[Zer0 (OP)]

Why is TNS unable to Retain New Members?

I've observed this Alot.

From somewhere or somehow, folks end up coming in here, but very very few stay back.
Most simply Disappear!

What can WE All do Collectively to Prevent this trend from Continuing?
This Brain Drain needs to be plugged ASAP!

*Note - This is an Edited/Modified version.
Please refer to the Link below for the Unedited version of the Question & Original Responses.
Thank You!

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=82354.0

[Zer0 (OP)]

Why is TNS unable to Retain New Members?

I've observed this Alot.

From somewhere or somehow, folks end up coming in here, but very very few stay back.
Most simply Disappear!

What can WE All do Collectively to Prevent this trend from Continuing?
This Brain Drain needs to be plugged ASAP!

Because it's a honest open forum that doesn't play favourite's and people find that harsh, it isn't ruled by moderators opinions but by rules that are applied by moderators. It has free speech. Fortunately it's content is mostly maths and science based, these are not popular amongst the egotistical as its content is not something that can be opinionated or posture upon, it's quite hard to take argument with reason.

It's amazing how few people are banned really, the spammers are about the only ones who get banned outright.

[Zer0 (OP)]

Hi.

Why is TNS unable to Retain New Members?

   I don't know.   I can speculate and talk about my own views / experience,  that is all:
1.    Some people did just want a question answered.   Once that's done they have no reason to remain.
2.   People have many other things to do and writing something on a computer takes a long time compared to just talking to someone in real life.

From somewhere or somehow, folks end up coming in here, but very very few stay back.

    Actually I think a lot more could be done to encourage new users.   One of the first things I did when I stumbled upon this site was to look around at the existing threads and discussions.  There was a large amount of very low quality posts which put me off using the site.
    My opinion of what is a low quality posts includes these things:
1.  Obvious junk like advertising.
2.  Posts that are just needlessly offensive.
3.  Monologues.   There are other sites and better places to just have something on display on the internet.   For example, Wikipedia takes articles written by anyone, that's how the whole thing started.   If you're bursting with knowledge or enthusiasm about a thing and want to have it on public display on the internet, see if you can write a Wikipedia article.    Meanwhile, a forum (I would think) is a place for discussion with someone else and not for publishing or what is sometimes described as "preaching".    (Rough guide: If you've replied to yourself 6 times and no-one else has replied in between, then there probably wasn't anyone here who could discuss the topic or that wished to).

It's not all negative:  One of the things that is very much in favour of this site is that it is very tolerant.   There are some forums that I would never recommend to a friend just because they are likely to put someone off stuying more physics.

Best Wishes.

[Zer0 (OP)]

I am hoping & expecting more responses from more Members.
Thanks in Advance.
: )

[Eternal Student]

Hi.

FREE FOOD - that's always been a good way to attract people and retain them.   I don't suppose you can get it sent down the internet but you could just add it to the title of your post:

Title:
FREE FOOD  (and tell me what you think about retaining new members)

tags:  FREE FOOD, new members, BUFFET

Best Wishes.

[paul cotter]

Free beer.

[alancalverd]

A local rock band called themselves Free Beer. Never short of an audience because the pubs would advertise "Free Beer - Thursday Night". Genius

[Eternal Student]

Hi.

    You're not doing too well here @Zer0 ,  collecting views or ideas from other users.

1.   Firstly there just are not very many regular users.   So you aren't going to get many replies.

2.   Trying to identify what users wanted from the forum is hard.    I tried it here:
         https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=82722.20
     (especially post #1  and pushing the question again in post #20).
     I didn't get many straight answers.

3.     I've tried asking people what they thought their interests or areas of expertise might be:
          https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=84486.0
       Most of those answers were just from a few moderators.

 - - - - - - - - -
Since it is difficult to get data, you may end up trying to make your own best estimates or guesses about why people are here and/or what would make the forum better or more useful in some way.

As you may know, click on someones name and you go to their profile.    There won't be much info there except for a list of all the posts they have ever made.   There's also some summary statistics about things like which sections of the forum they have posted in,  what times of day  etc.     Overall it's the list of posts they have made which is more useful.   If you have the time and determination, you can actively start collecting data or attempting to answer certain questions.

    Example:     If you clicked on my profile and went through the posts you may find that I post mainly in the Physics section - that should take only a few seconds since the summary statistics will show it.    With more time looking through the posts you can identify all sorts of things.   For example, you might conclude that Eternal Student is totally incapable of keeping anything short.
    One of the best methods is to have a question in your mind before you start reading the profiles like "how often does someone reply to a post rather than create a new post of their own?" -  then you can spend the time and actively mine that information for yourself out of the profile pages.
     One major issue is that I'm not sure how or even if you should discuss your findings.   People don't always want to be talked about directly and especially not if it's in a bad way.   So it would be unreasonable for me to suggest that  "this named person"  almost always runs posts in new theories in which they just want to talk about their stuff and has rarely bothered to take any interest in anything that somebody else has posted.   It's considerably more acceptable if you keep it much more general and just say that "in my limited observations and assessments, there are quite a few people who do much as just described".

