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Where is everyone????

28 Jul 2017 16:10 #55496 by fats
Where is everyone???? was created by fats
Hi all,

I've noticed that the number on the site has dropped, just looking through the site stats and found that we are down by a third, is there a new site that people are visiting that I'm not aware off or is there something else that has caused the loss of membership.

Even the discord chat room has died down, the Role play room has also died down.

I'm really concerned, please let me know what if anything that I need to sort to make the site more attractive.

Fats

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28 Jul 2017 16:34 #55497 by paul
Replied by paul on topic Where is everyone????
Summer Time?
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28 Jul 2017 16:48 #55498 by theomach
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Number of new stories are also down.

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28 Jul 2017 17:20 #55499 by slim36
Replied by slim36 on topic Where is everyone????
summer vacation? Does the server keep any analytics on where the visitors are?

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28 Jul 2017 17:23 #55500 by Pepper
Replied by Pepper on topic Where is everyone????

paul wrote: Summer Time?

...and the livin' is easy.

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28 Jul 2017 17:42 #55501 by fats
Replied by fats on topic Where is everyone????
the analytics has geo and tech info on all users so I know where you are and what computer and os and browser you are using.

Fats

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28 Jul 2017 18:44 #55502 by AuGoose
Replied by AuGoose on topic Where is everyone????
I had about two solid weeks of hosting houseguests and then the San Diego Comic Con. I'm still recuperating from all that, but the uberbabe writing itch has been steadily growing... ^_^

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28 Jul 2017 19:04 #55503 by shadar
Replied by shadar on topic Where is everyone????
Some of us are still here and as active as always. But it appears SWM is "gentrifying" in the way that most predecessor sites have done. By which I mean a small handful of enthusiasts remain active, with a declining audience of folks who read but rarely contribute.

Diana Valkyrie went that way, the Aurora Universe has gone that way, etc.

Part of that is that the culture around us changes, but a core of strong contributors don't (want to). Hell, even Facebook is probably going that way over time, given that most GenZers and increasingly GenYers are moving in other directions. Part of being on the Internet.

We also live in a world where superheroines are everywhere in media, entertainment, etc. etc.

Or maybe it's just summer. I guess you'll know by December.

As far as stories, I have new stuff in the works. Will try to get something finished enough to post in the next few weeks. They will be novella in size, and instead of posting portions incrementally like I used to, I want to wrap it up before I post. I'm practicing for preparing finished works to sell on Amazon (for a song).

Shadar
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28 Jul 2017 20:01 #55504 by Agent00Soul
Replied by Agent00Soul on topic Where is everyone????
Ironically, I've been posting more than usual this week.

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28 Jul 2017 20:08 #55505 by fats
Replied by fats on topic Where is everyone????
I just wanted to say that this thread is not calling out people for not being more active, I just wanted to know if there is a reason why the site has gone quiet.

Shadar, I have to disagree with you there, If the site has become "gentrified" then there need to be major changes needed to make it more reverent to people, maybe we need to get rid of the forums and replace it with a twitter feed or Facebook style. Maybe we need to change the library from long form stories to short form stories.

I do not want this site to fade into the background because the members have lost interest in the site, or have "evolved" and are looking for something new, we should and can evolve with them.

If evolution is what's needed, I need to know what they want the site to evolve into.

Fats

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28 Jul 2017 20:41 - 29 Jul 2017 02:56 #55508 by shadar
Replied by shadar on topic Where is everyone????

fats wrote: I just wanted to say that this thread is not calling out people for not being more active, I just wanted to know if there is a reason why the site has gone quiet.

Shadar, I have to disagree with you there, If the site has become "gentrified" then there need to be major changes needed to make it more reverent to people, maybe we need to get rid of the forums and replace it with a twitter feed or Facebook style. Maybe we need to change the library from long form stories to short form stories.

I do not want this site to fade into the background because the members have lost interest in the site, or have "evolved" and are looking for something new, we should and can evolve with them.

If evolution is what's needed, I need to know what they want the site to evolve into.

Fats


I wasn't trying to say you shouldn't evolve and innovate. To keep a large membership, you need to. But it can come with a price. I wasn't willing to alienate my original members to get new ones. So, to paraphrase Tolkien's Elves, "I faded away into the West" by deliberate choice.

You may make a very different choice, perhaps to stand upon the highest parapets of Minas Tirith in Gondor with banners flying.

Which could be a story itself. Perhaps the previously unheralded daughter of Galadriel lives secretly in Minas Tirith, pretending to be human. She possesses a very different kind of Ring of Power, for when she slips it on, she becomes physically powerful and invincible beyond the furthest boundaries of ordinary Elfdom, her feet so light she can soar with the Eagles. Yet she has her mother's golden heart, shining through her raiment like a star.

