Retaining and Gaining Members and Moderation Help

[89 MJ]

Its too bad that we are living in the decline of forums due to other social media platforms. I know that I am newer hear, but I am not new to forums. I have been over on Comanche Club for almost 6 years at this point, which has had a steady number of members in that time. This leads me to have a couple questions for the moderation team:
1. I see that lots of subforum moderators have not been active in months, if not years. Do you need help moderating? I could moderate a few subforums.
2. Is there anything that we can do to help grow the population of this site? There is way more information here than on Facebook, it just doesn't seem to get a ton of eyes on it. I have some ideas, but I don't want to be stepping on anyone's toes here either.

[vangremlin]

Thanks for reaching out.  Maybe let the administrators chat and see how we can best use your offer to help.  Thanks again.

[MIPS]

I think the biggest problem is that Eagles are in this rough spot where they are a touch too new for the AMC purists and classic car people where anything after the Pacer is dead to them and the Eagle being a lot of Jeep bits overlaps with the 4x4 forums where if the car has not rusted itself back into the earth it's been modified, driven, beat up and at this point is a barely safe husk of a unibody.
I'll call out Junkyard Digs because he's had at least three at this point. One while still drivable he took out for fun until the transmission fried and he threw a rod, which to me and a few other videos makes me think the current generation still see Eagles as somewhat disposable in comparison to Boomers and K-cars where if Red-Green didn't hack them all up, the rest met their demise in demo derby's.
Adding to that there's just not a lot of them left. I have not seen one in a junkyard for six years (with almost all my spare parts coming from backyard graves) and the Pacific Northwest gifting to us it's lack of winter salt means there should technically be more left here than anywhere else on the planet.

[89 MJ]

Thanks for reaching out.  Maybe let the administrators chat and see how we can best use your offer to help.  Thanks again.

Sounds good. These forums are too valuable to be at risk of losing in the future. In the mean time, I will probably be making some posts just to try to spark some activity.

I think the biggest problem is that Eagles are in this rough spot where they are a touch too new for the AMC purists and classic car people where anything after the Pacer is dead to them and the Eagle being a lot of Jeep bits overlaps with the 4x4 forums where if the car has not rusted itself back into the earth it's been modified, driven, beat up and at this point is a barely safe husk of a unibody.
I'll call out Junkyard Digs because he's had at least three at this point. One while still drivable he took out for fun until the transmission fried and he threw a rod, which to me and a few other videos makes me think the current generation still see Eagles as somewhat disposable in comparison to Boomers and K-cars where if Red-Green didn't hack them all up, the rest met their demise in demo derby's.
Adding to that there's just not a lot of them left. I have not seen one in a junkyard for six years (with almost all my spare parts coming from backyard graves) and the Pacific Northwest gifting to us it's lack of winter salt means there should technically be more left here than anywhere else on the planet.

I agree, but I also don't agree. Eagles were produced in similar numbers to Jeep Comanches (I'm a member on the Comanche forum too, which has a much larger number of forum "regulars"), many of which had a similar fate to our Eagles. In my experience, my beater Eagle gets more compliments than my restored Comanche. In general, I would also say that the current generation seems to appreciate them. I'm 20 with an Eagle, I have one friend who is also 20 and would like to own an Eagle, and another friend who is in his mid-upper 20s and is actively searching for an Eagle.
There most certainly are not a lot left, like you said, but I have seen roughly as many Comanches (roughly 180,000 produced) as I have Eagles (roughly 190,000 produced) since I've been driving. I have seen an Eagle in an junkyard, but not a Comanche.

I do agree that they are too new for AMC purists and classic car people, but we are starting to see a price increase in both Eagles and Comanches because people that are my parents' age remember them growing up. Yet with popularity increasing, forum use seems to be decreasing. Part of this could be because people don't work on their own stuff anymore, but I've found that forums are a much more knowledgeable and helpful than Facebook groups are.

[MIPS]

Much to my annoyance, forums are flaunted as a dying breed. Why talk about things in a public space which others can view when you have more niche (and arguably more likely to disappear) chat groups and boards like Facebook or Discord, the latter having been occasionally advertised as the replacement to forums. The big thing is that neither Facebook or Discord is regularly and automatically archived because external services like the Wayback Machine cannot see beyond the login screen. Forums such as this on the other hand, even after this site closes and shuts down, most of it still remains in the Wayback machine.

I saw somewhat of the same coming from my experience with top-end computer workstations from the 90's. Silicon Graphics Computer Systems had a sizable and knowledgeable community. By the end of the 2000's the community shrank and the moderator pool began to basically be one custodian. Everyone who maintained the hardware had moved on, there was no new contributions to third-party solutions and the equipment itself was pretty much worthless. Eventually the site was too high maintenance to keep running for how little traffic it saw that wasn't spam and shutdown. Silicon Graphics hardware would not ramp up again in value and form a new hobbyist community for nearly a decade later. It's been sustaining itself quite well since then.
Eagles seem to of been at this point for the last decade. They require agonizingly large amounts of regular maintenance, the parts vendors are slowly ending production of some specialty components and because most communities don't yet see 80's station wagons as collectible (you should of seen how the local Corvette community was when my province started offering 30-year Collector's Plates to first gen Dodge Caravans in 2014) there's very little momentum in the community right now.
Thankfully while this site has it's bugs and formatting error's, it's still here.

