Cannabis Connect

Whoa! What a whopper of a topic and what amazing feedback.
I have learned a lot from you all. Here's the business objectives and opportunities that may have been missed...
1. Every site owner needs to assess their target prospects and determine the relevance of these types of cohorts and where they may want to gravitate. Are you serving a community of interest or a community of practice? Would Special Interest Groups, Birds of a Feather, Executive Think Tanks or some other form of "club" be most appropriate? Once you have your answers for these then move to point #2.
2. Is it possible to offer any type of industry benchmarking data? Can you figure out how to share peer average and best-in-class data? This is not easy, nor inexpensive, but for business-oriented sites it can be a game-changer.
3. Figure out how to run a regularly scheduled webcast.
4. Make sure to offer "soft" gamification (i.e. point accrual" which is now possible via the IPS app, itself, or you can step up and run the Member Shop plugin app which features fine-grained gaming rules with a bank account. Now, for the biggest and most dramatic way to grab audience participation... drum roll please......
5. This needs IPS leadership and software support... Offer "Hard" gamification where the points which have been accrued in the member's bank account can be swapped for ENJ (Enjin) coins. This is the route that Facebook will be taking and IPS can help us by developing a DAO, supporting Defi and Blockchain, Smart Contracts and NFTs. This will be a game changer especially if you, as site owner, know which Sponsors would like to offer NFT's coins, prizes, etc.
I'd be glad to raise my hand to assist wth further guidance on how to get started.
 
Best Regards,
Phil Wilson

Whoa! What a whopper of a topic and what amazing feedback.
I have learned a lot from you all. Here's the business objectives and opportunities that may have been missed...
1. Every site owner needs to assess their target prospects and determine the relevance of these types of cohorts and where they may want to gravitate. Are you serving a community of interest or a community of practice? Would Special Interest Groups, Birds of a Feather, Executive Think Tanks or some other form of "club" be most appropriate? Once you have your answers for these then move to point #2.
2. Is it possible to offer any type of industry benchmarking data? Can you figure out how to share peer average and best-in-class data? This is not easy, nor inexpensive, but for business-oriented sites it can be a game-changer.
3. Figure out how to run a regularly scheduled webcast.
4. Make sure to offer "soft" gamification (i.e. point accrual" which is now possible via the IPS app, itself, or you can step up and run the Member Shop plugin app which features fine-grained gaming rules with a bank account. Now, for the biggest and most dramatic way to grab audience participation... drum roll please......
5. This needs IPS leadership and software support... Offer "Hard" gamification where the points which have been accrued in the member's bank account can be swapped for ENJ (Enjin) coins. This is the route that Facebook will be taking and IPS can help us by developing a DAO, supporting Defi and Blockchain, Smart Contracts and NFTs. This will be a game changer especially if you, as site owner, know which Sponsors would like to offer NFT's coins, prizes, etc.
I'd be glad to raise my hand to assist wth further guidance on how to get started.
 
