I have thought of a name: Talkative Twenties
I
LOVE it
I have been saying for months now that the Young Adults section really is in need of one of two things: An overhaul, or obliteration, because of it's severe redundancy. Having an 18 - 35 year old's forum is incredibly useless.
First, very few 30+ people post in it anyway, they go elsewhere. Not to generalize but the average 30+ year old doesn't want "life advice" from people in their 20's, that's been my experience anyway, and frankly I don't blame them.
I know it's nice for the 30 - 35 year olds perhaps to lump them into the young-adult group, but let's face it: 30+ is not considered your typical young adult out in the social scheme of things. Many of them possibly feel the same way.
So they'll go off to the 30+ section which is specifically for them anyway.
Thus we're left with some 20-year-olds on the average in the 20's forum. Now the 18 - 20 group is typically already covered in one of two areas: Late teens since the teen forum goes up to 21, or women's/men's discussion (or singles, as it is a very popular forum for just about everyone) since they are 18+. Therefor that particular age-range is already well taken care of.
So we're left with a stagnant-at-best "young adult's" forum where really it's only function for a long time was to watch people fist-fight it out in debates that got overlooked since no one seemed to care about that forum
That stopped a few months ago when the forums changed around and we lost a lot of members though. It's been relatively debate AND conversation free ever since.
I understand the idea behind the initial "young adult" theme -- for younger people to get advice in the adult world. However, the average person will go to their gender-specific forum for that.
Keeping with the separate age-range groups, it seems only logical to reduce the age range on the so-called Young Adults forum and fit it into step with the remaining theme. aka, Talkative Twenties, as Becky has suggested.
I think putting a specific age-range and a new name on the forum could possibly re-vitalize it a bit. I think people coming out of the teens section are confused on the idea of "young adult" -- perhaps it sounds too formal for instance, not a place for chatter but a place to specifically talk about how to live in the life of a young adult. That's really not what we should be aiming for. We need to be aiming for full-out fellowship which includes a casual/chatter-based nature as well, sort of like our Women's and Men's forums where we get a mix of advice and casual chat which keeps it active.
I think the idea of a forum named "20's" would better attract the people coming into their 20's rather than the name Young Adults on a forum.
Becky's idea is a great one, I think we should nix Young Adults and head on to the new era of CF with a brand new forum in it's place: Talkative Twenties (or whatever other name the mod-gods should decide upon
)
