Disclaimer: The following is the opinion of a single user based on the experiences they have had/ the problems they have noticed during their extensive exploration of the forums in their current state.

I hope I don't get to much flame for this O.o

The Following is my personal responses/reccomendations to each of the points contained within the FP of this thread. Keep in mind that while I have read the entire thread, responding to all of the opinions contained within here would be ridiculous. So this is all you get xD:
Bold = Op Statements
Unbolded = My Reponses

As I'm sure everyone knows we have a huge activity problem that needs to be sorted ASAP. Activity on the forums is drying up fast and even RMB activity is slowing down. Though some of this could be blamed on a slow down in NS right now, as this does happen during certain times of the year I don't all of it can. I'm going to say what I think are the current problems and how we can then solve them. Then I hope that we can have a large discussion and as a community work out how we can solve this activity issue.

While I personally agree with the appalling issue of Forum Activity. I do not support the idea of advertising it so publicly. However, due to the fact that it HAS been publicly advertised I now get to shove my opinion down everyone's throat. So I won't complain too much. Just know that I personally think that the majority of activity issues can/could have been solved through productive discussion and brainstorming in a simple meeting of the admins. The fact that our administration was capable of building this system proves that it is more than capable of fixing the issues that have developed within said system. As a citizen this topic seems rather rushed and disorganized. Almost as if a single high ranking user saw an issue and instead of discussing it with the proper personnel in an organized fashion, just kind of decided to through it at the public to deal with xD. (Again this is an opinion, no one needs to get salty about it.)

Problems

1. We're taking new nations for granted.

I think for too long now, we've just thought that because we're a feeder region we're going to get lots of new active members and everything will be fine. It's clearly not fine. UCR are thriving right now and I point to the likes of Europiea, Albion and so on. Our welcoming telegram doesn't tell me about the Fellowship Programme or the SPSF, it's not that inspiring it doesn't tell me why I should say in TSP and it doesn't recommend turning off recruitment TGs.

There is one thing that is being assumed here: That people read recruitment/welcoming Telegrams. I know for a fact that the first thing that I did on this sight was block the bloody things. I personally believe that we have no reason to worry about people joining TSP. What we should be worrying about is keeping them and getting them on the forums.

(note: while some users may read recruitment tele's/welcoming tele's. I am positive that the majority of new users have a TL;DR mind set when approaching these things) (note#2: I may be wrong, but I highly doubt it)

IMO there are several ways to efficiently keep people in TSP and get them active on forums, but first we need to be aware of something:

There will be users with NO interest in joining Regional Forums or participating in anything but the rmb AND THAT IS FINE. We should NOT be punishing new nations for choosing not to join our forums.

If we want to maximize the amount of new nations that join our forums and become citizens upon landing in TSP we will need a few things:

1: A mini right up that acts as a sales pitch. This is referred to as a hook when righting a book. Or a platform when advertising a campaign. This is the first step that should be taken. Ex:

Hello and Welcome to The South Pacific! If you don't already know the first thing you should be doing is blocking those pesky recruitment telegrams that are filling up your Inbox! Click Here (link to a 'how to' on telegram preferences) to find out how to do that! Finished? Good! The next step is enjoying NS! Go solve some issues and watch your nation grow and diversify as you unlock achievements, banners and a bunch of other really cool stuff!

But if you really want to get into the meat of NS then what you need to do is join The South Pacific Forums! It is full of all different kinds of members from our glorious region! You can join the Military! Pew Pew Pew! Pass Legislature! Democracy! Or even join the creative side of our diverse community in our RP Section! The possibilities are endless! Click Here to Join!

2: The First thing any new member should see when clicking that link to our forums is an Introduction. An even better way to implement this is to have the Link take you directly to the introductory Topic.

This topic should immediately open up with a link to our registration page, followed by and advertisement for citizenship that contains a link to the Application forum page(the citizen app page should link back to the intro page for user ease), and then finishes off with a break down of all the different things you can get involved with on our forums. The Fellowship programme topic accomplishes this but I honestly think that it could be better summarized and even re organized to present itself better. These Forums offer three main things

RP, Military involvement, Government involvement

Lay out each immediately after the citizen application section of the intro. Each should contain a link to an introduction into each respective area. This is key properly summarized and well organized introductions that are informative, but not TL;DR worthy will increase involvement exponentially. Right now it is up to the user to get involved, I say it is up to us to get the user involved.

I have SO MANY suggestions as to how we can improve our forums in regards to user ease, but this is getting into TL;DR territory so I'll stop here and


2. Our Forums aren't interesting

We have sooooo many threads that we just keep using over and over and they just look old and forgotten. I'm talking about the Fellowship, Citizenship SPSF application threads. They look old, we need to update them. Plus we have lots of old threads that aren't used any more in places like the University, the roleplay centre, RA the Assembly that just discourage people from getting involved. Plus for some reason people just don't seem to want to join the forums (as highlighted in the recent poll and even if they do join they aren't getting involved.

I disagree the Forums are extremely interesting, just unorganized and in need of a bit of housecleaning.

3. Regional Affairs is slowing down

RA is taking a huge hit right now. There aren't many members and nothing is being done. There has not been a single SJ, Onion, Real Time, RS or anything since the start of this term. RA is a key part of keeping TSP active and it needs to be active for TSP to thrive.

This can be directly related to the current lack of user friendliness our forums currently contain. If we simply advertise properly and re organize ourselves we will see this fix itself.

Solutions

1. Everyone counts

We have to take up a new attitude and stop taking new nations for granted. Lets be welcoming to all new nations and I think to do that we need a mentor programme. There have been many failed attempts by RA to set this up in the past however I really do think we need one if we want TSP to continue to thrive. We also need to make our welcoming TG interesting and fun. It should tell me about all the different opportunities I'll get by being a member of the forums or just a resident of TSP. So including things such as the SPSF, the Fellowship, the LC, and our regional chat would be great. It should also say why TSP is different so including things such Cake VS Pie would be great as well as recommending to people they should turn off requirement TGs.
Mentor programs are unnecessary, the forums can mentor new users for us if set up properly.

2. Lets find out why the forums aren't interesting

Together lets create a survey to find out why people aren't joining the forums or if they are why they aren't getting involved. And with that new information lets CHANGE so we can get new members involved. I also think we should update and change some of the old threads. I mean the FP application is compactly out of date. It's small things that add up and make a big difference.

Again, The Forums ARE interesting! They just need to be organized.

3. Speed it up again

Yes we may be low on members however we can't just sit in the corner and sulk about it. The original FP had just the then Minister, the Del and three other members involved, myself included. However we still got things done maybe not a lot but things soon sped up. As we did stuff people got interested and wanted to get involved, and things just took off from there.
See my suggestions above.

Other ideas

I think we should invite players from Europiea to visit our forums and RMB to see what they think is up and how we could improve. Whenever I hop on the Europiea forums there are loads of people online, there is also something to do as the forums are active and the RMB is also active. I think we could learn a lot from them and other thriving regions alike.

I also think we should do more cultural events both here and in other regions. Things such as flash mobs, Flying circuses, a few festivals, small competitions and other events. This would generate activity and if we do it in different regions people might think "Hey TSP sounds like a lot of fun I'll move there or create a puppet there and get involved."

This is a huge problem we face and these are just my ideas I think we should all share and discuss our own ideas and thoughts. We can only get through this if we all work together and not fight between each other.

Taking advice from other reasons isn't necessary, our regional administration is more than capable of accomplishing this task.

Inter-regional events are a fantastic Idea!

And the problem isn't super huge! It is really easily fixed! All we need is housecleaning! I promise!!