The State of SW-Fans (?)

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Before I start let me just say the purpose of this thread isn't to ruffle any one's feathers, nor is it to propose any sort of stunt thread or universe changing event or new RPing scenario in order to kick start activity. I think we have plenty of very good ideas that have been sitting on back burners or out right abandoned and trying a new one won't work if the past and recent present is any indication.

I am personally concerned that our activity has severely declined over the last few years and that it will continue to stay at this same level or get worse as time goes on. Yes, we have surges in activity and we're sort of bumping things up again at this very moment, which is great. I just know that we are not getting new people with any sort of regularity, and we don't seem to be able to hold onto long time members either.

Looking at other SW RPing boards this seems to be unique to us, as RPG is still pretty active and I've even noticed that people who used to RP here and there now RP there more than they do here. I'm not pointing fingers or calling anyone out, everyone is welcome to do what they want with their online time. I just want our SW-Fans to at least be competitive when it comes to new people in the RPing scene.

We probably have the easiest and most laid back character creation and RPing mechanic (common sense rules, etc), but our Star Wars roleplay has turned into one huge cats cradle of a story that is hard for even US to figure out what's going on. Then on top of that we have only a handful of RPers playing people who are in positions of power (and everyone has a lot of different characters [not saying this is bad]) so if one person goes LOA/MIA and doesn't post to a few RPs it causes everything on the board to grind to a halt.

I would love to find a way to simplify our universe - not a hard reset persay but maybe closing off some dangling story arcs and settling in on an Alliance/Imperial cold war with defined boundaries? I would not want to force people to abandon current RPs, that's not what I'm talking about.

And if new people magically appear and want to RP then we need characters to train them. And if you have someone who needs training, then you should post to your training threads - I know I am/was doing one with Serena with a bunch of padawan characters because people were complaining there was nothing for their padawans to do, only to have the padawans stop posting all together. So I don't think necessarily that it would be a problem where new people wouldn't have active masters, but I do think it's a problem that current members would just rather not post here?

Is there an underlying problem at 'Fans that I'm not aware of that is making it hard for people to stay interested in being active here? Or is it just that we're all old and busy? If we're just old and busy and aren't interested in trying to get more new blood in here, then I'm afraid that RPing here will die off all together.

But then, if we're just too busy to post then people posting on other boards sort of confuses me because that sort of indicates that they do have time to post.

Just tell me - it's me, isn't it. /

(unless it is me )

Sorry if that was all rambly, and sorry that rambly isn't a word.

[Wei Wu Wei]

I think one of the things that sort of makes me scratch my head is that if I want to do any writing at all, I feel like I have generate my own story ideas. People on this board (myself included) tend to have very defined and narrow stories, arcs, and goals that require specific people.

Perhaps all it would take is a broader set of goals. Perhaps one of two faction-wide goals for each group in our Star Wars universe that everyone can agree on and write on.

For example: The Jedi and the Alliance are always on the move as citizens of the Wheel. Perhaps gaining ground and power enough to establish a base of operations would be a goal that any thread could work towards.

Then again, I think Open threads are an endangered species. It's rare that people just toss out a thread idea and see what happens. I feel like when we had a lot of activity people were doing some particular things, but also a great deal more open threads.

I have loads more ideas, but those are the first two that come to mind.

[Serena Laran]

I think it's hard to say "if we had more open threads people would post more" because people aren't posting so starting an open thread is asking for nothing to happen. I started a few open threads in the DC story stuff, when that was fairly active, and no one jumped in.

Establishing 'goals' is... a step in the right direction perhaps, but I'm wary of just adding another RP goal or Big Story Idea for roleplays to revolve around. In the past that has been our go to move (let's rescue Serena and there is also a huge superweapon out there we'll have to stop is the one that comes immediately to mind) but it has never really done much other than an initial surge and then the thread peters off, sometimes without even completing the first story point.

