The Great Guild Meeting II

[Huntress]

Sept 20, 2010 18:26:08 GMT -5 Draco said:

Now for reviving threads... I think it's because the main guild area is a bit jumbled :p We have RPs, Games, Stores, Meetings, etc all kind of thrown into the same area. Of course I also find making new boards to organize things tend to kill them >.> So yeah.... No real help there I think...

Yesss, anyone still remember that epic debate thread that preceded the deletion of all guild subboards? The subboards were dead but at least they were clearly categorized (which was admittedly part of the problem). Now a newbie can look at the guild board and be all "wait whut, what can I even do here? D:" because A) our forumers are used to looking at the most recently active threads for browsing and our frontpage threads date down to February, B) there's no rhyme or reason to the most recent active threads. We have a couple roleplays, some OOC threads, the RCP, this meeting thread... by the looks of it, any newcomer would say that there are three active roleplays here and that's it. Bringing me to C) we can say that we have six guilds but we look like we have three or four, and even so nothing besides some dwindling roleplays is going on in those three or four. We're not exactly PR-friendly here. It'd take some serious overzealous devotion to join the guilds right now and actually stay in.

...granted, it's always taken some serious devotion to stay here anyway and I've always maintained that freeloading is one of the GWs' biggest problems, so. Ded end?

I ain't buying the "moved on to better things" theory, mind x3 Look at us. The guilds may go dead every now and then but as soon as something new pops up, the guilders crawl out from the woodwork as if I'd showed up after many centuries to release them from their blood oath. There's still plenty of interest and dormant enthusiasm going around. There's just a lack of ideas, as usual.

Whiiich is why I wanted to set our purpose in stone here. We seem to have that purpose anyway, but if it was official, so to say, it'd be an anchor for newbies and oldies alike to stick to when doing guildstuff. Something like "Welcome to the guilds, a world within a world, a place where we build a storyworld that lasts through the ages and which YOU can be a part of."

*pause* Hey, I like that. Opinions on editing that into the guildboard description? So that everyone would at least know what we aim for when writing those epic-long roleplay posts at 4 a.m. If we're doing it just for kicks, why would anyone want to join our nerdy textwall writing sessions in the first place?

[Draco]

That line sounds pretty good XD

[Tam]

...Because writing nerdy textwalls is fun and staves off the 4 am boredom spells? xD;

Anyhow, that description isn't bad at all, in my mind. But to be honest, I think one of the primary reasons we tend to scare off the newbies is because their first glimpse of the Guild boards usually shows them either a) a whole lot of really dead boards, or b) an active thread full of textwalls that seem to be philosophising about the purpose of the guilds. And, well, I don't think the average newbie really cares about the purpose of a guild any more than they care about the purpose of the last Neopian plot — they just want something fun and engaging that they can leap into and be swept away in.

But by all means let's revamp the board description and philosophise about the purpose of the guilds. I'm all for it; don't get me wrong. While the average newbie might not be all that interested, we crinkly old guild veterans have a right to be, and hopefully we succeed in making the guilds a less confusing aspect of the forum by doing so. I just think that we ought to remember that when it comes to the guilds, it's not new management and organisation that's gonna save them; it's new energy and a whole lot of individual effort. xD

Bottom line here? We need less talking and more doing. A lot more doing. xD If your guild is dead, start a new activity. If you don't have a clear idea of the guild layout, draw a map. If you don't have a leader, elect a new one. Start more roleplays. Have fun. As long as we're having fun and actually doing stuff, the newbies will come, and they'll figure out the purpose of the guilds the same way we did — by experiencing them firsthand.

[Draco]

Text wall, one liner, text wall XD

Leave it to a ninja to sneak a line between two large posts XD

And for the record, the ninjas have hundreds of members <.< You just can't see them XD

Anyways, I've been talking about working on a ninja base map of some sort for some time now... However, what I thought would be easy, is not XD I really can't draw And I figured a simple blueprint style picture would be easy, and it's not.

---

As for activities, I said earlier I was thinking of a idea. I'm thinking of a dodgeball kind of game that can be done in teams of some sort <.< I'm still working that out a bit... But the basics would involve dice rolls. Certain numbers will mean you have a ball or don't (ball number changes depending on team size), then another dice roll decides hit or misses.

