WRC is kind becoming outdated but we can fix it

[kalis0490]

I think WRC is starting to become outdated,

The main articles on the front page haven't been updated in 4 + years. The twitter hasn't had posts in a year

We are getting 1.5K members but many accounts are spam, unfortunately. I'm seeing more and more kw project discussion on Urban Toronto and Reece Martin's discord server. Discussion seems to become more argumentative than prior. 

But all's not lost, WRC needs to become more welcoming to new members and add more features. Updating the web site interface would be a good idea. Sites like Waterloo Region Connected are popular in many Canadian cities so there's not a lack of interest in the topic.

[jeffster]

Problem is that many topics go 'off topic' quickly. Example, we can't talk about Highway 7 to Guelph without the usual anti-car folks demanding that everyone walks, bikes or take transit to work/recreation/friends or whatever instead. Many topics also become political when they shouldn't.

I also agree that the front page needs to be updated more often.

Overall, though, I find this site to be good. An interface update, though, would be great.

One thing to keep in mind, though I might be wrong, is that there are no paid positions here. The site can be 'free' or premium, with the major difference being ad support and picture allotment. That limits how good this site can become. I haven't checked out Urban Toronto, though I am aware that they do have discussions over there about K-C-W, but you should still get a better feed here.

What would be nice is if we did have some people, either elected officials, or those working for the city/region to chime in officially once in a while. We did have one politician here for a bit, but I think he was run out of town (this site) if you know what I mean.

[danbrotherston]

Problem is that many topics go 'off topic' quickly. Example, we can't talk about Highway 7 to Guelph without the usual anti-car folks demanding that everyone walks, bikes or take transit to work/recreation/friends or whatever instead.  Many topics also become political when they shouldn't.

I also agree that the front page needs to be updated more often.

Overall, though, I find this site to be good. An interface update, though, would be great.

One thing to keep in mind, though I might be wrong, is that there are no paid positions here. The site can be 'free' or premium, with the major difference being ad support and picture allotment. That limits how good this site can become. I haven't checked out Urban Toronto, though I am aware that they do have discussions over there about K-C-W, but you should still get a better feed here.

What would be nice is if we did have some people, either elected officials, or those working for the city/region to chime in officially once in a while. We did have one politician here for a bit, but I think he was run out of town (this site) if you know what I mean.

You on the other hand, NEVER made extreme statements, mischaracterizations, or other bad faith statements.

But even so, I disagree that transit to Guelph is off topic for a transportation project to Guelph.

Yes, a City of Kitchener council member was on here for a while, he didn't particularly like the facts about sidewalk clearing, it was only reality which ran him out of town.

I like the community that exists here, I'd be happy to see more people join it, but scale absolutely brings challenges. I think one must have a goal in mind, growth for growth's sake is for VCs in Silicon Valley.

As for it being outdated, it certainly looks outdated, no question there, but it has ever since I joined the site years ago. It doesn't really bother me, and I lack the skills, time, and money to help those selfless individuals who are actually running the site (for free I might add), to invest in making it prettier.

[tomh009]

It's certainly possible to change the MyBB theme. That takes some design skills and then working with Spokes (who owns the site). But I don't know that this will gain a lot of readers.

Maintaining front page content is more challenging as writing new articles to keep the front page fresh requires ongoing work. Changing it to highlight "top" posts or photos might be one way to have fresh content (assuming that this has no technical issues). Same applies to the Twitter feed.

[Spokes]

Hey guys, like Tom said, the front page can be a work in progress, but it requires content that is worthy of going up on there. What would you like to see on the front page?

Theme: I'm open to changing things up. This was a solution to get things responsive and better served on mobile devices. We'd talked about a xenforo migration but that's a BIG task. One that frankly I don't have the time for right now. So if someone wants to look around for a better theme, I'm open to suggestions. But it's not a matter of slapping a new theme in place. There are many hours of customization that go into it.

Twitter: I've almost deleted the twitter account a number of times. It's so time consuming.

All of these things require A LOT OF TIME. Right now the site has a few people who commit various amounts of time and i really appreciate the time that they put in both in moderation and behind the scenes. But I also respect that they have lives. They have full time jobs. They have families. I don't pay them. I have no expectations of their time and commitment. I love and appreciate every ounce of energy they put into this site. The same goes for me.