So I'm personally more in favor of having no specific goals or over arching stories. (Edit: this is to say, like a Big Event type rp, not that people shouldnt write story arcs) Establishing a galaxy wide new status quo and then letting people play in the sandbox? rather than having every RP feel like a piece of a giant ten dimensional chess game. If that makes sense? I'm not trying to slap you down, Justin, I'm glad you posted and really, I don't think we can 'hurt' the board by trying anything at this point.

Really, I'm curious as to what everyone thinks. Why are we stagnant? What do you think will help? What would it take for you yourself to post more? So there aren't any wrong answers because this is an opinion piece.

[Captain Untouchable]

I'm not sure that we're "stagnant" as much as "bogged down".

Just plucking examples off the top of my head, over the last few years we've had big plans with Hapes, with the Jedi/Wheel, the Independents, the Dan/S'Il Crisis, and so on, but we've never really managed to get proper traction on them. What tends to happen is that one or more of the preamble threads that are leading up to a big event will stall, and because we have a pretty laid back attitude, we'll just kick back and wait. That slows everything down, we lose the momentum, and we haven't (yet) made it to the juicy part of any of those arcs. That leaves the whole board in a perpetual state of "waiting for stuff to happen", rather than giving any of us the freedom to go our individual ways and react to stuff.

No one person is to blame for any of it: we've each had our inactivity patches because of work, life, moving, illness, babies, and so forth. The problem is that when we all started out on Fans, we were all considerably younger: we didn't have so much grown up stuff to deal with, and so there were fewer of those real life distractions/obstacles to get in the way.

Personally, I don't care if Fans is competitive with other boards or not. I've roleplayed on other boards, and while their posting activity is certainly fast-paced, they're often way too strict, uptight, and relentless. Fans is a social experience for me, and after meeting a bunch of people, doing Google Hangouts so regularly, and all that stuff... it doesn't really bother me if roleplaying takes a back seat to people just hanging out.

That said, if we do want to stir up Fans activity a bit more, I think we may have to be a little bit more ruthless. Instead of the "we leave no thread behind" attitude we've currently been going with, if a thread gets bogged down we may have to just leave it in the mud to fend for itself and push on with the main story, just so we can get stuff done.

As far as Open threads go, I personally don't like them. I see them as an unknown quantity, because I'm never entirely sure what the person wants to happen, and I'm never entirely sure what I'm getting myself into. I think a better solution is what has been happening with DC threads: there are a lot of "I want to do this - who is interested?" that have cropped up on the DC front, and I think that's perhaps a more effective way of doing it.

[Dasquian Belargic]

Personally, I don't care if Fans is competitive with other boards or not. I've roleplayed on other boards, and while their posting activity is certainly fast-paced, they're often way too strict, uptight, and relentless. Fans is a social experience for me, and after meeting a bunch of people, doing Google Hangouts so regularly, and all that stuff... it doesn't really bother me if roleplaying takes a back seat to people just hanging out.

This is me, right now. I'm happy to post here to stuff, but unless a bunch of other people are active, it can feel a little pointless. Especially when we have such large, interconnected stories.

I am roleplaying elsewhere, but I have always done that on and off for years. My interest in certain characters/stories grows then fades then grows again, I just can't help it vv

On this topic.. it's interesting to look back at the comments from this thread.

[Miranda Tarkin]

Right now for me my interest here has toned down a bit since the baby, though I am rping somewhere else right now. I notice that my interest goes back and forth and trying to get back into posting here was just difficult after my LOA with pregnancy issues and then my daughter.

