Since Zephyr brought it to our attention, i've also been thinking of several ways to increase activity. ------ The Radio Since we now have a Shoutcast Radio, we can use the Livestream for anything except music. Berry Punch already amused myself and several others earlier today by going live and playing some emulator games. Additionally, we could run some MLP episodes on random occasions. If there's something we don't do enough, it's watch actual episodes. Zephyr mentioned going back to the roots of being bronies. What better way is there to do that? And ofcourse there's still plenty of fan-made material we can play on the Livestream that requires a screen to watch. Just focus on uploading more viewable material. Animations are far less common than music, but it does exist. For Floxy's Friday Night, i also have three suggestions: - EVERY friday night. - Think of something more than just repeating what was (or will be) said in the Community Posts. - Webcam? These are just a few ideas. If we get more ideas, we could turn the Livestream into a full-blown EveryPony TV Channel. As for the actual radio. It's been playing fanmade music for over a year now without any significant changes other than a new song every now and then. It's entirely normal this is getting less and less attention since it's so old. The reality of the situation is there's nothing significant you can do to change that. Stuff gets old. Upgrading to Shoutcast is both a good thing and a bad thing. The radio is now more accesible, but because of that, there's less reason to visit the actual website, which in turn means less activity. ------ The Forums I think it's just a lack of fresh discussion to keep us posting. Without a new MLP episode every week, the material we have to post discussions about grows scarce. That's not the fault of the website. But that just solves the activity problem in the MLP discussions. Once Season 3 starts airing, i'm sure we'll get more activity here. Also, i think the artistic section of the forums could do with some more variation, or events even. All i see in there is these "Ask threads". I apologize in advance for saying this, but... they're ridiculous. The amount, i mean. Try to think of more ways to utilize your sense of artistic capability. You can do so much more than just what people ask you to do. I'm thinking of branching out as well. Don't just post links to your DeviantArt page, post your works here. Talk about them here. Also, i've mentioned this some time ago, and i hope i won't regret bringing it up again. (though i'll keep it to a lesser extent this time) If we want to increase activity in general, i feel we need to do something about the general chat thread. Not lock it or delete it. I'm not crazy enough to start that discussion again. But i think we can at least do something to make the rest of the forum more appealing, and the general chat thread less appealing. Limiting the discussion with a set of exclusive GCT rules was an idea i've brought up before. How does everyone feel about that? Maybe unsticky the thread. It's popular enough, it'll stay on top of the list anyway, and it won't be in people's faces so much. Remove the "New Posts" function. Make people browse the forums. They'll see things they usually won't see when just looking at the new posts page all day. ------ Traffic I see a handful of new members joining us every day. Where are they going? Why do i never see them again? In other words, what are we doing (or not doing) that makes them go away? We have over 3200 members, 600 of them are supposedly active, according to the forum stats. There are always far more guests online than actual members. There are roughly 30 members online right now, and that's about the daily average. And of those 30 members, only a handful are actually posting regularly. Celebrating 3000 members doesn't mean **** if none of them are active. (forgive my use of words) It's up to EVERY member to make the forum appealing to guests, and that means doing MORE than just welcoming them in the introductions section. We should work on that. We ALL need to work to keep them here. Posting your own version of a copy/paste message is absolutely fine. Just make sure those posts are worth it! Tell members where they can go, what they can do. Talk to them on their visitor boards, get to know them. Make yourself friendly. I'm not gonna force everyone to do this ofcourse, but maybe a usergroup can be started who's duty it is to do exactly all that? Furthermore, i'd say it already is the duty of our Community Officers to do all that. Friendship is Magic, people! 30 Members online, 70 Guests online. These 70 guests are POTENTIAL DAILY ACTIVITY. We could pump our average of 30 members a day to 100 members a day if we can figure out why they're not joining (or not staying after joining). I'd say this is priority number 1. ------ Advertising We're getting a steady amount of new members. Where are they all coming from? I'd like to know where and how we're getting our members. Furthermore, we need to figure out what the best way is to get more members. Equestria Daily was apparently the reason we got so many people for Brony Day last year. Why didn't it have the same effect now? Don't just ask them, but convince the guys at Equestria Daily, and other big websites, to feature us. Prove to them that we're worth their attention and recognition. We're a relatively small website. There are hundreds of those out there like us. We need to find ways to stand out above them, if we even appear among them at all. ------ Individual Interest By now, i've written down alot of suggestions, ideas, and other issues we should consider. You want to know what i think about all this? Honestly? I think i wasted my time in posting this. I think that none of what i posted here is actually going to be listened to, because at some times, it looks like no one cares. And if people care, it usually doesn't last longer than a day. How many members will read this? How many will actually reply to this? How many have actually managed to read this huge friggin' wall of text out of pure interest because you genuinly care? If we're serious about getting this place more active, then we need to be interested in actually doing something about it! I'm not just talking to the staff members here, i'm talking to everyone! [video=youtube;oXt1AylGdFc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXt1AylGdFc[/video]
That's right. Apparently, you can browse the forums and see what's new on your own without a special section of the forum holding your hand. I get the feeling all everyone does is go to the New Posts, and refresh that page all day. In my opinion, it needs to change.
