It's been a fortnight, I turned 21, and the poll has had a fantastic turnout of 88 (so far).
While the votes have not changed much in terms of what people think about the slowdown, it seems that the forum has perked itself up anyway (as I thought it might). Great work, people: keep it up!
You can find my original analysis of the situation and what we could do about it
. Below is an updated version of it:
×1) DROD's infrastructure needs oiling
There are still lots of things that need doing in DROD and on these forums, for example, setting up the RPG hold publishing system and getting the latest TCB patches out.
Mike has asked if anyone is interested in helping to develop DROD, and I second that. Get in contact with the Caravel team and lend us your skills!
2) Holds need testing
Testers keep the whole DROD pool going. As we've all seen, no testers = no holds = no players. However, recent activity indicates architects are getting their hard hats on again and starting to dig out more fiendish puzzles to test us with. If you've got some time, please help with the testing over at the Architecture board. Some of the smaller alpha projects include
Gobrid's Dungeon,
Tar Dungeon, and
Metal Dungeon, while
Homeward Adventure is impressively large and needs some level re-sorting before it can go into beta.
For players wanting to play finished holds, we've had three new ones in the last week, including
The Old School,
Grud's Dungeon and
El Dorado. Please leave a comment if you can; I'm sure the architects will appreciate it greatly!
And, finally, if you do have some spare mod points, please do spend them on the testers and commenters to keep the whole cycle going!
3) (New) people are intimidated by the community/unhappy about specific things here
I have to say I am sorry that I nearly caused an argument here, but if we all busy ourselves with posting constructively, creating new stuff and playing DROD, we hopefully shouldn't have time for this sort of thing. We all like to play DROD and we all like to visit the forum. Let's keep it that way!
In addition, I continue to agree that a more newbie-friendly introduction to the Forums and DROD would be a good idea. There have been suggestions, for example, that we might want to change the Arnold thread into something else that is less confusing, and having more guides like
Jacob's would help give people a better intiation into what is a reasonably complex game and community. RoboBob's suggestion to cut the number of boards is also a good idea, although perhaps hiding them by default might be a better way to archive them (since deletion appears to be quite a contentious issue).
Also, I'd just like to mention that zwetchenwasser, on behalf of
this department, continues to do a fine job of enthusiastically welcoming people. Keep it up!
4) People don't feel they can contribute to the community
Consistently the #1 option (or nearly so) in the poll, this is clearly a significant issue here. From my point of view, it seems a general posting slowdown plus the odd negative criticism gives everyone the impression that creative work isn't appreciated here, even though this is not true at all.
Please don't be afraid to share your stuff with the rest of us! Whether it's a
hold,
mod,
DRODistic art,
other visual art,
music, or even
amusing DROD movies, I'm sure we're all keen to see your creations! Plus, if you see something you like, don't be afraid to post back to say so. As CSR says, even a short comment is feedback, and feedback is what drives inspiration!
Finally, having a few more site editors around might also be a good idea, since what better place could there be to showcase all of that aforementioned creativity? Matt, Patrick and anyone else who worked on the site have done a great job maintaining it (kudos are indeed still in order), but we all have limited time to do such things (as the poll indicates) and we definitely don't want volunteer burnout if we can avoid it.
5) More admins would be nice
Once again, as outstanding members of the community, our admins have always fully deserved their statuses and worked hard to keep the community going through the years. But, as Ryan and Jeremy point out, our current admins may be strapped for time (many of them have other DRODistic responsibilities as well), and having some new moderators to help out might free up some time for them. Even if it is just to seed mod points around liberally, it would definitely be a bonus.
6) "DROD simply isn't getting out there, to the people who would be interested in it"
One thing I have learnt is that marketing can be more important than the product itself sometimes. As DROD's community will always need replenishing as it grows, marketing remains important to us for all kinds of reasons.
It appears that the
marketing team was never active. While the Press Clippings board does show some activity on that front, I think we really still need someone (or a group of people) to consider our marketing strategy to get DROD out there. It would also help Mike free up more time for development!
Finally, on the subject of Illuminations, I shall simply quote Mike: "
Keep up the good work, ol' chap!"
.
Aww. I wasn't referring to you. The "incident" you refer to only happened because of a minor edit to a room that had already been tested. Even I wouldn't be so demanding as that! But having an architect test the original hold and any major additions shouldn't be too much to ask.
Plus, we need to actually advertise and not just talk about the need for it (oh, the irony)