I'm sure it will come back but I just lost a bit of drive here, though I do lurk almost everyday here to see what's going on

[Droo]

Perhaps we ought not to get too hung up on whether or not the site is competitive with other similar sites. Regardless of what we take from this place as individuals, it cannot hurt to seek and deploy the means to expand and improve the community we inhabit. This place is quiet, and its more regularly quiet than it is active these days, and, as we've all agreed in the past, our roleplaying surges are just part of a communal cycle we go through each year, or more. These cycles are unpredictable because they require a star-aligning turn of coincidence in which our creative enthusiasm happens to spike at the same time. In the meantime, those of us who are in the mood, so to speak, are left twiddling our thumbs with a severe case of roleplayer blue balls, so to speak. This is a most serious ailment, and one that may indeed be cured with an influx of new like-minded people with similar, ahem, creative urges.

While the emphasis for many may lie on the social side of the fence, as opposed to the creative side, I do have to wonder for how long into the future this community will be able to survive on its social strengths alone. There are, after all, better social networking alternatives. Compared to say, ten years ago, I'd quite safely assume the social interaction element of this community has been stunted by the likes of Facebook and Twitter. Rewind a week or two ago, and I was visiting this place only to find next to no new posts at all within twenty-four hours. And look at us today, a smidgen of activity and we surface from our lurkster's hidey-holes. It only goes to show what a little activity can do when given a topic to discuss or a new creative venture on which to embark.

Roleplaying participation cannot be forced no matter how tactfully we approach the matter, so the other option is bringing in new faces, but sadly, this raises the other inherent problem: what incentive does a newcomer have to revisit a community with such a low level of new content? There are other avenues of activity we can pursue, collectively or individually, which could help boost interest amongst exisiting members enough to have a knock-on effect upon a newbie's first impressions. Again, it's a question of content: what can we do here at SW-Fans to generate interest? Some people like to blog, others like to draw; some are musically gifted whereas others are simply passionate about music; there are those of us who are cinefiles and telly addicts; we have some excellent cooks, fitness enthusiasts, and comic book aficionados; then there are those who enjoy debating politics and current affairs, and there's also our small army of gaming geeks. All of this to name but of a few of our collective interests, which, if harnessed correctly, could be turned into a wealth of fun and engaging content for fresh faces and old farts alike.

[Crusader]

I am not familliar with your RP problems obviously since I only have my biweekly RP sessions on Google Hangout with you guys but I just want to give you three observations from lurking here:


1. The DC RP seems to go very well right now while other threads are stagnating. Don't complain about it, embrace it, maybe less RP settings and threads benefit more in the end. So maybe you should have like a focus month, term or semester where you do a certain number of arcs until you switch to a new setting and then return to this one at a later point.

2. Most complains I read on the forums here is about people breaking the loop by not posting on time and by doing so killing the flow of the thread. My suggestion here is coming straight from our Pen&Paper and I am not sure if it works for you but maybe each thread needs an appointed director that steps in for a player that does not meet his deadline to post. This way the flow keeps sort of maintained The directer might have a list of plot points from each character that has to be worked into the plot at some time but otherwise he or she would be free to do so with a character what he or she wants if the player does not show up.

3. Now is not the time to complain about traffic since we will have plenty of new and old members in 2 years (in JJ Abrams we trust!). We will just have to lure them in and keep them engaged then.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

I'm not trying to complain about stuff just for the sake of complaining, I'm just wondering what we offer that would keep new members that come and visit us because of the interest in the new movies.

Luring them in and keeping them engaged is what I'm talking about, and I assume that our style of SW rp has a very steep learning curve due to it's plot complexity.

I'm not even really talking about DC or Mutants or the General RPing threads. Those have an ebb and flow to them and interest waxes and wanes and seems to be waxing right now which is awesome and I enjoy it.

Having a thread director or GM is an interesting idea though - it could give the thread starter some leeway as a narrator and keep things from getting stuck if someone doesn't post within say a week.


edit: sorry I missed a whole slew of posts bear with me

edit edit: It is sort of a catch 22 - can't get more content without more people posting, can't get more people posting without more content.

edit3: I agree with everything Droo said (except for the time he called me a cow, that was just mean). Obviously most of our members are totally happy with how things are here because things have continued in this state of decline for years. But if we want long term viability as a website (and YES Facebook has eaten up a lot of our interactions because hey, we can chat on FB if we want) then I think something needs to be done consciously and as a group. Maybe that means just sitting down and forcing yourself to post, whether you're particularly inspired or not, because a few RPing posts are like seeds from which activity grows.

