I cant help but feel this forum has very limited engagement from the zwift community. I know amongst my collegues few post into or read it . The level of discussion and feedback seems to be low given the amount of strong and plentify views many have in other forums where Zwift might come up as a topic of discussion. I post challenging and very opinionated views and would expect a degree of feedback more that I get ( pro and con) that I dont get , I see others who post equally get the same .
So this is firstly as a feedback and challenge to Zwift , how do you get more people engaged here because ultimately that is better for you isnt it ? I assume you have good analytics that must be showing you were drop out are that will give far better insight than my opinions . Nonetheless I will add my input specifically that I find the layout and general usability for this forum very poor from a user experience POV. It might look nice but functionality and UX doesnt really cut it (for me) for what I want to get from a forum . Able to view posts in a simple logic order way, navigate to items of interest etc
A pretty good black and white proof is since moving the zwiftpower forum to this new forum engagement has dropped like a stone . The zwiftpower forum was a standard forum format and a designer might have all sorts of reasons to pick it apart but the truth is it had a function and it delivered it and resulted in high user engagement . That forum category it moved to has even had a high enough level of posts from users reflecting that disengagement that you must have realised @zwiftHQ ?
Likewise the various Facebook and whatsapp chat channels which discuss Zwift are far far more active that this forum. Zwift you are missing out on so much feedback and input and opportunities to interact ( you could be of course watching those , but you are certainly not inputting or “controlling” discussion on your platform).
Anyway just posted some feedback that might sound negative but it isnt , negative would be to not post , this is to at least help see what others might think (and hopefully reply or at least tag +/-) .
For Fellow Zwifters , are there other forums which does have good community engagement maybe ?
The problem isn’t the forum layout, design, or choice of forum software. It’s the fact that it came after the FB community was already formed and wel established. That song with the fact that FB is so ingrained in so many people that they’re not going to move off of it voluntarily for this forum. Also, unless I’m mistaken, the main FB communities are not ask not official Zwift. If they were, Zwift could close them and thus force them to move here.
It’s a problem for nearly all forums these days. Most people would much rather use Facebook (which is awful for a sensible discussion due to threads always being listed with the newest ones first), and find forums too confusing or simply have no idea why they’d want to use them.
I agree for sure that Facebook has a lot to answer for … not just in this . And maybe people might start to realise it and no longer want to be advertising fodder and want to be a part of a proper social community that said platform promises but does not deliver . However it doesnt account for example for the clear disengagement of the zwiftpower community from a simple move from one forum to another .
I take your point about the Zwiftpower forums. I can’t comment on that since I hardly used the ZP forums, so I don’t know why users haven’t moved over. Maybe the lack of a familiar structure? Isn’t there now just one ZP forum buried under racing, whereas ZP used to have their own structure of forums previously?
There’s probably fewer than 30 regular participants on here. The Zwift Riders Facebook group has over 80,000 members. There’s no comparison in terms of scale, people tend to only come here for support on specific issues rather than to be part of any sort of community.
The ZwiftPower forum thing is a real shame though, there’s virtually nothing now. It was always a third party thing so grew organically as a collection of Zwift users with a shared interest and it feels like discussion has just been closed down by HQ. Even though the intention is/was for it to move here, that was never going to happen and so it’s proved.
Spot on . Zwift what about it , admit assimilating zwift power hasnt worked as you had hoped . Come up with some suggestions to get ther virtual racing community back on board ?
One thing they could have done is have a gradual transition over here, a couple of examples being to prevent the creation of new threads but allowing others to remain for a known amount of time, keeping Sticky on board to help spread the word (and be a moderator in both places, for an initial period at least) and so on. Instead they just sacked him off overnight, locked everything and pissed off a load of people who probably now don’t want to post here as a result - even if they were reluctantly open to it.
It just perpetuated the whole premise of ZP being taken over in a hostile manner and for cynical reasons.
I don’t know that the Facebook Zwift community had an overwhelming advantage from being formed and established before the forums here. The Zwift forum goes back to at least January 1, 2015:
I did not know that! Honestly, I’m a bit surprised. I’ve been on Zwift since 2015 but never knew about the forum until I stumbled upon it via a Google search for something many years later. At that point, I already knew there were large FB group(s). I assumed that this forum was an afterthought thus everyone was on FB.
Bottom line, FB is convenient for most since they are already on FB vs having to go to another site.
