For ScapeCrunch members only?

[Yugang]

@Art we noticed that recently messages are blurred, and can only be read after logging in. This seems a rather significant decision that may or may not help the development of ScapeCrunch.

I have been posting for the benefit of the hobby community, not necessarily for ScapeCrunch members only. I have a rather strong preference for ScapeCrunch content to be visible for anyone, member or not.

I wonder what was the rationale for the change, and if a majority or ScapeCrunch members prefer it this way?

 

[Art]

Hi @Yugang - hope you’re well and thanks for bringing this up.

ScapeCrunch, like most forums, is receiving a lot of guests that don’t end up registering. While this is neither good or bad (we want active participation not just more members), we wanted to experiment to see if blurring the second post onwards would increase registrations.

This is only temporary and we will be lifting it within a week’s time and going back to fully open. Once we have some data, and if it shows a material increase in registrations, we would put it forth as a discussion item for the community.

If the data shows no material increase, we will not bother to bring it up.

I appreciate your patience during this short experiment.

All the best,

Art

 

[Yugang]

Appreciate your reply @Art, thank you.

I believe quality of content and traffic are the key to success, not necessarily membership.

If content cannot be seen to inspire interest, and traffic is obstructed by a firewall, this could be a really risky strategy even if you would gain a couple more members. As ScapeCrunch has no commercial agenda, and we can fund it easily with a smaller group, one can argue it is not worth the risk.

I am just one voice, really hope that others will chime in.

 

[Art]

Very well said! I appreciate your wisdom and caring.

I think the short experiment will provide us with data from which to base future decisions. Other forum admins are using this in different ways with the focus of benefiting the community.

I agree that building walls is not the objective. The objective is to encourage lurkers to lean in, engage and become contributing members of the growing community.

Creating great content is clearly one way to do this and we will continue in the quest.

 

[Pepere]

I agree that building walls is not the objective. The objective is to encourage lurkers to lean in, engage and become contributing members of the growing community.

Of course, lurkers would be unable to see your response to this thread now and wouldnt know that you are trying to encourage them to lean in and enhage…

I know for myself, if I do an internet search and see that I am unable to read without registering on many forums, I hit the back button pretty quickly and check out other search results…

 

[*Ci*]

I agree with @Pepere. I would not join any forum where I couldn’t lurk and read for some time. I do not think that blurring or blocking content is a good idea for Scapecrunch. We want people to see that there is something different on offer here, something better than they are seeing on other forums.

 

[Naturescapes_Rocco]

I agree with everyone else. Run the experiment, sure, but I can't stand it when a forum requires membership to read/participate. Most of the information I've gathered about this hobby has come from google-search-related forum information.

 

[Kwyet]

I can see having a members-only subforum, but making the majority of Scapecrunch inaccessible to non-members seems counterproductive.

 

[Burr740]

Agree, bad move. Needs to be all open for everyone

On a personal level, I would prefer if the entire hobby could read what I go to the trouble of writing, not just registered members. Others here who've published a lot more work than me probably feel the same way ( @Yugang obv does)

But also I think we'd rather have members who have spent a lot of time reading the board first. For several reasons. Main two being they are more educated, probably already found answers to the 15 noob questions they were about to ask. And also they have a better feel for the place as far as how to act when they get here

Ive been involved with lots and lots of boards on different things over the years. In all capacities, from lurker to staff. New members who have read a lot of the board first are always better than ones who havent. Always

There are also boards that literally changed my life in some area that I never joined, just read a lot. I think we'd rather be that kind of board imho

Besides all that I think a very large portion of visitors are just gonna leave if they cant read. Even if they register, what good is having a bunch of inactive members anyway for a non-profit outfit?

Jmho

 

[Unexpected]

Had I not been able to lurk in the background of many forums before I joined, I would not be where I am today.

 

[Tim Harrison]

Whatever the point of view, it’s definitely a worthwhile experiment. I for one would love to know the outcome. It might be surprising.

But I guess, whether it’s worthwhile depends on the desired outcome. More participation ain’t necessarily a good thing if it’s the wrong kind.

For instance folk looking for answers without searching the message board first and not giving back to the community.

On the other hand if blurring out content encourages folk with a more sincere agenda to join, that can only be a good thing for the community.

Sometimes taking a more strategical approach can benefit longterm.

 

[Art]

First, thank you all for caring enough to say something and speak your mind/hearts for the betterment of our community.

Second, can you think of a situation that blurring some aspect of the site would be helpful in encouraging registrations and participation?

