I’m not sure how many people will see this, but if you are a part of this great GIO community then I really encourage you to take the time and read this. A few months ago you may remember a blog from Saint where he challenged everyone in the blogging community to start making user reviews. This was a challenge to hopefully improve that section of the site. I really liked that “challenge” and I think it is a great way to get people involved in areas of the site that need attention or improvement. If I had to pick one section of the site where I challenged members to participate in more it would be the forums section. While I was reading Saints original blog post all I could think about was that this needs to be done for the forums section, which is why I wanted to make this blog.

Before the redesign in 2009 the only place to interact with other users was in the forums section. This is where everyone discussed everything from the latest gaming news to sports. The community was great as usual and the place was always active with new posts and threads. Then sometime in 2009 we got word that the site was going to have a redesign in October. Everyone was excited for what was to come. I remember many of us were saying that we were going to stick around and set an example for future members that would sign up to the new site. However, when October finally came and the redesign happened, the mood changed drastically.

The forums that we have now are a lot different than what we had before the redesign and people didn’t like that. Users were not happy that the forums were different than what they were used to and people started leaving the site. I can see why so many people were upset at the change, but I don’t understand leaving the site because of that change. That doesn’t sound like a community to me. From a design point of view the forums we have now are probably one of the worst I have ever seen. But the design of the forums is not important to me and shouldn’t be important to you. It’s the people that use that forum that make it what it is. We could have the most user friendly, well designed forum in the world, but if people don’t utilize it then what’s the point? The redesign of the site was not meant to hurt the community. It was meant to help make it better and give us the community members more tools to play with.

So after two years of waiting and hoping the forums would get back to the activity it once had I’m tired of waiting. I’m tired of not seeing the forums being utilized the way it should be and so I want to challenge every community member to participate more in the forums. I say community member because I’ve seen a lot of people that call their selves just a “blogger”, just a person who posts in the forums, just a person who posts in news articles, and I think that’s dumb to classify yourself as just that. You are a GIO community member with the entire site for you to utilize. I’m focusing on the forums because I really think most people don’t understand the potential fun that could be had in there.

So my challenge to each and every one of you is to make at least one post in the forums every week. There are a number of people that make a blog post each week. So it shouldn’t be hard to make at least one post in the forums each week as well. There are a number of video game topics in the General Gaming, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, and PC boards for you to talk about. You can discuss movies, shows, and books in the Gears & Media board. Last, but not least the Off-Topic board is where everything else goes. Just find a thread somewhere and post in it or better yet make a new thread to start new discussion. Don’t worry about how much you write in your post. It can be three paragraphs or just a couple sentences long it doesn’t matter. I’m just challenging you to use this section of the site, because I think we are missing out on fun community experiences.

The Off-Topic board is the place that I love the most on this site. Always has and probably always will be. Because that is the place where I can interact with other people and learn more about them besides their love for games. I know that may sound weird because this is a video game site and some people seem to think we should only talk games. But video games is just the reason we signed up to this site, it’s what we all have in common. It’s the other interactions we do that make us a community and I think Off-Topic is a great place for that to happen. I would love to see that board be alive like it used to be. Wanna post something that happened to you in your personal life, but don’t want to blog it because it’s not video game related? Make a new thread in Off-Topic and let’s discuss it. You can talk sports in there as well. We can do forum games and contests in there also. People that make podcasts you can post in there instead of knocking a regular blog to page two if you want. It’s a place for you to talk about anything (within the rules of course). Every month there is also a new Social Thread made. This is a thread where you just have fun talking to your fellow community members.

I know I may be starting to sound like a broken record, but we really are missing out on the potential fun and discussions in the forums. You guys have made the blog section great with the community spirit that is here. Let’s move some of that to the forums as well. It’s there to be used so let’s use it and have fun with it. I hope I have said enough in this blog post to motivate you to post in the forums. I know it’s not the best designed forum in the world, but it’s the community that makes it fun. We can make it great. All you have to do is just…post. That’s all it takes. I would love to see 2012 be the year the activity in the forums comes back.

One post a week is your challenge. Let’s make it happen!