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.
And I'm counting the OP, but I can always subtract the number of threads from the number of posts if the OP is not going to count.
Op counts as a post, and as a created thread (if created in May.)
I'm officially done with all the posts in May 2009, excluding any ones that come after it. I have 1215 total. Gah, it's going to be really annoying counting those... I'm taking a break lol.
Did you use my system? If so, how long did it take you?
Wait, I just realized, can't you just look under the "replies" column and use those totals?
You can do that, if the thread died in May of the given years, and as long as you check and see if there are any posts from the previous month at the start of the thread. If it was created in May and ended in May, that can speed it up considerably.
So just the ones that died after April 30 and before June 1?
All threads that died in May (Everything between April 30th, and June 1st.) If you're a nut about accuracy, you can push that up to June 15th to make sure you get every post possible, but that is entirely up to you guys.
All looking good guys. I'm off tomorrow, so I should have a rough draft of the email up. Don't forget to discuss which ideas are to be included and which aren't.
It is not a productive usage of whatever time and effort we possess in our presumably busy and soon to be occupied days. We do not need a quantitative or statistical model to forward practical plans, which should be the mainstay and actual focus, rather than collection of data. We already know for a fact that our activity is down, and we already know which sections saw the biggest decline in activity. Rather than beat around the bush, we should simply gather our ideas after debate, design our new logos/headings and head to the administrators who after all will have the final say and hold the key to this admirable project.
We could perhaps look at how other game sites/Forums have progressed/regressed, how their activity is like, and learn lessons from them, or incorporate excellent ideas. We could do a short write up to convince the admins. But I doubt that counting threads will in the end be of much help. Anecdotal evidence convinces more than anything in such a personal issue.
At the same time, we could continue with the thread creation and posting to increase the activity by ourselves.
we should simply gather our ideas after debate, design our new logos/headings and head to the administrators who after all will have the final say and hold the key to this admirable project.
It is not a productive usage of whatever time and effort we possess in our presumably busy and soon to be occupied days.
Statistics can be pretty influential. Right now, the admins only have us to say that activity has dropped. This way, we're able to prove to them on paper that activity has dropped (we'll also find out if it has dropped as much as we thought.)
At the same time, we could continue with the thread creation and posting to increase the activity by ourselves.
We already are doing that. We can only create so many threads ourselves, but without new people arriving to discuss the topics as well, they get pretty boring.
Remember volunteers, if you feel overwhelmed by the project, let me know so I can help you guys out.
Statistics can be pretty influential. Right now, the admins only have us to say that activity has dropped. This way, we're able to prove to them on paper that activity has dropped (we'll also find out if it has dropped as much as we thought.)
You don't need statistics. Bring up a thread like the WoM, or the Poetry Contest, and you're set. Nothing on such a large scale is happening now. The WoM was huge and popular, whilst the old Poetry Thread was overflowing. Or the fact that now we don't even need the list of active people on the Forums anymore.
Checking how many threads died in one month every other year isn't convincing.
Right now, the admins only have us to say that activity has dropped.
Does it matter if it dropped or increased? I don't care if this year is the best ever, tenfold the activity of other years. There's still plenty of room for improvement.
Statistics can be pretty influential. Right now, the admins only have us to say that activity has dropped. This way, we're able to prove to them on paper that activity has dropped (we'll also find out if it has dropped as much as we thought.)
You don't need statistics. Bring up a thread like the WoM, or the Poetry Contest, and you're set.
Nich is right, there is no need for statistics. While the admins do like numbers and charts, it wont fix the activity issues. Plus I think both the mods and admins can say for certain, the site is losing a lot of activity by the day.
Finding ways to promote activity is difficult, and the root of the issue I think is because AG3 took so long people lost interest and think that AG2 looks a bit outdated. Take a look at NG for example. NG has a lot of things AG doesn't have and it's a more clean cut look (but with more adult themes then AG would like to permit). Not to mention, the Community button is very small and wouldn't get you're attention.
If the Admins knew how to fix the activity issue they would have by now. Look at boppins, the list of glitches the site had he took care of in 2 months (or something like that). Activity is another factor, and really, it roots in how exciting the site is. Quests was a solution to both AP spamming and it brought something interesting into the site, but it isn't really making the cut. For now, we should be thinking about what people want to see in a gaming site rather then the root of the issue being, because when it comes down to "how to solve the issue" it will play but a small role. Plus most of my friends left the site a couple of months ago, and the main reason was because the site was boring. We need to have the site be like pop rox in you're mouth!
Plus I think both the mods and admins can say for certain, the site is losing a lot of activity by the day.
If the Admins knew how to fix the activity issue they would have by now.
The forum is not a primary source of income, the games are. The forum is losing activity, not the games, so with that said, there is little reason for them to care much for the forum. Activity is also something you can't simply fix like a glitch.
The forum is not a primary source of income, the games are. The forum is losing activity, not the games, so with that said, there is little reason for them to care much for the forum.
Actually, forums are used to build member loyalty, thus having the members play games on AG more often as opposed to other sites. It's a marketing thing.
You don't need statistics. Bring up a thread like the WoM, or the Poetry Contest, and you're set. Nothing on such a large scale is happening now. The WoM was huge and popular, whilst the old Poetry Thread was overflowing. Or the fact that now we don't even need the list of active people on the Forums anymore.
Flat out telling them that activity has dropped has failed to this point. Maybe showing them that we care enough about the community to go to this much trouble will change their minds.
The forum is not a primary source of income, the games are. The forum is losing activity, not the games, so with that said, there is little reason for them to care much for the forum. Activity is also something you can't simply fix like a glitch.
They could at least listen to us and try... That's all I want is a little bit of effort. That would improve the mood considerably.