It was not her time to face the Dark Lord in the Lhord of the Rings, so she was not in Tolkien's story. But now, a new Great Evil casts its eyes on MiddleEarth. Her time has now come.

Shadar
Last edit: 29 Jul 2017 02:56 by Monty. Reason: I don't think SWM needs a major change as it holds up well. Perhaps the downturn in new contributions has something to do with it?

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28 Jul 2017 22:17 #55512 by ace191
Replied by ace191 on topic Where is everyone????
Out of curiosity, did this start around the time of the last workshop?

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28 Jul 2017 22:21 #55513 by fats
Replied by fats on topic Where is everyone????
the drop off started a few days after the winning announcement took place.

Fats

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28 Jul 2017 22:51 #55514 by rebel4life
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Inner migration.

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28 Jul 2017 23:51 #55516 by brantley
Replied by brantley on topic Where is everyone????
AURG is close to dead. No comments on updates to The Bright Empire. If the people there emigrated, however, it wasn't to here. Maybe to sites devoted strictly to comic book movies, most of which don't interest me.. But then again, maybe the kind of thing I write and that Shadar and others used to write doesn't appeal to them.

--Brantleyt

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28 Jul 2017 23:54 #55517 by ace191
Replied by ace191 on topic Where is everyone????
I am not surprised by that. That workshop left a bit of a burning taste in my mouth. It was really hard and only 4 of 10 projected entries came in. Had I not teamed up with Argo I would have done the same thing that two other authors came up with which was to use the teleportation power to get more powers. Had I done that, there would have been 3 very similar stories.

In general, I think it was very restrictive and stifled creativity as evidenced by 75% of the authors coming up with the same idea and several authors not submitting their works. To be truthful, I didn't care much for the reviews and I really wanted to say, "Hey, let's see you come up with a story on teleportation or worse, Super Intuition which is what Argo originally got.
I was working on another story which I have not as yet started back on. I need to get back to it. Just in a bit of a funk.

Ace

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29 Jul 2017 00:44 #55518 by Markiehoe
Replied by Markiehoe on topic Where is everyone????
It is kind of tough for the people that are here to respond why people have left'
Why not seek out active and semi active members that no longer visit and contact them?
I assume you have a data base of e-mails.

On a personal note I almost left Superwomanmaina when the Peril video producers Bluestone were given freedom to pedal their garbage on this site.

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29 Jul 2017 12:27 #55523 by brantley
Replied by brantley on topic Where is everyone????
So who invited Bluestone?

--Brantley

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29 Jul 2017 12:47 #55525 by Woodclaw
Replied by Woodclaw on topic Where is everyone????

Markiehoe wrote: It is kind of tough for the people that are here to respond why people have left'
Why not seek out active and semi active members that no longer visit and contact them?
I assume you have a data base of e-mails.


One of the big problems is that often people doesn't update their e-mails and many accounts have out of date informations that makes more complicate to contact the users.

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29 Jul 2017 13:52 #55526 by circes_cup
Replied by circes_cup on topic Where is everyone????
It's a hard question to answer, Fats, because we never know whether our opinions are widely shared. Ace didn't like the parameters of the workshop, but that didn't bother me. Markiehoe didn't like the advertising of peril stuff here, but I didn't even know that was going on.. I personally think that improvements to the library would make a big difference, but there are active participants here who wouldn't agree with me.

When I take a step back and ask, "what are most people doing in the genre", it seems to me that most people are staring at imagery on DeviantArt. Obviously, 3d rendering technology has improved greatly over the last twenty years.. When the AU was started, the best way to enjoy all superwoman stuff was through stories. Now, people can produce, and view, really slick visuals in ways they couldn't only a few years ago.

To give an example, I posted LaPorte Caves to DeviantArt as it was being written. Then, as the story postings began to dwindle, I started posting Lowerbase's visual art on the same subject. The number of people "favoriting" and "watching" me on DA quadrupled. People want the visuals.

And if people want visuals, then maybe that is an area to focus. You could transforms teh "few images" into a proper gallery, with tags and thumbnail views and the other normal gallery stuff. But I dont'w know if it's realistic. There's work involved in creating that infrasturcture. And there's cost involved in bandwidth-intensive images and videos. But I expect that having a high quality gallery would be attractive to the site's historical audience as well as new participants.
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29 Jul 2017 15:29 #55527 by Woodclaw
Replied by Woodclaw on topic Where is everyone????

circes_cup wrote: It's a hard question to answer, Fats, because we never know whether our opinions are widely shared. Ace didn't like the parameters of the workshop, but that didn't bother me. Markiehoe didn't like the advertising of peril stuff here, but I didn't even know that was going on.. I personally think that improvements to the library would make a big difference, but there are active participants here who wouldn't agree with me.

