NES/Famicom message board popularity

[NationalGameDepot]

all hail manuel

I haven't seen you over at NESforums in a long time, glad to see your still alive.
~~NGD

[manuel]

Thanks. Maybe I'll have a look again into the nesforums.
I was quite busy the last 2 years.

[NationalGameDepot]

The site was booming for a while, but has slowed down a bit again anyways.  Since NintendoAGE opened all the NES exclusive sites has slowed down a TON.
~~NGD

[Doc]

The site was booming for a while, but has slowed down a bit again anyways.  Since NintendoAGE opened all the NES exclusive sites has slowed down a TON.
~~NGD

Is ANYTHING stil active? I think the NES message board fandom as a whole has gone down. This site's been pretty active, how have other message boards been fairing, NGD?

[JC]

Might be an end of the summer slowdown, but I think NintendoAGE has had a huge impact. I don't frequent a too many forums, but I've noticed that NES World has little activity and I almost never visit NESForums anymore. I think forums are intended to be a place to chat about games, and not much more, so when you try to branch out too much, you lose your core audience. Look at how many boards some of these forums have....way too many. I get discouraged trying to keep up. And because of too many boards and other policies (or lack thereof) some forums are too messy to get any useful conversations accomplished. I hope NintendoAGE doesn't branch out. The site is cool and the forum is ok for now, though it's getting kind of big and there are a lot of repeat topics posted (mods aren't merging topics to keep things organized).

[NationalGameDepot]

Everythings is slow NES wise but NA like JC said.  It has about killed the other NES exclusive fourms seems like.  Not sure it is a passing trend or a fixture though.

Your right about the threads, the forum package we use sucks right now and it won't allow you to merge threads very well to be honest.  Plus until yesterday it was just me and Dain Admin'ing.  We bumped up 2 members to MOD's to help ease the load.  Just to many posts for us to keep track of them all to be honest.  The NES community seems to be phasing to NA like the Atari community did to AtariAGE a few years ago.  We had 37 users online the other night which is shocking cause we just had our 1 year b-day a last week.  We only have 300 memebers, but like 260 of those long in about once a week or more.  That is pretty staggering #'s for a forum. So many sites have an assload of members that reg. and never return, we have less than 40 right now. 

Famiworld is actually one of the busier forums lately to be honest from what I can see. 
~~NGD

[Doc]

Yeah, it seems like us and NintendoAge are holding down the fort on NES/Famicom chatting.

[JC]

We only have 300 memebers, but like 260 of those long in about once a week or more.  That is pretty staggering #'s for a forum. So many sites have an assload of members that reg. and never return, we have less than 40 right now.

The reason some sites like NESWorld have so many members (2,000+) is because they require registration to view their threads. Some people looking for info will join just to find one piece of info and then they'll never return. I imagine it's unintentional on the part of the Admins, but it does inflate member numbers.

NintendoAGE and FW started around the same time. And we have roughly the same number of members, but I don't think we have as many members who log in regularly. We keep pretty busy, though, because there's not another English-language forum exclusively devoted to Famicom. Plus, often if you post in a Famicom board on an NES forum, you don't get an answer because people there aren't too familiar with Famicom or don't care enough about the console to reply.

It's interesting to watch these forums...to see which will survive and which won't. I'm particularly curious about NESWorld (not just because we share the name) but because the Admins started using the "Valued Member" designation as a way of keeping members active. I want to know if that strategy will work or fail.

[NationalGameDepot]

I agree completely with you JC.  I am not even a big Famicom fan but yet I check in here everyday now.  You guys have some interesting stuff to check out and it never hurts to learn some new stuff as well.  The next 1 or 2 years should really tell us were both are sites sites stand. 
~~NGD

[kite200]

Does this thread have anything to do with shady german websites now?

[133MHz]

Apparently not

[NationalGameDepot]

Sorry guys I got this thread pretty off topic.  Blame your 2 admins though, they helped
~~NGD

[UglyJoe]

Just about any topic is better than someone trolling for referrals.  I say keep this OT train going 

[MarioMania]

The only NES Forums I go

Famicom World

I'm somewhat active at NintendoAge

[JC]

Haha. Off topic we are. But, like was mentioned, this topic is kinda unusual...borders on spam, but it's from a known member, not just someone who stopped by once and posted spam.