[Spokes]

I think WRC is starting to become outdated,

The main articles on the front page haven't been updated in 4 + years. The twitter hasn't had posts in a year

We are getting 1.5K members but many accounts are spam, unfortunately. I'm seeing more and more kw project discussion on Urban Toronto and Reece Martin's discord server. Discussion seems to become more argumentative than prior. 

But all's not lost, WRC needs to become more welcoming to new members and add more features. Updating the web site interface would be a good idea. Sites like Waterloo Region Connected are popular in many Canadian cities so there's not a lack of interest in the topic.

Is this a volunteering of taking over the Twitter account?

[plam]

Fundamentally WRC is a discussion forum. There are other things like the front page but that's not where the action really is. One could make an effort to have a volunteer update the front page but it's not clear to me that would be worth the time.

WRC is not a discord and it would be hard to get into that space, especially if there's already an active one.

Although I agree that we shouldn't pursue growth for the sake of growth, it is also the case that without attracting new users (at least at replacement rate), the number of active users will tend to 0 eventually, because people leave naturally for various reasons. So it is worthwhile to be welcoming to new users.

I do not think that it's unreasonable to discuss whether there should be a better highway to Guelph or whether we should actually have better urbanism-friendly transit options. That's kind of the whole point of this site.

[Bytor]

Discords aren't a good idea for serious discussions as you have to be logged in and paying attention when it happens, rather than asynchronously like a bulletin board forum. Me, I'll join a new discord, be an active talker for maybe a few weeks, but then real life will intervene and I cannot check a zillion times a day, and then when I do come back I see these stale conversations a day old and replying to them (even with the new Discord threads) usually doesn't get much of a response. This is especially bad if your online times are out of sync with most others on it.

[ac3r]

Problem is that many topics go 'off topic' quickly.

I think that's just the nature of the internet. Doesn't matter what format a discussion forum is - be it a forking format like Reddit, or a chronological format imageboard like 4chan - discussions just branch off into a million different things pretty quickly.

There is also the fact that this website uses a pretty archaic format itself - that is, MyBB type bulletin board systems. These kind of forums were popular in the early 2000s, but not so much today due to the format and how different people have come to interact with the internet. So, once a thread gets derailed a bit and people reply to those posts, it throws a topic off topic until another post brings it back on topic. That said, I think it suits the forum pretty well. For what is discussed here, a Reddit format wouldn't work.

I suppose one thing that can change that is more heavy handed moderation, but eh...I'm never a fan of what is basically censorship on a discussion forum (unless it's extremely hostile stuff). Moving or deleting threads just gets confusing and quickly pisses off users who then may leave.

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Re: the OP post. Yeah the main page is pretty dated but again. I think when one lands on the domain, it should take you right to the forum itself, rather than the portal page. The website is obviously a discussion forum before anything else, so that should be emphasized as it'd draw more people into participating and exploring the threads. The portal page is kind of pointless since it's just a list to a few forum threads - most of which are dead anyway. All of the relevant stuff is buried in the forums and IMO the forums themselves are not really "obvious" because it isn't immediately apparent that that is where you want to click to find all of the good stuff.

The Twitter is also pretty dated as mentioned. I'm not sure who operates it (Spokes, I'm guessing?) but maybe it could be cooperatively operated? Its got a decent following so it could be used to spread news about what's happening in the region as well as generate more traffic to the rest of the website. Like, if I were running the account, I'd try to frequently post updates relevant to the forum and region...examples: when there is a new project or just more information/renderings/updates regarding one, I'd make a Tweet with a link to the thread. Or if there was, say, a new EngageWR campaign or upcoming community meeting about something (bike lanes, a new development etc), I'd want to share links to that. Sharing news articles relevant to the region is also a good idea. The thing with social media like Twitter is that you need to constantly post to maintain relevance.

You've also got to directly engage with your followers - that is, rather than retweet (nobody cares about retweets...ever), post your own new Tweet. Or generate discussions through polls or asking questions ("How are you guys liking the new downtown bike grid?"; "What sort of suggestions do you have to handle the opioid crisis?" etc) that will get your followers to engage, share things and interact with the website itself.

