How Much Content is Enough Content – Forum Maintenance

You need related content to grow – more and more of it. Webmasters go on creating pages after pages of beautiful or trash content.

Just take a look at any good forum – thousands and thousands of pages (not words alone) are being scribbled every other day with lots of emoticons.

We are getting so much of fresh content everyday. We are happy.

But have you ever wondered – how much content is enough content!

Why do we need those pages! If your only motivation is that of satisfying Search Engine’s needs – start counting – your days are numbered (did you ask why?).

How much quality information does a long thread carry! Someone, looking for some information, needs to pass through hundreds of questions and answers (related and superfluous) to get into some conclusion on the content of the thread. There is still no guarantee that the thread will solve his or her problem. It is like searching for bits and pieces of a lost mummy in Sahara.

If they are not finding answers to their own problems, they are not spending quality time in the forum – that means, they are not getting value for time.

If this trend continues, people would just become guests, who would post their problems and wait for answers – that also means that they are acting as a passive agent.

You would argue to turn a good thread into sticky – this is only a temporary solution – how many stickys would you like to have in the dashboard!

To add to this problem, the titles of threads are often not descriptive enough to reflect the content (one must remember that the title was written before the second post and it was written by a semi-conscious person).

What can be done!

My suggestion is very simple – when a thread is dead (i.e. discussions are over), turn it into an article that would include the most important points. Put a descriptive title and summary and make a different landing page with a title like “Solved Issues…..”.

What do you get!

• quality content (SE friendly)
• control over content
• organized content
• clean discussion board
• simple navigation
• better solutions to visitors
• etc.

What say you Forum Masters?