My fellow MyGaming Forumites

The MyGaming forum has become my online home. Here I have met some incredible people, and have made some great friends. MyGaming is probably the only site I visit every day for the past 2 years without exception, be that only reading or posting as well.

Unfortunately the past few months has been unkind to the frequency of posting from people here on the forum. In this time there has been many activity based competitions to not only draw in more posters, but also attract newbies as well. Some competitions has been more successful than others, and there are a few new faces that frequent the site. While these competition has proven to increase the posting in the forum during these events, the activity dies down quickly after they are concluded. Ultimately, more traffic to the forum means more traffic to the site as well, which helps the good people at MyGaming HQ as well.

So, over the weekend I was thinking about this dilemma, and what can we do as a community to try and increase the activity generated by the forums. The ideas I have is not a "brute force posting" approach, but more a subtle way of increasing ways in which the community can interact with each other, participate in events and ultimately share experiences and opinions here on the forum. I believe that in that way we will be able to convert more readers into regular posters. The purpose of this thread is to discuss and come up with ideas that you may have about what can be added or done to increase activity within the forum.

So, here are some of the ideas I have come up with:
(Please note these are completely open for discussion and critique)

MyGaming Leaderboards

This section can my community managed/curated Leaderboards for certain games. Already there is a type of level race going on the the Diablo thread. So this section is dedicated to create some spirited competition between the members of the MyGaming community to see who can reach the highest point of the various gaming leaderboards for each month/week. Should you then be the overall leader for a time period (like a month) you can receive a badge/trophy that is displayed on your MyGaming forum profile for all to see.

Each leaderboard can have it own scores and rules, as many games doesn't really have a leaderboard readily available. These leaderboard rules and scores can be decided on by the community, and maintained by a particular person

MyGaming Community Leaderboards

These leaderboards can work in the same way as the gaming leaderboards as discussed above, but will be based upon community activity. For example, we can have Most Hours, Most Games, Most Challenges, Most Event Wins leaderboards. These leaderboards can also give the winner for a time period (like a month or week) an honor badge to proudly display in their profile, or even in their forum signature.

All these leaderboards can have discussion threads where you can have a chat with the various members participating in the leaderboards. Any disputes of score or positioning can be taken up with the curator or the leaderboard via PM.

MyGaming Gaming Events/Competitions/Challenges

Weekly, people of the community can host Events within specific games to attract various players into a particular game. The community can create events where a bunch of MyGaming forumites come together to join in on some multiplayer fun.

It will also be possible to post gaming challenges to the forum. Challenges can be game specific, and we can monitor how many challenges each person completed in a month via the MyGaming Community Leaderboards

Competitions can also be held for particular games, where the forum comes together to see who is the best in a specific game. This game may even change from week to week to ensure everyone gets the opportunity to play with.

All these accomplishments can be put together into a single article that get's published on the main MyG site, showcasing to all it's readers the community activity and leaderboards, and create even more competition and challenges per month.

MyGaming Video of the Week

Weekly this thread will encourage people to share with the community their greatest/funniest/weirdest gaming experience of the week. At the end of the week the MyG staff can publish an article highlighting the top 5 videos of the week onto the main site, and these 5 posters may get to win a small prize, like a $10 game or a MyGaming T-shirt or something. At the end of the month we can have the overall videos of the month, and stand a chance to win the overall yearly grand prize.

These prizes may not be possible, but I still think it will be a cool addition to the forum to have these videos captured by our very own gaming community.

MyGaming Moment of the Week/Image of the Week

Same as the Video of the week, but just with screenshots.

MyGaming Reviews

We re-purpose the Rate the last game you played thread to the MyGaming Reviews thread. In this thread the community can write short reviews of games, but each review must adhere to a specific format, length and scoring methodology. We can set it to be at least 2 paragraphs, covering at least gameplay, graphics and story with one screenshot for each, then end the review with a Recommend/Highly Recommend/Avoid rating. At the end of a week, the best reviews can also be added to the MyG main site.

These are all ideas of things we can add/do on this forum to ensure that more content is created for the site, and more people come here on a weekly/daily basis to share or post as often as they want.

Obviously the rules of each idea is completely up for debate.

So please, feel free to comment of the above ideas, or share with us any other ideas you may have for the forum. Ultimately I want to see the MyGaming forum and community grow in strength and numbers, and any ideas to help achieve that is highly recommended.