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.
Tell me, how else do you get activity other than people using the site? The only way to get more people to use the site is to persuade them to, which is what I meant by "make". Not literally slamming their face into the computer until they use ArmorGames.
You should have clarified that. I'm not going to "make" anybody use anything, but merely increase activity by making the presence of the community known.
Make posts that will make them want to volunteer. You can't expect people to be willing to spend time on something like this if they have no idea what is going on.
They know enough. I don't have to explain everything in the OP. Doing it this way gives me an idea of the current mood of the community concerning activity... You might not understand.
Also, none of the volunteers are going to understand the mission I'm going to be laying out for them, and this whole project could stall. (I'm asking that the volunteers please try to understand and trust my judgement on the coming mission.)
I'll have it posted withing 1-2 hours, as well as everything else I've promised to post.
[Whispers]They could always place little advertisements/sponsors on the sides or bottom of the forum's pages (example: Vizzed.com)[/whispers]
The sides would get annoying, but I wouldn't mind one in the blank space beneath the submit button.
*Ahem*
I'm sorry my finger slipped between the two keys that happen to be next to each other and I didn't catch it before hitting submit. Happy?
I do not like help from others without request.
This entire topic seems like one big request. Why ask for volunteers if you're not going to take advice? Just so we're your cronies, praising your plans that we still haven't heard?
Doing it this way gives me an idea of the current mood of the community concerning activity
I want it done and done quickly before everyone's out for summer, not this "I've got plans, so trust me and be patient". It's been two days and nothing productive has happened other than the sharing of ideas that may or may not coincide with yours.
The only way to get more people to use the site is to persuade them to
The goal isn't necessarily to get more people on the site. There's already thousands here at a time. But very few know about the forums because they're tucked away.
Not literally slamming their face into the computer until they use ArmorGames.
Hmmm... I don't think that's been done before... Let's do it!
This entire topic seems like one big request. Why ask for volunteers if you're not going to take advice? Just so we're your cronies, praising your plans that we still haven't heard?
Failed to read my other posts didn't you?
I want it done and done quickly before everyone's out for summer
It's coming in the next hour! Just wait, you can't expect everything now.
Okay, first, I'm not trying to control anything. GOM was offering his advice and ideas on what I should have done when I started the thread. I don't want that kind of help, I'm fully capable of running the thread myself.
If you have ideas or suggestions that contribute to the the thread, by all means post them, as long as they aren't posted with a reference to something I should have done, unless you feel it's absolutely necessary. See my point now?
Here we are! Two days later, and we have a grand total of four volunteers not counting myself. (Not as much as I was hoping, but we can still work it out.
Firstly, I'm going to sum up all ideas posted in this thread to this point:
1. Persuading admins to take action concerning activity levels.
2. Make the forums/community (which did you mean emp?) more interesting.
3. Possibly move the community button to a location more easily visible.
4. Create more threads, make the forums more noticeable, accessible, and interactive.
Last post was accidental, but rather then post three posts, I'll just do two.
ANYWAY!
5. Request that the Admins use Facebook or Twitter to advertise the forums.
6. Badges or awards for community activity and contests. (With limitations.)
7. Placement of small ads or sponsors on forum pages.
8. Rename the Community button to Forums.
(There is a complete documentation of current submitted ideas.)
Now we will get on to my ideas that I've donated a very great deal of time to:
Firstly, I feel there needs to be greater interaction between the users and the administrators. Sure we have Ferret, and on occasion, Boppins come and visit us in the forums, but they are not actually interacting with the community, they aren't getting to know us, and us them. They don't see what kind of Community that AG is, thus they don't understand why we hate to see it become inactive and stale. I feel that they owe us at least this much, since we users are the life of AG. (To sum up, Request that all administrators visit the community on occasion.)
Next, I would like to find out what is going to happen with the forums once AG3 is released. I enjoy surprises as much as the next guy, but we haven't had an update, or even just a comment on what's happening in quite a while (I wont give an exact time, but it was at least around 1095 days. (To sum up, request what the current status of the forums are, as well as what priority level the forums are on.)
