Where is everyone???

I was going to post this as an error report but this is worth a mention.

I've noticed that when you click on the new post, or get a link in an email about a new reply it goes not the newest post, but to the first on. on some posts thats not a problem. On the few images post that can be.

Maybe it's just the dog days of summer.
Traffic is down on some Facebook sites I frequent also.

Here's a theory...

In years past, sites like SWM and others, including my own AU, were insanely busy because those were the only places to find genre material.

Now, with comicbook-inspired material everywhere, our genre sites are less important. Also, many of our discussions have to do with other media as opposed to being focused on original source media.

Under that scenario, fan-created stories and discussion should fall off as a lot of that energy is sucked up by TV and movies. That kind of discussion is inherently less involving than focusing exclusively on fan created material. It also shrinks inward to a smaller core group of .enthusiasts.

It's not like the 90's when our kind of websites were the ONLY place to get a 'beyond the comic book' view of our favorite characters and concepts.

SWM grew rapidly because it basically replaced a number of previously popular sites. But it's possible that even it will contract over time to a small core. Culture, like countries, change fundamentally over time. Even our tiny sub-sub piece of the culture cannot totally escape the winds of change.

Shadar

Hey guys, hope this finds all of you doing well. I have to admit, in the last weeks I was spending lots of time watching the Olympics, specially because of being in Rio. I try to watch the updates, but always reading as quick as possible. Wish you all a nice week

Markiehoe wrote: Maybe it's just the dog days of summer.
Traffic is down on some Facebook sites I frequent also.

I was thinking the same thing.

Yup - same here....no point in logging in. You can access everything you need to with out even putting in a password. I suggested once that all content should be password protected....All except the front page and new posted topics. But there really is no point in logging in unless you are an active member. You can even read the WS stories and vote without signing in

I tried to vote in the poll but couldn't get it to work. But I use Safari which never seems to work as well as a normal browser.

To Fats's question, I wonder whether some of our traffic is migrating over to DA. That's a better platform for sharing images than the forums, and it's a much bigger tent in terms of genres and material, so it's only natural that our community would spend some time over there. I don't see that as a weakness for SWM, just a reality.

I don't agree with the idea of making stories or forums private. On my most recent story, at least one person de-lurked to get involved in the discussion and another said they may now try their hand at writing. That, to me, is the point: create material that makes people want to get involved, rather than restict material to those that are already involved.

[quote="circes_cup" post=49800

To Fats's question, I wonder whether some of our traffic is migrating over to DA. That's a better platform for sharing images than the forums, and it's a much bigger tent in terms of genres and material, so it's only natural that our community would spend some time over there. I don't see that as a weakness for SWM, just a reality.
[/quote]

I'm going to disagree a bit, though I agree in part.

I think the sharing of art is better over at DA, assuredly. I don't share many of my commissions here, mostly as it doesn't seem to work with how I was wired. There's a link to my DA gallery in my profile, and I assume that anyone who wanted to see it has already gone over and done that. Others have shared them here and that always makes me happy (they liked it enough to share, usually w/o knowing it was something I commissioned). My avatar is something I commissioned.

As for stories, DA is a huge crapshoot, and you have to use groups to try to narrow down to stories here. There's a VERY high signal to noise ratio here (lots of GREAT stories in the Library that are EASY to find). Frankly I don't think there is a comparisons, nor do I think you can find so many well written SWM-type stories anywhere else.

Discussion here is FAR better than over at DA, esp on the topic we're all here for. We don't have to explain our fascinations, we're all here for the same reason, even if we all have variations on what we like the most (muscularity, strength, powers, etc). Mostly, we're a positive bunch, and the discourse can vary over the map, but in the end usually we're having some pretty great conversations. Sure we sometimes get a bit too ... at odds on the MCU/DC Movie thing, but even that is like 100x better than you'd get elsewhere (reddit, DA). Castor's graphics on the $ from each movie was phenomenal for example.

