So I was poking around a bit in the blogs section and on the most popular one I found this: Bronies and Change which then I also found a link to a thread in the comments- My opinions and ideas for more activity. Go ahead, go back and read them, I'll wait. I then saw that that blog and thread started and ended comments back in July 2012. Just recently, I saw a couple more threads that just popped up: A way to bring the site areas a bit closer and An EP Community Project please read 1st post. It's now January. What I'm wondering is what has been done from July through now? Are we still talking about the same things? It's been almost 6 months since the original two posts. What are the user stats now? Please do not tell me that nearly 6 months is not enough time to make a difference, that's two business quarters. In my opinion, it seems with the projects put forth recently, we are trying to build skyscrapers. Where is the foundation? A weekly or monthly show will bring in people for that day. But what part of the site will make them want to come here and stay? We need to focus more on the fundamentals of the site and make the day to day things better, build from the foundation up. Set some groundwork. In the EP community project thread, there is no defined project yet. There is no goal. Yes it's preliminary, but how can we give good information on what we could do towards the project when it is so abstract that no one even knows what it is? In conclusion, what I'm trying to say is that the focus should be on making the groundwork better before trying to build that 20 story building. Also, it's been six months. I see a lot of talking, but where is the doing? The only tangible results I've seen are the new themes from Mike and the Band of Bronies show. By the way, what were the stats on those shows? Did we bring in the expected viewers? Thank you.
And just what do you have in mind for this groundwork? I, as well as all of the staff, are open for suggestions.
Enough people join the site, but not half of them stay. What needs to be realized is this is just an MLP forum which is based on a show that only shows a series of new episodes for only a few months every year. Even less now in season 3. My point is, there is very little material to keep this place new and fresh the whole time, even if we try our best. Compare it to something like a manga/anime forum, they get consistently new material to discuss every single week without end. What keeps a forum alive and fresh is things to discuss, share, and talk about, and MLP doesn't offer much of that. It's a problem i've passively been trying to find a solution for and even now i got nothing. As for your skyscraper metaphor, I think we're lacking a good architect.
I think this is kind of what Dragon means about the foundations, before organising these big events and livestreams and podcasts and such, make sure the basics are enjoyable first. MLP does offer plenty, community-wise and in it's source material, which maybe with more encouragement could become more of the focus for the site. If you want a suggestion, I haven't been on the radio page in a very long time, reason being because the page looks cluttered and unwelcoming: I've zoomed out to see the whole page, but this is pretty much what it looks like at normal zoom too. The radio livestream video cuts into the Welovefine advert (or they touch really close and weirdly together), there's a large area of blank space underneath it which makes the page feel a bit empty, but then you've got the twitter feed and chat squashed up against the side. Oh and it doesn't show how many users are online or what's playing on the LS? I remember when it used to be video on the right, chat on the left, which looked neat and worked well. I understand the Shoutcast has been added now, but could you please organise the page layout a bit tidier? It would be nice on a pony forum such as this to see more discussion about ponies, just a suggestion, but making the pony discussion section bigger than the general discussion might help a lot. How about having Sugarcube Corner be all about just ponies? i.e. the first sub-forum would be: Equestria > General MLP Discussion > Episode Discussion > Community Discussion > Meetup Discussion > Pony Merchandise: I've seen a very good idea work on a G1 site where they have a sub-forum dedicated to threads showing your pony collection that works really well and encourages a lot of collecting and trading Then you could have: Sugarcube Corner > General Discussion > Forum Games > Non-Pony Media > Non-Pony Literature Carousel Boutique > Pony Art > Non-Pony Art > Commissions > Fan-Fiction This would put attention on MLP more and bring back the feeling of an MLP community, as well as attract more fans of the show to the site to talk about, what else, ponies! And compress some of the less-needed parts a bit more. I don't use the RP section so I won't comment on that. Thank you if you read all of this. *EDIT* Forgot about Pinkie's Friend in Need and Serious Discussion, to be honest they should probably have their own section away from the less serious stuff.
Well... I'm working on a Role-Playing system that I intend to put EP's name on. I was thinking; Everypony's Role-Play: Made by Everypony for everypony. Then that'll get used for a weekly game I'm gonna run on the chat, and hopefully the system will gain popularity in its vast differences from RiM, and the fact that the system is built to actually handle being an RP system. Muahahahaha! Ahem... but anyway, I've only recently joined staff, but out of a desire and a belief that I want this site to continue to succeed.
While I like your idea with making the MLP discussion more central with the site, the main place people will go to will still be General Discussion. That's where the general chat thread is, and where most of the traffic inevitably goes to. People come here to talk to each other much more than they come here to discuss the show, from what I've seen. We're going to have to find a steady medium between the two so that no section just gets tossed to the side.
I'm not saying the General Discussion won't still get a lot of traffic, but thinking about this logically, most new people come onto sites to discuss the show, and if the first thing they're presented with is a pony section, they will most likely use it. Long-service members will still use the General Discussion and the GCT a lot, but the newer members will have something too by getting used to the site and it's people through the common interest of ponies in the pony section first. It won't harm the long-serving members, they'll still know where to find the General Discussion and GCT, I mean I am just talking about moving it section down, not exactly hard to find, but it will have great benefits to newer members. There's literally no harm to the site in doing it. I can't guarantee my suggestion will solve all of EP's problems, but at least it's doing something to make the site better for the newer members, with no harm to the old/current. The whole idea of my suggestion is to create this medium you speak of, because the General Discussion is already big, nothing can stop it from getting attention, however something can be done to give attention to ponies more, thereby creating a balance.
Most new users who come here are initially from other pony forums or sites, and usually leave because they have friends back from where they came.
