talkmagic.co.uk

Why not launch a TM Newsletter? This can be sent out on a regular basis (weekly/monthly) with information like:

- number of new magicians joines TM last week/month
- number of visitors last week/month
- information about "The Great TalkMagic Competition", new competitions, deadlines, winners
- information about other interesting posts/threads
- other informative information

Newsletter would of course only be one2many, and not be possible to use by others then the admins responsible for sending out information. If you need a solution for this, I can host it for you, for free.

Solution would include:
- free signup
- web-based management for admins of the system
- security on all levels

Just an idea.... which I find brilliant. Some of the users here, don't pop by every our/day/week, and would find information in such a newsletter very interesting.

Hope you like it.

This I like. It could have the odd technical feature on, say, technique too, and links to particularly interesting threads.

yeah i find this to be a really good idea... i would definetly eb interested in it

Yeah, thanks for the support

Would be good, lot of extra work for the mods though

Well, get one that want to do it then. There's alot of ppl here that want to help out. This is NOT alot of extra work.

Yeah, I'll help out. If nothing else, I can show people how to structure a feature and I'm a fairly competent copy editor (for style, grammar, length, etc.)

No problem for me to spend some time on this either.

Some more information that could take part of such a newsletter:

- information about events (like fism/blackpool)
- new hot products / reviews

The goal is not to drive ppl away from TM, but to get them to visit more often. So the content of the newsletter must be of a certain level with enough information, but also work as a teaser to get them to visit TM again for more information.

stephenmagic wrote:Would be good, lot of extra work for the mods though

It certainly would, and given that the forum is an online newsletter in it's own right, which is dynamic, then I can't see any point at all for going to the trouble of condensing the info already here into a monthly summary.

Well first of all I don't agree that this would be alot of new work. If that's the most horrible concern, there are lots of ppl here, that would like to help around, so, let's entomb that concern.

Well, is this forum a online newsletter on it's own? I don't think so, or well, partly it is, but for alot of the users it's not very easy to visit TM on a daily/weekly basis. And, based on the truth that I am here every day, I see a huge problem for ppl accessing the forum once a week. It's impossible to stay updated, because there's alot of threads every day and users might miss out on interesting threads, information or events.

Also, we have ALOT of users in this forum, but only a handful active users (ok, a bit exaggerated, but you get my drift). Currently we have 4500 users, and that must be the least active 4500 users I have ever seen. Why? Well, I guess we have alot of users only registering and leaving, too many I guess. But again, alot of magicians register, and only pop by once in a while. That is a loss for both the registered magician, as well as the rest of the forum members.

Having a newsletter will make the forum even more live and online. More people will access the forums, more magicians will pop by more often, we will have an increase in threads and interesting news, and most important, TM will be stronger in the competition with other forums. And all this, with basically no effort....

rcarlsen wrote:Well, is this forum a online newsletter on it's own? I don't think so, or well, partly it is, but for alot of the users it's not very easy to visit TM on a daily/weekly basis. And, based on the truth that I am here every day, I see a huge problem for ppl accessing the forum once a week. It's impossible to stay updated, because there's alot of threads every day and users might miss out on interesting threads, information or events

If it ain't broke, don't fix it... I can't really understand how you fail to see TM as a newsletter?

It contains up to the minute event lists, up to the minute reviews, etc. etc.

If a user can't be bothered to check back for updates once in a while, they're obviously not too interested.

It may have escaped your attention, but for someone to trawl the archives here and statistics and produce a worthy, coherent publication would be actually quite time consuming.

Ergo, I stand by my comments. What advantage would it serve? What would it contain which isn't already covered on the forum?

I've always been under the impression that this forum IS a newsletter of sorts—a dynamic, daily update of what's going on.

Anyway, I am probably totally wrong about all this, as there's so many people feeling it's a good idea.

And Rune, I'm not knocking you personally at all... I am just airing my views, as you are airing yours.

Anyway, go ahead and do it if it floats your boat But I personally don't like the thought of an independently managed site which basically lifts out exerpts from TM and creates a newsletter. If it were to be a TM newsletter, then it would need to be managed and badged as such.

I have never said that a newsletter like this, wouldn't be part of TM. What I am saying is that phpBB (TMs current installation and version of this forum) doesn't support newsletter in the fashion I am announcing, and what I said is that, if TM members and board would like such a feature, I already have a feature that you can use. It's not based on phpBB but it solves the challenges needed in such a newsletter. It will be managed and "badged" by TM.

If a user can't be bothered to check back for updates once in a while, they're obviously not too interested.

Totally disagree. A while ago, I had way too much work to do and couldn't be so active in the forum, as I usually am. When I came back, after like 3 weeks, I first noticed that I was msised (thanks alot guys), but also noticed that there were way too many threads to follow up on, and I just "marked all threads as read", and just reset everything, and started from there. Most likely, I have missed alot of interesting threads and news, and that's not because I am a lazy b* and didn't have enough interest to hang around. Sometimes magic isn't everything, and other things in life take up your time. Keeping updated in forums and blogs is very time consuming, and a short and brief newsletter would really had been nice in such periods, because I would easily be updated with the most important news and happenings in the forum.

Ergo, I stand by my comments. What advantage would it serve? What would it contain which isn't already covered on the forum?

Again, this is not what I am saying. The newsletter will most likely have much of the same content as in the forum, but the goal of the newsletter is totally different than the forum itself. It will remind users about TM and keep them coming back for more information. We have too many registered users that drop out of the forum, for some reason. If these users were reminded on a regular basis what is happening in our forum, our great threads, file sharings, competitions and events, ppl would come back, and we would have a more active forum. Also, there will be information in the newsletter, if we want to, that is not part of the forum, as the statistics I already have mentioned.

It may have escaped your attention, but for someone to trawl the archives here and statistics and produce a worthy, coherent publication would be actually quite time consuming.

I am not sure what platform and statistics solution TM is running, but most likely, you already have a statistics engine running, and to copy paste information from this, would be rather easy. And I don't think it is fair that you trumpet how much work all this would be, when ppl willingly would like to help around. It's like killing the ehthusiasm even before it is a reality.

I get your point, and I do not think your are knocking me personally. Discussions are great, that's called democracy, and hopefully we will have more ppl joining the discussion.

Maybe the thread should be moved to the Misc forum, as I have a feeling that most ppl don't read the request category.

Actually, I like that idea too. I think that it would be quite easy to nominate the best post of the last, say, month and send them out. I think there's easily enough people on the forum who would contribute (I'd be happy to help but I'm mostly useless ) and so on - of course, it's the mods' decision finally

Kati

I think that it's a great idea. It could be called the TopHat (although we don't have these anymore)

Remember those days?