Ok So I think we have all come to grips with the fact that the clan section will (probably) never go higher on the forum list, and will not be advertised, What can we the leaders do, and possibly the mods do to make this Section better and clean it up. Back when clans were a bit more popular the forums where looked after better, troll clans had their threads locked, and if you were not a clan you had your thread locked. Why are we not doing this anymore?
This has just been on my mind the past few months. any ideas would be cool!
There doesn't seem to be much by way of cleaning up. It could be a byproduct of the clans section being lumped in with servers. Many clans that I have come across span multiple servers and communities. Some of them have their own servers, which is likely why they're classified in this section. However, when servers themselves are advertised here, even if they include clans, they seem to be restricted to other sections. That leads me to believe that there's a little hint of hypocrisy here. If Clans are classified as servers, and servers aren't classified as clans, then there's a bit of fuzz on the signal there.
Because of this, we get moderated under the servers section. Server section moderators likely have a similar approach to clans as they do servers. Servers come in huge volume, fare more than there are clans. So the administration deals with the vast amounts of servers blanket similar, clan posts and sections are lumped in with this as well. They're likely even in the same stream for the staff who look over the server section. It seems like this mentality has burdened the clan section, and leaves it in a state where it can no longer grow as much as it can and should.
It's not that we're too much of a headache, it's that servers are too much of a headache, and we're getting handled as servers in the server section.
So we need better Moderators to act as clean up Crew. Well I would be interested to see if the mods actually do something. If they dont soon the clans might open up their own website.
They already have, there has to be some sort of alternative. The only reason the clan section here has any activity at all is from the websites' traffic. Over time, the clan section has become more and more obscure and treated less and less like what they are. Clans are collections of people who play Minecraft together, nothing more and nothing less. You'd think something like that would be huge, whoever's done playing alone can find a group of like minded people to play with. This is a basic concept, and should be supported as a massive part of the game. Right now, it's not, as it is tucked away in a corner near the bottom of the forums with staff who treat these people like they're servers. Servers usually garner donations, which need money to survive. Servers advertise to get people, donations, and notoriety. Clans seek very few of these elements, and often provide the resources to themselves in order to stay afloat. (e.g. The clan I'm in, [RoMe] which provides logistical support, community events, their own Teamspeak server, etc.)
Clans are fundamentally different from servers, and are a huge part of the game, but they're just some corner seat tickets in a filing cabinet in their current state. Not the front row tickets like they should be treated as.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on the Clans section. I'd love to look at improving the section: what ideas do you have to improve it? If we can get a discussion going about how we can improve the section and further encourage participation in clans that would be great.
A small idea that might provide some value: allowing members to specify the clan they're a member of -- with a link to the thread -- in their post bit?
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on the Clans section. I'd love to look at improving the section: what ideas do you have to improve it? If we can get a discussion going about how we can improve the section and further encourage participation in clans that would be great.
A small idea that might provide some value: allowing members to specify the clan they're a member of -- with a link to the thread -- in their post bit?
I've had more than a year of research into the stagnation of the clans section. I've had large homegrown clans set up there, and I've got a decent amount of feedback. There's just not enough traffic flow to the section, and the people there are largely regulars. Some of which have been on the forum since 2011. Clans are also an MMO'd version of just group play, clans come in a menagerie of species. Personally, I think that they're all micro-communities all their own. Building Clans, Roleplay Clans, Minigame Clans, PvP Clans, etc. We need to provide the ability to organize the vast amount of clans in a place that they have attention focused on them.
It's difficult to say what specific solutions there are to the problem, but the most glaring issue with it right now is its' visibility. It's near the bottom of the forum with no attention or external links, and you'd only really find it if you were specifically looking for it.
I feel that with more publicity the section would grow, on top of that we need moderation. When the section was originally created the mods would lock or move threads that were not clans, or threads that died. If you were not recruiting your thread would be locked, and it cleaned the area up. We found it odd that things like the Minecraft Wii U edition section of the forums, were above the servers and clans, before the Wii U edition was even out.
I feel that with more publicity the section would grow, on top of that we need moderation. When the section was originally created the mods would lock or move threads that were not clans, or threads that died. If you were not recruiting your thread would be locked, and it cleaned the area up. We found it odd that things like the Minecraft Wii U edition section of the forums, were above the servers and clans, before the Wii U edition was even out.