Best Regards,
Phil Wilson

I would like to be clear - I'm not bashing forums, although it may appear that way, simply acknowledging the fact that not everything is as rosy in the garden as some would like to believe.  I also believe it's the responsible act to inform those looking to start a community that it's not as easy as they may think.  I can remember the days when a forum site would open up and within a matter of days you could have hundreds of members all communicating with each other with loads of posts and replies; those days are no more and it's tough to get a handful of members and even when that happens very little else happens.
I understand also that 'some' people have been lucky enough to build up a great and active community, but they are generally the exception and not the rule.  The problem is Social Media along with the fact that there are millions of sites out there that contain the information people are looking for - we have a world full of consumers, not contributors and I mean that in the sense that the general public are the consumers and that someone out there is contributing, but they are doing so in a way that does not require engagement.
Some in this discussion have employed numbers to bolster their arguments:
Twitter:
Facebook:
TikTok:
Instagram:
I image those dramatic figures will mean nothing, but we are talking about only four sites and they are 'active'.  I know of forum sites boasting 1 million members, but how many are active?  You can have 1 million members but if only a hundred or so are active then the 1 million number is meaningless.
Again, I'm not knocking forums, simply realising what they are up against.  The question on every prospective forum community owners mind should be 'can I tempt them away from these places?'  If you have something different and unique perhaps some will drift your way.  The next question should be 'what is unique on the Internet that hasn't already been done?'.  When you have the answer to those two questions, there may be a chance.
Man, I wish SM would disappear and people would realize the value of forum communities. But the other issue is mobile devices.  Forums are not easy to engage with using such a small device.  Imagine how long it would take for me to generate this reply on a mobile phone; I probably wouldn't live long enough to finish it lol.   
And how exactly have I done that?  Simply because I do not agree with your assessments?  I will not just roll over and say that you're right.  Wanting to be right and actually being right is not the same thing.  I am attempting to be realistic whilst you are at the opposite pole.  You haven't said anything that convinces me that your arguments hold any water, so now you resort to rudeness rather than engaging with me and convince me that anything I have said is incorrect.  And I will say it again for the umpteenth time, I am not here to bash or knock forums, simply making my case that it is expensive, time consuming and often pointless for anyone new coming into the fold that may have high expectations of success.  If that's me trying to turn your arguments into a joke then I really do feel for you.  In your own words:
Wasting my time here, as always.

The truth is that despite the rose tinted specs maybe being worn by @Davyc, starting a forum in the years before social media wasn't a guarantee of success by any stretch. In fact, most failed, as they do now. 
As has already been mentioned by others, getting success with a community (and other web related stuff) requires a number of things to come together, luck included. In some respects, social media can help with starting a website or community etc, because it's an instant way to drive interest, whereas pre social-media you'd have to wait for google to find you or rely on less straight forward methods of getting the word out there.
That's not to say social media hasn't taken some traffic and opportunities away from communities, of course it has, and it's probably changed the type of communities which can and can't work. But, with the right idea, niche, and the right person or people driving it, along with that splice of luck, there's still loads of opportunity to create a thriving community. 

Although I said I was out of here, please don't twist my words.  I never said pre-social media was a 'guarantee' for success,  just that it was easier to cultivate a community.  And, just as an aside, I have said throughout my comments that they were directed at 'forum based communities' nothing more, nothing less.  I have travelled the road of BB Boards and Forums for over 20 years so I am no newcomer to the arena.  So please be guarded in your comments and restrict them to the points made in the discussion without unwarranted fabrications.  And it would be a warm welcome for anyone who has recently (in the last couple of years) started a 'forum based community' to come forward and relay their successes; I have my doubts that many will, but I would dearly love to be proved wrong. Now I really am out of here.

I agree with everything you say, but the caveat is that it is becoming increasingly difficult for people to launch a successful forum based community in the current climate, at least for hobbyists or people who want to present something that interests them personally.  I'm not, and never have said throughout this discussion, that it's impossible.  However, there are a whole bunch of people who come into the arena with great expectations and little understanding and end up disappointed when they see their efforts fall by the wayside.  And there is no getting away from the fact that SM is the main reason; before SM forum communities of all kinds were springing up and achieving their owners expectations.  The landscape has changed dramatically since then and it is incredibly difficult to achieve expectations.
I have stressed throughout that I'm not forum bashing, quite the opposite I'm SM bashing.  But I do think it is irresponsible to big up expectations when they are seldom realised - and, again, I stress that this is in the hobbyist (for want of a better term) arena.  Businesses are in a completely different league, especially big businesses who have huge sums of money to spend on marketing and advertising. 
There are some forum sites that have been around since before the rise of SM and they are still there today and the IPS community suite has grown beyond forums, if it hadn't I have doubts that you would still be around today.  The IPS suite of apps can be applied successfully in many ways from Blog sites, to Websites, to Commerce sites to galleries for artists and photographers; there is a wide range to choose from.  I'm a great advocate of the IPS range of apps; some of my clients have adopted the IPS model, but not the forums because they have tried them and they did nothing to add value to their venture.  If you want an example try https://www.thenationalchefsunion.co.uk/ which I designed and help manage for them.  They use Pages for articles and sponsors and commerce for their member subscriptions.  So I wish to make it absolutely clear that I am not IPS bashing, because I get the feeling that some in this discussion are being incredibly defensive of the software when there is no reason to be.  Hell, I even run two sites myself with the IPS software so if I were against it then I would most certainly not use it, nor continue to pay for it.  I also run a Xenforo site simply because a third party app used there is not available on the IPS platform, otherwise it would be.
As @Rikki mentioned success is measured by a site creators own expectations and because they vary wildly it is not possible to put a figure on it, so to speak.  I just wanted to make it clear to prospective site creators that it is not as easy a task as throwing everything you have at your project and expect it to drive into action and that a long term commitment is required and a not so insignificant sum of money.  Advertising is not cheap and if it's included in your budget it needs to be directed in the correct way to maximise your ROI (return on investment).  It's tough out there and getting tougher.  If anyone wants to try, I say good luck to them as everyone loves a trier. 
When I started into this arena Google had only been around for a few years and there were 2,410,067 website listed (source for these figures is Google itself)  as of Jan 14, 2022, there are currently over 1.92 billion websites. So there is a monumental number more and covering just about every imaginable topic.  Numbers may not be relevant in many instances but sometimes they do tell a story and paint a different picture between one time and another.
Power to the elbows of the triers - I keep trying lol.

