[Ntrails]

I am on a forum with like 20 other posters and bots were stopped by the addition of a call/response field. Nobody who wanted to register would forget the classic response, but no bot was going to be able to answer it without some pretty specific google fu

[thedrbrian]

How does that work if you want to grow your hobby or group?

And if it’s something between friends why not use a private whatsapp group or IRC

[GuB-42]

Speaking for myself, if was a little bigger than 20 members (around 100). The thing is that we wanted to keep the forum open to everyone, at least for the public parts. That's why I went with invisible tweaks (mostly just renaming fields) instead of a challenge.

But I could have came up with a challenge that anyone interested in our forum would have known. We were a rhythm games club, so a questions could have been "We organize a tournament for this game, in 3 letters". Anyone who heard of us would know it is DDR (it was our main event), and for those who didn't, all it took was a quick look at our website.

And even if it is just a hobby, you don't get the same thing from a forum compared to a WhatsApp or even a Facebook group. In fact, a few years after me and all the geeky admins left, they switched to Facebook, which completely killed the already dying online community.

Maybe nowadays we could use a Discord server, which does a bit more for a community than an WhatsApp group, and is more accessible than IRC, and saves history.

Another great thing about the forum is that I still have a backup from the time I still had admin rights, and I could bring it back to life on a private server with some friends, even though the club is now completely dead.

Memories are not lost, except for most of the external links (ImageShack...).

[girvo]

> Anyone who heard of us would know it is DDR

Heck, I've never heard of you lot but I immediately guessed DDR. Man I miss competing with randoms at the arcade in Brisbane city

[RedHobbit]

My first thought would have been Osu or EBA (Elite Beat Agents), different type of rhythm game.

[yoz-y]

ITG is three letters as well though.

[dankwizard]

The one's I've seen are not difficult questions. I.e if it was a forum for some TV Series fandom, a question could be 'What is the main character's name?'

[Ntrails]

It's an offshoot forum of a video games guild subforum built from another larger forum. It's not going to grow (indeed, it is dying / dead at this point).

All things must pass and all that.