How popular are Profile posts on your Forum?

[tomdav]

Converting from another forum software that didn't have this feature. Debating whether to enable or disable it after converting to XF. Do your users find Profile posts useful? Do they use it very much. I'm guessing most of my users wouldn't use this feature and content would be less visible / harder to find, so rather than encouraging social engagement it may be a net negative in that regard, so maybe less is more? Thoughts?

 

[webbouk]

I tend to use it mainly as a means to inform the membership of changes, updates, or important information they need to know about. Others rarely use it other than the occasional member who uses as a means to message another.

 

[sbj]

See it for yourself.

If you have a very busy forum, I see the profile posts working. It would be another layer of keeping the people on the site. Specially if you have a "followship" thingy going on your forum where people follow others excessively.

However, if you don't have thousands of visitors per day, I wouldn't suggest having it. I have never seen a XF forum which makes a good use of it. It's just something which confuses people. Nobody knows really how to use it or for what to use it.

It only works, when people actively follow people. Do you use the follow feature? How many people use it so that they will be noticed about profile posts? Of course you can always have profile posts enabled and see it for yourself. And deactivate it later.

 

[m1ne]

Very popular, a crucial part of the forum.

 

[Mr. Jinx]

I turned it off. Way to confusing and I don't see how it would add value to a forum.

 

[foiovitor]

I turned it of. Way to confusing and I don't see how it would add value to a forum.

What is the best way to do it? Completely turn it off?

 

[Mr. Jinx]

Disable all the profile post permissions.

 

[Mr Lucky]

Tried it briefly, nobody understood what it was for so complete waste of time and space imo

 

[tomdav]

Tried it briefly, nobody understood what it was for so complete waste of time and space imo

That's my primary concern. It adds a complexity to the forum navigation (What's new vs. New Posts vs. New Profile Posts). Disabling it would simplify things considerably. Seems you could have a forum for member threads if you wanted something like profile posts but integrated into the actual forum.

 

[upnet]

We turned it off. Half of the posts were lost noobs thinking they were posting in the forums.

 

[djbaxter]

Tends to be targeted by spammers hoping to get around your rules.

 

[Mendalla]

We have it turned on but it is rarely used these days. Not causing any problems, just not being used, so I haven't seen a reason to turn it off.

 

[BassMan]

Turned it off on two forums. Just too confusing for members and no benefit for the forum.

 

[Mr Lucky]

We have it turned on but it is rarely used these days. Not causing any problems, just not being used, so I haven't seen a reason to turn it off.

I know what you mean, but I just found it one fewer thing cluttering up navigation.

 

[djbaxter]

We have it turned on but it is rarely used these days. Not causing any problems, just not being used, so I haven't seen a reason to turn it off.

That's been my experience too. Most people don't use it but some do (true on both vBulletin and Xenforo). A few like to customize their profile page. Some used Visitor Messages (vBulletin) a lot; I turned it off for my profiles because I didn't want to have to check to see if anyone wanted a response to something. My only intervention in vBulletin was to remind people that Visitor Messages were public unlike PMs so they needed to be careful about their privacy settings.

So they are there for those who want them and out of the way for those who don't. Good compromise.

 

[Sim]

I turned it off when it became obvious that a large percentage of the posts were actually intended to be private conversations.

I started sending "educational warnings" about this to members explaining the difference and asking whether they had intended their profile post to be private - and many of them responded that this had indeed been the case and asked for their profile post to be removed.

 

[siONtI]

Stats for last 4 months on my forum.

 

[tomdav]

Is that 1 post and 1 comment per day? If so, doesn't seem very popular.

 

[D.O.A.]

Profiles have to be the most unloved boring sections of any forum software. There's no progress in that department, no great ideas, just a page that ties to nothing. That's why we need links on the main page to profile stuff, or no one would even care (from my experience after 12 years)

 

[duderuud]

A LOT of our users think it's private conversation