We're actually getting some insidious spammers lately.
They will post 3 or 4 times, acting like they know what the forums about, be relatively on topic, and sometimes saying something really weird but not 100% spambot.

They go dark, and a few weeks later they come back, and edit their old posts changing it to spam.

Major milestone. Thanks IPS!
 

Hopefully this is because the crawl efficiency improvements allowing Google to focus on the new content and not be distracted by changes to profiles, etc.

Major milestone. Thanks IPS!
 

I have pored through the above comments regarding the Member Shop plug-in. I can't figure out the non-English comment. Perhaps we can get someone to translate?
We have been very impressed with Member Shop because of the creativity of the authors AND because it addresses both "soft gamification" (i.e. earning points and receiving donated point). The plug-in also addresses "hard gamification" which is point redemption for a real-world gift or prize. There is also a banking capability and mystery gifts! Overall, this is a very sophisticated app. I really wish that IPS would help us out with a code merge so that all of us can benefit.
For all those site managers who are trolling for community sponsors, like we are at https://chchains.org ... hard gamification is the next era of discussion forums. 
Please look under our More nav label to read our copy of the Member Shop rule set:
Https://chchains.org

Oh if this could tie into Nexus and let users cash out 50,000 of their points for a $50 Coupon code..........
 

I can't edit my comment above, but I did have an observation now after looking through the new achievements.
Is the poor image quality forced by the system with some kind of weird compression, or did you guys just not use the right size when uploading them?  The pixels are so poorly resized you can barely read out any wording or numbering details.

🥲 Thank you!! 

My only comment is I would strongly urge someone to look at Discourse to see what a typical "basic" set of badges looks like and make it very easy for Invision users to implement such a "basic" set to very easily have a great user onboarding experience.
This is the only area I think Discourse has been crushing us, and they really have pretty much nailed user onboarding through badges and gamification. I've joined two discourse communities recently related to some smart home stuff I'm doing (Hubitat being one of them) and the user onboarding with badges to reward participation and elevating to higher and higher trust levels the more things a person does to engage is just *chef's kiss*.
Sort of like the below (although I dobn't think this is the default set):

Adriano gets points, badges and ranks for it.

Man, I’m still lunching. I have no idea! TOO SOON to even think about it. Go sleep! 😆

No new reaction for this? 

A co z Membershopem z @ Adriano Faria? Będzie się integrował? 
 
