What do you define as a successful community?

[Shawn Gossman]

In your own opinion, what makes a community successful?

How do you rate your own community successful? What must happen for you to feel it has reached success?

 

[ClicketyKat]

I think success can only be defined in terms of whether your goals have been met?

When I had someone create Christianity Haven, my goal was to have daily activity and I'm getting that there. So in that aspect, we're successful. Would I like MORE members and MORE activity? Absolutely! But I don't think the site is a failure.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

I think success can only be defined in terms of whether your goals have been met?

I think that is a good way to define success.

I think metric goals mean different things to different people.

This is not the most active admin forum out there but my goal is to not login and talk to myself. As long as people are visiting and discussing things with me, I'm happy with the results.

 

[ClicketyKat]

I think that is a good way to define success.

I think metric goals mean different things to different people.

This is not the most active admin forum out there but my goal is to not login and talk to myself. As long as people are visiting and discussing things with me, I'm happy with the results.

I think having an active owner really helps to get others involved too!

 

[Shawn Gossman]

I think having an active owner really helps to get others involved too!

I agree.

I went inactive for a bit as I changed jobs. It was a big life change and I had to deal with it.

But I noticed activity significantly dropped here.

And I expected it to do that.

Now on to getting it going again.

 

[~ True Legend ~]

Quality and quantity. You want a lot of forum activity but you don't want your community to be a cesspool for trolls to hang out.

 

[Tracy]

In your own opinion, what makes a community successful?

How do you rate your own community successful? What must happen for you to feel it has reached success?

Errr... user participation is not a major factor for me personally as I set my site up for my user and determined before that, if others got a use out of it, then I was ahead. Yes.. it costs me money.. but most things we enjoy (eating, drinking, going to the movies) do so.
So, what I look at is more the traffic that is drawn to the site and information distributed, even though I may be the prime (or only) person generating that content.
And yes, I am WELL aware I'm the outlier in the fora/website field. Seems that so many are more concerned about how they can monetize their site instead of bringing benefit to our society.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

And yes, I am WELL aware I'm the outlier in the fora/website field. Seems that so many are more concerned about how they can monetize their site instead of bringing benefit to our society.

I think you have a good mission.]

I can relate that mission to this forum's mission. I'm not looking to really monetize this forum all that much. But I would like for it to become one of the more fun communities for discussion online communities!