Topic: The Site's Dead

[Sappy]

To put it bluntly.

We have one of the best communities of all the Pokemon sites out there. Apparently one of the easiest to get into, but we're not getting new members. Well we're getting some, just not active ones.

Basically, we need the remaining members and the newbies that stayed around to all come of an idea. I'll happily submit content, but we need an original idea. I know we have one or two things in the past; Pokemole, Name Rater and Ask Sentret, but I don't feel that's enough.

I personally think and a few other do, through IRC conversation, that the site needs a massive improvement to get back to it's glory days.

Everyone try and post as much as possible. IRC's been active the last two nights, believe it or not, so join. We're all friendly.

Yeah, we all love PUK. PUK's amazing. It just needs a massive shape up and why not a better time than now? X and Y in October. Let's get prepared!

[laserdude]

We are gonna do this! I'm confident that we can revive this site.
As mentioned before, the IRC has been somewhat rejuvenated, and you can find many of us hanging over there.

[Turner]

I think we need to focus on a specialized topic.

At the end of the day, we don't have many regular people who can keep posting content at the rate of the other Pokemon websites out there...and even if we could, what would we really be achieving? All it'd make us is a copy of those sites with a slightly different look/layout.

If we specialize on one aspect of Pokemon (Note, this doesn't mean we have to forget about everything else) then it should be easier to manage too.

[Joeno]

First, if you want to guarantee a place stays dead, put it in big letters in a topic line like that. Best way to scare off people who want to join. If you don't want to scare people off, I'd suggest changing the topic.

Second, this is how things go sometimes. All the people willing to work on the site have become busy with other things (and legitimately so - work and education comes first). Beyond forum miantenance, only a few things are still regularly done - Richard's column, Name Rater updates, I run backups and pay to keep the server running, and I'm slowly working on a Pokedex revamp that's taking time because I don't always feel like doing more when I get home after work.

If we want more content to come in, we need more than someone saying we do, and we need more than a promise something will be written. People need to be willing to regularly invest the time in it and learn how to update it. That's just not the case very often.

Last, please, please, PLEASE ignore what other sites do. If you are going to dismiss any idea by saying 'it just makes us a copy of another site', then we might as well close the site now. Yeah, there are other Pokemon sites out there. They have content, forums and so on. Well done. That's not us though. I've seen projects end or halt because of that. It's just not worth thinking that way.

So yeah, fine. We can keep posting content other sites have. I'm okay with that. The differentiation, as far as we see it, isn't that we're necessarily posting stuff others don't. It's that we do other things with it.

First, the writing style on PKMN.NET is intentionally less formal, a bit more jokey than most places. We're trying to add some entertainment. True, we tend to fail a lot with that, but we've always tried to make that different.

Second, we differentiate based on technical abilities. We've always tried to be in front when it comes to our feature set and even today I believe we've got a platform most others don't. This extends from the trivial - I still don't see Pokemon sites with actual comment sections - to the features. The Name Rater isn't anywhere else, and all the evidence I've got shows that's one of our major draws. I'm hoping to focus a bit more on these features once my big Pokedex rework is out of the way (it's a major update and should hopefully allow us to update its data to be leading again).

I'm limited here because I personally don't like writing content too much (that's why the other guys are there) and nobody else seems to want to at the moment. I'm also limited because I'd like to do more coding, but there's a lot to be done and I don't always have much time to do it. Again, not much help there at the moment.

Any help with that would be more than welcome, and I'm happy to show people the ropes. In the end though, it comes down to people having the time to spend on the site, and that's not as easy.

[sans the skeleton]

The site's dead

No it's not. Not yet. We've actually revived a little. Perhaps not as good as the glory days, but we might get there again one day.

What we need is something to spice it up. But how do we do that? I do remember that Forum Burp was pretty popular when it was about, though I have no idea if anyone has the time to run something like that again or if it would even work. We need to be able to provide something that the other sites don't, I guess, to bring people in. But how?

[Turner]

Well Joeno, as I said, there's no need NOT to work on the current content. But it makes sense if we specialize in something at least, it would be nice to bring something new to the table. It's true we don't have a comments section, but do we really get anybody using it who isn't already registered/regularly posting? As much as I love the name rater there are plenty of other places to get this service.

I just don't think what we currently have is enough to draw people in, the internet has changed and the Pokemon community has changed. It's not so much that we need to scrap everything and do something different, we just need to freshen it up a little bit.

We have some good writers here, why not have the front page as a blog? Instead of contributing information that nobody really thinks about contributing (Because there are already resources for that).

An example that springs to mind is smogon vs. nugget bridge. Smogon is a widely used website that has a lot of information and pretty much everything you need to know about competitive battling, but Nugget Bridge (A competitive battling blog maintained by a handful of contributors) is equally interesting to read because it explains techniques in a well-written way, talks about how various events went on, posts about the latest wi-fi Pokemon giveaways and what makes them stand out competitively. You wouldn't go there if you had something specific to look up, but it's fun to follow and read nonetheless and encourages a lot of user interaction.

