Gene Starwind 21122 wrote:Hey Radical Yue. Sorry about that, I was just trying to reach out to editors that haven't had many reviews, and see if they wanted feedback. I didn't know if they were just shy or what not. I wasn't trying to solicitate to anybody. I will however take your advice and hit up the AMV Announcement thread and also do the link in my signature.Radical_Yue wrote:Gene Starwind 21122 wrote:I'm going to try and see if I can reach out to new editors and help make this place more active like it use to be.
Messaging people in private and asking for Op exchanges isn't the way. It can be taken as solicitation and is not okay.
Your heart is in the right place but if you want to make it more active try commenting on some threads in the AMV Announcement section and link to your Opinion Exchange in your signature.
How would you try to get more people involve? I really want to see this place come alive again.
This is what I've been working on for the past few years since I became a mod and most recently, an admin.
Sadly, it's not as easy as just putting a few opinions out there. A couple problems have already been posted and this has already been discussed numerous times throughout the years but...
1) The website isn't very easy to use for new members. It's outdated, broken, and still heavily relies on multi-steps combined with FTP. They're not used to this. Most new editors don't know what FTP even is. They're used to the simplicity of Youtube with an easy drag, drop and stream option. This prevents people from signing up and posting their videos.
2) A lot of editors don't sign up or get active on the Org because we're still seen as an elitist community, even after all these years. They don't believe they're "good enough" or they think they'll be flamed if they post something silly. We're still quite scary to a lot of people.
3) As Mousebollocks pointed out, not everyone is open to criticism. Not everyone posts or gets involved because they don't want to be told that there is room for improvement. Therefore, they stick to Youtube where they can get their ego stroked at any time.
4) The mentality when it comes to posting and commenting has changed. As already pointed out, it's being more of a drop and run type of atmosphere than it used to be. In the old days you'd post your video, post on other threads to get noticed/involved, and in turn you'd get responses on your work. Now people post their videos and nothing else, then get upset at the lack of activity in their own thread. Both new and old editors have become guilty of this action. It used to be seen as shameful to get less than 3 pages on an announcement post, now you're lucky to get 3 responses.
5) The community is much more spread out. A lot of "community' activity doesn't happen on the forums anymore but in private editor chats on messaging programs such as Skype. That and there are other AMV communities out there such as AMVNews.ru, AMV-France, etc. Not to mention one of the largest and most spread out communities of them all being Youtube. So an editor that might not post a ton on the forums may be incredibly active and well-versed in the community by being involved in chats outside of the forums.
Now, what we're doing to fix this....
We're working on a redesign. This has been something in the works for many, many years but I'm considering this to be the final and best attempt possible. We've got a small team together, headed by a well known and respected member of the community, working their butts off in an attempt to make this a better community for us all. They're not getting paid and I don't want to post their names right here so they don't get any kind of harassment (they're welcome to advertise their involvement if they want) but right now they're the best hope for getting this place out of the current grave it's been dug into.
I've personally been running contests on the Org. CodeZTM started it all with Project Org Editor and we've expanded the number and types of contest we personally host on the Org. The contests have proven to generate activity and a decent amount of first posts are actually sign ups for said contests. It's not a major change but it has helped quite a few people that are currently on the forum get more involved and interested in the community.
That's all we can really do. There isn't a ton that can be done at this time. Until the redesign is completed we're basically trying to advertise a theme park with no rides and moldy cotton candy. No one wants to get involved indepth in something that is broken and unloved. We can still try to get our names out there but in my opinion it doesn't make much of a difference at this point. And this is coming from someone who has been at it for over 3 years now.
