Discussion

I'm always one to panic quickly, but this is different, we've hit rock bottom this month. And while I don't quite yet have a solution to lift activity, I've found that discussion always helps a bit and is the minimum we should be doing. While a lot of our discussions don't go anywhere, it is preferable to sitting around and doing nothing.

So thiis thread is for all of us to discuss anything really (besides the plot, we'll have another topic for that), though mainly what we need to discuss is how to raise activity.

It seems to me our current problems are a static plot, a low member base, and lack of participation. It also seems to me that we have so much to do on PA, but so few members that its quite pointless. We expanded the ministry a while ago, but all departments are inactive, so are classes and factions... And whenever we do get them moving its only by staff members.

Mainly I think, we need new members to join, so we actually have the member base to do something. We're advertising a lot, and many guests visit per month (look at our caution topic - 1308 views!), but very few guests ever join... Why?

Maybe guests need to feel more welcome... I try my best to be friendly in the cbox and everything... but we need more.. we need to LOOK like we are active, even if we aren't as much as we want to be.. I advertise in a LOT of places... Work on a LOT of things to help bring member stats up.. I'm actually talking to individual members to see what THEY think the site needs, and what they are thinking about the plot and certain characters on the site..

I find that if we involve the members more... make them feel special and apart of what's going on.. they will respond more.. not just be given a place to rp and be expected to go do it.. they need a reason to rally, a reason to fight, and most importantly.. a reason to post... so I'm talking to them.. not in one big "What do you think" thread.. noo.. I'm PMing them.. PERSONALLY... asking what they think... stuff like that... tell me if I'm wrong.. but we are higher up on the site so that THEY can enjoy it as much as we do.. we should be taking care of technicalities, not running the entire plot...

I agree with Chase, I think we do need to make new members feel more welcome like there part of the P.A. family. Like Chase I try as much as I can to make them feel welcome. I think one of the reasons for lack of members is like you said in the other thread there's nothing to do. I mean don't get me wrong RPing is fun but I think we need to make the Ooc section more active! As for the order and all that I think if we had more members coming then we could do more things! I mean those are just my thoughts but hey everyone has there own opinion right? but I think we need to think of ways to fix this problem like Darren said.

I hope that members enjoy it more than I do, actually.

I kid, I kid, it's just the admin stuff that peeves me at all...

I think that in order to appear more active to members we need to recondense the site. Scrap all departments in the ministry and make it the standard ministry worker - anyone can work wherever they like and Heads of Department can be NPCs, just so that we don't seem so spread out.

We need to clearly define the DEs from Grindy's supporters rather than have them so closely interwoven - I'm going to be in contact with ne'os about leadership and see if he'll break off to make the DEs work on their own.

The Order and PA I honestly believe just need a more active member base, because there have been ideas in the past which have had potential, and have had enthusiasm and potential, but have fallen flat once they've come into action due to inactivity.

Classes need to be condensed to one class rather than two and should be made non-compulsory to free teachers up for more interactive plotting and... interaction with students.

The note on making OOC interaction more prominent was interesting though, it was an issue I knew existed by hadn't given much thought to.

As far as I can tell, it stems from a changing member base. When you and I started, for example, we had a very young, very basic - but highly interactive member base. Over time as this member base has changed to the more advanced and older RPers interaction has died out. I hate to be cynical, but I believe there's a clear correlation between the two changes, as the site's more basic members were definitely more OOC interactive then the older ones, and now they're all gone. (I'm talking about people like, in more recent times, Aurora, Xem, Cec. and Hitame, but more apparent - the entire member base four years ago when the oldest members were... well, my current age now.

I'd definitely love to see OOC interest rise, so if you've got any suggestions please shoot them off, because I do miss the inclusive family-like feel that the site used to have.

okay, for one.. thanks so much guys.. It really feels nice to be included on some of this stuff.. i felt so out of loop, and.. well lonely... cause no one would talk to me about this thing.. sure made me FEEL lesser then you that was for sure.. now I feel better

Second: I don't feel that scaling it down THAT large would be necessary.. you forget one of my characters IS a Head of Department... So we can't just go NPC when we have them... I think that Aurors need to be used more... because I DO have activity in my Department, Wizangamot and Aurors have very little...