Back when a lot of Pokemon sites were equal we were best known for having a strong community, it'd be nice to work that in our favor.

I think a blog-style front page would be nice, we have a load of people here who are really into competitive battling and could do articles on that, we have spriters and artists who could post tutorials on various techniques they use. Some of us follow the anime/manga and could write reviews of the latest issue/episode/movies etc.

Then of course there is videogame news, spinoffs, TCG etc.

Readers would eventually get to know the writers and it would be a great boost to the community. If you got about 5 people to handle each subject there would be no pressure on one person to keep up to date with everything and balancing their personal lives, stuff they miss could be done by someone else. In the case of something like competitive battling, you might have someone who is particularly good at movesets but isn't as strong with teambuilding and vice versa. Not much different from how it is now, but presented in a way which is easier to scroll through, maybe with RSS and stuff too. Maybe even have PKMN.NET's official twitter (If there is one) automatically update when a new post is made.

There would of course be a handful of content admins/mods who can just proofread and approve posts before they show up on the front page.

[Joeno]

We have some good writers here, why not have the front page as a blog? Instead of contributing information that nobody really thinks about contributing (Because there are already resources for that).

I'm sorry, but after (by now) seven or eight years of people promising they'll contribute regularly or get their work done on time, and then delivering, slowing down or pulling out on me/us after a short while, I don't want to rely on people providing that sort of content now.

To do so would require some time on my end to reconfigure stuff (especially to go fully blog style) and I have no faith anymore people will keep it up, I've been burnt by that more than once.

(Another part is that I don't just want to drop half the stuff that's on the front page right now. I like the varied setup. It means people can go where they want - makes things easier to discover)

Prove to me that we can get a fairly large amount of content like this on a regular base for a longer amount of time and we can look at this. It's fairly easy for me to set up a column and allow people to post on there. If that actually works, we can see how else we can incorporate this.

If you got about 5 people to handle each subject there would be no pressure on one person to keep up to date with everything and balancing their personal lives, stuff they miss could be done by someone else.

We have five admins now. We had more at one point. It didn't work that way then.

I'm sorry if this sounds jaded or untrusting. It's just that I've heard these things before, people have tried, and it didn't work then. I've been impressed with how Richard has been handling things, but he needed a three month break too. I understand and don't mind that, but it shows how difficult it can be to keep things going. We've got the columns feature if you want to give it a try, but I'm not going to change the site's design and commit to further coding work just on someone's word.

By the way, evidence shows that the name rater gets us a lot more visitors. That's not speculation, I can see this easily by looking at our search statistics. Pokemon nicknames is the major one. If other places have it, then we're still the bigger. And I don't know another place with such a large database of Pokemon nicknames and a judgement on them. Dismiss it all you want, in visitor numbers and non-site-deadness, it is a major thing.

[Turner]

It's fairly easy for me to set up a column and allow people to post on there. If that actually works, we can see how else we can incorporate this.

Okay, if you can have a think about this I'll talk to people and see if anyone is interested in doing it too and we'll get back to you on it if we come up with something.

What kind of column are you thinking? General Pokemon news? Competitive battling? I think sometimes allowing 'any' content is a bit too open for some people that it puts them off, hard to tell what kind of information is needed and to what magnitude.

Regarding the Name Rater: I don't doubt that for a second, most of us can see firsthand that the Name Rater is one of the features that have attracted the most members, I always see it in 'What made you join PKMN.NET' threads. But, all I'm saying is that the Name Rater started in an era where getting that kind of direct feedback on the net was fairly rare, now that things have changed and it's easier to get that kind of feedback it just seems like a bad idea to solely rely upon that to draw in new visitors.

In any case, what would be your suggestions to make this place more active and visited again?

[Joeno]

What do you want to write about? I'm open for any column idea that's vaguely relevant and can last long enough. Tell me what you want to write about, and I can help adjust it to make it fit in.

Despite what you think about what draws people in, the Name Rater provably does. One in eight pages looked at on the site is a Name Rater page. Looking at the top 20 search results by number of people actually clicking through to the site, 15 are nicknames. Regardless of whether you feel we should rely on it to draw visitors, it does. The numbers are there.

To make the place grow... to be honest, I've been wanting to leave that to others more. I'm mostly here to facilitate it in ways that I can do (and sometimes want to). While I'm happy the site is being visited, more of my joy comes from the technical side of things - programming, database maintenance, making the site work - rather than increasing visitor numbers. For me it's a hobby that I hope people enjoy visiting, but just as much one where I care more about, for the lack of a more appropriate word, the craftmanship.

I care about the site, but for me the community is only a part of it now, and one that has, at times, been tiring and frustrating to deal with. This is also partially down to how I was treating things. But it means that by now, building a community isn't the big things. Others can help with that - I'll enjoy the results when I can, give my input and maintain a more 'overall vision' for the site, and interact. But I'm enjoying working on the site as much when it's quiet as when it's bustling.

