Idea Discord Channel

The down sides to discord are the same as the ones we brought up when it was discussed for the convention thing.

1. While chat line conversations can be logged and stored, they quickly become unsorted data in large quantities. Forums threads might not be an ideal data tracking system, but at the very least, threads have topics. Even still, people do commonly post questions that have already been discussed to death... this is why we purposely have review/feedback sections and specific threads for each story and/or character and ask that people find the existing one instead of make a new one. This helps consolidate information so it is available in the future. This is actually necessary because its not uncommon for authors to field a question with an answer that we just 'made up' on the spot based on what we already do know (what, you thought we had ALL the answers written down already? hahahahaha). If we started doing that in chat, even WE wouldn't know a given question had been answered in the past to go looking for it.

2. Conversations in chat are dependent to people being present at the moment that someone has a question or wants to chat. With a forums, that 'hit' period is based on the interval between your visit and your next visit. People are far less to come back regularly if there is no conversation within the interval of their visit on a forum... but with chat, its if they log on and no one is there. It takes a LARGE audience to cover a chat room adequately 24/7. Self-sustaining conversation happens with between 3-7 people online, if you assume the average person is in chat for 2-3 hours 3 times a week, you need 50-150 people committed to using chat. At the moment, we dont have that many actively posting on the forums.

3. Running a forums and chat at the same time is problematic. People will post in the forums and then talk about the forums thread in chat. One or two posts will happen in the forums, but because the discussion will happen in chat, it will appear as though no one cares to respond in the forums.


Are there benefits to having chat? Yes. But most of them are more appropriate to a more active community responding to something that is happening at a higher pace (like responding to streaming video - of a game, or of art being created, etc). Because we only release content once or twice a week... 'most' of the week the forums are quiet except behind the scenes. And sometimes even then. Even at our peak and pushing out three stories per week... we were probably only barely hitting on the necessary 'new' content to support chat.

But many of the benefits of chat will come at a cost to our forums community. And given that the site and forums community isn't exactly thriving right now (the difference between our release day/night hits and the rest of the week, right now, is significant). People are coming to read the stories and thats it. They're not participating in the community.

I think the best estimate of whether it 'works' without hurting the existing system will be to watch the feedback/comments counts.

But the solution to activity in the quad isn't so much 'different' options as it is a revival of audience activity in general. Whether that means more story output to require more visits or better 'marketing' to draw new audiences in... I'm not sure. I think 'all' online story sites have been hit by the introduction of Amazon Kindle / Unlimited independent publication. People who ten years ago were publishing all their work on web sites for free are now publishing under the unlimited program where its 'free' to the reader (within their subscription program) but the author gets paid based on number of people reading their material. That's reducing the number of new authors participating and giving 'free readers' more material to reach for ... less time to talk about things while they wait for the next installments to come out.

My thoughts, anyway. I'm not sure whether there are statistics to back the observation.


Not that we'd try to stop someone if they want to put the time into to give something like this a shot. The only 'official' input I'd like to put in is that you acknowledge that (like the WIKI) it is fan-run so discussions may or may not be canon and shouldn't be accepted as word of god unless the old bearded guy appears in the midst of a burning bush and starts dictating. (Note: if he does, please put in a good word for changeling style manifestations for those of us who want them). Also, please authorize mods to verify and contain author and protagonist character names as 'property' of their author. If you are unsure that someone is 'really' the author, I have email contact with authors or can ask for PM / forums verification of them here for you. Just PM me.

I don't know the state of financial strength of our average reader... but I've generally operated on the logic that "what I don't have, won't attract people who try to take it away". I mostly live paycheck to paycheck, my student loan debt continues to rise because my income based payment plan doesn't even pay for the interest accumulating on my loans. I don't own a house (I rent), a car (I walk, use Lyft, or take public transit), and I have minimal furniture to 'fill' my studio apartment. My computer is easily the most expensive thing in my apartment... and its a six year old system that I built for under a grand.

If someone wants to hack me and/or steal my identity, they can have it. I'll happily let them have all of this one and build up a new one from scratch. I'm not worth the time to hack and I don't have access to anything worth taking my identity for, sadly. Except maybe this site... and I suspect that by this point Malady has local copies of all the things (eyes Malady suspiciously).