People, if they choose, could RP the stuff that is happening XD I'm still working out the exact rules, but it shouldn't be to hard XD Maybe a few other things in the middle like catching or something, but yeah....

Guild Dodgeball XD

[Deleted]

This is going to be a rather frustrated post, but please understand that it is directed at the entire guild population and NOT a select group. I am also included in this.

My first point is to guide you all to something which has been forgotten (not by me, though).
ntwriters.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=guildinfo&action=display&thread=44112
Remember this? I worked on this all by my lonesome with a bit of help from Shade and an offer of help from ... I think it was Jina? Anyway, I never gave up, but I did stop working on it because no one else bothered to help me. I can't spend ages searching for all the required information all by myself, that's a huge task that requires co-operation.

Which brings me to my second point. The guildpeople are big on talking, and small on doing. The basic cycle goes like this:
Someone prods/starts a discussion thread > lots of people go "Oh, yes, we need to do this and this and this" > the discussion dies down. A few events are started by the few people who take action > those events are either active for a short while and then die, or are totally ignored > another prod/discussion ...

And so on and so forth. The main problem is that we all sit around talking about what we should do, but when someone tries to actually do it, they get left stranded with ALL the work and NONE of the help and support they desperately need. And because of that, the people who do work eventually get discouraged and give up.

I don't want to hear anymore "we need to do this" from anyone who isn't prepared to step up to the task of doing it themselves, or at least helping with it.

I am now going to taste my own medicine and offer my services to anyone with an idea/project to help the guilds. I am an expert at organization and mundane footwork and I'd be glad to help with anythig that doesn't require a direct leadership role, because I'm really not comfortale with that.

Edit: Hunty, I don't think its the case that the guildpeople swarm on new things. New RPs, perhaps, but not many events got much interest lately. Cases in point:

ntwriters.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=guilds&action=display&thread=40868
ntwriters.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=guilds&action=display&thread=44572
ntwriters.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=guilds&action=display&thread=44325
ntwriters.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=guilds&action=display&thread=44730
ntwriters.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=guilds&action=display&thread=44601
ntwriters.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=guilds&action=display&thread=42636
ntwriters.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=guilds&action=display&thread=43540
ntwriters.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=guilds&action=display&thread=43534
ntwriters.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=guilds&action=display&thread=43450
ntwriters.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=guilds&action=display&thread=43380
ntwriters.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=guilds&action=display&thread=43323

See? And wanna know the really stupid thing? WIth the exception of a few of these, actual participation in the events listed here takes less time than it takes to write your average RP post. Heck, Scar's one takes all of 30 seconds to roll 3 freaking dice and I was the only person to bother signing up for it.

Editedit: Further tasting my own medicine, I've edited my post in the "new guild rules" sticky thread and I'd like to suggest that the name be changed so that we can use it as a newbie quick-start guide to the guilds.

I also had an idea for a guild newsletter thread where current guild news and events can be posted and edited into the first post. It'll help remind people of what's going on and what they can participate in. Regular updates on the progress of RPs, discussions and events shouldn't be too hard a task for a couple of people. I would be willing to do some of it but I refuse to do it alone. Been down that road and it stinks. xD;

[Jina]

The other problem is the time of the year... This is around the time most people put school before the forum XD

And yet things are picking up now, when school is just starting. They've been pretty dead during the holidays, really. I actually think that people are more likely to do things while school is on because that way they feel time pressure.

With the exception of a few of these, actual participation in the events listed here takes less time than it takes to write your average RP post. Heck, Scar's one takes all of 30 seconds to roll 3 freaking dice and I was the only person to bother signing up for it.

Similarly to the above, I think that probably has to do with the fact that RP posts do take time, and other people rely on you to do them. Hence, you feel like that's something that needs to be done now, not later. With things that quite small, I, and I assume other people too, will put it aside till later, and sometimes forget about it.

"Welcome to the guilds, a world within a world, a place where we build a storyworld that lasts through the ages and which YOU can be a part of."

*pause* Hey, I like that. Opinions on editing that into the guildboard description?

That looks perfectly good. x3

We need less talking and more doing. A lot more doing. xD

The guildpeople are big on talking, and small on doing. The basic cycle goes like this:
Someone prods/starts a discussion thread > lots of people go "Oh, yes, we need to do this and this and this" > the discussion dies down. A few events are started by the few people who take action > those events are either active for a short while and then die, or are totally ignored > another prod/discussion ...