When I take a step back and ask, "what are most people doing in the genre", it seems to me that most people are staring at imagery on DeviantArt. Obviously, 3d rendering technology has improved greatly over the last twenty years.. When the AU was started, the best way to enjoy all superwoman stuff was through stories. Now, people can produce, and view, really slick visuals in ways they couldn't only a few years ago.

To give an example, I posted LaPorte Caves to DeviantArt as it was being written. Then, as the story postings began to dwindle, I started posting Lowerbase's visual art on the same subject. The number of people "favoriting" and "watching" me on DA quadrupled. People want the visuals.

And if people want visuals, then maybe that is an area to focus. You could transforms teh "few images" into a proper gallery, with tags and thumbnail views and the other normal gallery stuff. But I dont'w know if it's realistic. There's work involved in creating that infrasturcture. And there's cost involved in bandwidth-intensive images and videos. But I expect that having a high quality gallery would be attractive to the site's historical audience as well as new participants.


I think that Circes makes a very good point here: SWM is a hybrid site. We are a story repository, a gallery of sorts, a forum and a lot of other things. BEing a hybrid we survive crisis a lot better than other realities, but we are also more susceptible to problems since each and every user is looking for something different.

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29 Jul 2017 17:04 #55528 by shadar
Replied by shadar on topic Where is everyone????
If you approach this from the classic marketing perspective, we have to ask what portions of the potential "market" are not being adequately serviced by TV, movies and other Net sites.

I personally find that there is very little decent material which crosses over ubergirls and SciFi and/or high fantasy.

Star Wars with ubergirls on both sides.

Tolkien with beautiful, ultra-powerful Elves taking on unspeakable evil (along with lots of Orcs and a Balrog or two).

Star Trek with alien ubergirl NSFW themes on exotic planets.

Firefly where Inara or Kaylee or River gains incredible physical powers (even pheromones in Inara's case). .

And so on...

Very little decent material in those areas out there in recent years. But I can't speak for the size of the audience except from my personal interest in such themes.

Shadar

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29 Jul 2017 17:42 #55529 by thedoc9
Replied by thedoc9 on topic Where is everyone????
I work two jobs in the spring/summer (office work during the week, guitarist/singer on weekends). Trying to save up for a nice vacation this fall. Nothing about going elsewhere, or any complaints. Just really busy.

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29 Jul 2017 22:38 #55531 by d_k_c
Replied by d_k_c on topic Where is everyone????
I'm surprised that this site doesn't have a dedicated photo gallery. Gotta go to SHQ for that, but I cant imagine it would be terribly hard to do. Or if there's a good reason as to why its not done.

Unlike Ace, I really liked the WS. A story, I had no intention of writing, was written because of Fats list. I had a lot of fun writing it.

That being said, i'm unlikely to participate again. It reminded me of a time when I taped Sunday night football. Had nearly $1000 on the Packers to win. I was So excited to watch the game, got my nacho's made, bowl of salsa and sour cream flanking either side....Turn the game on, and my wife comes downstairs and says "I bet your happy the packers won". I was glad the packers won, but.....now there was no point in watching the game. The thrill of it was gone - I confirmed on my phone that my team won. Even the nacho's didn't taste good anymore.

That's kind of how I felt about this WS. I have no idea how many votes were cast. I have no idea if I was second third or fourth..I have no idea if I got blown away, or if it was close..Just that I lost. Which i'm certainly fine with, but it certainly did put a spear through any competitive spirit. Which unfortunately, is my main drive for the WS.

Other than that, I find that there's no need to log in unless I intend to post something. Everything is available without logging in. I don't know if logging in directly effects the stats.

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29 Jul 2017 23:07 - 29 Jul 2017 23:08 #55532 by shadar
Replied by shadar on topic Where is everyone????
I also liked the contests better when you could see a running total each time I checked in on the votes leading up to the closing day of the vote. That provided some suspense and even a chance for someone who was a few votes behind to talk up their story a bit.

The visible vote stats were basically just frozen on the vote deadline day. At least it was that way the last time I participated, which has been a while.

The current black-box "winner only" approach leaves me numb. It's also probably intimidating to new writers. One of the most pleasurable things for a new writer is to see people voting for your story, even if you don't win. That says you pleased some folks, and that's gold-plated encouragement for a writer.

I know I've had periods when I was thrilled if a single person enjoyed what I wrote. Just one person who liked it best was all it took to make me happy.

Shadar
Last edit: 29 Jul 2017 23:08 by shadar.
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