And in my opinion, you're wrong. It's basically the stop where you can view all the new threads and posts, besides, without that button I'd have missed out on some of the best threads because there are subforums I never go to
A problem with that would be new members may accidently necro-bump a long dead thread because they dont know if its active or not.
They can see the date of the last post. And besides, what's so horribly bad about bringing back an old thread anyway? If they have something to add to it, why prevent them? If a discussion is over before the thread gets old, a moderator usually locks it. They can't revive the topics no longer worth talking about
You would be surprised not all of those old threads are actually locked in fact hardly any of them are. I had to ask for an old Role Play to be locked because new members started posting on it long after it had ceased "living" not to mention locking those threads that need to be locked would be a monumentle task for the staff.
IMHO, I think Shoutcast was a bad idea, and a poorly executed one at that. Why change what's already good? Because Livestream was being a bit hard? Really? I think that some things need to change for sure... but I really don't like any of this new stuff that has been happening to the site except for BLOGS. BLOGS are Godlike.
The only problem is they barely get any replies except for the exceptional few. Alot of the website's issues have been posted there instead of here, and i think they don't get the attention they deserve.
As much as I would love for this to happen, it would interfere with possible future plans. If our ideas go awry, then it may be a possibility, but for now we can't do that, sorry. We've actually played around with this idea in the past in terms of having multiple radio shows, more karaoke nights or something, and Live fic readings. The problem is a lot of the ideas we go along with fall flat in a minute. I still want to see the Live-Fics become a reality, though. I'll see what I can do about that. I agree completely. One of the things about the Ask Threads that really irritates me is when people recycle the same image over and over again but with different texts. It's about the pictures as much as it is the response, so the idea of ever doing so completely baffled me. As for other artistic thingamajigs, the idea of starting up a Newbie Artist's Training Grounds here on the site was brought up to me by Virgil, and I absolutely love the idea. He's already offered to help teach people during these things, and I would be more than happy to help host them myself. A lot of people are getting into drawing all of a sudden, so why not make a thing out of it? We may possibly have plans in the future for the GCT. We won't be shutting it down or anything, but again I have to vague with my wording here: if our plans go well, this and many other things on the site are going to go through a period of change in terms of moderation. Stay tuned. I've never used it, so I can't say anything on the matter. Well, a while back when I decided to use the forums it was incredibly hard for me to actually get into it and get used to interacting with this particular group of people. It had the feeling of being an incredibly close group and being a part of it seemed nearly impossible as I barely knew anybody, and they barely knew me. I realize a lot of us are welcoming in the introduction threads, but the opposite seems true for threads like the GCT. I don't know how to fix this really, but perhaps we could all pitch in on being a little more welcoming outside of the threads designed for it? We've sent out E-Mails to just about every single site we can think of, and every one of them rejected us while accepting things from the same sources repeatedly. The reason as to why this is is currently a mystery, but we've heard rumors that EqD publicly said that we read clop fics lives, which may be the reason why. Yes, I know it's downright ridiculous because we don't allow clop. Yes, I know it's ludicrous because we don't even have live fic readings. But the point is, this is a possible reason for it, but we don't know if it's necessarily true yet so don't go jumping the gun. tl;dr: Too bad, read it all OLOLOLOL Edit: It's a matter of personal preference really. On one side, we lose a lot of our visual content such as Anthology, but on the other side we gain Mobile, something we've been striving for for a while. The radio is slowly dying on Livestream as we all know, so the fact that we changed to Shoutcast was inevitable. Keep in mind, we still have the Livestream for when we need it, and the radio on it still plays, but when you compare us to a radio like CR who has a lot of mobile listeners, it'll dramatically help in time. We're having our cake and eating it too.
