I’d like to see more dialogue in the forum, including with the authors

Hi again,
I’ve been active here on the forum for quite a while now, and I’d like to say something without meaning to upset anyone or anything.
This is one of the few forums I’ve come across during my time online where there’s somehow very little going on. As far as I can tell, there are two groups of people here: on the one hand, those who are supposed to or want to buy patterns, and on the other, those who want to sell them.
The ones who are supposed to or want to buy them rarely come to the forum—maybe for a contest or something, or if there’s a technical issue with the download.
But surely they must have questions sometimes—about techniques, knitting stitch patterns, “how do you do this,” “how do you do that,” “I’m working on something and I’m stuck,” and, well, all that sort of thing. That’s what’s missing here most of the time. And you don’t really hear much from the authors here in the forum either.
For me, forums are supposed to be places of lively exchange, but that’s somehow missing here. I mean, if even I—who’m an absolute beginner at crocheting, well, maybe not an absolute beginner, but a relatively absolute beginner compared to many others here—and who isn’t even here every day—if even I’m more or less the one who’s posted the most here on the forum, then something’s missing here.
I mean, I’m just used to seeing on other forums that people who want to offer or sell something are also really active, make their presence known, and want to stay in touch with potential buyers.
But well, I don’t know—most of the authors are probably active on similar platforms too, so of course there isn’t that much time left over.
I’d just like to see more dialogue, more interesting topics, more lively discussions—more of, well, everything, really. I somehow always get the impression that most people here are actually quite happy when things are on the quiet side. Oh well. I’ve actually been thinking about joining another craft forum where I can be active, ask questions, and talk to people, but I’ve kind of gotten used to Crazypatterns, and two forums on the same topic might be a bit much after all.

What do you guys think about this whole dialogue thing?

I’m always chatting with you anyway ;-)

HUHU... I do like to post when I have the time, but being the only one keeping the conversation going is no fun either — there’s no input.

On the one hand, it’s great when nobody has any problems with a pattern — that means we designers did everything right :)

On the other hand, there’s no communication happening.


Of course, it could also be that everyone — buyers and sellers alike — is active on so many websites that people tend to spend more time where more is going on.

And here on cp, as you already wrote, there’s nothing much going on... But when I have time and can post something because I have an opinion on it, I’m happy to do that — there’s just a lack of input... where there are no questions, there are no answers :)

Maybe that’ll change at some point and there’ll be more going on.

I’m incredibly busy at the moment, but I still make time to check the forum 3 times a week.

Best wishes

do you have any ideas on how we could attract more buyers and interested people to the forum?

I think tutorials on different techniques are always interesting

Thanks to all of you who replied in this thread. I’m starting to think that the topic of “more dialogue in the forum” is something that only a few people here are interested in.
Whether it makes sense to organize special events here in the forum to get more people involved, etc.—I don’t know either.
I’m well aware that this is a common problem in forums. After all, there are several forums dedicated to each of these topics. And when a new forum on a topic is added, it has to build up and establish itself first. And then you have to reach that tipping point—or critical mass—at which point the whole thing just starts running on its own and flowing smoothly, etc. Sometimes that just takes a while, and you have to be patient and maybe give it a nudge now and then, or bump up some topics, etc.
Maybe it’s too early for forum revitalization campaigns, or maybe we just haven’t found the right campaign yet that would really catch on. I mean, the shops are pretty active. There’s a lot going on there, so I assume that plenty of people are regularly active on CP here as well. So the users are there, but they’re just not in the forum as much. Or at least they don’t say much in the forum. I don’t really know. We’ll just have to see how it all goes.