Summary:
    You may not get many replies from many people in this thread  BUT  you can mine an awful lot of information if you try.

Best Wishes.

[paul cotter]

Unfortunately there is neither a great interest nor appreciation of science among the general populace. This, in my opinion, is partly due to very poor science education( I can only reference my own country, Ireland. The situation may be different elsewhere ). Personally, as a child, I had few interests other than "how does that work" with respect to everything I saw in my environment and as such did not need an interest to be cultivated. To give an example of how bad the education was, we once tricked our chemistry teacher into preparing a small quantity of manganese( 7 ) heptoxide, a wildly unstable substance, which spontaneously exploded after short period terrifying the poor man. A rotten trick I fully accept but it demonstrated his inability to tutor chemistry. Also there was no physics tuition available which meant I had to do it myself achieving an acceptable pass in the final exams.   

[Zer0 (OP)]

Changed the Title of the Thread into a ClickBait!
Now gotta sit Silently n Wait.

In the foggy mist of Travesty, lurks Opportunity!
(0)

[paul cotter]

Hi Zero, who is your dealer?

[alancalverd]

Can's speak for others, but I come here as a brief respite from Terrific Nonstop Sex.

[Bored chemist]

Can's speak for others, but I come here as a brief respite from Terrific Nonstop Sex.

Terrific originally meant "inducing terror"... just sayin'.

[alancalverd]

Just as "jungle" is derived from the Hindi for "desert".

Always happy to induce awe and surprise, of course.

[Zer0 (OP)]

This place does Not squash Radical thoughts & ideas.
(Not right away atleast!)
If a Breakthrough in Science & Technology is inevitable, chances are the Sparks might originate from in here.


MODS are way too Understanding & Tolerant!
So much, that a sense to self-regulate & self-moderate comes into effect.

I do have a few issues to discuss thou...

When i Search online for ' Science Forums ' i get results for redit, qora, scinet, sciphorums.
thenakedscientists.com does Not show up.
Folks might be searching for ' naked ' or ' scientists ' but seldom use both words together in key word search.

In what way can thenakedscientists.com be pushed up the ladder of results?

Also, do the 50k+ tweeterz on TheNakedScientists know that there is a whole forum present here for Them to Utilize?

& If atall possible, Please do give a thought of creating New Sections.
Such as Philosophy, Theology, Pseudoscience etc etc.
(Sections under ' General Discussion & Feedback ' are hardly ever active)


Btw, haven't seen Colin2B around since awhile...
Hope all is Well.

[Eternal Student]

Hi.

   Firstly I'm very sorry that you haven't had more replies, although I can't say I'm too surprised.

If a Breakthrough in Science & Technology is inevitable, chances are the Sparks might originate from in here.

    You have a very rosy view of the forum, @Zer0 .   In it's own way that's great and I wouldn't like to crush it.   However, if you're really thinking about what this forum can do and how it could grow,  then it might be necessary to do some straight talking.

    There are many forums out there.   Realistically, this one is not regarded as having the best experts.   That may change in the future but at the moment, this forum is years away from competing with the leading forums.

     So, when comparing this forum to others, you are just not going to win or persuade people to come here with arguments about the experts we have or the number of breakthroughs which have started off in this forum.   It would take an expert about 10 minutes to browse through some of the recent discussions and know straight away that the site does not live up to that description.   The only thing they will think is that whoever made up that description seriously overestimated their own ability and that of the other users of the site.   Meanwhile, people just looking for a place to post their "junk"  (which might be advertising or a theory that they couldn't get published in a recognised journal) might actually believe the comment and then they will come here and post their junk.
   
    What really makes this forum different is that it's not "nasty".   According to comments from Chris and some of the team who started up the NakedScientists - they expect to get questions and discussions at about School level.   There's nothing to stop a higher level discussion (and there are some) but if a question comes in that is pitched at around school level then the user isn't made to feel small or silly.   More generally, there are a few forums which have a reputation for putting people off studying any more physics.  Half-formed notions with partially correct ideas often lead to the original poster being crushed like a bug under the feet of people who seem to have no time to or patience.  That seems like a failure to recognise that the OP may have been trying to engage with physics and part of the journey to learning physics is stopping to ask (yourself and/or others) things which seemed like logical developments or consequences   -   well if it's like this.... then surely it should be this...   and why isn't it like this.... ?  etc.

     In some of the previous posts you ( @Zer0 ) have attached some importance to information being useful for people in the future.   I recommend that you don't even start to think like that.   Forums are never going to be like textbooks,  or Wikipedia  or the  "libretext" pages that are available online and they should not try to be.    You would not want to go to a forum to find information,  they are hard to search through and you have to read a dozen replies, some of which will be just fixing previous mistakes.   The final information you may have wanted will rarely be condensed and neatly presented in just one post, it will spread out over several people's responses.
    When you start thinking that a forum post should be just a high quality textbook,   then what happens is that you have created a place for monologues and not for discussion.   To keep the quality of information high, moderators will be quicker to shut down threads and reprimand users for making inaccurate statements or seeming to present an incorrect idea as if it might be a logical consequence.   The sort of thing mentioned earlier  (learners just trying to make logical connections as they progress in their journey learning physics) is prevented.   So my recommendation is that you just never make the assumption that a forum post will ever be used as a source of information by anyone who wasn't already in that discussion.   The focus of a forum thread should always be that there was one person there (the OP plus maybe more who will join) who wanted to discuss something and the sole purpose of that thread is to facilitate that discussion between those people.   A forum thread was successful if the people in that thread have had a good discussion and just ONE person has learnt something new or been able to bounce their ideas off someone else etc. 