There's also a factor that the clans existing now care very little about the growth of other clans. Due to the stagnant waters, the community has become even more closed off to new players. It made my stomach turn when the new clans that I saw form from my efforts went into the clan MCF forums and immediately dried up as they were torn apart to take sides. This prevented a very large clan from establishing a post, its' leader, DJ_Gong, did not want his clan to fail. There's so little activity there that even a little bit of an active player base is poached at every opportunity. That practice isn't the problem, it's a byproduct of a greater ailment that is the stagnation that needs fixing.
It's difficult to say what specific solutions there are to the problem, but the most glaring issue with it right now is its' visibility. It's near the bottom of the forum with no attention or external links, and you'd only really find it if you were specifically looking for it.
I think it's important to understand that just moving the section higher up in the forum isn't a silver bullet. Although it might drive a few more people to the section, it is not going to breathe new life into the section, it's not going to fill the section with a new clan dedicated player base. Providing more exposure to the section can be an important part of an improvement strategy but it can't be the majority of the strategy.
I think it's important to understand that just moving the section higher up in the forum isn't a silver bullet. Although it might drive a few more people to the section, it is not going to breathe new life into the section, it's not going to fill the section with a new clan dedicated player base. Providing more exposure to the section can be an important part of an improvement strategy but it can't be the majority of the strategy.
I prefaced this with a recognition that it's not a one-size fits-all solution. However, I was speaking with other players and that's simply the consensus of those I've spoken to. You know the metrics of the website better than either of us, so hopefully your insights can help us think of something that works. For a long time all of the solutions have been purely conceptual.
I'm wondering how this is progressing behind the scenes. It's really an issue that has been floating around for a decent amount of time and I've been invested in finding solutions for some time now. I've had a diverse group of people to test from including close friends of mine to essentially involve themselves within the clan community. As I may have mentioned before, one of my long-time Minecraft friends DJ_Gong purposely avoided posting his clan on the MCF like the plague for a long time, as other clans that he observed would join post and die fairly quickly. Even successful clans that included people I knew in my everyday life such as Draconic Ascension was a notable 'success' story for some time. However, the leader noted how much drama was involved in the clan section. How everything is politicized, and rumours spreading around were a problem. There was a polarization of clan alignments that seemed to only come to light in the absence of many outside influences that would normally diversify the community enough to destabilize a sense of 'oneness'. Currently, the players in the clans section of this forum are heavily recycled, some have been in as many clans as you can count with your fingers. One such friend of mine has his own little community now, and has bounced around the clan community from The Roman Empire, Oligarchy of Nirigore, Royal Minecraft Marine Corps, Kingdom of Skurheil, and more. With his new community, he's also refraining from making a post.
This is just from my small collections of people I'm in contact with. If this is the case for just my circle of friends and limited contact pool, who knows how many other similar cases there are? I'm really interested in seeing your view on the metrics, and I'd be glad to help as much as I can on the issue.
My opinion is that essentially the only way there's going to be any major change in the activity of the clan section is if changes are made by clans themselves. I'm happy to do what we can to support this but I don't think any structural changes we make are going to have any tangible bearing on the long term success of the section. The section can be moved, rules can be made, but unless there's a constant stream of new players interested in joining clans, and clans supporting that growth, growth won't happen... and a forum can't provide that, we can't provide that.
My personal opinion is that the correct way to encourage new growth is through servers: allowing players to take part in activities that lead them towards joining a clan. Every group of gamers I've ever been involved with (whether a formal clan, or a more loose group) has formed through players in game, it hasn't formed through a forum. If your recruitment strategy is a thread on this forum, you've already greatly limited your potential player base, to Minecraft players who visit the Minecraft Forum and see the clans section and the take the time to read through a thread about a clan and then decide they want to commit their time to the clan. The only reason this ever worked in the past was because of just how huge our visitor base was, we had 10s of millions of people visiting the forum every month... and how many made it into clans? Even at our peak the biggest clans didn't come close to the size of any server.
Due to the way Minecraft has evolved over the years the forum isn't as popular as it once was, so it was inevitable that this would be reflected in every part of the forum. We're still a very popular forum, with over 6 million unique visitors every month, and these are millions of people looking for new interesting ways to play Minecraft, but they're not looking to make a huge commitment off of the back of a forum post... and the clans strategies here appear to be just that: write an interesting post and hope people make a commitment to the clan.
My opinion is that threads in the section should be the place where clans define, discuss and plan, they shouldn't be the primary method of recruitment. Most people don't know they want to join a clan.
