My quick 2 cents...
As for personal contributions....life spanks my a$$ on the regular, time is not easy to come by....usually, when Eye do have it, I'll drop what Eye can. Honestly, there are times when Eye wanna drop more but, not in a position 2 do so and later it drops off the radar.....
...which brings me to the next thing....Eye can't speak for the rest of the vets but, something has 2 catch my Eye in the 1st place....the been there, done that thing makes it a tough sell at times....also, not really a vinyl cat....so, Eye can appreciate the vibe and certainly the tunes but, not quite the same experience 4 me.....
....as for working towards getting the momentum that other threads had/have....Eye think that it's gotta be organic. Ask yourself how you found the 1st Hip-Hop forums you participated in...was it word of mouth, ads or simply stumble upon? For the most part, it was the latter for me....Eye was on OSHH from like around month 2 or 3 of it's existence. In the beginning, it was handful of cats barely posting...as more people "found" the site, it grew...naturally. But keep in mind, times were different...content about Hip Hop on the web, especially true school era, was minimal. So heads looking for the same thing were bound to hit that site....the number of extremely knowledgable cats that signed on and added to the chipher was surprising high and ultimately, is what built that spot....what kept it going were the characters that emerged....which ironically, is what did them in.
So the question is, what is it about this place that's going to make people stumble in routinely....and subsequently, why will they want to stay? In the case of places like OSHH, EE, JL, Okayplayer....the names said it all.....the 2 former focused on those specific genres...the latter 2 attracted heads who vibed off those camps.....
...if vinyl collectors are your core target audience, then you need heads that live and breathe that life to speak on it....it's nice to have cats up in here that know music....but that's wholly different from the art of crate digging. It's a question of focus....those other sites had 1 main thrust as a foundation, the rest of the content was built around that.
Eye think a good place to start would be trying to determine how to strengthen your foundation.