 

I love it. The new point system ties nicely into a vision I have for one or both of my communities.  I have been using Discuz! (2002) and FluxBB (2008); since the founding of their conception. Both of them have become dated in many ways, and while I have developed them both beyond their functionality, I feel we have reached an impasse. They most certainly work and function, but the development for one of them (FluxBB) has all but nearly stopped, and the other has become more 'hackish' (Discuz! 3.5) as the development has progressed (when it moves).
Our current business model mimics Reddit, both in the way of ad placement, monthly subscription, and the ability to reward others. Members naturally already receive achievements and points, which I see Invision will have in the upcoming v4.6; this is a beautiful way to encourage engagement while giving the member base a sense of involved reward and recognition.  Additionally, you already have a reaction system in place. What is lacking, and I presume we may need to build out in third-party development, is a method to purchase the reactions to reward others ("x" value allows to "y" number of reactions you can reward others).
Nevertheless, I am excited and looking forward to the pending release of 4.6

I have question about Membershop 
That apps can work toogether? After i install update, then  i will have two points systems? It will works toogether? 

I got involved with forums soon after I got married (in 2003). My husband had a job with extremely late hours, we had no kids yet, and I was home from my own job by 6:00 and very, VERY bored. My husband is an avid fan of the New York Yankees, and really wanted me to join him at the games, so I started to learn a little more about baseball. I wanted to sound halfway intelligent, so I began spending time on the YES Network forums to see what other fans were saying. (Solid choice, Esther, hang around with crazy trolls. Excellent decision-making skills.)
After a couple of months there, one of the more active members decided he was fed up with the sheer number of trolls and total lack of moderation - there was 1 moderator for nearly 1 million members. This guy was asking around to see if anyone could help him get the site up and running. As I mentioned, I was VERY bored, so I figured I'd do it.
The site was running IPB 2.2, and I started poking around and learning how to customize things. Taught myself PHP by implementing the modifications, then started making my own. 
Our site ran for nearly 5 years (and was really popular) before we had to shut it down simply because we had no time to run it. By then I was distributing my own minor modifications and doing really small custom pieces. 
In 2010, I quit my job to go out on my own and do this full time. I love this job. I love that my customers never ever want the same things twice, I love that nearly anything is possible with IPS. I'm really enjoying watching the framework "grow up", so to speak. 

I think Language (and the language strings) are one of the easiest, fastest, yet most powerful ways for you to cultivate a unique culture for your community.  It's also using a default feature of IPS so you're not customizing with a third party app.  I used to think that langstrings were only for non-english communities but they should be used by any admin to cultivate a unique culture and lingo for your board.  
If you have a themed community, you can be extremely creative in your language customization.  Even if you don't have a themed community, it's an opportunity to think very deeply about your organization's goals and to couch those goals within a set of unique terms.  For example:
- if I were running a Harry Potter website, my reactions could be 'spells'
- if I were running a gaming clan, my leaderboard could be a 'scoreboard' or 'hit list'
- if I were running a mental health nonprofit, my clubs could be called 'support circles'. 
As a personal example, I changed my langstring for Subscription to Pledge.  Subscription sounded very commercial and monetary.  I wanted a word that connected better with supporting my websites mission and values, and to have less of $$ edge.  

Is this blog post the definitive guide to gamification? No.  But I think it's a decent start of a conceptual introduction, and more importantly, a conceptual framework to think deeply and broadly about gamification.  
For example, here are things that can be easily extended for gamification:
- Ranks and Pips: old school gamification badges that have been around forever.  If you're not using a third party trophy system, then you should at least be using Ranks.  
- Language: most of us are probably using the default language for things like reactions, leaderboard, and reputation.  The default language is not geared towards  personally engaging or congratulating the user, so you can change the language strings.  
- Recognition topics: this is something that needs to be manually done and many boards already do this, but a board for public recognition of major accomplishments and group promotions.  Think of it as going up on stage to get an award from the organization's president.  
Gamification is the defining user engagement framework of our time and that's because gamification techniques are behaviorally-based.  The first website to get into your mind is the website who wins your attention, and thus your time, clicks, and money.  I think this blog post is a good springboard to think profoundly about all the aspects of gamification and the application of the idea to our specific communities.  Do I think IPS can and ought to do much more in the core software? Hell yes.  But in the meantime, there are plenty of things to think about, experiment with, and implement.  

Nice post! Great subject. As always, some food for thought.
You almost had me thinking you were officially announcing IPS Gamification though, or actual built-in Core support for gamification trophies and awards to, er, level up the Leaderboard feature! No fair, ya meanie!