If you want to recruit Minecraft players you need to focus on playing Minecraft.
That said, I'm not an expert on Minecraft clans, if I've made any mistakes in my assumptions here please let me know. I'm happy to look at ways to help clans here (because your success is our success) but there's only so much we can do. The focus needs to be on what we can do to best support clans on the forum, not what we can do to help recruitment, because I don't believe there is much. Suggestions on what we can do in the section are very much welcome: we can institute a no drama rule and remove posts that engage in drama (as we do in some other sections, Server Hosts has strong rules against drama that are strictly enforced (thread owners can't post in others threads for example)).
My opinion is that essentially the only way there's going to be any major change in the activity of the clan section is if changes are made by clans themselves. I'm happy to do what we can to support this but I don't think any structural changes we make are going to have any tangible bearing on the long term success of the section. The section can be moved, rules can be made, but unless there's a constant stream of new players interested in joining clans, and clans supporting that growth, growth won't happen... and a forum can't provide that, we can't provide that.
My personal opinion is that the correct way to encourage new growth is through servers: allowing players to take part in activities that lead them towards joining a clan. Every group of gamers I've ever been involved with (whether a formal clan, or a more loose group) has formed through players in game, it hasn't formed through a forum. If your recruitment strategy is a thread on this forum, you've already greatly limited your potential player base, to Minecraft players who visit the Minecraft Forum and see the clans section and the take the time to read through a thread about a clan and then decide they want to commit their time to the clan. The only reason this ever worked in the past was because of just how huge our visitor base was, we had 10s of millions of people visiting the forum every month... and how many made it into clans? Even at our peak the biggest clans didn't come close to the size of any server.
Due to the way Minecraft has evolved over the years the forum isn't as popular as it once was, so it was inevitable that this would be reflected in every part of the forum. We're still a very popular forum, with over 6 million unique visitors every month, and these are millions of people looking for new interesting ways to play Minecraft, but they're not looking to make a huge commitment off of the back of a forum post... and the clans strategies here appear to be just that: write an interesting post and hope people make a commitment to the clan.
My opinion is that threads in the section should be the place where clans define, discuss and plan, they shouldn't be the primary method of recruitment. Most people don't know they want to join a clan.
If you want to recruit Minecraft players you need to focus on playing Minecraft.
That said, I'm not an expert on Minecraft clans, if I've made any mistakes in my assumptions here please let me know. I'm happy to look at ways to help clans here (because your success is our success) but there's only so much we can do. The focus needs to be on what we can do to best support clans on the forum, not what we can do to help recruitment, because I don't believe there is much. Suggestions on what we can do in the section are very much welcome: we can institute a no drama rule and remove posts that engage in drama (as we do in some other sections, Server Hosts has strong rules against drama that are strictly enforced (thread owners can't post in others threads for example)).
As much as it is true, we need to be focusing on recruiting in other ways other than the forums, the forums are just the best way to recruit in alot of ways, and for a few reasons,
1. Recruiting off of a server could be advertising in the view of the admins
2. Recruiting off of a server could lead to spy's from other factions or towns looking to F stuff up
3. If you Recruit off of a server the people you recruit may not want anything to do with any other server, and moving from server to server is what changes a clan from a Town or faction
As much as it is true, we need to be focusing on recruiting in other ways other than the forums, the forums are just the best way to recruit in alot of ways, and for a few reasons,
1. Recruiting off of a server could be advertising in the view of the admins
2. Recruiting off of a server could lead to spy's from other factions or towns looking to F stuff up
3. If you Recruit off of a server the people you recruit may not want anything to do with any other server, and moving from server to server is what changes a clan from a Town or faction
As much as I'd like to agree with your points, fireboy...
Recruiting off of a server tends to be from the lifecycle of servers. Minecraft servers are as plentiful as they've always been, but the play world survival arc has become more of an abstraction from what it once was. Where clans could remain together from server to server, all of the resets and server changes seem to have them trying to establish their own sense of permanence. This fundamentally detracts from the 'clans should recruit from servers' mentality, because if you do that, you're now depending on the server. The forum has permanence, and has been a source for recruitment from those I've spoken to, and is essentially the full flow of new players onto clan servers including clans on my server get them from forums and advertising from semi-permanent web spaces. This also covers your third point, clans exist outside of servers as well as the game. I am in 3 clans, each for different games and some play Minecraft. By most standards I could not join a clan on the forums because many have a policy of no multi-clans. This backs up Citrics' idea that clans need to change to fit the times, but I also don't believe that you should rely on the fact that they 'will', and even 'should' change.
