2010-06-20, 10:06 AM
Marston Wrote:I'd be relieved, really. I'd rather have this forum die with Fiel than watch it slowly crumble with the new owner.
Which it probably will. We've already lost some great members from the bad news alone.
Alright, time to be straight with you.
What's been happening here over the past year with a massive influx of culture was not due to anything that I did or caused. It was the community that created culture here. All of you decided that Southperry was something worth caring about, and you all posted here to help shape what Southperry is today. The cultural impact has had a huge influence on administration of the site as well as helped Southperry be a prominent forum for people to visit. So I didn't do this. I didn't create this, and I didn't determine the eventual twists and spins some of the culture would take. I think part of what transpired last year was because SP was exciting, fresh, and new. KoC brought a huge influx of members to the site while the culture of the site was being developed by influential forum members. These two waves collided into the Southperry that you remember. Many members with lots of culture. Of course, some part of the culture was created by me (chinchillas, fruit censors, exploding airplanes), but for the most part it was all you guys.
Another area which has greatly changed over the past year is the R&R. Because there was so much drama and such on the forums, it was a constant step up month to month as these rules had to be changed time and time again. Each reiteration brought more stability to the forums until we have this today - a very stable forum board with respectable rules (though I'm sure there are those who will disagree with that). One side effect of stability is that there's very little craziness. And due to little amounts of craziness or drama, there's not much culture. Most big names become smaller and less infamous, and so forth. So did the rules kill the culture of SP? No, I think it rooted out a lot of the drama, but not the culture. The culture is still here, but less prominent.
Another thing that has changed a lot over the past year is the amount of information and extractions. As of last year about this time, I started doing GMS extractions again. I was able to improve my extraction abilities in the past year to give out more information than ever before. However, a side effect of releasing more information is that it causes users to be passive. Consider places with lots of information like MapleTip and Hidden Street, and you'll see that the large majority of the members that visit the site do not contribute. After all, why should they contribute when the main contributors to the database already do so much? Any contribution anyone else could make would pale in comparison to the original, so there's little contribution. So since I've focused more on information, perhaps that has made users more passive. To prove my point further, in the past year we've also accumulated many more regularly visiting guests but not a whole lot more forum members. This is to be expected.
In the end, I believe there are three parts to a forum --> Administration, Content, and Culture. Too much of any one of these three things will drown out the other two. Last year we had a lot of culture, smaller content, and smaller administration. Now we have a moderate amount of culture, larger amount of content, and moderate amount of administration. All I've done is rebalanced the equation.
If there's anything I would worry about if I were you, it's not the new administration, it's all the doom and gloomers that have been around recently since my announcement. Yeah, it's bad news. But people that just predict doom and gloom do nothing to help the site and destroy it more than any new administration could. This is why I'm not giving out any more dates or timelines for people to latch on to as it would only increase the doom and gloom as time marches onward toward the date. I can't have that, and I don't want it. If you want to kill the culture of Southperry, tell all your friends about the impending doom. Tell them that Southperry sucks and will never live up to how it did this last year. Tell them that all of the "good members" no longer post on the site. Make sure to tell them about the admin's announcement and how bad the new administration will be. All of these things will kill everything. Do it.
Or, if you want to see Southperry continue to succeed, continue posting and keep having a good time here. Let the good times roll and stay chinchillin'. No one wants to be around a place that sucks, and no one wants to be in a forum that's dying omg!
unce unce unce