I also don't think condensing classes is all that great... Keep the classes, get rid of all that other crap we don't need.. didn't you say some of the forums were there as a test? Well some of them aren't being posted in... I know the Out of Order Bathroom on the Second floor is getting action.. and the Study Room on the Fourth Floor.. and the Quidditch Pitch/Forbidden forest.. but there is a lot of stuff no one is using...

Ooc Sections are commonly used yes.. but what about OOC INTERACTIONS.... TALK to the members... put up polls monthly... ask them how THEY feel the site is going.. ask them what parts THEY want to see gone, or added, or changed... give them a way to express opinions they otherwise wouldn't say because they weren't asked...

And you have to keep in mind... members grow up... people change... how many kids even KNOW what Rping is these days anymore? Maybe you should make a Youtube Video for PA.. a REAL one.. get it promoted.. Ask the membership to watch it to increase views... anyone good at making vids? I'm sure not...

Order and PA are lousy, lets be honest here... something needs to change with that.. maybe a new leader... a sudden shift towards something else.. maybe make a newspaper designed for rebellious people.. I would f'ing write the articles people! Ask members to write articles.. get them INVOLVED with the Grindy plot.. it's not about us anymore... it's about them.. we have to make THEM feel special, so THEY want to stay... you have to understand that..

The problem at Hogwarts actually has nothing to do with having too many forums there, that's just appearances and if we were more active, sure, I'd be more interested in changing forum layouts. But right now the issue is activity, not appearance of activity. Basically we can't dress what we're doing now up in any way to make it appear to be active, instead we need to change the administrative side of things.

I'm just saying that the Ministry should be focused more on the essential things, ones which appear in situations outside of the Ministry, such as the Law Enforcement side of things. But that's fine, we'll leave it how it is. Merely saying that we do need to get activity into the more essential avenues of the Ministry.

We do know how to interact with members Chase

But while that sounds fine and dandy, when we last did it the whole 3 members who replied loved it...
all three of them.
And that was then we have about 50 members...
Basically it comes down to a matter of "We've tried it before, and it doesn't work. Whenever we try to interact with members they ignore us... or me, not sure about the others, but no one ever replies to my things. I think members hate me or something *Shrugs*

We do have a section, however, where people are supposed to be posting their ideas and suggestions all the time. I know that in the perfect world we'd be chasing members up down and all around to give us their information, but we're all stretched with what we already do, and frankly if members don't value their opinions enough, or if they're simply too lazy to put them out on their own, I don't think it's worth our time to chase them up - we do have other things to do both on the site and IRL.

I can cut and edit, but I don't have time to gather footage and secure the rights to use music. If I can be given footage I'm happy to put it all together.

We've already started this, actually, the newspaper thing. We're just working out the IC logistics of it, but we are a step ahead of you for that

And finally.

We try to include members. We've done all sorts of things, I couldn't hope to name them all if I tried, but whenever we do try, members just aren't interested. We set up events and battles and you're lucky to get half the member base to participate, and even then a massive portion wont post more than once in that topic.

And when you try and make it something else small, attendance is even worse. I had an Order mission all planned out. We had a kidnappee, a plan and a date set. But when it came to execution the three members (All of whom had guaranteed their activity) were inactive (for the most part) and activity dwindled.

Don't wanna be negative, but I'm just responding to what you've suggested. We need to think outside the obvious "Be active" methods. The above methods aren't wrong, per say, they're just not right for this site.

I've gotten response from members.. just saying... if you want people to respond.. prompt them too... they forget about things like that.. I sure do...