As for your second point, spies are not as much of a problem as you think they are. In the dry spell of clans and resources, a 'spy' can be used to bring old players back to you, as well as gather successful methods of running a clan from other sources. They are a product of scarcity, and when used on factions servers are just an element of the gameplay itself, not a necessity of a clan. For instance, gaming communities and building clans have no use to be spied on. If you play GTA servers or Prop Hunt, minigame servers, etc. spies become almost completely useless. It's like putting a spy into a StarCraft clan... What's the point?
My opinion is that essentially the only way there's going to be any major change in the activity of the clan section is if changes are made by clans themselves. I'm happy to do what we can to support this but I don't think any structural changes we make are going to have any tangible bearing on the long term success of the section. The section can be moved, rules can be made, but unless there's a constant stream of new players interested in joining clans, and clans supporting that growth, growth won't happen... and a forum can't provide that, we can't provide that.
You cannot rely on the clans themselves to change. Clans are fluid, but they have ended up where they are for a reason. Many remember 'the good old days' where clans were so saturated with new players that there was always a struggle to find new things to do. Something happened between then and now to where the clan section has become dried up. As fireboy mentioned, a common fear is 'spies' and infiltrators. This does not seem like healthy clan behaviour to me, and may be a symptom of other problems that the forum may not be able to fix, but may help alleviate. For instance, I've spoken to GreenWindu on the subject of clan leaders, and he had given me his feedback of their character. Usually positive, and I went to speak with each individual to discuss the welfare of their clans and what they expected to change in the future. Overwhelmingly there was a need to discuss the status quo, to a point where Skype groups were made to discuss certain people in the community that had influence and who was bad, etc. Many of the people who were talked up by others in the community turned out to be bad apples who were just trying to gather what was left in the section. An ex clan leader even sent out a mass apology to other leaders and clan members for their questionable conduct. Scarcity breeds this. You cannot rely on the clans themselves for the traffic to the clans section.
My personal opinion is that the correct way to encourage new growth is through servers: allowing players to take part in activities that lead them towards joining a clan. Every group of gamers I've ever been involved with (whether a formal clan, or a more loose group) has formed through players in game, it hasn't formed through a forum. If your recruitment strategy is a thread on this forum, you've already greatly limited your potential player base, to Minecraft players who visit the Minecraft Forum and see the clans section and the take the time to read through a thread about a clan and then decide they want to commit their time to the clan. The only reason this ever worked in the past was because of just how huge our visitor base was, we had 10s of millions of people visiting the forum every month... and how many made it into clans? Even at our peak the biggest clans didn't come close to the size of any server.
Servers are not permanent, clans are. Due to the erratic nature of servers, many clans on the MCF have gravitated towards clans-only servers. You can grow with other players in the game, let me stress this. I believe you when you say this, but singleplayer can also breed clans. If someone sees your single player world through screenshots, it may prompt them to ask you to join their clan. If you are a redstone engineer, and have a good creation, then that's another prompt. Servers are a bulk section and EXTREMELY impermanent. Someones' work on a server could be gone the following month, and the same goes for any factions and builds that you may have had there. When you say you've already greatly limited your potential playerbase by posting on these forums, that is the trend. Clans do not go searching for players on other servers, this could also be seen as poaching players. If your clan is very active on one server, and you go to another server and see someone you want to play with: "get off that server and play on this other one!" seems to be the go-to strategy. Servers are NOT the way to grow clans, they are simply another tool to play with your clan members. Clans are groups of people, when you see clans, assume that a group is already established before entering a server.
Due to the way Minecraft has evolved over the years the forum isn't as popular as it once was, so it was inevitable that this would be reflected in every part of the forum. We're still a very popular forum, with over 6 million unique visitors every month, and these are millions of people looking for new interesting ways to play Minecraft, but they're not looking to make a huge commitment off of the back of a forum post... and the clans strategies here appear to be just that: write an interesting post and hope people make a commitment to the clan.
As mentioned by Shanka in one of the former posts on this thread, the traffic to the forum does not reflect the traffic to the clan section. I'm not sure what the metrics say, but you may be underestimating the power that this forum has by way of creating long lasting communities.
