changes?

[Jim in Wisconsin]

I wonder what these changes to the website are going to be. There isn't a lot of activity here - but then again quality is better than quantity!

[Jim in Wisconsin]

I Love a Mystery!

[RobD]

The core goal of the TMA has always been the sentence at the top of every page ...

The TMA is dedicated to preserving the rich and fascinating heritage of the traditional muzzleloading firearms of early America.

For more than a few reasons, TMA forum participation has dwindled over more than a few years.

"Ya can lead a horse to water but ya can't make it drink."

We all at the TMA officer level have done a buncha things over the last few or more years to encourage participation in our organization.  IMHO none have been effective at bringing in new forum registrants let alone contributing members.  This may be due to other like minded forums that have a longer established membership, and that the TMA was more of a physical "localized" get-together organization that lost some or most of that local group.  I dunno exactly.

Add to this the continuing trend of social media leaving forums for linear "fast food" media such as Facebook, Instagram, Tic Tok, and the like.

What we have now is a TMA club of sorts where the forum is more of a loose gathering of like-minded folks sitting around a campfire and chatting.  Not a thing wrong with that.

What it takes to keep this virtual campfire going is the website forum server space and domain name.

What next, you say?

[Bigsmoke]

Rob, I think you nailed it in a nutshell.
Too many of the original people dying off and not enough people to replace them.
And you are spot on about the social pages drawing people away from the forums.
The forum Beaverman started for horners, for example,  suffered near catastrophe when it started a Facebook page.  It went from a very active site to me being nearly the only one posting about horns.  And that was mainly about horns in my collection, not what I had been working on.  Nothing new there, move on.
What's the answer?  New members.  How do you get them?  I dunno.
John

[RobD]

At the Officer level there is a discussion of just this topic - what the future bodes for the TMA.

Nothing has been solidified as yet, but suffice to say there is a strong possibility that changes to both the TMA website and forum will occur within days or weeks.

I believe there is a greater interactive value for dynamic forums over linear social media.  We shall see.

[Jim in Wisconsin]

I don't exactly know what social media is - facebook or something like that I suppose. I have never looked at that stuff, am too old (78) to learn and don't care about it anyhow. These discussion forums are ok with me, although I have never figured out how to put pictures on them.
I used to be on a different and much bigger forum, but there was too much arguing and insulting going on. Some parts of it were completely dominated by one extremely insistent person. I never look at it anymore.
I am interested in American history - especially the Civil War - and in percussion guns. Others are more interested in earlier times and flintlocks.
I hope this one can attract more people and stay mostly "within bounds" - although an occasional straying into other topics isn't so bad as long as the "third rail" (politics and religion) isn't touched.