Forum Games

Games to spark posting and involvement

[zigx]

Does anyone know of some games or threads that spark tons of posts?

Example:
-Word association

(This is of course for a non professional forum)

[HelenDev]

I take it you have seen the Friday word game [webmasterworld.com]?

[ppg]

>threads

"where are you from" and "how did you get your nick" always seem to go on for pages and pages.

Then there's always "introduce yourself"...

[ytswy]

1000 signs you've been playing/eating/reading/listening to to much whatever-the-forum's-about. I've seen these run and run.

[grelmar]

First line contests work good too. Gives people a chance to really open up the creative juices.

You come up with a typical "It was a dark and stormy night..." type first line, and then as everyone to complete it in a paragraph, or as long as they want.

I've had members post entire short stories that spanned multiple posts based on those.

[zigx]

The friday word game is Awesome.

I am going to try this RIGHT now.

I was also thinking about games that integrate into the forum ie scripts/mods

but those seem to be more work than they are worth.

[pleeker]

Tried to do a Friday word game on one of my forums, but there wasn't enough traffic to make it work. So now we do a monthly word game where it just spread out over a whole month. Works great.

[SlowMove]

With a good jump start, you could probably do a whole site or major section of a site on the "Friday" Word Game with several threads running simultaneously. If SEO is a concern, you might want to eliminate all but the final post in each thread because of duplicate content.

[zigx]

Any other types?

[Macguru]

I care for a couple of sites with forums. Topics vary from car mods to cooking. I think allowing picture updoads and installing a picture ratings script can be intersting.

I have seen a lot of picture show off topics/contests. From cake decoration contests to custom car paintings, people just love to show what their proud of. If you can get sponsers to offer decent prizes to the winners, you top a community building game, with a decent promotion tool.

We once had to make an extra moderation effort, when some guy started a GF picture contest in the car mod forum... Ho là là! ;)

[limbo]

I think the real trick is to have a forum like FOO [webmasterworld.com]

A forum that underpins the community feel - sparks debates, games, news and chatter that wouldn't sit elsewhere.

For me your question is not so much 'what?' but 'where?'.

Ta

Limbo

[SlowMove]

You could have people post links to what they feel are the worst websites, and have others add their comments.

[Macguru]

Ouch!

I will make sure those links dont generate any referrals...

[Marketing Guy]

Having people comment on other websites is a whole can o worms tbh and a mod nightmare! ;)

Ive seen mods for some forum software that creates user ranks in the style of RPG experience bars (and IIRC, adds "shops" and "profiles" where people can update their "character") - limited to certain industries but can be a nice touch if used appropriately.

Scott

[AAnnAArchy]

We have a question and answer thread on our board that's being going since Sept. 03. You know, someone asks a question, someone else answers it and then asks their own question. Sometimes it gets really dumb, sometimes it's really interesting...depends who's playing at the time.