When we launched the forums 2 months ago, it was quite a gamble. We knew the theory, we’d spoken to the experts, we’d researched the state of the art for building conversations. But all we really knew was that FaceBook groups were becoming unsustainable, and we didn’t know if our FB community would be able to adapt.
Maybe forums are only great for technical folk, like developers. Maybe some of the problems of FB groups burying good content and highlighting stupid flame wars would also follow us here. We thought if maybe 1000 people made the move then that would be enough to build a community, and those left orphaned on FB who couldn’t make the move might build their own vibrant communities.
I’m happy to say that this forum has been a success beyond all our expectations thanks mainly to the strength of this community. In 2 months the forums have 4,500 users, 3000 topics, 75,000 likes, 2,500 bookmarks, and only 83 flags - and over 2 Million page views.
The best thing I think is that the community is taking responsibility for welcoming new users and being so generous with their time and explanations.
For example;
The willingness of the ketogenic forum community to admin itself gives the forums the ability to scale and remain more relevant than any FaceBook group could. Sure the forums have great technology features, with features like a search that returns meaningful results - but it’s the people that makes this place.
We have a big job ahead of us; this is just the beginning of a revolution of metabolically deranged people finding the information to fix themselves then helping their neighbours to do the same. And along the way we’ll all help a lot of people who are less progressed down that that metabolic path to lose weight, treat depression, develop a better relationship with food.