Assuming that someone else is going to get active and kick start your own activity is just... passing the buck? And I'm as guilty of this as anyone - there's a lull in RPing or something and it takes two weeks for a thread to get a reply. I'm faced with a choice - I could reply right away or I could wait (sometimes it's even a "they made me wait so they can wait for a bit) and that just compounds the problem.

If there is a problem. If you're well pleased with Fans as it is then ....

[Dasquian Belargic]

What encourages people to hang around is fun and activity, so we just need to do more fun stuff which will in turn breed activity and thereby encourage people to stay

[Lilaena De'Ville]

*puts a party hat on Dasquian*

[Reshmar]

As every one knows My role playing here Is generally Set in or about star ship battles. I do not stray far from these settings. I have before on many many sites but here I concentrated on Fleeting. I fondly remember getting started here and Yog giving Resh his first command. And Telan... well I learned so much from him.

I don't deal with 90 percent of the members or stories here and there are many many members here I have never said two words too, for that I am sorry. I have been one of the worst about disappearing in the past. Life can kick you at times, but I always return because you are an amazing group of people.

When I started writing here I had just quit a short but eye opening music career and was looking for an outlet for my creativity. Now music has found me again. I guess it never left, just stalled. Now I am again throwing myself into my music and this is leaving me very little time to write. But I love this site and the people here. I know making myself take the time to post is the only way I can share with you. Hell I watched most of you grow up from the background here.

As for activity and the site. I have seen and met may people who have visited and shown interest in the site and role playing here and every one gets frustrated early on by the slow pace. My question is.

Is this something that can be fixed?

Has the site reached a pint to where it is no longer attractive to new writers. It would seem this is so. Most of us here scrap out what little time we can find to write. The fact I think is we need new and younger people. most of you were teens when you started here. Where are today's teens? Where are the bulk of young star wars fans hiding?

Another thought. Think about the exposure now. 12 years ago we had Star Wars and Star Trek. Now there are 25 other universes for writers to write in. Even we have set Star Wars as a back seat kind of universe to other more current and diverse settings. Not that this is bad. I love reading the general roleplay forum, it has saved me tons in book costs. lol

Another thought. Online gaming was almost non existent 10 years ago. This could be the biggest dagger in the back to forum base role playing. Now we can talk to our friend's and slay orks or sith in real time.


Sadlly Star Wars is just not as popular today as it was 12 years ago, not even here. The internet is alot bigger now. People have more outlets for creativity and networking. gaming is real time now. Point being Making a forum base site competitive now is nearly impossible. It is Hard work. With it taking hard work for us just to post, where do we find the time to work on making the site popular. I do not know if new blood will save Fans. But I do know it deserves to be saved.

The above are the delusional babblings of a crazy old fish.

[Charley]

I've been a lazy sod and we only have one functioning computer in the house currently. I'm working on slowly getting back into things so I am open to demands of me.

[Ilias Nytrau]

I've been a lazy sod and we only have one functioning computer in the house currently. I'm working on slowly getting back into things so I am open to demands of me.

This, minus the computer issues, is me in a nutshell.

Now, on to the topic at hand.

My 'opinion', as it were, is that - at least for one thing - the front page is in dire need of updating. I hear tell that the 'infobox' was updated last in 2005? I had a read of the blurb there. It's short, and it doesn't really say anything except, 'hey, we're old, we're still here and, oh, there's a few roleplay settings.' but there's been so much that has happened since then.