My opinion is that threads in the section should be the place where clans define, discuss and plan, they shouldn't be the primary method of recruitment. Most people don't know they want to join a clan.
I would not say that this is a place to define, discuss, and plan. Skype groups, Teamspeaks, in-game party, faction, town chat are places to plan and discuss. To plan and discuss there has to be discourse, and some of the tidbits of posts on the clan section could be seen as bump fodder. "Hey, just checkin' up, how're you guys doing?" could be done through PM. A forum is a place to display what your clan is about, and to get attention from that forum community and have an interface with current and potential members. (Event announcements and recruiting is the best utility I see coming out of a forum. However, this is just my personal opinion.)
That said, I'm not an expert on Minecraft clans, if I've made any mistakes in my assumptions here please let me know. I'm happy to look at ways to help clans here (because your success is our success) but there's only so much we can do. The focus needs to be on what we can do to best support clans on the forum, not what we can do to help recruitment, because I don't believe there is much. Suggestions on what we can do in the section are very much welcome: we can institute a no drama rule and remove posts that engage in drama (as we do in some other sections, Server Hosts has strong rules against drama that are strictly enforced (thread owners can't post in others threads for example)).
There isn't much recruitment, but there can be. The section currently isn't visible, the PC clan section comes after all the other platforms and is tucked under the fold of servers and moderated in that section. Servers are in bulk, and clans are scarce. They appear as a small blip on a server section moderator's feed, and are moderated as such. I've seen drama occur, and I police drama on my server's thread as well as on my clans' thread. It is because the servers section has rules against drama that the clans section gets moderated as such, echoing my previous point. I hope I've been of some assistance in slowly chipping away at this issue, as I am very passionate about it.
have moderators be assigned to certain sections and have them moderate only in the section they are assigned to
We have operated this way for years. Sectional mods are only permitted to moderate in the section they are assigned to.
And we are already looking at ways to get new moderators.
If you have suggestions for how to improve the forum, then please share them. Simply saying "this could use work" and not offering anything is not really going to help much.
Forums are terrible for tracking applications, however at this point, this kind of discussion is off-topic to what the OP is talking about. If you wish to continue this, please make a new thread.
Two threads near the top highlighting and promoting servers... not even Clan servers just hamachi ones, there are other things on there like Gaming Communities, build teams ( I guess these might be clans?) and so on. you need to assign more mods or admins here please...
Two threads near the top highlighting and promoting servers... not even Clan servers just hamachi ones, there are other things on there like Gaming Communities, build teams ( I guess these might be clans?) and so on. you need to assign more mods or admins here please...
We do not do sub-sectional moderation. All PC Server mods can moderate Clans. If you find those posts, report them, because it brings it to our attention. By not reporting, you are essentially not helping the very section you want to improve. We cannot see every post ever made, and reports are the best way to bring that content to our attention.
If you don't report them after complaining they are breaking the rules, then you are not helping the problem.
Ok So I think we have all come to grips with the fact that the clan section will (probably) never go higher on the forum list, and will not be advertised, What can we the leaders do, and possibly the mods do to make this Section better and clean it up. Back when clans were a bit more popular the forums where looked after better, troll clans had their threads locked, and if you were not a clan you had your thread locked. Why are we not doing this anymore?
This has just been on my mind the past few months. any ideas would be cool!
Hail Victory
There doesn't seem to be much by way of cleaning up. It could be a byproduct of the clans section being lumped in with servers. Many clans that I have come across span multiple servers and communities. Some of them have their own servers, which is likely why they're classified in this section. However, when servers themselves are advertised here, even if they include clans, they seem to be restricted to other sections. That leads me to believe that there's a little hint of hypocrisy here. If Clans are classified as servers, and servers aren't classified as clans, then there's a bit of fuzz on the signal there.
Because of this, we get moderated under the servers section. Server section moderators likely have a similar approach to clans as they do servers. Servers come in huge volume, fare more than there are clans. So the administration deals with the vast amounts of servers blanket similar, clan posts and sections are lumped in with this as well. They're likely even in the same stream for the staff who look over the server section. It seems like this mentality has burdened the clan section, and leaves it in a state where it can no longer grow as much as it can and should.
It's not that we're too much of a headache, it's that servers are too much of a headache, and we're getting handled as servers in the server section.
So we need better Moderators to act as clean up Crew. Well I would be interested to see if the mods actually do something. If they dont soon the clans might open up their own website.