It was a suggestion of course. Maybe i just enjoyed Brony Day just a little too much. Do whatever works is the bigger message i'm trying to bring. Exactly my point. That's how the roleplaying section sprouted, didn't it? Looking forward to it. Exactly what i'm talking about. I admit i haven't been doing much myself about it either. The epiphany came to me while posting this thread. Any other ways to get attention besides getting featured on big websites, maybe? Being more active on Youtube could help. And i'm proud of you for it! *pinches cheek* Well, from what i've gathered on the whole Shoutcast thing, it's main (and perhaps only) purpose, is mobile and off-site support. But that doesn't really help the radio ON the website get more activity. Switching to Shoutcast doesn't change anything about that. The radio is the website's main attraction, and i've given that more thought than anything. But there's nothing i can think of to keep the radio new. All shoutcast does on-site is give it a fresh face. A face without footage, even. If anything, Shoutcast made the radio even more boring to look at. In short, it's an improvement for mobile users, but the website users suffer for it. If we keep Shoutcast for the radio stuff, we NEED a productive use for the Livestream.
That's my fault. I started that trend. Also, I don't think I'm allowed to post my new work here. So...yeah..... I can't fix that. Does it matter anymore, it sometimes goes 3 hours with no activity. I disagree with this. people have a choice to browse or push that button. They choose to click new posts. I like that button ------ Same thing that made me leave after the first week I was here. We have like 22 daily active members. [quote[It's up to EVERY member to make the forum appealing to guests, and that means doing MORE than just welcoming them in the introductions section. We should work on that. We ALL need to work to keep them here. Posting your own version of a copy/paste message is absolutely fine. Just make sure those posts are worth it! Tell members where they can go, what they can do. Talk to them on their visitor boards, get to know them. Make yourself friendly. I'm not gonna force everyone to do this ofcourse, but maybe a usergroup can be started who's duty it is to do exactly all that? Furthermore, i'd say it already is the duty of our Community Officers to do all that. Friendship is Magic, people![/quote] I no longer do the copy pasta welcome. I read every intro and respond accordingly. They never join. I've called them out before. You're right, no one cares. Well they do, but only about themselves. Past themselves they could care less. It's ago I don't care about parts of this forum, like RPs and the radio. This whole "let's do this" will have to life span of the last one. It will last 3 days then back to no one caring.
Ok, removing the New Posts button is a bit drastic, but you're all missing the picture i'm trying to show you by saying that. When you look at the new posts page every time, all you see is the same threads every time. It's good to use the new posts page every once in a while to see if someone made a new thread or something. But once you know that thread exists, why not browse the rest of the forums normally? Maybe i'm the only one who feels like this, and i'm sorry for blatantly assuming things, but i've used the new posts button alot. I'm sort of addicted to it, and i can't help but think everyone is. The new posts page feels a bit restricting to me. Try to think of it like i do for a second: The new posts page doesn't connect you to the entire forum. It connects you to a small fraction of the entire forum.
I'd go to other parts of the site, but there is almost no reason to. The art section is barely used. I used to go to the fic section until the people that posted threads decided to never respond. Just gonna say what I said last time. Change the users, not the site.
okay, i posted a giant post that i think can apply to this thread as well, so check it out, it should be familiar to some. http://www.everypony.com/blogs/entry.php?193-Bronies-and-Change
There's a New Posts page? I had no idea. :derpe: It's not much, but I got a brony friend I met at the meetup give this site a shout-out on his Youtube channel or podcast. I'm not entirely sure what it was, but it was some sort of broadcast. I'll continue to do what I can to help get other places to promote this site!
I had a friend in real life who joined this site and never came back on. I haven't asked him why, but I assume that it's because he simply forgot. I reckon that this is the main reason why these members never come back. This place isn't memorable enough. There isn't much we can do to stop this. There are no new episodes to discuss so this place becomes pretty boring if you don't know anyone. One thing we can do is set up loads of "Everypony Projects". If we get enough members on this site to take part in a huge collaboration, that's more likely to get people to join than a couple of shout-outs. In my opinion, the one thing this forum has over other forums is the community. If we were to do a site-wide collaborations, maybe other bronies will think "that looked fun to do, I'd like to be a part of this".
