Major Overhaul of Writer's Corner Please???

[Kumo]

I've been around the forums for a while, but for the most part I hang out in the Writer's Corner. First off, let me say that forum is one of the more popular forums on the net. It has decent traffic and a very respectable post count. But I do have one complaint about how it is currently organized. I feel that the forum is catered more towards those that write poetry than fanfics (I'm a fanfic writer myself). It is much easier to write poetry than a chapter of a story, and thus the stories get knocked down and forgotten rather quickly.

What I suggest is to make a subforum for Poetry and stuff like that, and let the original stories and fanfics stay in the main forum. The admins over at FF Worlds Apart have tried this and it has worked successfully for them. The new forum they created is going strong and the regular forum is doing much better (We've reached about 10000 replies!). Traffic is also very high too, three times as much as it is over here. You could also perhaps make two seperate forums for poetry as well. The choice is up to you. I feel that it will be very beneficial to the culture of this site and to the traffic browsing it's many forums. I know you admins could probably care less about the Writers Corner, but please take this into consideration.

[Shira]

Well... I've thought about this before but the Writer's Corner will be split too much as we don't have enough people there right now. There are a lot of posts, yes, but it's all the same people. Me, Bannor, Spatvark, harlequil, Calliope, Del Murder, Zypher, and occasionally OWA.

It would be kind of inconvenient, I think, and we might lose some poetry or story readers because they may be dedicated to reading one type.

I think it's fine as it is. The poetry is pushing the stories down, but not so much anymore, and I don't think they would get any more read if they were at the top of the forum. The people who actually consistantly read stories are mostly those who would read it regardless of whether it's at the top or not.

One thing I'd like, though, is if people labeled their threads, "poem" "fanfic" or "original story". I have to click on the thread to know, and with my slow-slow-slow phone modem, it's annoying.

[Griever]

I think it's just because people enjoy writing poetry more. It's shorter, less time-consuming etc. Fanfictions are full stories that need a Start, Middle and End. So a lot of people don't have time for it. I pop into the Writers Corner occasionally and usually just read poems. I don't know why though.

[Agent Proto]

You know, I just have a good idea. :D I'm going to get this into staff asap.

[Zypher]

I agree that it should not be done. We have too few people in the Writer's Forum as it is, and that might cause some to leave. As long as the writer keeps adding to the Fanfic in a timely manner, it'll stay fairly high anyway. Also, the fanfic forum would likely be close to empty (or at best have a few large threads); like Griever said, more people write poetry than fanfics/stories (for the reasons he said).
One thing I'd like, though, is if people labeled their threads, "poem" "fanfic" or "original story". I have to click on the thread to know, and with my slow-slow-slow phone modem, it's annoying.That's a very good idea. I do that myself when I can remember, put I haven't posted up much anyway.

[Griever]

I think he just stole your idea Kumo. Get 'im, get 'im quick. *barks*

[Loony BoB]

I personally don't like the idea of changing the Writer's Corner. I mean, look at the Study Hall. You want to increase traffic to the WRITER'S CORNER? *dies*

[Bannor]

Well personally I dont thin it would be that bad actually. Only a few people actually read novels, and I think if we separated the fora, it would greatly help the whole bump down thing... But that is my own opinion. Personally I dont think any readers would stop reading... We could do a survey in the writers corner though.

[Kumo]

Why do you think people prune plants? Why do they get rid of the strong parts of the plant even though it might hurt it? You want to know why? Because it gives everything an equal chance to survive. It is better to separate the two now and see how it goes than to wait till a time comes where nobody posts fanfics anymore because poetry is the only thing being read. If you separate the forums, one is surely to thrive. If one dies, then so be it. You can't continue letting it be this way or both will die out eventually.

I think that both poems and fics have their own separate audiences, so at least those people will continue to support each forum.

[Citizen Bleys]

Originally posted by Shira
Well... I've thought about this before but the Writer's Corner will be split too much as we don't have enough people there right now. There are a lot of posts, yes, but it's all the same people. Me, Bannor, Spatvark, harlequil, Calliope, Del Murder, Zypher, and occasionally OWA.


EoFF started out with just a few people. It doesn't matter if it's the same people posting replies every time--it's still activity, and every bit as valid as if you never saw two posts from the same person.

Moreso, I think. Repeat customers means you have a good business going, and you're serving your customers well. A lot of customers you don't know simply means you're a good liar--you can catch anybody once, but once they go home and find out they've been ripped off, they never come back.

At least, not without the police.

Yeah.

[Kumo]

So I guess my request is going to go unheard and uncared for. Well, I do have other sites I go to that I like better, but I always wanted to help EOFF's fanfic forum become something better.

I challenge any of you to take a look at the writers corner now and find any type of organization there. Tis chaos . . . poems, originals, fanfics . . spam threads. Where are the mods? I thought at least that they would do their jobs. Ehh, guess I'll do what I've been doing these last couple months. I'll check up on EOFF sporadically and see if anything has gotten better in the Writers Corner.