There could be more detail. I agree with the fact that getting in here, as far as the story goes, can honestly be confusing unless you can needle the people that are around, that might know, more or less, what's going on, where are we in the timeline, where should I start, so on and so forth. And reaching out to someone you don't know can be awful daunting for some. There just needs to be more detail. Even if there's more of a detailed blurb and 'read the FAQ' - because some of this information could be in the FAQ, or be provided vai links to write-ups (or whatever) kept up to date. I'm just running out my thoughts here, I'm not saying that it must be this, but there does need to be more done in the way of upkeep and care.

I also think that some of the stuff on the front page could be moved around - like the recent posts, for example, is the most up-to-date thing, the most regularly updated thing and is most representative of activity. It could be closer to the top. Stuff that isn't kept regularly up-to-date shouldn't be a upfront feature.

Also, the Star Wars RP stuff and the General RP stuff could possibly do with being more visually separate in the set-up of the board. Whether that means putting them on different pages altogether or moving things around to give a more distinct divide - whatever is appropriate. Also, anything OOC could be kept in a completely separate category from the IC forums. And I'm not sure about the ooc planning forums, but maybe consider sticking them as a subforum in the IC forum they apply to? That might not be necessary, but it is a thought.

I guess what I'm saying here, regardless of my mere suggestions, is that there's a lack of info for new users (or even for the benefit of those of us that go away sometimes and come back!) and that visual appeal matters. It could be tidier, it could look more like it was cared for and that it mattered. There is nothing wrong, in any case, with wanting to be an attractive and most sexy beast.

I don't know about you all, but I consider this place my home, as far as RP is concerned.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

I think Fans needs a big old face lift, we should make it pretty. Our style sets are so old it's really kinda embarrassing (and the newest ones are supporter only). We should go full Web 2.0

[Park Kraken]

I wouldn't say that this is a problem unique to SWF - TRF has slowly died out over the past couple of years as well.

The biggest problem that I've noticed is keeping the threads moving forward. Being a fleeting type person I keep finding myself stuck in a quandry; Either A) Do a multi-person thread and watch it stall when one person goes MIA or B) Do a solo thread and get bogged down under the large weight of a solo writing project.

That being said, I don't think it would hurt to update the front page and maybe the timeline?

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Just as a fyi, to upgrade to vbulletin 5 (which lets face it, we should do something as we're running 3.6) it would be $209 on top of our hosting costs for the year. If people are willing to donate toward the effort I'm sure we could hit that number no problem.

There is also a mobile suite to fully offer mobile integration for iOS and Android but that's an additional $199. Certainly as we live in the future this is also something we should probably think about even if we can't afford to do it the same year as upgrading.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

I agree with most of what's been said. The front page does indeed need a big ole update, and a few new stylesets is always fun.

I also think that it might be a good idea to promote more of the stuff that we do; like the pen and paper, the Nerd events, the resurgence of the book club, the prop building and art we do, stuff like that. For new folks it might not be so easily apparent where to find those threads, but maybe if we put announcements for them on the front page, or even made up a series of banners that promote the different activities that we all engage in it'd give someone - at a single glance - a good idea of the wide range of things that actually do go on around here.

We've grown so far beyond what we started out as, and while I know that we'll never truly abandon our writing roots (and frankly we never should), I feel it's about time that we show newcomers a bit more of the spectrum of SWFans.

On the actual RPing front, I'm as guilty as anyone else for dropping off the face of the earth in that respect. For the last few days I've been trying to recall the old days and the creative motivations that I had pulled from, and so I'm taking measures to recreate and go beyond those

[Lilaena De'Ville]

I've been a lazy sod and we only have one functioning computer in the house currently. I'm working on slowly getting back into things so I am open to demands of me.

So you have a functioning computer and...? If you had zero functioning computers that would be one thing.

edit: I would be interested in hearing what DEmotivates people. Like, you say you are lazy or just don't feel like writing, but what's the cause? Can it be fixed?

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

I don't think it's an issue of complete demotivation, but more a product of us growing older, discovering more hobbies that we weren't able to afford/whatever when we were younger, and pursuing those hobbies.