Greetings fellow LTS members.

Lately I've noticed our forum has come to a dreadful halt in activity Maybe this is just a particularly dry spell, but it's becoming worrysome. A lot of people have been visiting, but not posting. I'd just like to remind everyone that we all need to do our part to keep this community going I can't imagine what would happen if our posting kept getting smaller and smaller We could very well end up with a dead forum on our hands. So let's not let that happen. Please, if you have thoughts or opinions on the matter, post them here. I'm eager to here what others have to say.

I admit, I have been very quite recently and I apologies once again for lack of forum commitment.

The problem is that for the whole of the Easter holiday and this first week back to school, it's been very busy and hectic for me , a lot has happened.

However I plan on posting more art up soon, and hopefully will be able to take part in more discussions when I've got some of my work out of the way with

I'm busy moving into my new apartment and that eats up a lot of time. But once that's all done, I'll post more here

LTS will never close down, so even if the activity will be one post per week, that post will be valued and trsaured for all its worth
I also prefer to see an active forum but i am well aware of the fact that we are all busy people and as interesting is the character Lisa simpson, there are not endless things to say about her.

I am sure that even if people do not post, they still like this place very much. Every effort in keeping the community will be surely appreciated, but remember that this should not be a pressure to you all. Posting in here should come natural, like willing to sit down for a nice chat with friends, and the Lisa Bar is always open

I don't think the situation is as good as Marco and Andreas are trying to tell. I believe in statistics, not emotions... and statistics tells that LTS is experiencing activity troubles for quite a long time, not only past two days. Being blunt, the forum is slowly dying. That's why I quit several days ago - I failed to keep it alive, and seeing it going down was too much for me. Please understand, if we will decide once again that everything is fine and the situation will sort out eventually by itself, we'll have another dead forum very soon.

SimpReal
A forum that has only one new post per week is already dead to me. Imagine yourself posting a new picture, hoping for replies but seeing nothing! That's pretty cruel, you won't post anything anymore on such a place. The same thing with other sections... if you post your opinion in some topic but everyone else ignores it, you see that nobody cares about your participation or, in other words, nobody cares about the forum at all.

Andreas
Of course nobody is obliged to post anywhere, but you should realize that if you visit the forum only for reading new posts (which many of us do lately), then one day you'll see no new posts at all. I'm completely with George here.

Right now I don't know what to do to help LTS. Honestly, I'm still depressed, because I know today's burst of activity was caused by this topic; some time passes and we'll face the same situation again. The worst thing is that people accept "quiet" periods like something natural, while actually they are the first indicators of pretty dangerous things.

Andreas
No, I never turned this forum off for purpose. I quit it myself - logged out and tried not even to think about it for some time, because the dropping activity started to make me depressed (everyone talking to me via ICQ these days probably have noticed that). I'm not going to "pull the plug" while there are chances to revive the place. But if I see that LTS is dead and nothing helps, I'll close it. Even if Marco will be against. I don't believe in miracles, dead forums are dead forums. I've seen enough of them already, I know that once the community loses interest, they produce only flood and spam. And that's not the fate I want for LTS.

Seems like we have a few different sets of opinions here.

SimpReal
I agree that posting here should come naturally, and that it should be "always open"... but what's the point of keeping the bar open if there are no drinks to sell or people to talk to?

Dagdamor
I agree, posting something and not receiving a response is a bit discouraging. As if you were to say something to someone and they ignored you. And no doubt this recent bout of posting is just because of this "alert" post. It's like trying to keep a tired person awake. You clap your hands in front of their face and they jerk awake, but you find a few seconds later that they're falling asleep again.

Andreas
You're right, nobody is obliged to post, it is definitely something we should do because we want to, not because we have to. But there is some level of participation that should come from discussions, and if people aren't posting, that usually means they don't want to.

You can judge me strong now... but i'll say...
Dagdamor, GeorgeHarrison
All you say here is nothing but a result of depression. And i really sorry about it. I have a depression last week ago too, it was very hardly (and reading of Jenny's "Lisa Fitzgerald 2005" simply has killed me...)
Neverthless, as for me i'm trying to keep my activity as it possible... So, i think the other words would simply superfluous.

And by the way i have a pretty much of experience with talking to the emptyness. And i have already got used to this, now i'm typing new posts and laying out pictures not very much reflecting on positive responses (though it still hurts enough). So i would to speak my attitude to this place is already behind a side of simple hobby, averaged interest. It's a duty for me now. And a very pleasant.

I'm sure LTS won't die, because of a few days of lower activity. We have plenty of members who want to discuss Lisa, so there will always be new posts and new things to discuss. And to make sure that happens, I'm going to try to post more.

So, as boring as it is, i guess the truth stands in the middle, as always.

