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And me! LOL

This topic is closed for the time being while we focus on trying to revive TNBW, the discussions for which will be documented in the Reviving TNBW thread.

I'm closing this thread for the time being in favor of another I posted called Reviving TNBW.

Copied from the Migrating to Booksie thread.

Awesome idea: I can replace Princess Stephanie (a doormat) with Nurse Catherine in the second act (the young leaders conference), and replace Paul Highlander, Joseph's 2nd cousin and best friend, who travels with him to Earth, in the third act. It's too bad about Paul since that reduces him to a short appearance in act 1 (he's present at the parade square massacre). But I can make Catherine be his older sister. That allows me to bring her into the story several times, and tie her to Paul, who is otherwise this unrelated character. Paul can come back for the dogfights in the final battle, while Catherine would accompany Joseph and Christian onboard Lupus's flagship to capture it from within. She could have training as a military medic, who accompany each raider's combat team when they board enemy vessels.

I'll scroll back through maintenance and minor enhancement requests and pull out the easy wins for review in this thread before finalizing it for Sol.

Thanks, Sol. As I mentioned in my first post, it was my understanding that you didn't feel you could keep running both sites indefinitely.

Combine that with the fact that the New Books (new chapters) scroll is virtually at a standstill, and that we keep losing long-term members without converting new ones to permanent membership, something has to change. Add in the lack of bug fixes (not many needed), minor enhancements (even fewer needed), and quick turnaround time for user support, and there's no obvious way to hang on to trial users. Contests may help, but to the best of my knowledge, we've kept almost no one who joined following the last one. Naturally the crash cost us users as well, but the trickle out has continued since then. And the more experienced users (among the best reviewers / mentors) we lose, the less value-add we have to offer over bigger sites, including Booksie.

I don't know yet which extra support functions you're going to transition to me, but I hoped we'd find a way to transition user support (or at least make me a first contact for the easy stuff, and I could escalate to you if I don't have the ability to help them).

The rest is out of my control, although I've been discussing with other members what we could change to gain and keep more users. In addition to the things above, it includes policy changes you didn't want to make in the past (e.g., a 30-day trial so people really get to know us and the site before being asked to pay money, 30 points up front so trial users can post roughly 3 chapters and get reviews (to assess the quality of them and compare themselves to those reviewers) before they're forced to do them too (which can be quite intimidating), and making it easier for everyone to gain points or spend fewer points). Those of us who have been around a long time (not many left) have enough points to post War & Peace several times over, so it would most help new/newer users to make it easier to gain points to post.

As we all know, the real way to succeed on this site is to develop and maintain a network of reciprocal reviewers, and you can't do that unless you get to know people here and consistently trade reviews with them (something trial users need to understand going in). To do those things, you don't *really* need points. As a result, they're largely irrelevant, so why not make it easier for everyone who needs them to get them?

EDIT: I just checked the ratio of how much it costs to post a work vs. how much that work pays. It's currently 5:1, and Alan some months ago mentioned that it seemed like it took more effort (points) to post after the crash. Sol once told us in the forums (some years back) that he thought it was 4:1. Since the feed of new work is at a standstill and most people have left, why don't we overcompensate and make it 3:1?

Marilyn and I were just talking about a system yesterday that has a ratio of roughly 3:1 (3 points to post a piece of writing of any size, 1-2 points paid to each reviewer depending on length of review, although, I believe, full points are only paid for a short time (maybe a week?) while the posted piece is in an active queue; after that it pays less. But their "inline" comment system is a joke/painful compared to ours. Still, they claim that 85 users were on the site when I checked (no clue if they count those who are always logged in) and 650 the day before.

Why not lure some of that traffic this way, with a great up front trial, faster support, timely fixes/minor tweaks, a terrific inline comment system, and a points system that is less onerous than others? Add some advertising from Sol and a few contests, and if the site still doesn't pick up, then we can at least say we did everything we could. I'd be very surprised if the above changes didn't have a strong positive impact on permanent membership.

yup, he's gone

Quite a bit of fizzling, and then a lot of people didn't come back after the crash, so we're on life support. I'm looking at Booksie (our sister site, also run by Sol) to see if it could be a viable alternative for us since the New Books (chapters) section on the home page here has come to a virtual standstill. Booksie is very similar to TNBW, but is actively maintained with new/more features, minor enhancements, bug fixes, etc. And more users! TNBW, while still a great site (I prefer the look and feel of TNBW over Booksie), has been mostly in maintenance mode for a couple of years. Sol simply doesn't have the time to keep both sites going indefinitely. I'm going to be taking over some of the easy admin/support tasks later this month from him to give him a break. I'd love to revive this site, but it would remain in maintenance mode since Sol simply doesn't have the time to build features for both sites.

Hi Suin.

Welcome back. Yes, we did a group cleanup after the servers were restored following the crash in October 2023. One of the steps we did was to request input from everyone on the site as to which groups members were still using and wanted retained. The final list of groups to be deleted, merged, and retained was then announced repeatedly well before any changes were made. The groups you see in the system right now are those that survived, give or take any one offs anyone may have created in the meantime ("The custom Military velcro Patches Group" is probably spam and will be removed; the creator was a trial member who never became permanent).

Dirk

Bill, a few more questions for you, if I may: Do you primarily post to the main house on Booksie? Roughly what kind of response do you get in terms of actionable reviews vs fluff? How do you deal with the fluff reviewers? Do they generally expect you to read their stories in return for a "Good job!" from them? I'm curious how you deal with them, and how many you generally encounter for a given piece of posted writing (e.g., a new chapter or new short story). Do the fluff reviews tend to number in the single digits, low double digits, or higher? And have you built up a fan base with whom you regularly trade helpful reviews?

Thanks
Dirk