And so on and so forth. The main problem is that we all sit around talking about what we should do, but when someone tries to actually do it, they get left stranded with ALL the work and NONE of the help and support they desperately need. And because of that, the people who do work eventually get discouraged and give up.

Yes, we need to do more. I'm pretty sure we've come to that conclusion before. Buuut... people have done things. Those things died. And it's not down to the fact that those people didn't have help, at least not in all cases.

Guild activity does come in cycles, and at the big downturns, things die, including RPs. The difference between RPs and other activities is that when things get better, RPs get revived. When other things drop in activity, they're declared dead for good. If we tried reviving activities as well, we might get somewhere.

...And another thing. Though we do need to do some activities and get things going, that doesn't explain how things got so dead in the first place. In other words, it's only papering over cracks. It can't be just because we don't have enough new people coming in, because there are enough of us for things to run reasonably actively. People have actually stopped taking interest, for whatever reason.

[Deleted]

I should've clarified, by "help" I was generally blanket-covering both organizational help and participational help, since both give encouragement to the leader of an event.

But I see your point about papering over cracks. I don't think it can be put down to any single cause, or even just a few. Things like human tendancies to forget about things that aren't shoved in their face, school/IRL stuff, "what's the point" syndrome and other things are major players. I honestly think my idea of a newsletter would help with perhaps a few of thes, and perhaps some out-of-guild propoganda could help things along, though I've no idea what that would look like, unfortunately.

[Fraze]

Sept 23, 2010 12:14:39 GMT -5 Jina said:

People have actually stopped taking interest, for whatever reason.

I, for one, dropped off the forum as a whole. It's entirely possible that the same fate has befallen other people, I'm not sure. That being said, this is as good a place as any for me to get back into guilding.

I've seen a lot of speculation on this thread about how newbies view the Guilds. But do we really have any concrete evidence to back any of that up? When I first joined Spacefleet a year and a day ago, I didn't pour over the front page. I didn't scrutinize the threads and what was or wasn't going on in them. Heck, I don't even think I gave much thought to how active the 'Fleet RP was. I just joined and started posting.
More publicity is what we need, I'd say. Inside, we've got a flourishing world that we've built from scratch with our own keyboards--and that we'll probably continue to expand and adapt for as long as the board itself is here. But from the outside, we're a dinky little broken down shed in a back alley on the outskirts of town with torn bits of stray posts littering the ground and hobos sleeping in the trash cans.

Of course, this is getting a bit off topic. We've sort of been off topic for a while, really. What is the actual point of the guilds? I'd have to agree with what some people have said: it's mostly a communal worldbuilding project. I would like to see more individual short stories being made. We're writers, after all, and any activity is good activity. Team worldbuilding is great, but I'd like to see different takes on the world--the stuff that people particularly like will stick, the stuff that they don't will fall through the cracks. We've already got enough continuity holes to start a swiss cheese factory, a few more won't hurt anything.

Sept 22, 2010 3:00:18 GMT -5 Draco said:

And for the record, the ninjas have hundreds of members <.< You just can't see them XD

And Spacefleet has about 50,000 members. *Shifty eyes* They're just on the moon.

[Celestial]

Description looks good. *gives magical thumbs up of approval* ^^

The actual point of the guilds? Fun and profit as far as I can see, out of universe. In-universe, it's a place to gather for like-minded people and combine their strengths to achieve a common goal. The question now becomes what the common goal is. Perhaps we need something physical, like making shinies into an actual currency? =/

So what we need is a recruitment drive? Hyping things up might be good but once the hype dies down, people will leave and things will take a turn for the same old. We could have a NTWF banner advertising the guilds or have then included as part of the FAQ for the forum (explaining what the guilds are, how they work, how to join, etc.) and maybe a board with lovely, shiny posters.

This may not work out but how about a points system? You allocate a certain amount of points for each guild activity (eg: creating an event would be 10 points, posting in a roleplay would be 1 point, something like that) and people could get prizes over on Neo (well, gifts really) or an art/writing request done by the leader of their guild or one of the others. At the end we see how many points a guild has and they get...something. xD Dunno. But it might get some people to have a little activity and motivation.