Hail Victory
They already have, there has to be some sort of alternative. The only reason the clan section here has any activity at all is from the websites' traffic. Over time, the clan section has become more and more obscure and treated less and less like what they are. Clans are collections of people who play Minecraft together, nothing more and nothing less. You'd think something like that would be huge, whoever's done playing alone can find a group of like minded people to play with. This is a basic concept, and should be supported as a massive part of the game. Right now, it's not, as it is tucked away in a corner near the bottom of the forums with staff who treat these people like they're servers. Servers usually garner donations, which need money to survive. Servers advertise to get people, donations, and notoriety. Clans seek very few of these elements, and often provide the resources to themselves in order to stay afloat. (e.g. The clan I'm in, [RoMe] which provides logistical support, community events, their own Teamspeak server, etc.)
Clans are fundamentally different from servers, and are a huge part of the game, but they're just some corner seat tickets in a filing cabinet in their current state. Not the front row tickets like they should be treated as.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on the Clans section. I'd love to look at improving the section: what ideas do you have to improve it? If we can get a discussion going about how we can improve the section and further encourage participation in clans that would be great.
A small idea that might provide some value: allowing members to specify the clan they're a member of -- with a link to the thread -- in their post bit?
I've had more than a year of research into the stagnation of the clans section. I've had large homegrown clans set up there, and I've got a decent amount of feedback. There's just not enough traffic flow to the section, and the people there are largely regulars. Some of which have been on the forum since 2011. Clans are also an MMO'd version of just group play, clans come in a menagerie of species. Personally, I think that they're all micro-communities all their own. Building Clans, Roleplay Clans, Minigame Clans, PvP Clans, etc. We need to provide the ability to organize the vast amount of clans in a place that they have attention focused on them.
It's difficult to say what specific solutions there are to the problem, but the most glaring issue with it right now is its' visibility. It's near the bottom of the forum with no attention or external links, and you'd only really find it if you were specifically looking for it.
I feel that with more publicity the section would grow, on top of that we need moderation. When the section was originally created the mods would lock or move threads that were not clans, or threads that died. If you were not recruiting your thread would be locked, and it cleaned the area up. We found it odd that things like the Minecraft Wii U edition section of the forums, were above the servers and clans, before the Wii U edition was even out.
Hail Victory
There's also a factor that the clans existing now care very little about the growth of other clans. Due to the stagnant waters, the community has become even more closed off to new players. It made my stomach turn when the new clans that I saw form from my efforts went into the clan MCF forums and immediately dried up as they were torn apart to take sides. This prevented a very large clan from establishing a post, its' leader, DJ_Gong, did not want his clan to fail. There's so little activity there that even a little bit of an active player base is poached at every opportunity. That practice isn't the problem, it's a byproduct of a greater ailment that is the stagnation that needs fixing.
I think it's important to understand that just moving the section higher up in the forum isn't a silver bullet. Although it might drive a few more people to the section, it is not going to breathe new life into the section, it's not going to fill the section with a new clan dedicated player base. Providing more exposure to the section can be an important part of an improvement strategy but it can't be the majority of the strategy.
I prefaced this with a recognition that it's not a one-size fits-all solution. However, I was speaking with other players and that's simply the consensus of those I've spoken to. You know the metrics of the website better than either of us, so hopefully your insights can help us think of something that works. For a long time all of the solutions have been purely conceptual.
I'm wondering how this is progressing behind the scenes. It's really an issue that has been floating around for a decent amount of time and I've been invested in finding solutions for some time now. I've had a diverse group of people to test from including close friends of mine to essentially involve themselves within the clan community. As I may have mentioned before, one of my long-time Minecraft friends DJ_Gong purposely avoided posting his clan on the MCF like the plague for a long time, as other clans that he observed would join post and die fairly quickly. Even successful clans that included people I knew in my everyday life such as Draconic Ascension was a notable 'success' story for some time. However, the leader noted how much drama was involved in the clan section. How everything is politicized, and rumours spreading around were a problem. There was a polarization of clan alignments that seemed to only come to light in the absence of many outside influences that would normally diversify the community enough to destabilize a sense of 'oneness'. Currently, the players in the clans section of this forum are heavily recycled, some have been in as many clans as you can count with your fingers. One such friend of mine has his own little community now, and has bounced around the clan community from The Roman Empire, Oligarchy of Nirigore, Royal Minecraft Marine Corps, Kingdom of Skurheil, and more. With his new community, he's also refraining from making a post.
