Is this forum dying?

[Ninshub]

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


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?

I'm open to all of this, but wouldn't be available to handle this area.

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


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?

On the one hand, the question "Is this forum dying?" certainly is related to the fact that the largest online activity these days takes place on various social media platforms. In that sense I can understand why it might be suggested that that is where we should be active too.

On the other hand, I try to avoid posting or interacting on any of those places because they seem targetted at short attention-span low-seriousness content.

As such I would not feel inclined to be involved in such activity myself - though these are my personal views and I don't mean to be obstructive or uncooperative should anyone else wish to proceed in that direction.

On the one hand, the question "Is this forum dying?" certainly is related to the fact that the largest online activity these days takes place on various social media platforms. In that sense I can understand why it might be suggested that that is where we should be active too.

On the other hand, I try to avoid posting or interacting on any of those places because they seem targetted at short attention-span low-seriousness content.

As such I would not feel inclined to be involved in such activity myself - though these are my personal views and I don't mean to be obstructive or uncooperative should anyone else wish to proceed in that direction.

I share your assessment of social media as not being a place for good discussion, though every so often I think people have meaningful engagement.

However I think our activity would largely be limited to just promoting certain threads and ideally interviews. I don’t see us getting hundreds of people coming in, but this isn’t something I’d strive for anyway. 5-10 people who share similar outlook to people here would be more than enough IMO.

I share your assessment of social media as not being a place for good discussion, though every so often I think people have meaningful engagement.

However I think our activity would largely be limited to just promoting certain threads and ideally interviews. I don’t see us getting hundreds of people coming in, but this isn’t something I’d strive for anyway. 5-10 people who share similar outlook to people here would be more than enough IMO.

That's a fair comment. Actually, my previous post was worded in somewhat dull terms. That's mostly related to my situation outside this forum and I don't mean to dampen the enthusiasm of others. In fact I'd be happy about activities which might ensue, I do encourage people to go ahead.

That's a fair comment. Actually, my previous post was worded in somewhat dull terms. That's mostly related to my situation outside this forum and I don't mean to dampen the enthusiasm of others. In fact I'd be happy about activities which might ensue, I do encourage people to go ahead.

Oh I thought your post was worth taking into account, I hadn't really considered exactly how engagement would work.

I think part of the challenge is the forum as a whole is being represented, not just an individual. It's important for whoever does this to not get too drawn into interacting via the account.

There probably also needs to be some planning / discussion on how the threads will be picked.

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

I see what you mean but there's a certain charm to Psi-ence Quest.

I also think we could spend months alone on people trying to debate a new name heh.

I see what you mean but there's a certain charm to Psi-ence Quest.

I also think we could spend months alone on people trying to debate a new name heh.

Actually I don't really like invented words or phrases like "Psi-ence Quest". I suppose I'd prefer a longer name, even though it would be less snappy.

I'm not sure if we could have TWO names pointing to the same website. We certainly would not want to drop the existing name, otherwise everyone (including me) would get confused. It would be great to have a names that spelled out what we aspire to be really about, for example:

Science and a larger reality

Science consciousness and our greater reality

Skeptiko2.0 (tongue in cheek)

BTW, I'm glad my original question has inspired so much thoughtful comment.

David

Do you mean we could get an interview from Mishlove?

edit: To be clear I mean we ask him questions and post the answers here.

Well any interaction would be good. I think most of us here enjoy our anonymity (I certainly feel more comfortable that way) so we can't really do an interview. Perhaps we could add something to our top menu - such as "Kindred sites". Hopefully he would do something similar for us.

David

[Laird]

Max,

I appreciate you trying to help with the site structure.

Responding more specifically:

You say that the wiki is a dead end, but it does contain a "Forum" link in its left sidebar. Is that insufficient, do you think?

Yes, the Skeptiko Index staging page on the wiki has a lot of off-site links to Skeptiko using the http rather than https protocol (I seem to remember that at the time I put it together, Skeptiko wasn't using SSL). Do you see this as problematic, and, if so, why?

More generally, what problem(s) do you think that disallowing wiki links in robots.txt would solve, and how?

The XML sitemap is generated by the Google SEO plugin. It should be comprehensive for relevant board pages.

You suggest that some of the site links that it references are disallowed in robots.txt. Can you please provide some examples? Sampling URLs from the `Page indexing` › `Blocked by robots.txt` listing for PQ in Google search console, I don't see any that look like they ought to be indexed.

Yes, the site's root directory `/` redirects to `/forums`. That's by design, but perhaps we could set up a landing page instead, geared towards SEO. If you have any suggestions in this respect, then please fire away.

Yes, the board homepage at `/forums` (or `/forums/index.php`) defaults to a Latest Updated Threads view. I added that view to complement the Roundo theme's default Latest Created Threads view (for which I added that heading: the Roundo theme doesn't use one by default). It seemed to me that most of the time, a visitor will prefer the former.

It is indeed a very different homepage than that provided by the MyBB default theme, which, instead, lists the board's categories and (sub)forums. There wasn't much discussion about this difference when I floated the (ultimately accepted) idea of setting Roundo as our default theme. We can certainly have that discussion now, especially regarding SEO implications - I'm not sure about them either, but maybe, whatever they are, we could mitigate them via that landing page I suggested above.

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...

Can you please share an example of where you are seeing these keywords that you think should be changed?

I seem to remember that the forum titles were mostly chosen by Doug, taking advice and suggestions from the rest of us. Can you share some examples of how you think they could be better worded using search keywords?

Regarding the site and domain name: I really like them; in fact, if it weren't for the fact that "psience" is pronounced identically to "science", and thus is too ambiguous in speech, I'd suggest that the discipline of "parapsychology" itself be renamed to "psience", especially given that there has been discussion amongst professional parapsychologists regarding the deficiencies of the current term. I am, then, not in favour of changing them, despite that a change might improve our discoverability via search engines.

[Laird]

I think part of the challenge is the forum as a whole is being represented, not just an individual. It's important for whoever does this to not get too drawn into interacting via the account.

Exactly my sentiments too.

There probably also needs to be some planning / discussion on how the threads will be picked.

Yes.

First, though: is there actually anybody suitable who will put their hand up for this role? @Typoz and @Ninshub are "No"s, and I'm not especially keen on taking it on either. Are you up for it, Sci? And are there any other volunteers?