Reinvigorating the Fellowship Hall

Five years and 43 days ago, I added a mes­sage board to my (now defunct) web­site. The board quickly became the most pop­u­lar area of the site and was moved over to its own domain some time later. ((Just about three years ago, accord­ing to WHOIS infor­ma­tion.)) That board is the Fel­low­ship Hall Chris­t­ian Forums.

For the longest time, that site was my pride & joy; I spent the major­ity of my time online there, get­ting to know peo­ple from all over the world — Cal­i­for­nia, New Zealand, Canada, and Arkansas, just to name a few nota­bles — many of whom I con­sider good friends even today.

For a long while now, the Hall has been very quiet. I’m par­tially to blame — the world of blog­ging now saps most of my online time — and I’m sure many of the Hal­lians have things going on in their lives as well.

Still, I have a lot of sen­ti­men­tal­ity for the Hall, and I want it to again be a thriv­ing com­mu­nity of Christians.

Which is why I’m post­ing this.

I’m look­ing for one or two ((…or more)) new mem­bers for the Hall — a trans­fu­sion of fresh blood, so to speak, to instill some life in the ol’ board.

Now if that’s all I was look­ing for, this is a rather silly post; a ban­ner ad in the side­bar would have worked just as well. I’m look­ing not just for peo­ple to join, post a few times, and for­get all about us. Rather, I’m look­ing for a few choice indi­vid­u­als to step into the roll of mod­er­a­tors (or Hall mon­i­tors, if you prefer).

As far as mod­er­a­tion is con­cerned, the bur­den is fairly small; we don’t get much trou­ble at the Hall. But as moderators/monitors, I’m hop­ing you’ll be more will­ing to instill some cre­ative juice into the Hall — not only fos­ter­ing new and excit­ing con­ver­sa­tions, but also shar­ing and imple­ment­ing a vari­ety of other ideas to rein­vig­o­rate the community.

A few vitals, if you’re inter­ested, taken from the Hall’s admin stats. You can see that we’re really not that busy at all, and I’m hop­ing that can change.

• Board started: May 27, 2003
• Post #: 24311
• Topic #: 2387
• Posts per day: 13
• Top­ics per day: 1.28
• User #: 181 — some of whom actu­ally post

Mod­er­at­ing the Hall is strictly a vol­un­teer effort — for those who already do so, it is a labor of love and friend­ship which I’m sure you’ll agree with. How­ever, you’ll get to know some great peo­ple and hope­fully have a lot of fun in the process. Mod­er­a­tors who do an out­stand­ing job and show a lot of zeal for the com­mu­nity may be pro­moted to admin­is­tra­tor; it’d be great to have some­one to fall back on in man­ag­ing the board. :-)

Is “more post­ing” all I’m look­ing for on the Hall? Absolutely not. One of the issues noted a long time ago which is still an issue today is the Hall’s appeal to women. To be hon­est, aside from my wife, I can’t remem­ber that last time one of our women mem­bers have been around. In other words, if you think you can help out in that regard, you have my attention.

I’ll be happy to answer any ques­tions you have before vol­un­teer­ing (you are vol­un­teer­ing, right?), so just ask. If I don’t already know you, I will ask that you hang out on the Hall as an ordi­nary mem­ber for about a month or so just so I can get to know you and to see how seri­ous you are about want­ing to help out.