Bronies and Change.

If we want to be the best fan-site on the internet, we are going to have to earn it! All I got is art and even then, I have wrestled with it since I started here. What I fear is a creative stagnation. As for solutions, I can only recommend the kinds of things that keep people coming back to check up on progress.

I recommend something like the Newbie Artist Training Ground for but our site. Daily Pictures, Favs for each day and submission goals/guidelines that will encourage us all to not only get better, but post regularly. I would bust my hump to provide a daily submission if I knew I was competing along side my fellow ponies here. I have more ideas I could expound on and should perhaps do that in a Blog Post.

A Newbie Artist Training Ground is actually a really good idea seeing as how a lot of our users seem to be getting into art recently.

What we're suffering from is a lack of ease of access. Not everybody has the complex computer programs and sophisticated system hard ware to produce music or video. However, a scanner, a good one, is usually only about 60$ and even if you don't you can use one at the Public Library or Kinkos to scan. Then you could take the image home and use a free program like GIMP to create some really sophisticated art!

Do what is easiest and compel ponies to get involved! Bob Ross taught us all that Anyone can paint. In fact, I volunteer to help out with tutorials if we implement this.

the prob is that the radio NEVER changes. its always the same music, same thing every time. i understand that you cant do a show every day, but put in a variety of stuff. instead of just music 24/7, have music days and game days. where monday, wednesday, and friday are game days that show the staff playing fun games and laughing, then the rest are music days and live shows.
As well, throw in a mix where members can join into the radio. They can play games with staff or talk with staff etc.

Basically, give the audience what they want, entertainment. At this point you guys are just every other radio out there, playing songs even though they are over played and annoying at this point. i am always switching station or turning off my radio cause of this exact reason.

We're still working on getting the Live Fic readings in order. We also have some other things in the works but as far as getting them to be a reality goes, that's rather difficult at times.
But yeah, we'll work on some things

Good man. Thanks for speaking up.
We hear you, and I agree entirely. This is what we want to see, people jumping up and saying, change "this".
I'll make sure sure the DJ's see this!
TY

Some people seem to say this website never changes, but those people are focussing on the wrong things. It's the community as a whole that never changes. It's the fandom that always stays the same. Example: We can't change the music on our radio, because it's the brony community that makes the music. And that music is always the same.

There's not much you can do about that. By all means, come up with ways to shake things up around the site. It'll help, but that's not the only issue.

Take other websites for example. Ponibooru is closing down, because the admin there got tired of hosting it. And Derpibooru, which was basically announced as it's replacement is not nearly as active as Ponibooru used to be when it started.

Another thing is, there are many bigger brony websites out there, and EPR is just one of a thousand smaller ones. Last year on Brony Day, this place was still very new, hence the big turn-out for livestreaming the episodes. As you all know, EQD only likes featuring new things. We had them to thank for the hundreds of members last year, and it's their fault, not yours, that this year's turn-out was much smaller.

There's not much we can do to change. EPR is a small community like there are many others. We just have to accept that.

If we can come up with some sort of event that'll get us featured on popular websites on at least a weekly basis, we have lift-off. So i'll be brainstorming on ways to do that. I encourage others to do that too. But like i said, i'm not sure there's anything we can do at all.


Skyraze has some good ideas, but there is a problem with his way of thinking.

The staff here at EPR has always been doing their best to give the audience what they want. It's just never good enough for everyone. That's the problem we're having right now.

Who can possibly know what the audience wants? Every audience is different. The people in one audience are all different. Thinking you know what the audience wants is a self-centered opinion, and it never works. Hosting or organizing something you THINK the audience wants makes you look selfish. Pleasing everyone is impossible. There will always be an equal number of people who complain.


*sigh* I'll be brainstorming on all this whenever i can...



EDIT: There's something i'd like to add.

Brony Day may not have had a turn-out as big as last year. But i enjoyed myself. A crowd doesn't have to be big, it just has to be worth it.

Quality over quantity, guys!

Well the things about not having many people this time wasn't so much we didn't get many viewers, but it's the fact that last time when we got 300 viewers from all over, a lot of them found the motivation to stay at the site and become active users.

What we were hoping for was for a similar rush to occur and help stimulate the total activity of the site.

Well that didn't happen due to Seth and EqD being biased towards american-run sites, and a rumour that got spread around about us reading clopfictions that was completely false.
Better luck next year guys.

i have so many ideas on how to make next years brony day better and so many ideas on how to make things more fun. they are fun for me at least.

If there is one thing i know, its that people love to laugh, and nothing is better than public comedy. have a new show where you trick celebs into the stream or just random guests and mess around with them. create some funny laughs. considering some of the DJ's might find humility funny, we need to be careful about it. i know some people mistake putting someone down as a joke, i got it a few time from staff and regulars.

