting up the individual regions that I think is a great way to start and manage the community. But whilst Facebook is a simple platform to start up, it can take people away from here, the Overland Bound site, and I think that is to the detriment of the community.

I do believe we should encourage members to use the OB Regions section here in the forums instead of using Facebook which is great for general chit chat, Hi how are you etc but not where we should be sharing resources. Resources need to be retained and here is where that should be and should be encouraged.

I would also like to see trip reports by region. If I'm in Scotland whilst i personally do like to browse trip reports from much further afield when planning a big trip, I would prefer to have the ones closer to me for weekends away in my region forum or covered under the resources tab by region.

And this goes back to fact if we are getting too big we need to find a means to narrow the search parameters for us looking for routes or info.

If I'm out of order I apologise but this is meant to hopefully generate a discussion only and perhaps in doing so improve the community to all our benefit after all we are all guardians of this community.

 

[Rubyredfozzy]

I think you are spot on. The draw for me is the community and the knowledge. If people leave for another forum or web page we lose the content here. If it gets too confusing or difficult to navigate then it becomes ineffective. I am relatively new to the forum and the group and can see the potential for a great resource for me once I return to the states however, There is a lot goin on in here. I think most likely unfortunately it would take a decent overhaul of the site to simplify it and organize some of the threads into groups and sub categories. IDK though I am not an internet wizard.

I do love the site and have become accustomed to how it works and don't like change much so I would probably be just as stirred up if they "fixed" any of the perceived issues people have wit the site.

 

[Raul B]

I have been on forums for about 18 years now. the larger the forum gets the harder it will be to manage. In order for the information to be usefully it needs to be catorigized very neatly. A really good and extensive FAQ section for all the new guys so that the same question isn't asked over and over again. Another suggestion is member tiered sections.

I used to be a vendor on powerstroke.org. when I first joined that forum it had just over 1k members... when I left it had over 300k members. we had different tiered sections for veterans of the forum where most of our conversations where made. but even with 300k members it was still a great site. but it had about 20 admins and way more categories.

So no I don't think it can ever be too big but steps need to be taken in order for it to still be effective....

-Raul

 

[nickburt]

@Polaris Overland - Good points well made Dave.

I have posted before about how dilution occurs. Also - Facebook is killing the forums - I've seen many a good, healthy, energetic forum completely collapse due to Facebook. Don't get me wrong, FB is good for keeping up with friends, family and like minded groups, but it does end up being the goto app instead of making use of a forum and FB is nearly impossible to keep a group organised. This forum. like many others, is a mine of useful information, but if not used and maintained to it's full potential, could risk going the same way. That's not the case at the moment, for sure. Hats off to the team, who are obviously working hard in the background to keep things organised, in focus, and with current and future purpose, from experience, I know how difficult that can be.

Sectioning the forum into regions should help, but it depends on the community making full use of it, and it being maintained by the moderators - and yes, I do know how much hard work is involved in doing this (I am a mod on a couple of other forums, one of which is a fairly big, international club). Putting effort into shifting topics into the correct areas etc... is a thankless, time consuming job - often questioned - "where has my topic/post/picture gone and why" and mods have to have thick skins at times to maintain the status quo.

In my experience elsewhere, repetition is always going to be happening, daily, must users do not make use of the search facility for some reason - usually because it's quicker to ask the question than search out the answer - yup - I'm guilty of that too sometimes. But that's human nature, we think of a question, so ask it, rather than spend the time it takes to find the answer that already exists. The solution to that is patience and education.

Let's all do our bit to keep up the good work and try to do our little bit to help keep this the place it is and deserves to be.

 

[Rubyredfozzy]

Great info guys. I never thought of some of the points you made about searching and what not.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G891A using OB Talk mobile app

 

[Polaris Overland]

Appreciate the responses guys, I was beginning to think I was invisible.

Hopefully by everyone discussing the issues we can avoid the pitfalls of other groups / forums and I also believe if a change does need to be made it is better to do it early on. By leaving it too late re-organising becomes an awful time consuming job that I would not wish on my worst enemy.

 

[Craig M]

Good topic!

I tend to agree with the idea that there is such a thing as too big. In fact, when I first joined here I was pretty excited. I've been active on car related forums pretty regularly since around 2004 when I bought my first 'sporty' car and and got into racing. Before that I had spent periods where i was really active in Yahoo message boards, before forums like this existed.

Back in 2004, I started on a couple of national forums but ended up finding a local forum to my area and that was perfect for me. It was pretty active but not huge (maybe a couple hundred active, over 10,000 registered). Most of my best friends today are from that forum. I even met my wife through that forum (at an actual event).

As to offroading / camping / overlanding and forums, I started out on Expedition Portal in 2010. I had started camping again after not doing so in a decade or two, and more specifically, started doing vehicle based dispersed camping on public lands. I stumbled on Expo while researching some gear or something and found a great resource in that site. That said, I had a core group of friends that I camped with occasionally, and although I was relatively active on the site, I made no real effort to meet members or attend events.

I dabbled in a few Facebook groups but honestly, I was already starting to move away from Facebook, and am not a fan of how thier groups operate as opposed to internet forums. I was excited when finding this place because I was finally looking to actually get out and meet new people. The main couple we used to camp with moved out of state and we only get to see them a couple of times a year now.

I went to a few meetups, met a bunch of members, and even camped with one last year in CO. That said, the pace at which this place has been growing has been tough to keep up with, and at this point I have reverted back to treating it much like Expo Portal. A place to kill some time mostly, but otherwise more of a place for info exchange rather than real connections. I jump into the current now and then but just don't have the time or interest in spending hours upon hours staying on top of the bulk of the threads.

In my opinion, and clearly biased by my personal experience, the best model for these groups are those based on region / geographical locations. One where the forum or facebook group are just there to facilitate the real world, face to face stuff.