[89 MJ]

Much to my annoyance, forums are flaunted as a dying breed. Why talk about things in a public space which others can view when you have more niche (and arguably more likely to disappear) chat groups and boards like Facebook or Discord, the latter having been occasionally advertised as the replacement to forums. The big thing is that neither Facebook or Discord is regularly and automatically archived because external services like the Wayback Machine cannot see beyond the login screen. Forums such as this on the other hand, even after this site closes and shuts down, most of it still remains in the Wayback machine.

I saw somewhat of the same coming from my experience with top-end computer workstations from the 90's. Silicon Graphics Computer Systems had a sizable and knowledgeable community. By the end of the 2000's the community shrank and the moderator pool began to basically be one custodian. Everyone who maintained the hardware had moved on, there was no new contributions to third-party solutions and the equipment itself was pretty much worthless. Eventually the site was too high maintenance to keep running for how little traffic it saw that wasn't spam and shutdown. Silicon Graphics hardware would not ramp up again in value and form a new hobbyist community for nearly a decade later. It's been sustaining itself quite well since then.
Eagles seem to of been at this point for the last decade. They require agonizingly large amounts of regular maintenance, the parts vendors are slowly ending production of some specialty components and because most communities don't yet see 80's station wagons as collectible (you should of seen how the local Corvette community was when my province started offering 30-year Collector's Plates to first gen Dodge Caravans in 2014) there's very little momentum in the community right now.
Thankfully while this site has it's bugs and formatting error's, it's still here.

Us Eagle owners are super lucky to still have this place for sure!

[vangremlin]

Its too bad that we are living in the decline of forums due to other social media platforms. I know that I am newer hear, but I am not new to forums. I have been over on Comanche Club for almost 6 years at this point, which has had a steady number of members in that time. This leads me to have a couple questions for the moderation team:
1. I see that lots of subforum moderators have not been active in months, if not years. Do you need help moderating? I could moderate a few subforums.
2. Is there anything that we can do to help grow the population of this site? There is way more information here than on Facebook, it just doesn't seem to get a ton of eyes on it. I have some ideas, but I don't want to be stepping on anyone's toes here either.

Hey, just wanted to get back to you on your offers.  The admins talked it over, and feel at this time we don't necessarily need to add any moderators, just because there isn't much activity that requires attention.  Second, if you have any suggestions on how to get new members, retain old members, or increase traffic on this site, we'd be glad to hear them.  It's a shame that it's so quiet here anymore, it was a very thriving community when I joined in 2008.  Thanks again for volunteering to help.

[89 MJ]

Its too bad that we are living in the decline of forums due to other social media platforms. I know that I am newer hear, but I am not new to forums. I have been over on Comanche Club for almost 6 years at this point, which has had a steady number of members in that time. This leads me to have a couple questions for the moderation team:
1. I see that lots of subforum moderators have not been active in months, if not years. Do you need help moderating? I could moderate a few subforums.
2. Is there anything that we can do to help grow the population of this site? There is way more information here than on Facebook, it just doesn't seem to get a ton of eyes on it. I have some ideas, but I don't want to be stepping on anyone's toes here either.

Hey, just wanted to get back to you on your offers.  The admins talked it over, and feel at this time we don't necessarily need to add any moderators, just because there isn't much activity that requires attention.  Second, if you have any suggestions on how to get new members, retain old members, or increase traffic on this site, we'd be glad to hear them.  It's a shame that it's so quiet here anymore, it was a very thriving community when I joined in 2008.  Thanks again for volunteering to help.

Sounds good, I will send you a PM. It really is a shame how quiet it is.

[89 MJ]

Its too bad that we are living in the decline of forums due to other social media platforms. I know that I am newer hear, but I am not new to forums. I have been over on Comanche Club for almost 6 years at this point, which has had a steady number of members in that time. This leads me to have a couple questions for the moderation team:
1. I see that lots of subforum moderators have not been active in months, if not years. Do you need help moderating? I could moderate a few subforums.
2. Is there anything that we can do to help grow the population of this site? There is way more information here than on Facebook, it just doesn't seem to get a ton of eyes on it. I have some ideas, but I don't want to be stepping on anyone's toes here either.

Hey, just wanted to get back to you on your offers.  The admins talked it over, and feel at this time we don't necessarily need to add any moderators, just because there isn't much activity that requires attention.  Second, if you have any suggestions on how to get new members, retain old members, or increase traffic on this site, we'd be glad to hear them.  It's a shame that it's so quiet here anymore, it was a very thriving community when I joined in 2008.  Thanks again for volunteering to help.

Just checking in, did you receive my PM?

[vangremlin]

Just checking in, did you receive my PM?

I did, sorry I've been out of town for the last week.  I'll send a response today.

[89 MJ]

Just checking in, did you receive my PM?

I did, sorry I've been out of town for the last week.  I'll send a response today.

No worries, it was just the first PM I’ve sent here. Wanted to make sure it work alright haha