Discussion Discussion and question about Interest in new site direction

[The Helper]

I had a thought. You know I have always tried to help people and I have been trying to help a person in my life and it has been a challenge. In the past, I have ran away from helping this person because they have some serious issues. This time though, I am in it to win it and not run away. However, doing it alone is draining. So my strategy for helping this person has switched and now instead of working alone I am going to try and enlist some help so that I am not completely life drained from this and the person can get more help. This is a great idea, imho, and the biggest challenge I have here I believe is getting people to help. I am also not talking about money unless that is the only way. I tried to fix this problem with money and it did not work.

Flash over to this site, I have been thinking about closing it, then I was thinking about making it a game dev site for a project that I am working on, but then now I am thinking - The Helper.net - a community of Helpers. I think I want to make that tagline real. I am thinking about turning this site into a hub for helping people in real life. Have a place for people to come ask for help and then people can help however they want. Whatever kind of help it is I think I want to make this place a real help site for real problems.

What do you guys think? Could you guys who keep coming back get behind this? If all of a sudden there were posts for help here do you think you guys would read them? I think this is where I want to go with this. I think we could really help some people.

 

[tom_mai78101]

It would require a dedicated community with a consistent stream of updates about that general direction the site will be heading towards.

If we use a game project as a metaphor for the site, the game project needs to:

• Keep itself updated on a consistent basis of time.
• The project needs to be able to carve out a niche audience to keep the attraction going. It could be a technical marvel, or something related to a big publisher doing constant game updates.
• It has to be something the community would be willing to volunteer and support so as long as the project is active.

Niche audiences are really hard to come by though.

 

[jonas]

I probably would read and try to answer as long as the tone in the forum stays friendly and kind.

You should bring back real rep though. Little green glowing bars, and maybe some unlockables based on rep like customization of posts in the forum haha

 

[Blackveiled]

I lurk a lot right now for the most part. But I really wouldn't if there was more going on. I do miss the way the forums was before, like reputations and all the additional social features. I like the ideas you have though! I'm down for anything.