I agree with George and Dagdamor when they say that every member should try a bit harder to keep this place alive and interesting when things seem to be slow and stalling. But i don't really share their feelings of impending doom and "forum death" whenever i see that no new posts are made in some time. On the latter case, i really agree with what Casper, Andreas and Janglewolf said:

this is a very special community, made of special people. So far i am very proud to be part of it, as i think is everyone of you guys. So, let's try and keep it this way

GeorgeHarrison
I've got it.
Last time i haven't enough forces to answer all in time. So please don't consider my silence like disrespect or lack of the interest. Simply sometimes i physically was not capable to write the worthy answer. And to write a pair of lines i do not want, especially in threads i really like.

I suppose that you'll all be surprised to learn that the past five months have been the most active in the forums history. With around 1000 posts each month, but that still isnt really enough to have an "active" forum by most peoples standards, myself included.

I very much agree to that statement. Hell, I'd probably say that zero posts in any one day is showing the first signs that a forum is going to die. Though so far, the forum hasnt had to expirence it going that far yet. Though the single post that was posted on 19th April would be very close.

About the quality vs. quantity, the two go hand in hand really, most people want the quantity of a nice active forum as its the number of posts that people would be intrested, but if they find a nice active forum and they join then they'll see the quality.

Never just allow for long winded posts, but do allow for shorter, jokey ones to be mixed in, they help lighten the mood, and make the forum entertaining, which is one of the primary thing people want, they want to be entertained. While this is there, but it's not there as often as the essay like posts that most people are posting. (I'll level that if it were a rule to post more than 3 paragraphs in each post, my count would be zero) Even on SimpleMachines.org people are sarcastic, take stabs at each other and have fun and entertain each other. There has to be a mix of seriousness and playfulness.

I'll be honest, this forum features some of the craziest Simpsons threads that I have ever seen, I mean, going into essay like posts about the facial expressions of Lisa Simpson? Lisa's facial expressions are no more different than Homer's or Bart's or Mr. Burns's or Apu's or any other characters, I know this is a Lisa forum, but why discuss only Lisa in that thread, why not any other character?

Whats more, this forum doesnt have a general off topic discussion board where you can just talk about anything general. This is something that can really boost activity and get people who dont have a primary intrest in the Simpsons but watch it every now and then to join as they can talk about something else and it is shown very obviously, currently all the off-topic posts are mixed in with the Simpsons ones and they get lost fairly easily.

Also too many people seem to be apoligizing for not posting, dont, to me it makes you seem like you're a robot and are constantly require to post in the first day the thread/post was created. You're not exactly going to be hung for that. We are humans and cant be expected to be on a forum 24/7. As long as you post in general one day or even a week later is still good.

ambercrystal
LOL... thanks, although the topic is a little outdated and maybe right now things aren't as bad as they were when George has created this topic (after chatting to me, I suppose). But thanks for supporting.

ALM
You keep judging LTS by the mainstream forums' merits! This is very incorrect, while other forums (your MT2 including) are about everything, they don't have certain subject, they encourage people to talk whatever they like, their admins don't care what members are talking about, this forum is thematic. It has certain subject, rather narrow one, and for that reason, it can't be as active.

Yes, when LTS experiences times of inactivity, I'm starting to worry about it. But on the other hand, I perfectly understand that LTS can't have 100-200 posts per day and remain LTS, it would just turn into yet another flooding range where people don't think a bit before posting, where all posts are one-liners (sometimes just one or two words!) and therefore absolutely not interesting to read afterwards. I think Internet has quite enough of such forums, why turning LTS into one of them.

I want you to understand, I'm not heading for the activity record or something. How many posts per month LTS has, is not very important for me. 500 is as good as 5000 - I won't earn any money, or respect, or whatever from those numbers. I only tend to worry when the activity goes too low (say, less than 10 posts per day), and only because this is a first sign that LTS has inactivity problems. But when the activity is decent, I don't ask for more, and more, and even more.

I don't get it at all... this thread is located under OFFTOPIC > Forum Discussion, it contains topics concerning the forum (but not on forum topic), and it contains off topic threads. You can post as much off topic here as you want, no?
I do realise that alot of topics that belong here end up in the Lisa's Family section, guess people should make sure to categorize this better.

And ALM, with risk of sounding repetitive, I don't think that this is a forum that's meant for people who place quantity over quality. The small, thoughtful community is what makes this place unique, were it just another one in the bunch, the place wouldn't really interest me.

I?m sure the forum will be kept open! These Lisa-themed art galleries you can't see anywhere except here. When I first saw those pics, I thought just WOW! I haven?t been most active users on here, but its important for me to have a place for writing Lisa, her beliefs and her enthusiasm for nature and animals. Its good the main topic isnt the Simpsons men and their stupidity .