One example comes to mind. You know those very annoying registration or email signup pop ups that everyone hates? They have been statistically shown to increase registrations by over 40% in spite of everyone hating them. Once you are registered then you are more apt to participate because the inertia of registering has been removed. The site can now also entice you to participate through emails or notices.

To be clear, I am not formulating an argument to keep the blurring. It will be removed on Friday. I am curious if this experiments results in some ideas of what we can do to encourage more people like you to lean in and help our community thrive.

 

[Pepere]

I notice @Art that when you are not so busy with work you start posts asking questions that seek input that has good responses. You often ask questions that never entered my mind…. And I find I learn things from it.

The more of those added to the forum archive, the more likely someone having that question will stumble across the site.

And a person might need to stumble across a site several times before gaining confidence in the site. Goodness knows I sometimes have to stumble over a concept several times before the concept sinks in and makes sense…

On another site I frequent which pales in comparison to the expertise and knowledge base among members here there was recently a post asking what is the most challenging aspect of this hobby. I exercised impulse control and did not type in that the most challenging aspect is separating all of the BS myths accepted wisdom and knowledge from things that actually work…. I shudder to think of the time, effort and money I have wasted following bad advice…

The best advice I ever got was to find pictures of a tank you like and are impressed with and ask that tanks caretaker for advice…

If someone is always posting videos of how to eliminate algae and they are demonstrating on multiple algae infested tanks, and you never see any of their tanks with Algae in control, you might want to consider someone else for advice on Algae control.

 

[Asher E.]

First, thank you all for caring enough to say something and speak your mind/hearts for the betterment of our community.

Second, can you think of a situation that blurring some aspect of the site would be helpful in encouraging registrations and participation?

One example comes to mind. You know those very annoying registration or email signup pop ups that everyone hates? They have been statistically shown to increase registrations by over 40% in spite of everyone hating them. Once you are registered then you are more apt to participate because the inertia of registering has been removed. The site can now also entice you to participate through emails or notices.

To be clear, I am not formulating an argument to keep the blurring. It will be removed on Friday. I am curious if this experiments results in some ideas of what we can do to encourage more people like you to lean in and help our community thrive.

I did find the blurring annoying, but it’s actually what made me join. I wanted to read something (I think it was about a light, I forget what it was exactly) but I couldn’t read it so I made an account so I could read it.

 

[Art]

Thanks for all the comments while we conducted this experiment. As I stated, the blurring will go off today after 1 week on.

To clarify, the first post of each thread was visible by guests. The second post onward was blurred. This allowed guests to see what the topic was but they needed to register to see responses. There was no impact on search engine bots nor on spam bots (unfortunately).

Metrics for the 1 week experiment​

• 9 new registrations - average week
• 8 new confirmed email registrations - 600% increase from average
• 35.1% decrease in organic search traffic

Analyzing results​

The week experiment seems to indicate that the blurring caused significantly more human registrations than normal increasing by 600% from average. This makes sense if you agree that blurring the second post onward will peak the interest of those humans search for planted aquarium information. The hypothesis was that the blurring would cause some level of annoyance but curiosity would override that and result in people interested in the information to register. @Asher E. thank you for being here and confirming this.

However, we saw a marked decrease in traffic from search engines that implies that not everyone saw the blurring as creating curiosity and the annoyance may have caused them to arrive and then leave the site very quickly. This suggests that this strategy is not perfect and doesn't apply universally.

Conclusion and decision​

Although blurring did result in an increase in new members (THANK YOU TO ALL WHO JOINED), the ScapeCrunch community mission of openly promoting the hobby and aquatic plants overrides need to encourage registrations. Sharing information freely and openly is more important to us than having registered members, especially if there is no guarantee that registration equals participation (which is what we really want).

Therefore, we will not institute blurring as a means to encourage guests to become engaged members. We will be testing a temporary notice, visible only to guests when they arrive on the site, that will be dismissible by the guest. This notice will briefly explain our mission and why becoming a member is beneficial to them and the community. We will follow the same experiment methodology that we did with the blurring.

Thank you for caring enough to comment on this. We are all in it together so collectively thinking through these types of tests is wonderful to experience.

 

[Yugang]

Although blurring did result in an increase in new members

Yet the subsequent un-blurring did result in a further increase in new members

Just to say that the causal relationship with hindsight was not that clear.

 

[Art]

I’m sure I can pull the data and we can compare!

Doesn’t really matter. If our community prefers not to blur, doesn’t matter what the data says.

 

[Yugang]

I’m sure I can pull the data and we can compare!

Doesn’t really matter. If our community prefers not to blur, doesn’t matter what the data says.

Just teasing Happy to see so many new members joining recently!