I like to get right to the point. I've got some suggestions of my own to make about it to the (rest of the) staff.
So what you're saying to me is that EP has a problem that nobody can solve? Seriously, people don't hang around on the site because there's nothing to keep them on the site, if there was, they'd bring their friends with them more often than not, if it was such a big problem for them, they wouldn't join a site away from their friends anyway, surely? Give them a reason to stay. Give them a reason to bring their friends with them. I'm literally giving you suggestions on how to make the site better, which literally do not harm any members in any shape or form, literally being just a simple case of organising sub-sections more, and you're tossing them aside with no attempt at continuing the discussion about it. That's not what I call "open to suggestions" as you say. I'm not criticising the site, I'm trying to give simple, basic ways to improve. Don't be scared of taking input, I'm trying to help, really, I am, and you're not listening.
You act like you know what will cause people to stay. People will come and go of their own volition; No matter what we do, there will always be people who will leave because they have no reason to stay. We're not ignoring your suggestions, we're pointing out a flaw. Not with you, not with the site, but the basic aspect of something that is very, very hard to change. Change does not happen instantly like you or Dragon want it to. It has been a long time coming, but change is not something to be rushed.
Change doesn't happen instantly, I'm not an idiot, but you need to do something in order for things to start to change. You need to get the ball rolling first before it moves of it's own accord down the hill without you needing to push it. At the moment, nothing is being done to change anything except maybe the new themes and whatever this Band of Bronies thing is. I've already said: So no, I don't think I know what will make people stay for a long time. But it's better than what's being done now, which to be honest is nothing. If you're as open to suggestions as you say, then take the suggestion up for discussion.
Speaking of change: Remember, change is very hard to do, too much at one time and you make a lot of people upset and angry, too little and you fall behind everyone else and you still manage to urk a lot of people. And even if you find the perfect balance, people are STILL gonna be mad. Here's my take: I wouldn't mind better site organization, nor would I mind more people joining and STAYING, but what everyone is proposing is purely hypothetical, who's to say that better site organization and such will cause more people to stay. What we need to do is form a kind of 'research' team I guess you can say who will 1): Be a sort of 'think tank' to generate new ideas on how to improve the site, and 2): Find out just WHAT makes other forums successful and abounding with members. We need to find out just what we are doing wrong, why we were doing it wrong, and find out what is right and fix what was wrong and replace it with what is right.
We have one of those, but from being in it myself, it was very quiet, not much to no discussion for at least a couple of weeks. It would be impossible really to have a review team for organisation of the site I'm sure, because it would have to be implemented on the site itself. In fact, why not do a trial run of it, and if there's any major complaints it could change back? I've seen a few attempts at compressing sub-sections here and there, so what exactly's the problem? Sometimes I get the feeling it's just because I'm me and not another user/staff member putting the idea forwards...
We already have the EP Review Team. After I get back from out-of-state, things should start getting active again. @Miggy: I have no idea what happened to that, either. I'd like to start that again. @Poetic: It doesn't change the fact that you're rushing one thing without thinking of any better alternatives. Mike literally just got finished cleaning and organizing the site, for one. For another, the discussion with the episodes still has plenty of attention. It's not like they can't scroll down a little bit more to see it.
While you do have a good point about making this site more pony-orientated, I've found that the main reason I stay here is because of the community. There are plenty of pony sites on the internet, this one is the only one I visit. Even though the other forums are larger, I prefer this one because of the members. The site is currently based around meeting the other members. Sugarcube Corner (the forum with the highest traffic) contains the discussions and games that bring the members closer to each other. Although I'm pretty weird, so my reasons for staying here are likely to be different to everyone else's. Perhaps a survey could be made and sent around to find this stuff out? As for the merch sub-forum, this thread was made a while ago: http://www.everypony.com/forums/showthread.php?8464-quot-Toy-Discussion-quot-Sub-Forum The main reason for not going through with it was that not much could be talked about merchandise. Although perhaps it's worth another think. I've also noticed that pony and non-pony topics were split up. This is practically the opposite of what Mike just did not too long ago. Sometimes there is a-bit of overlap between pony and non-pony, and too many sub-forums make the page look a bit too complicated/clustered. I believe that "less is more" applies here. And finally the idea about separating the serious discussion and Pinkie's FIN sub-forums seemed like a good idea at first, but then the Sugarcube Corner forum is meant to have threads that get members to know more about each other. Although if Sugarcube Corner is meant to be a more light-hearted area, then moving those two sub-forums could be a good idea. So that's my opinion on what you've said Poetic. While there are some good ideas there, I did find a few thing that I didn't quite agree with. But that's what these discussions are for. And a more general point is that the general discussion sub-forum has the most threads by far. Since a new member will look at these numbers, they'll assume that all the activity goes on in there, assume that not much pony activity goes on on this site and leave for another one. If the mods/admins have the power, perhaps they could delete some of the older, spam threads. I know that there are many of those threads that have just been locked but still exist. EDIT: lol wall of text
I'll actually get to doing that. I'm sure a bunch of deleted threads from ages ago won't harm anything.
Just a thought, instead of trying to get people to stay here, just try to organize stuff a bit and basically focus on making the site more enjoyable to the users who are already here and will be here for some time to come. The rest will follow. Maybe follow EQD's example and post a fan art submission of the day? Fan fic of the day? Some pony news? My opinion, the home page needs a lot more work than the forum, so as to make this place look like THE place to go to get our fill of all things pony. But personally, I've never really had that big a problem with this place. It isn't really entertaining enough to hang out here all the time but it's nice to pop in and talk to some good people. *shrug*