[Del Murder]

Personally I only really look at the poetry in the Writer's Corner. Or the occasional original story. I don't read the fanfics when they involve characters from video games, they just don't appeal to me. But I think splitting it might be a bad idea since it already gets very little traffic as it is. Then again, who ever goes to Xenogears?

[Garland]

Unheard and uncared for = 0 replies

Your thread = 12 replies

12 replies = lots of attention and concideration.

Disagreeing doesn't equal not caring.

[Kumo]

Del Murder, you prove my point exactly. You only go there for poems basically, so a separate forum would benefit you. You could browse through the forum at your leisure and choose whatever poem you like.

I don't think the admins or other people are seeing this in the long run. Just because there is no traffic now doesn't mean there won't be any in the future. If you create a forum catering to writers and authors, more will come and post. Having only a few people to start with is great. I've helped to start forums from scratch and now they are 500% busier than they were a year ago. I'm working on another forum at the moment and it is showing much promise. If you are worried about the time it would take to move all the poems and stories into their respective forums, I'd be happy to temp mod and help move them into each forum.

Please check out the fanfic forums and original fic/poetry forums at www.ffnet.net so it can be proved to you that something like this can work and work well. All I'm asking for is a test run. If it fails, you can always merge everything back into one forum, but if it succeeds, you'll get more traffic, and tons more memembers.

[Citizen Bleys]

Originally posted by Garland
Unheard and uncared for = 0 replies

Your thread = 12 replies

12 replies = lots of attention and concideration.

Disagreeing doesn't equal not caring.

That's what I was going to say, except I wasn't going to be quite so good at saying it.

The Writer's Corner is FAR from underattended by Staff. Even if there weren't dabbler writers like myself on Staff, we'd have people like Spatvark, Bannor, and yourself to keep us on our toes :D

The system works well right now. If it isn't broken, don't fix it. If/when we see an influx of traffic to the Writer's Corner, subforums may become a possibility. I'm not nixing the idea (The Staff would be furious with me if I did something like that unilaterally), I'm just saying that I don't think that it's the appropriate course of action at this point in time.

[Spatvark]

The problem with the Writer's Corner isn't the organistaion, it's just the lack of writers on EoFF, it's as simple as that. There are currently 3 serious writers of stories there (Zypher, Harlequil and Shira), 2 people who pop in every now and then (Proto and Bleys), then you get those who don't really show up all that much there (Solphie, Moed'dep, Kumo... even me these days) and a few others whose names escape me...

That's 12 people I count... add Calliope, Del Murder and Bannor, that's 15... and now you see the problem we have, we have 15 people who go into the Writer's Corner...

That's why I'm not even gonna bother running the EoFF Writer's Awards at all this year since there is nobody to vote for really... hardly anyone actually cares

What we need is more writers and we just don't seem to entice them here; they're all on FF:WA and FWF (They're a sort of renegade breakaway faction of FF:WA who focus on writing) with a few on Legardinia as well

Basically, I think EoFF's writing section is always going to be fairly small unless someone accidentally stumbles onto here... *gets thinking evil thoughts about Pulsar*

[Dr Unne]

I agree with Spatvark. I hardly go there myself except when I write something. Which is once or twice a year. Or when I want to talk about a new book that's coming out. Or if I'm bored one day. Compare that to the Artist forum where we have tons and tons of posts. There isn't much difference between the two forums except we seem to have a lot of artists here and not many writers. Whatyagonnado. Doesn't seem to be an organizational problem.

[Kumo]

I haven't gotten a new post in my fic for more than 2 months. 5 chapters have gone without being read. You guys have to release how easy it is to post in a poetry thread instead of a fic. Most people do that because its a easy way to get their post count up. I mean, have you ever seen an actual critique of a poem? Probably not. It is usually praise for the writer, asking the writer if he/she is okay, or empty praise. Don't forget the common one liner that sneaks into the threads either once in a while.

So okay, let's say that there isn't an organizational problem, or a lack of writers and poets . . . In my opinion its the moderators of that forum that aren't doing to good a job. Certain posts are made that shouldn't be there, and spam usually goes undetected (cause people don't read the majority of whats posted there). Hell, is there even a moderator just for that forum? Or is this whole site run by supermods? Not saying thats a bad practice, but for fanfic it is. Writers need attention, not a watchful eye always viewing them. And besides Bleys who sometimes pops in to write something, most admins or supermods could care less about a Writers Corner unless it was to their own gain (they wanted to get their own stuff read when they post it).

Anyways, I think I'm done bitching for the moment.

[Garland]

There isn't a mod limited to any forum. Any mod can work any forum s/he chooses. If in fact writer's Corner does get less attention from the staff, it's because it gets less attention by the members. I'm pretty sure keeping up with General and EoEO is a full day's work in itself. There's a bit of spam that goes uncriticized in every thread. Sometimes, you just have to set priorities.

[Dr Unne]

Spam goes on in every forum, not just the Writer's Corner. The Mods don't have 20 hours a day to constantly check every thread on the MB for spam. We take care of it when we see it. If you see something that a Mod missed you can let one know, that'd be nice. I fail to see how a slight (very slight) lack of Modding could result in a forum getting LESS traffic. If anything the place should be brimming with tons of spam, if no Mods ever went there.