90% of your users have a computer (10% being those with smart phones only) and 70% of the 90% have steam. Update your steam group much more often and advertise the group around. As well, have twitter alerts or whatever they are called. let people know of events or shows. just telling EQD wont help too much. EQD gets way too much news for people to notice EP's brony day. You guys have facebook right? im sure everyone who has facebook checks it daily. update those too. I do not have twitter and i rarely check facebook, but i do have steam and i rarely see anything on steam related to EP.

have variety and randomness. If it is possible, try having daily changing backgrounds, seeing the same thing over and over always gets boring. Think about it like this, for those who live in new york, its just a city for you, nothing really special, if anything, annoying. But those who have never seen it before find it amazing and cant get enough. Variety allows for every person to have that little bit of fun, not the same thing over and over. When i say changing backgrounds, i dont mean the theme ability, i mean actual changing backgrounds, for those with a 360, just like bings picture of the day

i haven't seen the forums as well as others, but i haven't seen a lot that isn't related to bronies. have it feel more friendly for non-bronies too, cause i know we have a few of those. To follow with the multiple backgrounds, have multiple themes, brony and non brony themes. this also helps those who are still in the closet with their brony-ism. they are scared to let their parents now, and possibly for good reasons. having non-brony makes them feel a bit more secure.

i fond out about the shoutcast thing, but honestly, i have no idea how to use it or where it is. i have zero info on the shoutcast try to publicize the radio a bit more, cause its hard to notice. i was look at the forums and i saw the shoutcast to the right of the page. "oh hey! there's the little bugger!"

In regards to your comment, with the recent Community Game thingamajigs, I have a feeling we'll be using steam even functions much more often.
And as for the themes, they actually take a bit of work but we do work on them. Stay tuned.

I personally feel that I would prefer a smaller number of users. But that's just my weird opinion.

There's a difference between having lots of members and having an active forum. There's roughly between 20-50 members online each day, and theoretically, that's enough. If they were more active, that would already make a BIG difference. But of the 50 that come online each day, i can count the active posters on two hands.

Getting more users isn't as important as provoking more activity from them. And provoking activity isn't just going out yelling "Post, piggies, post!"

We need to focus on new things to keep people interested, and the problem is no one has any good ideas. Well, the staff is working on some, but we're not allowed to know much about them until they've been worked out properly. The problem i'm seeing is that there are barely any non-staff members coming up with ideas for improvement. And there aren't alot of non-staff members giving well-appreciated and necessary feedback either.

The biggest problem is no one cares to increase activity, and i want to change that. I just don't know how. People can come up with ideas all they want, but if no one cares, it's not gonna help any.

Yeah, we need more people to come up with ideas.
In my honest opinion, try thinking of ways to increase activity instead of actually telling us we need an increase of activity. we have enough doers, we just need thinkers.

Nature has a way of working itself out
whats happening is the answer to the problem

There's a thread in Site Discussion full of my ideas. Hardly anyone noticed it or cared to notice it.

Oh trust me, the staff noticed it. That's part of the tinder that sparked our discussion about ways to increase activity.

Unless it's a discussion that started after Zephyr posted this blog, that's impossible lol.

Is this the thread you're talking about?

Even then, it's good that the staff noticed it, but it's the members who should notice it.

i noticed that.

All i have are my videos (which for the most part aren't pony)...and my poetry (which too isn't much pony)...and my stories (which have quite a bit of pony)...and my crazytalkingness...and help...I Have Nothing To Contribute To This Site!!!!

okay, too many things to multi-quote, but what i notice, is that some people literally can't come on here everyday, due to some family problems, work, etc. The thing is, we can't really fix that. I liked Rarit_E's idea of advertising, and i have actually spent some time doing that before. My YT channel refers to this site, my DA does too, and i go omegle at least once a week to find bronies, and give them the link to this site. The thing is, i'm really only known on this site, so that's my main problem with advertising, hence the omegle scouting.

I am a guy that simply LOVES music. When i first found Brony heaven on YT, i was thrilled. It was the first video i had ever seen like it, and it literally felt like a heavy for me, a brony, and it was the first Pony music i had ever heard, even if it is a non-pony song using parts of the show. So i love the shoutcast and LS because of the music, but i must agree that the LS replays the same music a lot, so more gaming activities on that would be appreciated, ore really, we could find a GROUP DRAWING program online, so that members of Everypony can come together and draw with each other in real-time, and even possibly steam it on the LS. I personally would love that!

As for the radio problem in the original post, i am literally on there for at least 60% of my day, everyday. This will decrease during the school year, but i will definitely still come here everyday, and chat with whomever is on the radio chat. I see people come into the radio chat and leave because they think no one is there too, even though it's because 1. only a small amount of people are on, and they are lurking. 2. a link was just put up for something, i remember when ponies the anthology came out... we just finished that then or 3. the rare chance that no one is actually on.
i am deeply devoted to the radio for some reason, i have no idea why, i am constantly on it, and i've heard probably every song ever played on it. But i know that some new members don't even know that the radio has a chat to it! i think that the chat on the radio should be advertised a little bit on the site, but that's just my opinion, as we do have a normal chat that i log into some times.

