Welcome! Please grab a cup of coffee, and one of those delicious donuts most kindly donated by R2.
As you can guess from the title, this is yet another attempt at solving the AG activity problem. This problem has been ever present since late 2010. Many reasons as to the cause have been presented, ranging from a much delayed release of AG3, to lacking of a community manager, or the end of the flash gaming era.
I do have a couple of ideas concerning activity and how to increase it. Whether these are the keys to solving the issues at hand or not is unbeknownst to me, but I most certainly feel it is definitely worth the effort.
I'm not going into details - yet. Firstly, I'm going to need a few volunteers. More the better, but not more then 20 (20, yeah right...) Don't volunteer then become inactive that would not be beneficial to anything.
Yea, um, we should be notified of any communication here! What happened guys? Things were going so well...
Has Ferret sent anything to you xeano via E-mail? When is the Community link turning into Forums? When is the Game News tab bar going to look more... clean?
A lot of posts, mostly for Twitter, pertain to featured games. Something will be said about it..and then a link will be posted for the game
When such posts are made..under the main post, they could just have something that also directs people to the forums..like to a page about the game, with the line "And discuss the game in our Forums: "
It seems to be the general consensus that May 2012 was the height of the spam reckoning on the forum. This was the day that we implemented a 3 day restriction on new users before they could comment in the forums, and therefore it would make sense that we'd see a large decline in the forum activity.
The good news however, is that trend seems to be turning around! So we're going the right direction, we just need to keep on going.
Social Posts Just a quick update about this, I'll be looking to highlight more of our forum posts on Twitter. If you guys are on Twitter, retweeting them could be helpful to getting the word out. I've already done a couple in the past few days. I'll also try to brainstorm some unique ways to tie the forums into our news posts. If you know of a really cool thread, message me with it!
Forum Bug Updates Not sure if you noticed, but one of the big issues with Forum Games was the blank pages at the end of the posts. Not only did we eliminate this bug, but we also sped up the forums quite a bit in the process. This has lead to another "Invisible Page Glitch" that happens on the 11th, 22nd, 33rd post that still needs fixing. Even so, it's a vast improvement.
Forum Friday Starting next week I want to try something out called "Forum Friday" where I e-mail the office here about cool forum threads. I'll need some helping finding some, so I'll start a thread to start gathering ideas. This should ideally be 3-5 threads that are fun and could get other Admin involvement.
Forum Contest How about a "Draw your favorite Armor Games character" contest? We could start it up next week, I'm sure we have a spare Sushi Cat for a prize.
Also, just a quick note. I'm leaving on Vacation 15th-18th, so if I don't seem as responsive during that period that's why.
I just might have to get a twitter account to participate in this. =D
Not sure if you noticed, but one of the big issues with Forum Games was the blank pages at the end of the posts.
I noticed that this morning! That is awesome, although I had become accustomed to its presence.
Forum Friday
Only problem I can foresee from that, is the lacking of creation of major threads... I mean, give this a month and all the popular threads would be used up... Then again, such an idea might encourage newcomers to create threads consistent with high standards so that it might be featured... That could be an interesting idea.
Also, just a quick note. I'm leaving on Vacation 15th-18th, so if I don't seem as responsive during that period that's why.
No big deal. Gives us time to thoroughly discuss the ideas you presented. You're awesome Ferret, and you most certainly deserve a brief vacation.
Well you probably don't know me, but I'm also known as MoonFairy to those who were here when my account was jacked up. I was pretty darn active for a while, but after my account was messed up, there wasn't much use in staying and I needed to focus on my school at the time. I was present during the decline of activity, seeing as I joined on the tail end of the Golden Age. When that happened, a lot of us younger kids tried to keep AG alive while the older people who made all the great stuff left for school, family, life, etc. But yeah, we tried and we failed, because a majority of the new kids were either dumb as rocks or just plain annoying. Ever heard of those spam war things? They existed. They weren't a huge deal but it was after those that the 3 day thing was made, I believe. Forgive me if I'm totally wrong on my history here. I tend to forget pretty easily with most things. Anyways. If my account was fixed I probably would come here more, because I was a silver queen on that darn thing and I was supposed to beat MageGrayWolf at becoming gold. BUT YEAH. If my account was fixed I would be way more active because I do miss my old pals. There are too many to add onto this new account. I'm not VERY active, but thats just because there isn't much on the forums and most of my old friends are gone. Or they're too busy modding/ignoring AG because they are mods.
Holy crap do any of the old mods even come? Cen? Zoph? Strop? Walker? D:
Okay my point is, if you become my friend I will probably come around more often. Or fix my account. Or both. Or force Nicho to stop ignoring me so I'll have an old friend to talk to. Otherwise, I'm not seeing much of a community to help save if they won't even try to communicate with me~
Ah Ferret, nice. Another good job done by Ferret. But of course not all the credit should go to him. The other admins should also get tons of credit as well, but I don't want to name them all.
Only problem I can foresee from that, is the lacking of creation of major threads
No problem with that. I'm pretty sure many of us are already planning.
Then again, such an idea might encourage newcomers to create threads consistent with high standards so that it might be featured
There ya go. That's the spirit.
Anyways. If my account was fixed I probably would come here more, because I was a silver queen on that darn thing and I was supposed to beat MageGrayWolf at becoming gold.
You quitted because of that? Look, I know AP back then was like amazing stuff by then. But when you looked past the AP and the ranks, and see the amazing users of the community, you forget all that stuff and just go ahead and make your enjoyment on AG greater than life(well maybe not that great).
Strop?
Check the AMW, he's recently been hanging out there.
Otherwise, I'm not seeing much of a community to help save if they won't even try to communicate with me~
You gotta let the Community get to know you. As you said before, you said you had a decline in activity. Well that brings your usage down in this Community. I mean look at Ernie, he was awesome back then. But now not many people know him because of his inactivity and his awesomeness is fading away.
You quitted because of that? Look, I know AP back then was like amazing stuff by then. But when you looked past the AP and the ranks, and see the amazing users of the community, you forget all that stuff and just go ahead and make your enjoyment on AG greater than life(well maybe not that great).
To each his/her own.
Oh Emily, you're guilt tripping me. That's not nice. D:
it isnt a recent decline for me ahahaha its more like a year and a half of not being here lol. I don't want my account back just for AP, I was remembering one of the thousands of chats I've had with so many people.
Go look at my old account, bro. I just want the people back. I don't, however, want to stay on an account that isn't truly mine. I spent years using that name, I don't want to make another account and more friends that know me by a different name. If that makes sense to you.
I quit due to personal reasons, none of which had anything to do with AG, besides the fact I was spending more time here than I should have at the time. I believe I was failing all of my classes because I would stay up until the ungodly hours of the morning talking with people. I don't blame AG for that because it was my decision to stay up, but thats what happens when you have insomnia. But hey, I left and got my life back on track. Now that I'm not a total disaster I want to come back. But I want to come back under my own name, not this one. You don't have to convince me that this is a great community. I know what it was. I just know that half of my old friends are gone and I'm not sure about how the community is now. And yes Ernie is a good friend of mine! He was one of the people I would talk to in the early mornings
In my time being active, I was a big AMW'er. I spent all of my time there, basically. That was the section that was hit the hardest by the decline of people. So many wonderfuly creative people leaving sort of gets you down, man.
Ah yes nicho that was its purpose. I EVEN SEE YOU ON TWITTER yet you never talk to me even though I know you see me at 5 in the goddang morning.