Yeah I don't know, day off so I'm lurking the forum today. I know I suggested a regional wiki and I believe someone started contributing to that. My idea was to offer a place for specific discussions on buildings or projects happening in the region. However, in retrospect, a wiki is probably not the most ideal thing (although it would be a great place for disseminating a collection of information without needing to wade through tens of pages of forum discussion). To grow the website, I think the easiest thing to do is to simply place more of an emphasis on the forums, which is where all the action is, which could be done by simply directing people to them. And then use the nearly 3500 followers on Twitter to draw in more curiosity, interest, discussion etc by having links to various threads here.

And yeah...maybe find a way to deal with the argumentative derailments that seem to happen, though they are always natural in an internet forum phenomenon you can't really avoid. Even this thread has already had some complaining that have nothing to do with the OPs post, just personal ego, which has no place here. It gets a little hard to deal with that on a more "classic" forum like this because you don't really have up/down votes to get a judge of a posters character history or have it trigger a flag where certain posts get muted for being off topic, like you can achieve on Reddit. And without an easy mode report feature like Reddit where you can just click a couple things to report a post for violating rule A or B, it's mostly up to the mods discretion. In any case, doesn't seem like anyone here truly hates each other, there's just disagreements, but seeing that sort of stuff can turn people off visiting a website when you don't have a downvote system that can simply hide a discussion thread that gets too off topic or heated.

Anyway, this is a great website and I appreciate everyone here who helps out! But I agree with OP, it feels outdated in the sense that it's an old school forum. But that format still works fine, you've just got to adapt to the fact this is 2022 and use social media clout to draw more people in. If your content is interesting enough, users aren't going to care you're using software initially released in 2002. It's all about who clicks what, in the end.

[Spokes]

I agree, social media would help direct a lot of traffic here. It does. I just couldn't keep up with it to be honest. Without getting into too many details, I've gone through some personal crises and haven't had the time that I've had in the past. Social media was the first thing to fall. That being said Jeffster has stepped up and offered to help promote via Twitter so that's something that's going to change.

I'm intrigued by the notion of the home page being the forum page rather than the portal. Looking for more thoughts and opinions on this idea.

There's definitely a balance to be had here between keeping things organized and letting the discussion go on its own. I think historically the mod team has done a good job of moving posts to appropriate threads if needed.

The forum issue like you said, is simply a byproduct of a dated genre of software, but I agree, for what we've got here, it works. Like I said, if there's a theme or platform that is head and shoulders above the rest I'm open to it but it's a lot of time that needs to go into it and so it's got to be worth it. By a fairly significant margin.

You mentioned a WRC Wiki, that's in the works.

That being said, I appreciate everyone's feedback.

[ac3r]

If you want another hand in operating the social media aspect, feel free to reach out to me. I've got lots of experience operating social media accounts for various architectural firms, running some fairly large architecture meme pages on Instagram and...just being a long time internet lurker, so I know the nuances of everything pretty well, from engaging to followers via useful information to amusing memes.

You've done a great job keeping this place running and put a lot of work into it, so it's greatly appreciated. I don't think any other Waterloo Region related urbanism forum has lasted as long as this one has, nor grown as much. I know there are some serious people out there who work with/are involved in local journalism, real estate, development, architecture etc as well as plenty of students and everyday residents interested in urbanism and architecture who value this place, so it is definitely a really good project!

[jwilliamson]

I agree that the home page should be the forum rather than the current page. Anyone coming here should see the forum first since that is almost certainly what they want.

[Lebronj23]

How about something similar to UrbanToronto, some front page posts with pictures and updates for current projects (although someone would have to take the time create these) and those link directly to that particular form

[jamincan]

While it would be nice, unless someone has the passion and time to maintain that, it is probably better to just direct people to the forum. The reality is that very few people would likely even use a front page feature like that making any time commitment from a volunteer even less worthwhile.

[neonjoe]

Is there a plug-in that could perhaps just post to social media automatically about new threads or hit threads of the day. It could drive traffic but also not require constant effort.