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Forum Wars III


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When goecaching.com made their forums they made them with the hopes the forums would be a success. A success would mean that geocachers enjoyed the forums and used them.

 

One of the problems an enterprise faces with success is that when they succeed, very often it’s not how they thought they would. Thus the forums now have 50,000+ registered users who have made their own community. Truly, this is a success. However the community discusses what it will. Very often that has nothing to do with the geocaching topics that Groundspeak had in mind when they created the forums.

 

Any enterprise when faced with being a success in an unexpected area has two options. Run with the success and work with this unexpected boon or they can say to themselves “This is not what we want” and ignore the success while working to make the lagging parts of their vision into the success they thought it should be. You can not make both a priority.

 

Groundspeak faces the same choice. Do they work with what the forum community has become or do they strive to mold the community into something other than what it is? The obvious choice is to work with your success. Yet that choice has as a risk the immediate loss of some level of control. Most people don’t make that choice because of that reason. The other choice exerts a lot more immediate control and yet runs the risk of a drastic decrease in the very control trying to be preserved. There is no easy balance between the two. For now the choice that Groundspeak has made is clear. The irony is that same choice made by a different discussion group is how the forums you are reading this in got their start.

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Or they can ban a select dozen users who just like to whine and cause problems, and then the forums would be what they desire.

 

It's quite obvious from reading the recent "lurkers" threads, that the vocal minority are very much in the minority. :huh:

Isn't that what some English King essentially said about some colonists once? ;) (OK that was a stretch huh?)

 

It's not what you say so much as how you say it. Tone, dude.

 

RK was very respectful IMO.

 

Sn :D;) gans

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Or they can ban a select dozen users who just like to whine and cause problems, and then the forums would be what they desire.

 

It's quite obvious from reading the recent "lurkers" threads, that the vocal minority are very much in the minority. :huh:

Hmmm, I don't whine and I'm not aware of causing much trouble....

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Hemlock wrote:

It's quite obvious from reading the recent "lurkers" threads, that the vocal minority are very much in the minority.

I've been following that thread and although there are a few that have expressed that opinion, I don't think it anyone could say it's obvious or the general consensus. I have noticed that several people have expressed that they find the forums entertaining and informative.

 

*****

Geo 135 40B-H 2

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10 years as a full service resturaunt manager taught me alot. One of the most important lessons I learned:

 

Some people complain no matter what.

 

Some people complain when they feel they have been treated wrongly.

 

Some people never complain, no matter what.

 

Statistically, 80% of people who feel they are treated poorly or receive bad service don't complain, they simply go away.

 

The lurkers who are in the 'disgruntled but won't complain' category don't voice they're opinions because they already stopped reading the forums.

 

I feel 'voicing my opinion', which I hope I have done constructively (and believe I have done so fairly) is a SERVICE to these forums, the community and TPTB. A failure to listen to those voicing compliants does not make the complaint a bad thing. Actually it makes the complaint all the more crucial to the survival and evolution of the system.

 

The degree and severity of complaints reduces as the number of people (in a position to do something about it) listen and respond to said complaints. Even if the response is only 'yes I hear you'.

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When goecaching.com made their forums they made them with the hopes the forums would be a success. A success would mean that geocachers enjoyed the forums and used them...

 

You have no idea how much I can relate to that post. As a business owner all I wanted was to grow my business into the biggest and best real estate company in my market area. However as my business grew and grew and I began to achieve my goals along with it came more and more stress. When it was just me and a couple of agents it was easy. It was easy to know what everyone wanted and it was easy to keep everybody happy. Then my business grew to the point where I didn't know everyone as well, different people wanted different things and I wasn't prepared for it. Than I bought a franchise and even more agents came, in 2 years I went from a 2 agent office to a 16 agent office and I was ready to open office number 2. I was ahead of schedule to achieve my goals. But then people started to complain. I would attempt to make those couple of agents happy, and others would complain. The stress got to the point where I hated going to the office. Finally enough was enough. I had to take a step back. I scaled my sales force down to only 7 agents. Now I'm taking things slower, keeping everything in control. I still have goals but I've realized you can't keep everybody happy. It's just not possible. To try is an exercise in futility. It's more important to stay true to what it is you started the business to begin with. In this case Jeremy wanted to start a site where people could come to one place, get all the info they needed to enjoy the sport of geocaching. I'm not sure what goals he has for the future but I'm sure he never expected all of these issues. We're all not going to be happy all the time. That's it. Most of the time the Mods do a great job, sometimes,... well you don't hit a home run every time at bat. I'm have no problem voicing my opinion when a mod closes a topic too quickly. But I also don't have problem letting them know when I think they're doing a good job too. I'm sure we can all agree that CO did the right thing by closing that last thread. Sometimes you need to take a step back in order to move forward. Maybe we should all go geocaching this weekend and not visit the forums again until Monday. Yea right, I'll see everyone back here tomorrow. :huh:

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Statistically,  80% of people who feel they are treated poorly or receive bad service don't complain, they simply go away.

The 80/20 rule is remarkably accurate and well done for pointing it out. It applies in all aspects of business. It was total eye opener to me when I was taught some of the applications of that one.

When I was in sales we used to say, 'Some will, some won't, so what?'

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