The State of ENWorld (too important to go to Meta)

[Glyfair]

Plus, pretty much every publisher now has its own little messageboard, and tries to encourage people to go there. That hasn't affected our traffic negatively, but it does explain why they prefer to just use EN World for announcements and not for the community aspects.

This is something of a shame. While I understand the comments made about only so much time and so many places to be online, plus only a small percentage of time can be spent online, there are differences between a presense here and one of their own forums.

A publishers own forum is mostly a place for people who have found your products. They are either fans and want to support the company, or people who have questions or complaints about the products (probably more the first than the last, but as I don't frequent too many, I wouldn't be sure).

On the other hand, this is the area to bring new people towards your company. Reading a press release is one thing. Seeing a publisher makes semi-regular appearances on a forum like this lets us see them as something more than a "company." You get to know them and are more likely to look into their products, even if the press release didn't grab you immediately.

I know I became fans of several companies because of I got to know the people behind the company here. Green Ronin is a good example. I saw Chris' & Nikchik's comments on other things, liked what I saw, looked into their products and became a fan of the company.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

i don't like 3.11ed for Workgroups and i still post.

But I don't want to only be known for one thing. 3.11ed was more of a change from the previous D&D_OS. My problem was the tinkering that gave us D&D ME.

 

[Emerald]

deleted post, posted from wife's account

 

[MerakSpielman]

I haven't been browsing ENworld as much as I used to.

The primary reason for this is the page loading times. They're really good right now - but it's in the middle of the night. At work, when I do most of my posting, it can take five minutes to load a page. I honestly have a hard time putting up with that, so I've been feeding my NKL addiction instead.

Also, just for the record, I visit ENW for the "idea" threads and the rules forum more than anything else. I don't read reviews and am uninterested in the industry news. I like the archive of free adventures. In short, I'm just a DM who browses through looking for nifty ideas and expanding my knowledge of the rules. ENW is the perfect place for that.

I know that the thread reply notifications have been turned off to increase performance, but I'm far less likely to remember to check interesting threads without a reminder in my in-box. I might post once on a thread, and then forget about it.
But I'd like to reiterate my single main complaint: Loading times. I know you're working on a new server, Morrus, and AFAIC, it can't happen too soon.

 

[Kalanyr]

I've been around less in terms of posting than I have been in the post, this year has been a pain at University.

But can I say please don't limit the creation of new threads to community supporters (as one post suggested), I think it would probably kill the non-pay nature of the site (and for this reason I doubt its actually being considered but I thought I should mention it).

 

[wedgeski]

It seems to me that many of the folks who think they see ENW becoming more clique-ish, or less vibrant, or less relevant, or less interesting, have their posts counted in the thousands. That may be significant.

I lurked on Eric's site and later on the ENW forums but only recently started participating. I can say without hesitation that this is consistently the most friendly, knowledgeable, enlightened and best moderated board I have ever seen. The site as a whole keeps getting better and better - polls and threads on the front page were a great addition, the benefits to Community Supporters keep expanding, etc. - but it's the messageboards that blow the air through the furnace. As far as I'm concerned ENW is as good as it's ever been, which is to say it's very good indeed.

 

[Zappo]

i don't like 3.11ed for Workgroups and i still post.

Y'know, I've always been wondering... I mean, doesn't that make OD&D == DOS? It's not exactly flattering...

 

[Piratecat]

I haven't been browsing ENworld as much as I used to.

The primary reason for this is the page loading times.

Lordy, I can't wait until this is resolved; the current lag is intolerable. We're hoping to make an announcement before too long. Let's just say that we're actively pursuing servers, and the current bottleneck is all our current server (we have lots of available bandwidth.) Once the new server is in, email notifications go right back on. Thank you, everyone, for being patient.

Also note that we'll never go to a model where only community supporters can post new threads. That's not going to happen, because it would gut the nature of the community. No one wants that!

 

[Henry]

Also note that we'll never go to a model where only community supporters can post new threads. That's not going to happen, because it would gut the nature of the community. No one wants that!

We ARE, however, thinking about a new rule that every New Thread must start on the topic of how great the mods are; they can diverge from there, of course, but the first post must be a paean of supplication to the mods in order to post.

 

[Piratecat]

Henry, weren't we keeping that a secret until the executive clique community could approve it? Darn it, cat's out of the bag!

So to speak.