Is this forum dying?

[Laird]

(You'll probably notice that those clicks in the table don't add up to 333 as one would expect: as I understand it, none of this is particularly exact; to an extent it's just Google's estimates).

Keep on keeping on: Continue exactly as we are, risking the possibility of a slow, gradual death, or at least of an ultimate end point at which there is a handful of us left having the same sort of discussions, at a much reduced frequency, that are currently popular.

Broaden and/or refine our effective topicality: Find out what members want to have conversations about that we aren't already having conversations about, why those conversations aren't happening, and how we can facilitate and nurture them. @Larry, for example, has made clear that he wants us to have more conversations about congressional hearings on UFOs, the organisations investigating UFOs, the simulation hypothesis, telepathy and related phenomena in non-speaking autistic savants, DMT entities, and how these all intersect.

Attract new members like the ones we have: Either through SEO, more interviews, or endorsements by popular organisations or figures like Jeffrey Mishlove, try to increase our active membership without changing the type of members we have, to forestall the possibility of a slow and gradual death.

Establish ourselves as a venue for professional discussions: Attract professional parapsychologists (and related professionals) to discuss their work and the field, and to brainstorm research possibilities, etc. This is the most ambitious option. Some challenges and considerations:

1. Several professionals (both individuals and organisations) have already joined us - e.g., @deanradin, @Titus Rivas, @Tom Ruffles, and @IONS - but haven't stuck around or at least become regular contributors. We would need to find out why and turn that around.
   
2. There presumably already exist many channels of online communication amongst professionals, including through their professional organisations. Why, then, would they choose us?
   
3. We would probably need to amend our rules and standards to facilitate and ensure an appropriately collegial atmosphere. The brief visit by @deanradin, for example, was in response to some quite harsh and, in my opinion, unfounded criticism, which would probably need to be avoided going forward if we wanted professionals to feel comfortable.
   

I think that that's everything I'd wanted to address, but if I later realise I've missed something, I'll add it.

Warm wishes to all of our members and potential new members.

I think one thing we might do is have social media accounts that highlight particular threads?

For example if we look at the past few months people have posted about personal experiences, the relation between Experiencers and the Experienced Reality, possible explanations for the UFO phenomenon, Intelligent Design at Cosmic & Biological levels, Psi Research, and various stuff in Philosophy & Spirituality.

If we tagged, say, a researcher like Alexander-Gomez or Michael Levin (assuming they have accounts in relevant platforms) they may come check us out or at least people interested in the topic may pop in.

I do worry that we are going to just get an influx of pseudo-skepticism, though it seems the number of evangelical Materialist-Atheist fanatics trying to go around forcing their faith onto others has dropped...

edit: To be clear I do think this would need to be balanced so it's not just latest thread created as I realize my posts would then incorrectly represent the breadth of the forum's interests.

[Laird]

Social media accounts seem like an interesting and potentially fruitful idea. My sense is that we'd want to be cautious about, and judicious in, our tagging of others, so as to avoid being perceived as spammy or at least spam-adjacent, or otherwise as a pest. It seems that often, when somebody with common interests is followed, they follow back, and they would then see our messages anyway (if/when they were looking). We might, then, limit tagging to those who have engaged with and shown interest in our messages previously, and who very plausibly would be interested in the one in which we're tagging them. Anyhow, those sort of "policy" questions could be hashed out later. My immediate and general reaction to your idea though is positive. (Incidentally, I have a feeling that we - as a community, or perhaps only the founders - discussed a social media presence years ago, but can't remember what conclusion we came to and why).

[Laird]

I think one thing we might do is have social media accounts that highlight particular threads?

For example if we look at the past few months people have posted about personal experiences, the relation between Experiencers and the Experienced Reality, possible explanations for the UFO phenomenon, Intelligent Design at Cosmic & Biological levels, Psi Research, and various stuff in Philosophy & Spirituality.

To add to my last post, re the above-quoted:

The "highlight particular threads" idea sounds a little like a call to resume Psience News - only a little though.

To add to my last post, re the above-quoted:

The "highlight particular threads" idea sounds a little like a call to resume Psience News - only a little though.

I almost never read these emails even when I choose to sign up heh.

Re: your last post, I do get how continually tagging someone could be spammy. Maybe just tag someone once if we have enough posts about them. And maybe only if there's some actual discussion about their topic.

Otherwise just mention the thread maybe?

I do think we might be one of the very few places that tries to discuss the philosophical import of Psi & Survival. I don't know if that's a major selling point because interest in said topic seems to be minimal heh...

[Laird]

I almost never read these emails even when I choose to sign up heh.

And, IIRC, nobody did sign up for the Psience News emails anyhow.

Re: your last post, I do get how continually tagging someone could be spammy. Maybe just tag someone once if we have enough posts about them. And maybe only if there's some actual discussion about their topic.

Otherwise just mention the thread maybe?

That sounds workable. The main four questions in my mind right now are:

Who are suitable candidates to manage these accounts?

Would any of those candidates actually be willing to manage them?

Which social media platforms would we create accounts on?

What do other members, and in particular the other two remaining active founders - @Typoz and @Ninshub - think of this idea?

[Laird]

Oh, and I neglected to respond to this:

I do think we might be one of the very few places that tries to discuss the philosophical import of Psi & Survival. I don't know if that's a major selling point because interest in said topic seems to be minimal heh...

Hey, it's definitely a strength of ours, and it's worth playing to one's strengths. 👍

I suspect there may be something wrong with the site structure...

I'd disallow /wiki/ in the robots.txt  it's not part of the forums, it's a dead end - no way back... and it leads to lots of off site URL's... particularly all those old skeptiko staging URL's... which throws security wobblers...

There is an XML sitemap of some sort still at https://psiencequest.net/forums/sitemap-index.xml

The domain seems to redirect to */forums and defaults to the latest updated threads view... not sure of the implications

I suspect there something wrong with the site structure...

The sitemap XML seems to index some parts of the site that are disallowed in the robots.txt file?

Google search console might give some clues too?


Also think the main keyword terms used internally are a random mixture (topic, category, forum) probably just needs to be forum... if I want a forum, I put 'forum' in a search...

the forums titles if I remember were chosen by committee :-) and are terrible, as they don't focus on the best popular generic keywords people use to search for on these topics...

There is a lot of work necessary to get organic search back...

I suspect there something wrong with the site structure...

Personally, I'd replace the domain name and site name psiencequest ... it's a mouthful, science is spelt wrong, it's not going to come up in results, and doesn't incorporate the key term 'forum' and the other parts of the domain need a long hard think as to what will get on the radar psi-science-forum for instance would be far better