This is just from my small collections of people I'm in contact with. If this is the case for just my circle of friends and limited contact pool, who knows how many other similar cases there are? I'm really interested in seeing your view on the metrics, and I'd be glad to help as much as I can on the issue.
My opinion is that essentially the only way there's going to be any major change in the activity of the clan section is if changes are made by clans themselves. I'm happy to do what we can to support this but I don't think any structural changes we make are going to have any tangible bearing on the long term success of the section. The section can be moved, rules can be made, but unless there's a constant stream of new players interested in joining clans, and clans supporting that growth, growth won't happen... and a forum can't provide that, we can't provide that.
My personal opinion is that the correct way to encourage new growth is through servers: allowing players to take part in activities that lead them towards joining a clan. Every group of gamers I've ever been involved with (whether a formal clan, or a more loose group) has formed through players in game, it hasn't formed through a forum. If your recruitment strategy is a thread on this forum, you've already greatly limited your potential player base, to Minecraft players who visit the Minecraft Forum and see the clans section and the take the time to read through a thread about a clan and then decide they want to commit their time to the clan. The only reason this ever worked in the past was because of just how huge our visitor base was, we had 10s of millions of people visiting the forum every month... and how many made it into clans? Even at our peak the biggest clans didn't come close to the size of any server.
Due to the way Minecraft has evolved over the years the forum isn't as popular as it once was, so it was inevitable that this would be reflected in every part of the forum. We're still a very popular forum, with over 6 million unique visitors every month, and these are millions of people looking for new interesting ways to play Minecraft, but they're not looking to make a huge commitment off of the back of a forum post... and the clans strategies here appear to be just that: write an interesting post and hope people make a commitment to the clan.
My opinion is that threads in the section should be the place where clans define, discuss and plan, they shouldn't be the primary method of recruitment. Most people don't know they want to join a clan.
If you want to recruit Minecraft players you need to focus on playing Minecraft.
That said, I'm not an expert on Minecraft clans, if I've made any mistakes in my assumptions here please let me know. I'm happy to look at ways to help clans here (because your success is our success) but there's only so much we can do. The focus needs to be on what we can do to best support clans on the forum, not what we can do to help recruitment, because I don't believe there is much. Suggestions on what we can do in the section are very much welcome: we can institute a no drama rule and remove posts that engage in drama (as we do in some other sections, Server Hosts has strong rules against drama that are strictly enforced (thread owners can't post in others threads for example)).
As much as it is true, we need to be focusing on recruiting in other ways other than the forums, the forums are just the best way to recruit in alot of ways, and for a few reasons,
1. Recruiting off of a server could be advertising in the view of the admins
2. Recruiting off of a server could lead to spy's from other factions or towns looking to F stuff up
3. If you Recruit off of a server the people you recruit may not want anything to do with any other server, and moving from server to server is what changes a clan from a Town or faction
Hail Victory
As much as I'd like to agree with your points, fireboy...
Recruiting off of a server tends to be from the lifecycle of servers. Minecraft servers are as plentiful as they've always been, but the play world survival arc has become more of an abstraction from what it once was. Where clans could remain together from server to server, all of the resets and server changes seem to have them trying to establish their own sense of permanence. This fundamentally detracts from the 'clans should recruit from servers' mentality, because if you do that, you're now depending on the server. The forum has permanence, and has been a source for recruitment from those I've spoken to, and is essentially the full flow of new players onto clan servers including clans on my server get them from forums and advertising from semi-permanent web spaces. This also covers your third point, clans exist outside of servers as well as the game. I am in 3 clans, each for different games and some play Minecraft. By most standards I could not join a clan on the forums because many have a policy of no multi-clans. This backs up Citrics' idea that clans need to change to fit the times, but I also don't believe that you should rely on the fact that they 'will', and even 'should' change.
As for your second point, spies are not as much of a problem as you think they are. In the dry spell of clans and resources, a 'spy' can be used to bring old players back to you, as well as gather successful methods of running a clan from other sources. They are a product of scarcity, and when used on factions servers are just an element of the gameplay itself, not a necessity of a clan. For instance, gaming communities and building clans have no use to be spied on. If you play GTA servers or Prop Hunt, minigame servers, etc. spies become almost completely useless. It's like putting a spy into a StarCraft clan... What's the point?
