How can we keep more people active on the forum?

[Anonymous]

Hi everyone,

After just having had a discussion with someone through PM about how to keep more people active on the forum, I wanted to ask for your input as well.

Although we'll always have some 1-time posters (which is fine), I'm sure there are still many of people that would love to be part of the community. Either by reading threads, making posts or even by contributing and helping other people. 

Some of the suggestions, were to:

- Post news and updates from the blog and news page (for example in a weekly digest thread)

- Create help, setup pages and guides for the forum (that include Guru videos)

- Linking the community more often and perhaps do exclusive community promotions

So, I wanted to ask you for your feedback and ideas on that as well. If there you have any ideas, or if there are certain areas that you'd like to help with, just let me know (either here or through PM).

Looking forward to your suggestions!

Cheers,

Leonard

[Anonymous]

In forum terms, the only area that needed urgent attention was the spam and the ease of access that spammers had.

Everything else on the "old" forum, to me, was OK, it did the job.

Again, personally, I detest Facebook/Twitter et al and I perceive that this "community" might be spawning into yet another drivel-spattered online chat page such as for example some of the sections on DigitalSpy forum like http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?f=22 and http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?f=150

[Anonymous]

My concern was that there was no dedicated help section on the Forums - I'm sure if you moved all of the Help requests from the Other forums, users could see some of the active threads that were there previously.

[Anonymous]

I find the forum since the updates to be very good, I agree with the weekly digest mentioned.

It's been mentioned elsewhere, but I think an app for both iOS and Android and perhaps Blackberry (if the demand in Blackberry users is there) would be an excellent idea.

It would make the forum easier to access and also it would have the potential to reach more people has most people have their smartphones with them at all times. I know there is a mobile site for the forum, but specific apps for specific smartphones/operating systems would be better in my opinion and it would make the forum more user friendly and accessible.

One last thing I would like to see on the forum, is the paragraphs not showing when posting from a computer fixed. I find it especially important to be able to have paragraphs, when writing help guides/instructions, has the paragraphs make it easier to follow the instructions.

[perksie]

A link to the Community on pages like this might help too:

http://www.o2.co.uk/support/generalhelp/howdoi

[Anonymous]

I too like the design of the new forum I also like the suggestion of community offers the weekly bulletin sounds like a good idea too

[Anonymous]

Undo some of your previous changes! I haven't seen any increase in contributions resulting from those.

People mainly come here looking for help.
We need some technical contributions from O2.
We also need someone here from O2 who can pursue the issues (mainly account issues) which O2 support fail to resolve.
Have a look at the Plusnet forum to see how it's done.

What we do not need IMO is a facebook style forum. If you insist in going that route why not split the forum in to two parts. One part which actually helps people and another part for your "community".

[Anonymous]

Please keep things simple. That means new users will find it easy to post and navigate round.

Weekly digest sounds good.

Input from o2 staff is much needed. Even if its only can the user PM them with some details to look into.

Nothing that you can do with a forum to make it exciting. As its only as good as the posts and replies....

[anticpated]

Perhaps a common solutions section not generaly covered for the more advanced users such as this fine league of gentlemen.

I know there is already one on the O2 website although I struggle to find anything useful to fix problems. Whether this could be user generated or not is another thing. With the obvious absence of subjects like rooting, jailbreaking and custom ROM's.

It could contain useful links to 3rd party music programs like Propellerhead iPhone apps to Android apps such as AutoCAD or Photoshop for tablets. There's a plethora of things. Also something like an easily explained tutorials on technical issues. This would save time and patience especially those not fond of "foreign" Customer Care sic.

[Anonymous]

no weekly digest as most people dont even look in the news section more than once. keep things simple so people can understand what you are talking about. the community promotion sounds like a good thing, let me know more about area please