Are Articles Important?

For some reason, I naturally believe that every forum should have an "Articles" section with articles and information relevant to that forum's subject. For example, a pet forum should have pet articles; a computer forum should have computer (probably "How To") articles.

But how important are these sections? How many people actually go and read the articles in these sections? And do they actually entice people to register (since you have exclusive and helpful content)?

 

How about everyone with an article section takes a look at the overlay in Google Analytics and reports their click rate for it?

 

I tried to make an articles section, even for the members to post threads in. And sure enough every week someone would post a question in the articles section. I found myself cleaning the articles sections more then posting there.

So what I did, I opened a whole other site on the same topic, installed wordpress and that is my articles section.

I feel articles are important to build high quality content.

 

Ive always liked article sections and I think they are important to a forum

 

Depends on the forum.

One of my forums I had awhile ago didn't have an articles section when I was running it. The forum I'm doing now has a main site and then there's the forum. We have some members that are writers and write articles, interviews, and news that they post on the main site and then make a thread for discussing the article in the forum.

 

Forum membership relies on content.

Articles are content.

Think of it as an easy way to remember other things in the site like memorable threads (links).

 

I get that too... that, and people posting crappy little misspelled articles that would barely have made good posts. And then they always ask why I didn't approve their article...