You cannot rely on the clans themselves to change. Clans are fluid, but they have ended up where they are for a reason. Many remember 'the good old days' where clans were so saturated with new players that there was always a struggle to find new things to do. Something happened between then and now to where the clan section has become dried up. As fireboy mentioned, a common fear is 'spies' and infiltrators. This does not seem like healthy clan behaviour to me, and may be a symptom of other problems that the forum may not be able to fix, but may help alleviate. For instance, I've spoken to GreenWindu on the subject of clan leaders, and he had given me his feedback of their character. Usually positive, and I went to speak with each individual to discuss the welfare of their clans and what they expected to change in the future. Overwhelmingly there was a need to discuss the status quo, to a point where Skype groups were made to discuss certain people in the community that had influence and who was bad, etc. Many of the people who were talked up by others in the community turned out to be bad apples who were just trying to gather what was left in the section. An ex clan leader even sent out a mass apology to other leaders and clan members for their questionable conduct. Scarcity breeds this. You cannot rely on the clans themselves for the traffic to the clans section.
Servers are not permanent, clans are. Due to the erratic nature of servers, many clans on the MCF have gravitated towards clans-only servers. You can grow with other players in the game, let me stress this. I believe you when you say this, but singleplayer can also breed clans. If someone sees your single player world through screenshots, it may prompt them to ask you to join their clan. If you are a redstone engineer, and have a good creation, then that's another prompt. Servers are a bulk section and EXTREMELY impermanent. Someones' work on a server could be gone the following month, and the same goes for any factions and builds that you may have had there. When you say you've already greatly limited your potential playerbase by posting on these forums, that is the trend. Clans do not go searching for players on other servers, this could also be seen as poaching players. If your clan is very active on one server, and you go to another server and see someone you want to play with: "get off that server and play on this other one!" seems to be the go-to strategy. Servers are NOT the way to grow clans, they are simply another tool to play with your clan members. Clans are groups of people, when you see clans, assume that a group is already established before entering a server.
As mentioned by Shanka in one of the former posts on this thread, the traffic to the forum does not reflect the traffic to the clan section. I'm not sure what the metrics say, but you may be underestimating the power that this forum has by way of creating long lasting communities.
I would not say that this is a place to define, discuss, and plan. Skype groups, Teamspeaks, in-game party, faction, town chat are places to plan and discuss. To plan and discuss there has to be discourse, and some of the tidbits of posts on the clan section could be seen as bump fodder. "Hey, just checkin' up, how're you guys doing?" could be done through PM. A forum is a place to display what your clan is about, and to get attention from that forum community and have an interface with current and potential members. (Event announcements and recruiting is the best utility I see coming out of a forum. However, this is just my personal opinion.)
Wholeheartedly agree, not just play on servers.
There isn't much recruitment, but there can be. The section currently isn't visible, the PC clan section comes after all the other platforms and is tucked under the fold of servers and moderated in that section. Servers are in bulk, and clans are scarce. They appear as a small blip on a server section moderator's feed, and are moderated as such. I've seen drama occur, and I police drama on my server's thread as well as on my clans' thread. It is because the servers section has rules against drama that the clans section gets moderated as such, echoing my previous point. I hope I've been of some assistance in slowly chipping away at this issue, as I am very passionate about it.
Yo This is still important, and Saber made good points
Hail Victory
We have operated this way for years. Sectional mods are only permitted to moderate in the section they are assigned to.
And we are already looking at ways to get new moderators.
If you have suggestions for how to improve the forum, then please share them. Simply saying "this could use work" and not offering anything is not really going to help much.
Forums are terrible for tracking applications, however at this point, this kind of discussion is off-topic to what the OP is talking about. If you wish to continue this, please make a new thread.
So like Remember when I said that there is a lack of moderation in the clans section?
https://gyazo.com/e18935462d52d888b2e67f46dd855a3e
Two threads near the top highlighting and promoting servers... not even Clan servers just hamachi ones, there are other things on there like Gaming Communities, build teams ( I guess these might be clans?) and so on. you need to assign more mods or admins here please...
Hail Victory
We do not do sub-sectional moderation. All PC Server mods can moderate Clans. If you find those posts, report them, because it brings it to our attention. By not reporting, you are essentially not helping the very section you want to improve. We cannot see every post ever made, and reports are the best way to bring that content to our attention.
If you don't report them after complaining they are breaking the rules, then you are not helping the problem.