Hi everyone,
I believe that this place is a community that is held together by it's culture, which is held together by it's members. I don't really think having the keyword sociopath in our name has any effect, and I think the opposite is true, most here mock anyone who thinks they are a sociopath.
As you guys know, I really want to stop having to build websites for clients, because it's boring, I want to make money building my own software, and to do that we must of course build good software, but it also helps tremendously to have a good sized, reputable forum running it to demonstrate it's capabilities and potential for success.
Google Keyword Research Tool shows that 50 people per month search for the keyword "sociopath forum". Growth has been virtually non-existent.
I have found that people who come to this website after searching for the keyword Sociopath are often superficial, young, stupid, and usually trolled off the website within the first day after being told repeatedly that they are indeed NOT a sociopath, and laughed at. The users generally don't know much about computers, very rarely will you see a thread which concerns IT, and any discussion of IT or development is considering boring.
Members of this community are usually apathetic, they don't really enjoy uniting together to for example raid other communities, or really do anything to make drama besides bicker with each other endlessly.
On the contrary, 250 users per month search for the keyword "Anonymous Forums", and there are no good Google results. If I were looking for a forum that specialized in anonymity, I would be disappointing to find that no quality forum exists.
The sort of people Googling for Anonymous Forums are smart, techy, they are interested in cool causes like Hacktivism, and they share our values of freedom of information, and a lack of censorship. I have no doubt that users of such a demographic would bring interesting new points of views to our community.
So that's why I'd like to change our forum's name to Anonymous-Foru.ms
Our forum will grow, we will gain a more techy community who has a history of making waves in the world, and doing interesting hi-jinx.
What do you guys think?
I at the most I would advocate a middle ground alternative.
- Anonymous Sociopath Community
It'll garner the traffic you want(if that is what this is really about) while not changing the dynamic that's attracted your user base so far.
Im completely against abandoning the foundation this place was built on.
That's a bad idea. It's this place's inside joke, our bait, what flavors the identity of people here towards an ironic bent and Dark Triad themes. You're also asking to change the culture here, but instead you'll be shooting yourself in the foot from how this place is essentially counter-culture. If you give this place a source material, they'll spend their time ripping it apart just like we did with M.E.'s blog back in the day. Instead of bashing sociopathy, assuming this doesn't inspire people to leave, those that stay will be bashing the new bait.
If you want this place to appeal to a techy sort, you might want to improve it... significantly. They're more likely to come here and insult your code similar to that of the Kiwi's that recently visited. I'm also pretty sure that anonymous has plenty of ways to communicate already, since they are somehow already able to coordinate.
It's... hard to call this timing of yours coincidental. The Kiwis will see this decision of yours as an intentional response to their attacks on you. They'll see themselves as having a victory under their belts.
If you want an increase in traffic? Fix the site, get us back with M.E.'s blog, and throw us at other forums. With each interaction we gain new members.