Activity Surge!

[Jarka]

So, regarding retention of newcomers/elitism...

I think there should be a forum specifically for nubs. I was actually really excited when I saw the new forum today, but I then realized that it was just advertisements (which I should have realized by looking at the title of the forum).

Since everybody here has more or less known each other forever (or knows at least one long term member and weasels their way into the group), any new person that stumbles to this site probably gets the feeling that they're an intruder or the odd one out. I know I felt that way at first, despite knowing Sigfried and Piper.

To invert that, one selling point of this site that we haven't focused on is the fact that we are an actual community, too. Most of us interact outside of the forums in one way or another, and the social side of our site almost always has something going on, even if the RP part is fizzled out for the moment.

It would be really awesome if we could have some place dedicated for new people (since the sheer amount of forums is kind of overwhelming at first). Honestly, it could get merged with the new advertising forum.

I'm thinking something like:

WELCOME forum
- Getting started
- Introduce yourself!
- New user questions/concerns
- Link backs
- Advertisements (what is now the Newcomer forum)

Getting Started would probably consist of a locked sticky thread with a brief explanation of who we are, what we do, and how to join. Also, a link to the Rules and Joining subforums, natch. Maybe some sample RPs of different style writers to showcase the variety of writers we have, too (I'm sure we'd be able to get a couple of volunteers to write a short sample for dummy characters).

I think the Introduce Yourself forum would be really useful because then it's a little bit clearer when somebody is totally new versus when somebody is just an alt. It also gives us a little reference to their personality and interests, so it's easier for us to be more welcoming to them in the other forums.

The reason I separate new user questions from our normal forum is because it can be really intimidating to ask a question like, "What does CA mean?" in the current forum, which is usually used for a more advanced questions like fusion threesomes.

Then Linkbacks and Newcomers (with a new name, since not all newcomers come from other RPGs necessarily and I was confused by that at first, myself).

On top of the forum, I think there should be a Welcoming staff member whose job is to make new people feel comfortable on our site. Somebody who responds to each of the introduction threads and gives a new person a sense that they have somebody interested in them in their first forays onto our site. If the current staff feels overburdened in the status quo, just make a new staff member to do that. It's not like they're paid positions or anything.

I mean, if we can change people's perception from us being elitist/cliquey to us being a tight knit community, that little semantic change would probably do wonders for anybody who's hesitant about joining for that reason.