What can we do?

[TMC]

Wildman I hear everything you say. I have been shooting since I was 7 and shot my first .38 on a hunting trip where I got my first taste of beer lol. When The Act hit I had a decision to make register, hide or modify.I chose register and I will explain .
The belief of mass confiscation is a myth any confiscations have involved other legal problem and confiscation were a result of the crime not the gun.
If it happens I get stopped with unmodified AR's I show my papers and go on my way.I have been questioned especially since registration has passed as today you mostly see Thorsden stocked compliant AR's or the fixed mag none of mine have either and I own 4 full featured.
I own 2 compliant AR's with fixed mags I hate but I don't shoot much anymore due to health.
Am I bitter you bet ya but the law is the law. I won't own closet queens I am afraid to use and I just can't find .22 magnum ammo to shoot out of my marlin 882.
The last time I shot was when my son had to qualify before his Ft Drum visit and the grandson was getting ready to go to Airforce boot in February freaking cold but a lot of fun.
When first joining NYF I ended getting banned for 5 days because of a huge fight with another member about being a traitor to the cause and part of the problem with the SAFE ACT so I know first hand how controversial things can be.
I am all for some good old fashion Hillary bashing and some Cumo bashing what I can't stand is the people that think the louder they shout the righter they are. Yes I will also admit to throwing some Fu and other choice words at a particular member just because as a super poster and type A person he disrespected me and I feel it was well deserved and yes he is a founding member here.
This site could be great but it needs to be a living, breathing and growing thing and we as members can only do so much.The Safe act has hobbled our spirit conspiracy theories abound. Belief that the old ways are the only way and some super poster is the new messiah preaching from the mount because he has legions of friends and speaks the same foul language and Anti establishment as they do. We do nothing because change is bad? we follow and no longer lead because it's too hard or not our responsibility.
Sorry for the rant. Forget the Safe act talk guns talk bow for god sake talk airsoft talk anything but let's talk .If there others like me once you get us started well we don't shut up lol

[Meketrefe]

you already know what I like so not need to be redundant. It could become the chicken and the egg discussion.
I would personally change a few things but what do I know anyway? lol
But I agree, know many individuals who are awesome people in real life.

[MilesTeg]

I think we missed the boat on advertising. The other new forum did a stroke of business PM'ing people it really seemed to work for them. Honestly I don't know what can be done. I think the members here have wealth of knowledge and good welcoming demeanors, but for whatever reason this site doesn't seem to be gaining any traction. I don't get it and it makes no logical sense. This is me just looking at this as a third party.

[Cgrutt]

I think we had about the same boost and number of members hopping on board from being a new forum as NYGunForum is getting now. When we first started up, we were being hosted by VBulletin and had TONS of problems that lasted for the first year. Site was horrible in terms of technical difficulties. Hard to navigate, recurring problems, problems that never were resolved, etc. From a technology standpoint alone it was horrible. I think we lost a lot of the initial crowd from this alone. Then we started with name NYShenaniguns, which IMO was great and captured the spirit of what we were about, but received a lot of feedback ranging from it gives bad connotation to gun owners, to it's too hard to spell and find on internet, too long, stupid, etc, etc, etc. We changed all that up with a shorter non-controversial name and host that doesn't screw things up every other day. As far as advertising, I've mentioned it above but will again, we offer FREE advertising to almost anybody who wants it. USMC has tried countless times to get conversations moving. I'm open to doing whatever it takes, but for whatever reason, the site hasn't developed to its full potential (IMO). Time will tell if NYGunForum has similar experience. Whatever happens, we're committed to being here and our core group will have a place to call home for as long as we can afford to keep it going. No matter what happens, it will never be sold to an anti-gun org that much for sure!

[Cgrutt]

And for what it's worth, we're still #3 on the Google Search "Best NY Gun Forum" and #2 isn't even a NY forum, LOL...

[WARFAB]

The saying is that "content is king" these days. A lot of the suggestions so far have included more blog content. At this point does AvidArms even have a blog? As far as I know it's purely a forum and the content is all user generated posts. Adding a blog requires a more serious time commitment from some people. There are plenty of guys who would be willing to contribute, but it would probably be spotty at best. We're all busy guys trying to make a living so we can pay taxes and enjoy shooting.

[lefty]

I think a growing forum is great and all, but TBH, quality not quantity... I've been invited over to the other new gun forum but, I like it here, the way it is. It's a smaller group and that's okay, as long as we have stuff going on to keep us involved then who care how big we get?

[Cgrutt]

Thanks, Lefty, and welcome to the site if I haven't welcomed you before now. I agree with you. One thing that I think everybody could do that would make a huge improvement to site is to post up new and interesting threads whenever you can. We have a fair number of members who visit pretty frequently but never post anything. I think if there were a bunch of new threads every week we'd definitely get more participation. We don't necessarily need to grow in terms of number of members, but it would be great to have new things to talk about.

