More than a handful of them have activity. Albeit not super high, they are being used by some people :) With the high potential for scaling of user base over the years, this feature could become more relevant in the future. Who knows :)

As it stands, there is hardly nothing other than my ramblings.

Sounds like the regular forum then! :D

and scene......

A women-only forum sounds like a good idea to me. It is a shame there aren't more women posting on the main forums, though I'm not sure how to encourage that. I guess the way I encourage women to train at my school is having a confidence-building entry point of a women-only class to help them transition to joining the mixed classes too. So, maybe a women-only forum on here would have a similar effect?

Don't see any justification for a women only forum. The forum is already open to all. There isn't an male-only forum. It's not like there is any type of harassment going on. Let's not go down that path.

To continue the comparison to BJJ schools, there isn't an issue with encouraging more men to join the sport (which like I mentioned is the reason I have had a women-only class since I founded my club 7 years ago, it helps bring more women into the sport). You don't need a male-only BJJ classm because at most schools, you will frequently have either entirely male classes anyway, or very small numbers of women. The same is true of the forum currently: it is basically all men right now, in terms of people regularly posting both comments and threads. If like BJJ training the lack of women on the forum is potentially putting off women from posting, then a women only forum might help. But yeah, I'm not a woman, I'm also not aware of what other reasons might mean that we have so few women regularly posting on the forum. Bridget is the only one that springs to mind, in terms of frequent posting.

Do your Team Forums have any activity? Our team (GHumaita) forum does not have any activity. Does anyone see a point in having them?

Don't see any justification for a women only forum. The forum is already open to all. There isn't an male-only forum. It's not like there is any type of harassment going on. Let's not go down that path.

Sometimes women want to discuss things that we might not be keen on men listening in on. Periods, bras, training while pregnant, awkward situations on the mat, and advice on whether a guy at the gym is being creepy are just some of the questions that come up in the Women's Grappling Network on Facebook. The Internet is also full of men who want to read the things women post about BJJ because they are creepy and pervy. WGN regularly has men trying to infiltrate the group and ask us creepy questions ('Hey when you've taken someone's back is he able to get you off?' Yeah, I see what you did there, bro). If BeltChecker wanted to do a women's forum, locking it to only women with verified identities could go a long way to blocking out creepy people. I'm not saying it's the silver bullet to more women participating here, but sometimes, giving women a space of our own can get us out of our shells. Personally, I wouldn't care if there was a male-only forum. I mean, I wouldn't be able to see it, and I can imagine there being BJJ-related situations where a dude only wants to hear from other dudes. Increasing female participation on forums is kind of paradoxical because the #1 thing women want to see is fellow women posting, so you kind of need to have women to get women. I've posted on male-dominated forums for ~22 years now and have sometimes found that, if I keep at it, eventually more women come out of the woodwork and we wind up with a robust level of female participation.

There are other social mediums for that kind of discussion. Lets keep Beltchecker clear of that mess.

A women-only forum sounds like a good idea to me. It is a shame there aren't more women posting on the main forums, though I'm not sure how to encourage that. I guess the way I encourage women to train at my school is having a confidence-building entry point of a women-only class to help them transition to joining the mixed classes too. So, maybe a women-only forum on here would have a similar effect?

I feel like there is not that many people in general posting in the forums. It’s typically the same 20 or so people.

I will have to agree to disagree with you on this one, Dave. :D

I feel like there is not that many people in general posting in the forums. It’s typically the same 20 or so people.

I have built and moderated online communities for 20 years and there are always a huge % of users that just look and read. The forum here is getting crazy traffic despite only relatively few people writing. I think this is true for all online forums etc. Even /r/bjj has 250k users but probably only a few hundred people actively writing there.

Oooo, is it possible to share stats for how many people view the forum? Though I guess tricky to isolate how many actually read a thread. Unless there is a way of tracking how long somebody looks at a particular page, like the forum bit? I seem to remember there was something like that on StatCounter and possibly Google Analytics (to do with exit and landing page? Not sure), when I used to be more obsessive about checking my website stats for slideyfoot.com, ArtemisBJJ.com etc, but I may be imagining things. As yeah, I definitely haven't been making online communities for the last few decades, I've just posted in them, so I have no idea about all the back end stuff. :P

Technically I could figure out all of that for you, but in real life, I have other things to on my list that I'll prioritize higher haha :D You'll have to do with https://www.beltchecker.c[...]hp?p=forum

I have built and moderated online communities for 20 years and there are always a huge % of users that just look and read. The forum here is getting crazy traffic despite only relatively few people writing. I think this is true for all online forums etc. Even /r/bjj has 250k users but probably only a few hundred people actively writing there.