[Dan]

I've been keeping tabs on this thread out of curiosity -- though I've not read it entirely, mind you. I just wanted to put in my two cents from an outsider's perspective, since someone was asking how a newbie might see things. On that topic, I'd say that in my opinion things are really cluttered on this board. >>; As in, there are a lot of events and projects and such -- some completed, some dead -- and it's hard to know where to start, what is current and what's horrifically out of date.

It might be worth it to consider ways to simplify things, to streamline the process of getting involved, make it explicitly clear what there is to do and how to go about doing things. Because at the moment, I'm a bit lost looking over the board and its subboard (as shiny as the banner is). XD

But like I said, I'm an outsider. This should definitely be taken with an enormous grain of salt. ^^;

[Draco]

Sept 23, 2010 16:35:28 GMT -5 Fraze said:

We're writers, after all, and any activity is good activity.

Sept 22, 2010 3:00:18 GMT -5 Draco said:

And for the record, the ninjas have hundreds of members <.< You just can't see them XD

And Spacefleet has about 50,000 members. *Shifty eyes* They're just on the moon.

And the one's who aren't writers are artists or slackers (me) who aren't very good at either side.

And there are ninjas everywhere, even the moon. Moon Ninjas are even harder to find though.

@cele
The problem with a point system is that some people will be making random event/rps and stuff just for the points alone. I don't think I want to see <Insert Guild> Vampire RP popping up any time soon, or something else really random that doesn't fit.

There is also the problem for people who don't do anything on Neo any more.

[Celestial]

No, Dan, an outsider's opinion is exactly what we need right now. Thanks! ^^

So what we basically need to do is streamline everything, organise it all and update what needs to be updated? We'll probably need some sub-boards or at least sticky thread some of the most important ones and maybe combine several similar threads into one.

And we could also delegate tasks. When people are singled out to do something, it avoids the bystander effect and could get things done. =/

EDIT: Draco, I'd think this forum is trustworthy enough to not do things like that (besides, Mage/Ninja Vampire RP would be rather fun. xD *brick'd*). We could I suppose label them as spam. And for those who don't play Neo, that's what art/writing requests are for. =3

[Jo]

If outsider opinion is what you want... XD

Well, I don't have too much to add on what Dan said, but very clear instructions would be amazingly useful. For example, what are the bases actually for? Is it all roleplaying, or are there chat threads? Is it possible to have multiple personas and join multiple guilds? That sort of thing.

More advertising would be useful, I had never really realised the guilds were that big of a thing before. I'm not sure how exactly you'd do it. I was thinking that maybe if there was a very large guild plot/game, which combined roleplaying but also some sort of game aspect... perhaps something like the Spoiled Kitten in karmageddon where there were various challenges to complete? Obviously it'd be very adapted, and I'm not sure if that's a good idea at all (like I said I'm an outsider), but it might help get people excited about the guilds and drag a few newbies in.

[Huntress]

We had six perfectly good subboards here - dead, but perfectly good all the same xD - but we all know what happened to those. So yes, I'm all for organization. Which of course opens up a whole bunch of new questions. We are six-possibly-seven different guilds all crammed up into one board - the subboard doesn't count, that's the info-corner that doesn't get that much actual active content - and thus all these guilds have to do their thing in the internet equivalent of a small clubhouse while elbowing each other in the ribs every once in a while.

On the flipside, subboards like to kill activity as we all know. *ponder* Maaaybe a subboard for roleplays alone would be plausible; if a person is following a roleplay, they'll find it no matter where it is. On the flipside, that'd still leave the guild frontpage even more dead and messy and filled with assorted flopped events. We'd need to start encouraging reviving old events a lot more, but with this no-gravedigging attitude in place everywhere else on the forum, I'm not really expecting for it to actually work >>;

...I think we need an FAQ. Probably some decent bit of organization among guildstuff first - terminology, roleplays, events, bases, etc - then the FAQ pinning it all down and building a nice big signpost for the newbies on top of it. I could probably draw one, with links n everything. *inspirayshun'd =D* I also started a guild glossary back in summer, but that takes epic levels of reading back so it'll be a while before I get it done.

*should turn the glossary into groupwork, yep*

[Deleted]

*cough* I hate to toot the horn of my own idea, but a newsletter or something similar would help to organize things better. Did no one see my idea, or ...?

Edit: *giggles and hums Mr. Celliphane* xDDDDDDDDDDDD Sorry, couldn't help it.