---- The post is already getting too long.   I'm ending.   All of the above is just one person's opinion.  No insult was intended to any experts that might be here, it's just trying to be realistic about how many are here in comparison to other sites.

Best Wishes.

[paul cotter]

Hi Zero, you want encroach on philosophy, theology and pseudoscience?  Well i'm sure Alancalverd will oblige on the former two disciplines( joke, joke!, he will probably put out a contract on me for such a suggestion! ). Pseudoscience is a serious problem: I am personally horrified by the amount of science denial and pseudoscience clogging up the internet. Just look at new theories and the absolute nonsense that regularly infects it. Generally those holding pseudoscientific beliefs 'know it all' and are impervious to reason. If there was the slightest hope of countering these errors I would be enthusiastic, but it's just not the case.

[napdmitry]

Hi everybody. I'm one of the new members, and what I am looking for is a place where scientific matters can be discussed at a good, preferably expert level. Because what I see on facebook or twitter groups is mainly advertising. There are lots of pictures and videos that are completely science-unrelated. But on the other hand, I've been trying to add a picture to my second post and have failed. I know about links in the first posts, but what about pictures? I think it would be good to point the newbies to some faq covering such issues.

[Halc]

Hi everybody. I'm one of the new members, and what I am looking for is a place where scientific matters can be discussed at a good, preferably expert level.

There are some members here with good expertise in some fields, but not all. I for instance know relativity theory quite well but would not consider answering an electrical field question.

Because what I see on facebook or twitter groups is mainly advertising.

Those are not science sites, with no moderation for content. Quora similarly has wrong answers as much as correct ones. All the sites have problems with spammers, but facebook and twitter lack the resources to moderate the sort of volume they get.

I've been trying to add a picture to my second post and have failed. I know about links in the first posts, but what about pictures? I think it would be good to point the newbies to some faq covering such issues.

FAQ is here: https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=45718.0
Link brings you to reply 3, which covers the attachments, using the "Attachments and other options" link just below your edit window. I honestly forget what the policy is about attaching images as a newbie. What I need is a second account to experiment as a newbie.

When i Search online for ' Science Forums ' i get results for redit, qora, scinet, sciphorums.
thenakedscientists.com does Not show up.

That may be because TNS is primarily a website supporting a radio podcast program, and it just happens to have a forum, rather than actually being a forum as its primary purpose.

[Eternal Student]

Hi.

I've been trying to add a picture to my second post and have failed. I know about links in the first posts, but what about pictures?

     This article is a description of how to insert images.
https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=45718.msg397740#msg397740
     It's a bit tricky and rarely works as you hoped first time.    The best advice is to have a go and eventually you'll get it.

    There are shortcut buttons all over the posting interface.   Here's two that will be helpful:


Adding Images.jpg (145.85 kB . 1175x655 - viewed 1162 times)

- - - - - - -

.... what I am looking for is a place where scientific matters can be discussed at a good, preferably expert level...

    I'm going to be cautious and not to say much.  The moderators are often still working in their fields.   There are some retired scientists and engineers among the regular users.   However, the forum is open to the general public and quite friendly to questions pitched at school level or based on everyday questions like "why is the sky blue?"  etc. 
     There are some discussions at all levels and there are certainly people keen to discuss science rather than pseudoscience  (see @paul cotter 's reply just above yours,  for example).
     Most people agree that one of the main differences of this forum compared to others is the amount of tolerance.   However, it's not without some limits.   I'm not a moderator but mainly the advice is don't try to advertise something and it will probably be OK.

I think it would be good to point the newbies to some faq covering such issues.

    I agree.  I'm not staff so I can't do much about it.   There is a fair amount of information here,  it's just spread out and hard to find for newbies.   You don't HAVE to read it all in one go, by the way, it's not a highlight of a visit to the site.

Forum Acceptable usage Policy     (does what it says in the title).
     https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=8535.0

Tips and tricks FAQ     (mainly how to do fancy tricks like adding images).
      https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=45718.0

How do we moderate discussion of new theories in the main part of the forum?
      https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=66954.0
- - - - - - - - -
   There are also some sections of the forum that are not well used and can be confusing for newbies.
For example,  the  "NAKED SCIENCE - The Official Book"  and also the "Guest Book"  sections seem to be what IT experts would call a honey-pot trap.   Specifically, automated bots (or real people) looking to drop some advertising into as many websites as possible are drawn to it like flies.   Occasionally a real person will post their first message there and regrettably that can be missed.
     I didn't design the User Interface for the site.   I think it's very hard for a new user to know where they should put their first post.

Best Wishes.

NOTE:  @Halc  finished their post before I completed this.   Hence some overlap in content.