Rick:
Let me tell you how I got here and what my initial thoughts are on the lack of participation.
First off, I live in Sarasota, I am 28 years old, I have never been kitesurfing and until today I near knew anything about it. The closest I have ever come to kitesurfing was seeing people doing it near the bridge on 275 heading to the airport (each time almost causing an accident because it was so hard not to just watch). Until today, I did not know what it was really properly called and although it seemed like one of the coolest things to try, I put that idea in the box of things I will talk about doing and never look into and put any effort towards (that put it in the same category as skydiving, getting scuba training and taking a trip, etc).
That said, this afternoon INHD 2 on Comcast had a program all about kitesurfing. I came across it 5 mins into the hour long program and had found this web site before it was over.
The program was amazing in HD and focused on the Red Bull championship in Maui; however, it did not really address some of the FAQ's someone who has NO CLUE would ask. That is what led me to
www.fksa.org.
Let me first say your site has truly impressive amount of information and knowledge on kitesurfing. I have spent about 2 hours on your site and it is obvious you do a tremendous job capturing and posting all things kitesurfing, and I was particularly happy to see you’re stressing of safety and respect for beach rules. For a sport that most people know nothing about (from an active 28 year old's perspective in Sarasota, FL), you also have more local information for FLA than I would have ever thought was out there.
With that said, I almost left your site several times because you had so much information and topics, I could not find out simple answers to questions I had about the sport as non-kitesurfer. It has been frustrating because I really wanted to get some of the most basic information on the sport and when I googled "kitesurfing FL," your site was one of the top ones to choose from. Knowing NOTHING about the sport and living in Florida, the web site for the "Florida Kitesurfing Association" seemed to be the absolute best place to get some quick answers on where you do it, the costs involved, etc. While your site has that information somewhere in it (probably more than once), it is most definitely not where it should be on a web site that promotes the sport in Florida. I could be wrong, but I would think my profile (single, young, male, money to spend and most importantly very interested in kiteboarding) would be your low hanging fruit for potential new members to your site and the kind of slightly more mature and responsible people that could help the sport as a whole if they got active.
With that profile being me, I felt like I was working on a research project for my job while looking for the basics; Granted I tend to be overly critical sometimes because part of my background is in web design and information architecture. I think your post about closing part of the site is on the money...although you really are not going to close anything....just organizing it properly.
Since you use phpBB for your board and it appears like you have previously used Rapid Decision Corp for design work, reorganizing and cleaning up the content should not take long at all. Since you have stated you have great traffic, I am positive if you do cut the number of topics in 1/2, have a dedicated place for links to other kitesurfing sites, and most importantly, better classify your visitors and direct them where they need to be on your site. Some examples:
1) When I came to your site from Google, I should have immediately seen where your information and FAQs for newbies is located. You need a better FAQ for newbies that should only be updated once or twice a year, and a separate forum where newbies can ask veterans questions....and on going Q&A if you will. If you had that, and was strict about directing off-topic newbies there for answers, you have taken care of your responsibility to newbies...keeping in mind this is the minimum needed - you obviously would want to dedicate more of your site to promotion of the sport to newbies if that was your intent for the site.
I would think if you would leverage your current users and create topic for suggested Q&A's, this would be painless. I would just make sure you spell out the answers to the 4 W's...Who is into this sport now, What equipment is needed, how much does it cost and what is the basic terminology used in the sport (I still see it referred to as kitesurfing, kiteboarding, wakeboarding...which is right? This is the number one reason people who want to add to a discussion or ask a question in a forum fails to do so....no one wants to look like an idiot, even if they admit they do not know much about the topic) Where do people kitesurf and where can someone get lessons?
This should also have the added effect of building frequent posters out of your membership (longer-term members will not be asked the same questions by newbies regardless of the topic, and you will be better fostering an environment for more in depth discussion.
2) Your long-term members and advanced kitesurfers have more focused reasons for visiting your site. Meet people to kitesurf with locally, learning about events, weather conditions, etc... You have great information on your site for them, and have the regional FLA sections well organized....you just need to bring it more together.
3) Lastly, once you get more posters, your job as the admin will become more time consuming. Have you though about having some regional admins you trust that have better address local topics and questions, in addition to better promoting discussion and the web site in general. I suspect that you get the majority of your traffic from one area of FLA and when someone come by from a different area and sees few posts or few recent posts, you are losing them. Having someone in charge of their regions will keep fresh information on the site for everyone and keep them coming back because your have the local information exchange they want.
I know I tend to write my blogs like stereo instructions, but I hope that gives you some ideas.
As for me, I am totally psyched to get started. Anyone that has any thoughts on local places in Sarasota to buy gear and local recommendations who to use for lessons...please PM or email me...I am ready to start ASAP. Actually, I would love to talk to anyone that kiteboards in the Sarasota area and pick your brain.
Chris
QUICK UPDATE: After I posted this, I went through the site some more with an eye reviewing its organization, not looking for information. In some instances it is not that the tpocs are not organized....it is that the "Subject" lines tell the user nothing discriptive about the post. "Check this out" and morbidly excessive: "Kitesurf break his neck and dies" posts are not appropriate titles. If the subjects told me something tangible and it agreed with what was posted, I would be more likely to reply. I bet most of your users have to click on each post before they know if it is something they want to read....cutting out the "Wind is king" posts takes care of that, and if you have members that like that posting style, confine it to the right area. I also was struck by number of "downer" posts and articles about accidents, shark attacks, etc... Don't get me wrong, that is important information that should be included and easy to find for new users, but I got the feeling you are trying to scare people about the sport or this was done for some reason of full disclosure...in anyevent, a bad-news section is fine, but who wants it scattered everywhere about the topics? The best post I saw was someone who said they never posted, but always visited the site and the topic was about a specific beach and some people that are breaking the rules and are putting access to that beach in danger.