Isaac -
The problem is with the 15+ years of old members - it really isn't with the new members at all. I'm not concerned about what the new members do or do not do, as they are active accounts. I'm striving to find a way to turn off all emails to all accounts across the board in order to handle those 15 years of ancient accounts which are getting me blocked by mail companies. To that end, I don't want new members to choose to turn on mail because at some point they can turn into those inactive accounts. I want to prevent all members from getting random forum-alert mail.
Gizmo -
I hear you on the intention. I used to make all sorts of coding changes to my forums to aim to boost interaction. I added all sorts of social networking links, prods to join the forum, auto-watch code, etc. etc. But for the past six months I've had an incredibly serious problem with my mail being blocked and that is my #1 focus. I cannot send out any more mail from the forum except what is absolutely necessary. That takes precedence over anything else. It's a shame I can't just do this globally - my goal has been to reduce the number of changes I have to make to the code on each update, not to increase them
.
In a more holistic sense, I have accepted that traffic to my forums is simply not what it was ten years ago. Ten years ago the forums were bursting at the seams with posts. I would get multiple posts every second from around the world. Now everybody is using Facebook and Twitter to post instead, and it's my Facebook and Twitter pages which are bustling. I still get a ton of readers on the legacy forum content and that is great. They serve as a resource library. And yes, there are a few people who still post in them - but it's not even a hundredth of what it was in its heyday. Rather than be a buggy whip maker who tries to force people to stop using social networking, I am focusing on taking advantage of that social networking traffic to its best effect and also ensuring the forums serve their new purpose as best they can. I can't allow those forums to seriously damage the rest of the website while they serve their new purpose
.