I definitely agree with your assessment of weaning interest on the site. I mostly hang around on the forums, and to a lesser extent EPR, but since they changed EPR I hardly ever visit it anymore. I have no interest in watching people play TF2 or whatever is going on there now. As far as the forums go, I've felt they needed a reorganization for a long time. A lot of the sections feel either redundant or too esoteric. As far as the New Threads button goes, I agree with Rarit E 100%. I'm actually quite guilty of mostly posting in threads that come up in the New Threads section, and hitting refresh on it a bunch of times and when nothing new pops up, logging off. Although Radaboy makes a good point too. Without the New Threads button, I probably would not have found many of the threads I ended up posting in (such as this one, actually). But I have been on many forums without such a function, and they get along just fine, perhaps better even. As far as the art section goes, I don't think too many people pay much attention to it, other than the numerous ask threads. Have you checked the sticky list of updating artists? Most of the members in that list don't update even semi regularly, and I'm pretty sure more than half are not even active on the site anymore. Admittedly I'm kinda guilty of this, mostly because I've been busy and when I am doing arts, I'm doing art lessons out of the books I bought, which aren't interesting to post. That and I disappeared for like 5 months. >.< I also agree that getting back to the roots of being a brony is a great idea. I just have no idea how to accomplish that. Anyway, I'm out of time, gotta go take the test for my motorcycle license I'll try to think of more helpful input in the meantime. EDIT: I'm back, got my license w00t! Now back on topic, I think some of the issue is the site is too spread out. You got the forums, the chat, RP chat, EPR, SC radio, etc. Even if there are 100 people using the site, there may only be 15 using the forums, 10 using EPR, 15 on the radio, etc. I just think we're kinda spread thin, which is why we're having lower activity across the board. This could be solved by getting rid of redundant tools. EPR worked as a chat room quite well, do we really need a separate chat room or two? I'm just sayin' Also the site itself is very...busy. Have you seen the homepage recently? There's a whole bunch of widgets, gadgets, newsfeeds, new blog posts, announcements, etc. There are also several different links/banners/buttons that go to the same place. It really should be streamlined and simplified. Edit: I don't really remember what I was talking about when I wrote this. After more carefully reviewing the site, it isn't as bad as I had thought. Although there is still some room for improvement. Also, I noticed we don't actually have a legit homepage. When you click "home" there is the usual EP banner, a couple community update posts and that's about it. We should definitely have a main homepage, with a directory to all the sites' areas with big buttons or something. And the final thing I have to input is the community patrol. There job should be to welcome new members and help them integrate into the community, and to deal with sensitive issues and disputes between members. Instead they seem to only be acting as mods, locking threads and stuff. That is helpful yes, but we have mods for that. And how many community patrol officers do we have anyway? Two? I think I've only seen two, maybe three. Not to mention I think we should call them something other than community patrol. To me it sounds kinda like they're cops or something. They should have a better title, something less authoritarian, like community liaisons or something. And I think they should be more focused on welcoming members and creating a friendly atmosphere, and should themselves be very friendly and outgoing people. Like DRD and ePONYmous were. (I know DRD wasn't part of the community patrol, but that type of personality.) Edit: I noticed there is a "friends in need" section which I hadn't noticed before (that new posts button is the devil) but that still doesn't cover the whole "welcoming and integrating" thing I was talking about. Anyway, that's my two cents for now. If I think of anything else I'll update. Hopefully this thread is being taken into serious consideration, because site activity has become a serious issue this last year. With the release of S3 activity will pick up, but still, we need to find a way to keep activity up even during the shows' off season. EDIT 2: I'm also thinking that giving out awards could very well be a good idea. I know I know, people say it will horribly backfire, but I think otherwise. Remember that whole self-esteem thing they tried in schools? Where everyone is a winner and everyone gets an award? Yeah, that ended up going horribly awry. And doing away with awards entirely is basically the same thing. People are competitive and get bored without goals. Some type of award or recognition system would give members something to strive for, like A's on a test. In my opinion the reputation system really wasn't all that bad, but maybe a different system that focuses more on achievement and less on popularity could help make members more active. Give them a goal to reach ya know? Also, I think collaborations, group projects, site events, etc are a great idea and help bring us together and give people something to do on the site. Perhaps there can be a event or group project designed to help newbies integrate with the old hats. I don't have any specific ideas at the moment, but I'm sure the members/staff can come up with something if they haven't already. Edit: I saw the Artists Training Grounds thread (how do I keep missing this stuff?) and I think it is an awesome idea. We need more of this, and more people to participate in it. Final thing: I notice a lot of threads are asking for people's opinion, and almost all posts are just people giving their opinion, without much replying to other members posts or discussion going on. I admit I'm guilty of this, almost all of us are. Actually that is kinda the point of forums in general, but it doesn't really promote much interaction and togetherness. This I why having a singular, active chat is important, and why I think EPR was so great. EPR, to me, seems very under-utilized.
Congratulations on getting your license! My sister got hers yesterday I totally agree with the above post. Being a new member to the forum, although people have done their best to point me around but.. I still feel lost. Some form of re-organisation would be great - though I shouldn't be complaining until I have a proper look around.
It seems this thread is finally sprouting a bit. I'd like to thank all of you for the input. I've read every word of it, and i'm sure the staff will too. And Calvin, if you need any help getting around, you can ask myself or most likely anyone else and they'll be happy to help.