[That Girl in the 'Roo Suit]

Work is slow for me at the moment.. if you want any help with the coding, teach me as you go along and I can see what I can do. It's always good to learn something new, especially whilst I wait for my volunteering application to be processed.

Results are good, yes, but I think it's clear a lot of people still care not just about the site, but the community and what it brings to them. If there's any way I can help, just let me know!

[Richard and Blaziken]

Sorry about needing the break; it was literally something beyond my control due to family issues. I have sincerely tried to make the site a better place and besides the Pokemon of the Week articles I've been doing, I've written two massive guides (one for Pokemon Battle Revolution's Stargazer Colosseum set and another for a very thorough Guide to Competitive Battling).

I've gotten Tim into writing Unearthed bits of Pokemon of the Week at his convenience, though it is hard to find the energy and motivation to write sometimes, especially with the coding that I always seem to mess up in some minor spot before fixing it. Writing content is a lot harder than it sounds, but I really have been trying. Life issues are worked out, for the most part, and I plan on posting a new PotW every Sunday.

I'd love to see more people adding content as well, it would make the site more appealing to visitors, but as Joeno said, you have to be ready for the work of it (and I'm not trying to single anyone out, as I have had to stop before too).

[Joeno]

Work is slow for me at the moment.. if you want any help with the coding, teach me as you go along and I can see what I can do. It's always good to learn something new, especially whilst I wait for my volunteering application to be processed.

How much experience do you have?

Learning how to code is not an easy thing - it's a new way of thinking that on its own will take a lot of time that I won't necessarily have. If you do want to try, Codeacademy offer some great courses - their 'Year of code' last year seemed to work well. People who get through that or something equivalent would be able to learn more, but starting from scratch can take some time.

If it comes down to just the HTML coding, then that's different (and quite a bit easier), but that may need content first.

Results are good, yes, but I think it's clear a lot of people still care not just about the site, but the community and what it brings to them. If there's any way I can help, just let me know!

Fair enough. I think my point is about the same as the end bit - if I can help, let me know. There's just not much I can do directly.

Sorry about needing the break; it was literally something beyond my control due to family issues.

(...)

I'd love to see more people adding content as well, it would make the site more appealing to visitors, but as Joeno said, you have to be ready for the work of it (and I'm not trying to single anyone out, as I have had to stop before too).

Just to make it clear - that's fine. I understand people needing a break.

If people want to make a concentrated effort, though, and want to work with a few, be aware that constriction is there and life works that way, and that that needs to be taken into account.

If people feel they can do it, fine, I can set them up. It's fairly easy for me to constrict access to a few places and give staggered rights so people have control of sections. I can set that up, I can help with the HTML basics and PKMN.NET specific bits. If there's code fixes or small updates to be made, I can fit that in. It's just that the actual content writing isn't what I'm looking to do, and at this point I can't really do bigger site updates before I know it'll be worth it.

(For the record - in case people are interested, aside from setting up columns, we can set up people to just provide news, content access for sections or the whole thing, or any other part of the site. If you think you can provide it for long enough, I can set you up with access and give you instructions. Only slightly paranoid condition is that if I don't recognise you, a 'probationary' period may be useful - vet what you write so there's no problems. I hope that makes sense.)

(Actually, if someone's interested in coordinating this and feels they can spend the time doing so - and perhaps do so a bit more actively than we've been later, I can look at setting up proper access for that)

(Also, later edit, I'll get a few things checked over, but let's agree on this: If you want to write about stuff, check with us, but assume you can. We may object to having ten Pokemon of the week, but in the spirit of Keeping Things Fun, I'd rather have people writing about what they want, than about what they feel they need to. Look for gaps in information and try to be timely with news, but think more about 'what would I want to read' than 'what do the admins say they need'.)

[Lord Raven]

I'd love to coordinate but I will literally have no time for another 50-60 years the way my life's going.

Anyway, I think we should make the best of what we've got now.  I'm a little peeved by the activity of these threads like "What's making you happy" etc.  I think making new threads instead of posting in these old ones would bolster activity and bring back interest in the random randomness section and, as a result, the other sections.  Could bring people back too.  Having an easy, go-to thread really does stifle discussion quite a bit as I view it.

Just a greater variety of threads in general is what I'm talking about, because I'm sure some of the things said in the threads I'm complaining about can be made into a new thread.  Of course, I'm more focusing on the community myself.  Who knows, we may attract a young newbie that'll be willing to work and help out on the forums?  haha

[Joeno]

I'd love to coordinate but I will literally have no time for another 50-60 years the way my life's going.

And that's the problem. I can try to do it, but can't always promise I can keep up with everything either.

[Silverwing Bloodsplash]

Oi. So that's why no one's on when I'm on...