I know that i really forget about this site even having a forum part to it a lot, because i'm chatting on the radio, so i really do need to crawl out of the radio hole and visit more. I do enjoy a lot of the discussion that happen on the Forums though, and it's a good time for me. my only problem is remembering which forums i want to look back at, and i forget a lot. luckily, if it's sticky, i can get to it nice and easy, but could there be a way to mark a thread you want to stay updated on? If there is already a way, then why don't i know about it yet, and how do new members find out about this too?

Back to drawing, i like the idea of having people teach how to draw, A LOT. I know personally i suck at my drawings, i really only love my first picture, and it's of a nice Fluttershy ;D. But could there be a way to teach people how to animate, make music, and even videos to spark ideas in people that frankly are witless about these subjects? I need help with making music, and animating which i really want to get into. I know Banjomane animates quite a bit, so maybe we can ask him for some help. Doesn't Swift and Bounty make music too? they might be willing to help, but i don't know.

And finally i want to close with asking that we try to throw something BIG for next Spring, like a giant group Winter Wrap Up!
i'm asking this now, because i know that it could take a lot of work, so we might as well start it up. But doing something giant and announcing it throughout the web could cause a GIANT spark of people to get interested in the site. Now i don't really have any great ideas right now, but i'm sure that with Rarit_E's, Zephyr's, Foxy's, Flash's, Berry Punch's, and EVERYPONY'S mind on this site, we can do this, and we can do it well. I know that we can use the Art classes, and if my other ideas of animating and music classes get accpeted, we can all help with doing this, and this will make some of the less active and inactive members of the site come back, and stay.

I bet not many people read this whole thing, but i bet Rarit_E sure did, Thanks Everypony, for bringing me this amazing site that i love!

I don´t have to much to say. so... hi.

The biggest problem right now isn't getting people to come here. People sign up every day. What we need to do is find out why most of them don't come back after making an account. Alot of them don't even bother making an introduction thread.

The livestream gaming sessions had a good start, and if BlazingDawn can keep it up, that'll definetly be worth keeping around. I also think it was for the first time last week that we did live fanfic reading. (Though i heard future readings will probably be recorded)

As for the online drawing you mentioned, how would that work exactly?

I once made a suggestion of removing the general chat channel from that chatbox and use it exclusively for the roleplaying channel. It would get alot more people to go on the radio chatbox. We basically have two chatboxes for the same purpose. It doesn't bother me all that much, but i think it's worth looking into. Also, you have a good point about people not knowing about the chatbox attached to the radio. However, the radio itself is advertised enough, and once people go there, they're bound to notice the chatbox anyway.

You can subscribe to threads you like. Whenever you make a new post, scroll down a bit before submitting it. There should be a dropdown menu for choosing a type of subscription. There's a similar dropdown menu on the top of each thread, just above the OP.

This is a standard feature for every forum, so likely the staff assumes everyone knows about it.

Zephyr already mentioned there will be more than just drawing if enough people show interest in the idea. I like the idea alot, but it turns out actual drawing doesn't interest me much. In fact, i don't like to learn much when it comes to art, but if i can end up helping someone in making a signature or anything similar, i'd love to help them.

The big event thing just might work, but we'd need to come up with something new every time. And quite frankly, i'm having a hard time coming up with just one event. Brony Day is a good example of why doing something twice doesn't work that well. (Though i realize EqD is to blame <_<)

Too long, didn't read. :Trollestia:

a quick google search came up with what i think could be a pretty fun site, and i even made a little room for us so far. you can check it out here, but i needed friends to make a private room, so once we get some people on here, i can set it up, or have a mod make an actual room. It also says that you can add the certain room to a site, so we could make a page on the actual site i believe. the room is here http://www.doodletoo.com/#/everypony

Ah, well, I didn't know that because this is the first forum i've ever been on, sorry

ahhhh, you jerk!

Well i just spent some time in there (i was the one who wrote "lolwut" ) And honestly i don't think it'll be a hit on livestream. That website is probably good for a few random doodles, but to keep people watching the livestream interested, we would need to do some actual drawing with proper narration on how and what to do, and i don't think it'll work with that website. I also noticed that (for me at least) the website is a bit too laggy to draw anything properly.

well, i went into the online drawing without knowing any site about it, and this is what google gave me when i looked it up. I personally agree though. I've seen quite a bit of people draw REALLY well on there, but they all said they had tablets, which i don't, and most of us probably don't either. I might look into it more just to find a way to try this online drawing in a better way. It's not the worst thing we can do, right?