This next one is rather close to Idea 6. by nicho. I was hoping that Quests would be awarded based on community activity.
Make AG more appealing to girls. Strange as this may seem, but having girls that are continually active on websites contributes to the activity level greatly (I've found this out by other websites that I'm actively using, and it is a surprising fact that activity is greater when members of both gender are active.) Having girls active in positions of authority also contributes to activity (administrators and moderator positions.)
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You're probably now wondering why the volunteer positions have not been mentioned. Wonder no longer! =D
)Since we only have four volunteers, I'm going to trim down considerably the size of the project at hand.) All volunteers are going to be counting forum posts, and threads created at given times in the community history. (In this case, May 2009, May 2011, and May 2013.)
From these findings, I will be able to find if the decline of activity is really so great, and possibly be able to chart whether future activity is going to increase or decrease.
We are not going to count every section of the forums! Only a chosen few, those being:
~The Tavern. ~AMW ~Flash Games ~Newcomers
Why did I choose these four? Well, these threads are probably the most affected by lack of activity. WEPR for instance, depends on current events, rather then users for activity. Any statistics from that section would not show an accurate base for activity. (I'm a statistic nut, so unless you are too, you might not understand what I mean.)
Note to volunteers: I will post a video (at request) (or pictures, if my computer will handle my screen recorder) showing the most efficient way of counting posts and threads (you don't have to use this method, but it is a way to assist your efforts.) If any of you are unable to complete your task, or if you don't feel like participating, let me know now (it shouldn't take more then an hour or two to complete.) Once this mission is completed, all volunteers will be released. (To sum it up, just count and keep track of all threads created, and posts made in May 09, 11, and 13. Using the pages in a thread makes it considerably easier to count the posts.)
If you guys have any questions just ask. I will post the video, but probably not today, since I have to work.
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Lastly, I would like to present this to you guys for discussion:
Any and all ideas posted by me or anyone else are up for discussion, and it will be up to you guys to thoroughly discuss which ideas will be included in a formal E-mail I'm planning on sending to the administrators to represent the current state of the community (Can refer to this as the "State of the Community Address.) I'll post a draft email, so you guys can assist in the wording as well as the composition of the email. I want to try to get this done before the 5th of June, so we can get the email off and work completed before Summer.
Doh... I forgot to post the assignments for the volunteers!
pang- AMW
Emp- The Tavern R2- Newcomers (Your favorite section LoL)
Soccerdude- Flash Games
Nicho, since your activity is dependent on outside stuff, I'll make you a back up, in the even I need assistance with the project. Salvidian is my assistant, and he will be in charge in the event I get too caught up in work.
Volunteers are still welcome to join, and the more we get, the larger and more accurate my findings will be. (Once all final figures are in, volunteers will no longer be accepted.)
Are we choosing the sections or will you be doing that for us?
Make AG more appealing to girls.
That's a hard one, but that's actually quite possible. In my opinion they should make more "girl related" flash games. Plus in the Community we only have 2 active females and one of those females is a mod.
I was hoping that Quests would be awarded based on community activity.
It would be nice if they did this. Quests like these could bring more community activity. They should make quests like: Make your first post in the forums, get a merit, or make an armater.
I feel there needs to be greater interaction between the users and the administrators.
I don't actually blame them for this. They have a job to keep but it would be nice if they communicated for about half an hour. (unless they're making a flash game or fixing bugs, then that would be an excuse) They should visit 3 times a month at least, in my opinion.
Does it all sound good?
For now, but it feels like we're missing something...
To sum it up, just count and keep track of all threads created, and posts made in May 09, 11, and 13.
To do that accurately, we'd need to look at each page of every thread to see when the activity occured. It's not as simple as going back to where the dates are May XX, 20YY because that only says when the threads died. Some threads were created at those times and continued for months or years. I don't feel like going thru 400+ pages to find them all.
Um... can I wait to count the threads until I see the video? I know the flash games is probably the easiest section, but still. It seems a little long to accomplish..
