Does EN World need a change of focus?

[Umbran]

I don't know if it's my place to speak, being that I'm a lowly registered user...

Well, first off, there's no such thing as a "lowly registered user". The only thing that separates a registered user from a community supporter is a bit of spending cash. In about a month, I'm getting married. That means I'm short of cash and when my membership runs out in October I'm not terribly likely to have the bucks to spare to renew it. Then, I'll be just like you.

It's often very hard for me to take a lot of the things in online communities seriously, mostly because it seems that no one is interested in what I have to say, and it gets tiresome to talk to nobody.

Well, as far as I can tell, that's how most people start out. I felt the same way when I started posting. I had posting habits similar to those you describe. At some undefineable point, the feeling that I was talking to nobody dissolved away.

We must remember that while this place is a community, it is a largish one. When I talk about "community" here, I don't mean the feeling that I'm known by each and every member, or that I know everyone who posts, or even a large fraction of them.

"Community" in a fannish sense is something a touch more distant than that. It's a knowledge that we are all here for basically the same reason, and that we have a few things in common with the other folks here, and that we are willing to work together in some siimple ways to help each other enjoy ourselves a little bit.

That said, I don't really come to EN World for the comraderie. I'm grateful when I find it, but I don't expect it, nor do I deliberately search for it.

Honestly, nor do I. But it is the camraderie that makes the place function. I don't come here for it, but if it weren't here, I would not return. Without comraderie, the place would degenerate into every other flame-filled online forum, and it would become nigh useless.

There seems to be a lot of pressure and guilt-tripping to make me feel like I have to do something (usually donating money) to prove my worth to be among the community.

For a very, very long time I was not a community supporter, and I did not feel such pressure. I am not sure where your feeling is comeing from.

Recently, there's also been a lot of talk about how ungrateful "we" are and not a lot of people asking what EN World means to the people who come here and what they would like to see done or what they would like to do to support EN World.

Well, that's largely because every once in a while some folks (publishers and fans alike) do start getting a little ungrateful. They forget that this place runs on volunteer labor, and start to feel they are entitled to things. Humans, by nature, tend to slide into such behavior unless they are occasionally reminded that there's things beyond themselves to consider.

As for asking what people feel about the place, and what they want - isn't that what this thread is all about? In large part, isn't that what the whole Meta Forum is about?

As for my ideas on how to give EN World more focus or to make it work more cohesively, I have some half-formed ideas floating around in my head, and most of them center around solidifying what it means to be a part of the EN World community and how you define supporting that community.

I'd be interested, but I have some doubts.

My doubts (and the reason I said EN World doesn't need to refocus) lie in one simple fact - there's 22,000 registered users and some hundreds of them are active. While we have our commonalities, we also have our differences. Lots of them. We're talking about "herding cats" here. It seems most reasonable to give them some broad frameworks - like the dividing lines among fora - and from there allow them to collectively find what they want. Anything else is highly likely to be problematic.

If you have thoughts as how to get these cats to all move in one direction, and I think that direction is a useful one, I'll be all ears

 

[Mouseferatu]

Well, I come to ENWorld pretty much every day. I check the D20 news, I check product reviews, but the majority of my time is spent in the forums. Discussions of upcoming or recent products, rules clarifications, hyping my own work (I admit it, yes), and just virtually hanging out with other gamers...

EN World doesn't need to change focus, just tighten it. To me, the community is the single most important part of ENWorld. I want the news and reviews to stay--those are, in that order, priorities number 2 and 3. But number 1 is, by far, the forums. Keep those, and EN World prospers, IMO.

I like the idea of setting up formal galleries, to make the maps and other material more easily accessable and user-friendly. (I suggested much the same in a thread on the main page some days back.)

I can support the idea of ditching the ENnies. I like the fact that they exist, and I'd love to see them continue, but they seem to be the single greatest source of problems, financial and personal, for Morrus and co. If that's so, I say boot them, and fast.

Also, I have to suggest that if EN World is tightening focus, that we stop the drift into covering non-D20/OGL games. I know they're popular, and I'm not saying discussion of them should be disallowed on the main page. But I don't believe we should have reviews for them, or anything else specifically dedicated to them. (That includes an ENnie, but that's a separate issue, and also moot if the ENnies don't last.) We've already got other sites for wide-ranging RPG reviews. I always liked the fact that EN World was D&D/D20-specific. I think throwing that open has caused a lot of the "drift" we've seen in focus (to say nothing of attracting certain recent posters who might not otherwise have come, and who we very well do without if we're going to keep EN World friendly).

I see the need for no change, except to turn the site back to what it's always done best.

 

[Umbran]

I can support the idea of ditching the ENnies. I like the fact that they exist, and I'd love to see them continue, but they seem to be the single greatest source of problems, financial and personal, for Morrus and co. If that's so, I say boot them, and fast.

If the Ennies are going to cause financial difficulties, then we can and should ditch them. However, if the folks out there cannot grok the idea of a bunch of us getting together to give awards of our own accord, well, that's their problem, not ours.

I think throwing that open has caused a lot of the "drift" we've seen in focus

I have to tell you, I don't see it. I simply don't. Opening up for a few reviews has not, to my eye, notably changed the discussion content elsewhere. There's always been occasional discussion of other games around here, and I have not seen any upswing of "lack of focus" of late. I'm scanning the general forum as we speak, and I just don't see the effect of which you speak.

 

[MerricB]

One thing to consider is that the companies that ENworld reports the news about (especially Wizards) have become better at providing news about their products on their own sites.

Then too, I think a bunch of designers have become very busy in their projects and aren't passing on information so much.

Consider the bunch of Wizards products coming out this year - how much do we really know about them? Not all that much, and it's mostly from articles on Wizards' site.

I know that I really haven't had so much spoiler information about the D&D Miniature game to post this last couple of months as opposed to relaying on official information (although occasionally I get lucky); but it's been a whole lot more than what I've seen about other upcoming D&D products.

Cheers!

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

I see the priorities of ENWorld being:

1. Community (in particular the messageboards)
2. News
3. Reviews

All the rest kind of falls into line. I can understand the news portion taking more time than it seems it should, but I think it is a vital service to have one spot that does a good job of alerting us all to new stuff. That said - I spend 90% of my time here on the forums, not reading news or reviews.

As for the registered user thing, don't worry about that - I've been here for years, and I've never been a community supporter (more out of laziness than anything else, I think). I've never felt less than welcome, though there have been times when the lure of supporter-dom seems greater than others - almost entirely due to my own changing feelings, I'm certain.