I don't know what to say to all of that.. I feel as though you are giving up... at least that's how it's looking to me... If you don't have enough energy to prompt members, get someone who does... I've been pming members all week, talking, asking, and gathering information... as much as I can! Why not get a team together? Send some pms.. it doesn't take long.. I'm just saying.. what you are doing makes everything seem impresonal! You try to make it exciting, but what you do isn't very exciting.. cool, you had a kidnapee.. and a team.. did you do this during a downtime in activity?

I'm just saying.. Admins looks SCARY on this site! And you do TO MUCH work! If you take a step back, they will realize it and step forward.. it's a balance of power issue.. and you are on the heavy side...

^^Agree.

I understand we are some of the only active people on the site, but that was why I was considering stepping down as admin. So we'd have one more non-admin active in the plot, yknow??

haha? Enjoy it as much as we do? I don't enjoy PA at all. I honestly don't even have a clue why I'm still here. This is just a chore I can't seem to stop doing :/

And... we are only sort of running the plot, we allow members to join in if they want to. They don't. Take a look at the order meeting for example. They are openly uninterested in it. And anytime we create a suggestion topic or a plot planning toptic, hardly anyone replies.

I'm not saying its necessarily the fault of our members. There might be a problem with what we are doing. Perhaps factions, jobs and classes are all naturally too boring for them compared to roleplaying about teenage relationships and the like.

But yeah, we can't blame the members for everything. Our so called plot is too prosaic. Its the same as our old Voldemort plot except we've replaced one two dimensional, omnipotent, evil villain with another. Basically, its nothing new and a bit far fetched and I can telll why new members and old ones alike aren't interested in the plot. But then again I've already said that many times before, it hardly matters now.

And just throwing this out there... one problem I've raised before is that the site overall is too divided. Or, in other words, we're focused on too many things with a relatively small member base. I've seen many sites which have less members then us but focus only on Hogwarts. So in the end they are more active because almost everyone has a student and they interact with each other and participate in regular Hogwarts events like quidditch, balls, classes and they all roleplay collectively. At PA we have 3-4 order members, 2-3 death eaters, 2-3 aurors, 4-5 students in classes... Its all so scattered that it becomes hard to do any group event. Perhaps if we want a more collective feel in roleplaying, we could cut down some of these groups, or focus specifically on Hogwarts, or specifically on graduates.

As for classes... I know I pitched the idea that we might consider scrapping them since they are so inactive, but really that won't help our activity in any way. I'm a bit upset with what we are doing with classes, mainly cause I personally have always liked joining hp roleplaying forums with an emphasis on Hogwarts classes, earning housepoints and role playing quidditch matches and etc. I think it usually works well, and if we stop focusing on grads so much, classes could still work. But I'm all for making them non-compulsory though, even though they are pretty much non-compulsory already haha.

OOC stuff... If we post there, randomly and consistently in loads of OOC topics, the members will follow, I'm sure. That won't be too difficult, and will definitely give the feeling that we are more active to guests... Otherwise, we could bring back the awards forum, people used to post there a lot.. or, have fanfic contests perhaps? But then again, contests are pointless - only red replied to the halloween one.

Also, I don't think the inactivity is relaated to power issues with the admin team, if they even exist. We definitely did force a lot of rules on members before, but we are quite lenient now in almost everything. Nothing is compulsory here, and whatever we admins do is only to get members to participate. Most members seem to think we control everything, but.. its not really like that. Keith for example usually organizes his own events (lockdown, IC news and etc.) All members can and should do that, but they don't. Perhaps we need to remind them of that or something :/

Personally, my only problem with the admin team is that our characters hold too many important positions. In short, every single important position is held by a staff member, besides head of death eaters. We need to do something about that.

^agree

I think P.A. should go back to how it used to be, you know when it we had Quidditch Rps and we gotten house points based on student showing up for classes or winning Quidditch games. So I do agree with Darren on that point as well as all the rest of the site. I think some members are thinknig the admins have TOO much power so I think we need to decrease on the amount of Admin power. I also think that maybe the members think the board is to confusing at times, heck even I get confused at times looking for things and I'm an older member! I just think if we go back to some of P.A. old ways maybe it might make it better but that's just my opinion.