[TMC]

I am a member of all 3 sites only for the reason that certain subjects are discussed by certain members and I really am a boring guy see my venison post.
It seems that usually the same 2 or 3 members are responding and no other input.when I went thru the members list this morning about the same time USMC was up I noticed there are members who haven't been here in 1 1/2 years or visited once I believe I counted 36 in the first 10 pages.I only saw 1 banned member FU masterswimmer page 7 and that was in 2014.
Now having only looked at the first 10 pages it seems that all members could have a site email sent asking if they would come back, what would bring them back,why they lost interest or want to be taken off the list I think they would answer.
I was surprised to see so many familiar names that are members but I have either never seen or saw maybe twice here but they show up on the NYG site and seem to be regular posters.To be totally honest I like this site better feels more like home but the NYG site has topics being posted by this sites members over there and I just don't know why they don't post them here.
I would ask a few members but I really don't want to get into the middle of an issue if there is one it just seems odd they don't post here or even respond here have been members for years,but over there they are regulars. As far as the NYF site I really believe it is in it's death throws. Posting seems to have dropped to replies to old posts very very few familiar names .

[lefty]

My only minor "complaint" is the granularity of the sub-forums. I like more generic sub-forums but thats just my personal taste.

[Cgrutt]

TMC, thanks for the comments and observations. On the mark for the most part. You need to keep in mind NYG only started a few days ago. There is a ton of enthusiasm because of the latest situation at NYF and the fact that a couple of well known and liked moderators from NYF jumped ship and started their own site. I have no doubt they are going to do well with this new venture. Their situation is a little different than ours though as they were the guys behind the wheel over at NYF keeping everything up and running for so many years. We jumped ship in 2014 because quite frankly NYF had become a zoo over Safe Act and some of the same members behind the wheels at NYG were handing out bans like candy. Personally, I was an active member at NYF but by no means a technology guy, had zero experience with running forums and basically said F it and started this up on a whim one night by registering a funny domain, licensing a copy of vbulletin and picking a host to run the tech behind the scenes. All it took was some internet searches and a credit card to get this off the ground. The host happened to also be vBulletin and they did an aweful job at hosting and supporting their own software. USMC was a good friend through NYF as well as a mod over there and offered to help me with the tech end of things so we became partners in AvidArms (initially NYShenaniguns). We had almost the same level of enthusiasm as NYG right from the start (to my surprise, LOL). I really think all of the tech problems put a lot of people off and we've tried to fix that part of it as well as some other issues. Personally, I have zero motivation to make any money off this forum, so quite frankly, I don't really care if we have 100 active members or a million. What I do care enormously about is that when people come here they have a good time, maybe learn or teach others some stuff and that everyone gets along with each other. The constant infighting, bickering and other things at NYF (2013-14) drove me away and I don't want anything to do with that environment, esp. here. So with all that said, I'm open to any ideas and doing whatever it takes to make things better for the membership here so long as it doesn't ruin what we've got. Not sure if this makes any sense... LOL.

[Cgrutt]

My only minor "complaint" is the granularity of the sub-forums. I like more generic sub-forums but thats just my personal taste.

We've heard that one a lot before and at one point USMC tried to rearrange things and broaden the scope. I think a lot of the "granularity" that you're referring to is an artifact of that process. USMC can we roll up any of the subforums and streamline things a bit? Works for me if it is something you all think would be better.

[TMC]

granularity? sub forums are dirty? lmao
I agree about the site format I think another member mentioned the same in this forum. I think cleaning the old posts that no longer apply sort of clearing the dead wood .There are quite a few posts that are dated like in the firearm forum posts about things in February that are outdated.
Maybe take some posts like the pistol permits put them in the legal forum.
Nothing huge just a streamline but that still wont solve the member or posting issue.
We need to find out why members here are posting on the other site and not here. If they are posting on the other site they are over there instead of being here.
I wonder if the issue is interaction once you post. I didn't expect much from my venison post but got some really good replies. Is the problem a lack of interest in what is being posted?
Could it be that some members feel that it is a waste of time posting anything that no one comments or gives feed back on?

[usmcveteran]

Some great feedback. I just want to recap so I can come back to this and make sure I'm not missing anything.

Find out why members aren't coming here anymore
Find out why they don't post more
​​what do you mean cleaning up old posts? Locking them or what?
Also can you explain how things should be streamlined more for organization of site?

Did I miss anything?

[WARFAB]

Does deleting old posts hurt our SEO?

At NYF they jumped all over anyone who didn't search for their topic before posting. I was surprised to see that Calguns.net actually discourages people from reviving old threads.