Not that I've not had many great conversations over on DA -- but frankly most of those really have been between me and an artist I'm commissioning, and it happened in email outside DA. Then those carry over to some here/there conversations. But overall, nothing like here.

Honestly, this site hasn't been the same since the password issue in Dec 2014 that caused a bunch of folks to not be able to login. If you were around in the "ubergirls" days, you might not have had an e-mail associated with your account and couldn't follow the reset instructions. Hell, even Berkhart had that problem.

A lot of the older folks that generated content don't seem to be around...

I just got back from vacation in San Diego. I bring my old Ipad which does not work well in portrait mode but gets by in landscape. It is a pain to post without a regular keyboard other than just a few words.

By far we have the best bank of stories anywhere. It is unfortunate that we don't hear from the old guys as much as we would like to. Much of that I think is real life getting in the way be it work or family. I have more time now than I ever have had. Motivation is my issue now.

And did I mention that I really, really miss the hit meter? I know I am not the only one.

by the way, what is the cookies thing and what happens if you click on "got it?"

TwiceOnThursdays wrote: ...

As for stories, DA is a huge crapshoot, and you have to use groups to try to narrow down to stories here. There's a VERY high signal to noise ratio here (lots of GREAT stories in the Library that are EASY to find). Frankly I don't think there is a comparisons, nor do I think you can find so many well written SWM-type stories anywhere else.
...

I have to disagree a bit here. While there's clearly a bigger focus on 'our' genre here than at DA, there are a few issues here as well.
For example it's not that easy to find stories of a certain author here. Especially when it's not part of a bigger series. You actually have to sort the stories by author name and then start searching manually. Not helped by the fact that the name after which the author name is sorted is not the nickname we always see - it's part of the software, but that doesn't make it less frustrating. For example you won't find AuGoose's stories withing the first hundred stories there.
Then I miss the 'Classic' library views that allowed a better browsing through the stories. I remember the people being quite happy when I introduced that possibility about 4 years ago. Now it's been removed and the alternative is frustrating. When I now go into the 'Sort by date' view, then I see it sorted ascending meaning that it starts with the oldest story rather than the ones in the ticker.
Another point are comments, at some point we had a ticker similar to the new stories which was dropped when the comments were temporarily lost. Then a forum with the same idea was created and now runs in parallel with the reactivated comments. But that's probably not an issue because feedback has always been scarce here, while there's more of it on DA - even with our limited genre.

Question: How's the development on new stories here? Were there more or less new stories than in the year before?

On another note, I think this community focussed a little too much on the Supergirl TV series. Having a separate sub-forum dedicated to it is one thing, but it dominating the ticker so much that it had to receive it's own is a bit misleading for any new arrival making this seem like just another Supergirl Fan site.

The lack of comments was the very reason I really liked the hit meter. If 100, 250 or 5000 folks were reading what I had written, that was all the feedback that I needed.

Personally, I've just been out-of-town a lot on business this summer and haven't had time to come here very often. I've been home the past few weeks but will be back out on the road again next week.

Really, the only time I've had to do on here for the past few months was argue against the hate campaign of the DCEU.

ace191 wrote: The lack of comments was the very reason I really liked the hit meter. If 100, 250 or 5000 folks were reading what I had written, that was all the feedback that I needed.

I'm somewhat dubious of the value of the hit counter as useful feedback, since a lot of the hits (I suspect) are from search engine indexing bots.

What I've found much more satisfying, over on DeviantArt, is when people "favorite" my stories, especially when they add them to their own collections. Then I know for sure that someone actually likes them! (Unless, I suppose, it's a collection of "stories I hate", but so far I don't think I've seen any collections like that.)

It would be nice if there was an easy-to-use equivalent to DA's favorites and collections here on SWM.

The last page of the top hit getters had the vast majority of the best stories ever written and published on this site. It may not have been numerically accurate, but it certainly appeared to be an excellent relative measure.