Wednesday 4 June 2014

Where we are

AIF Central has been chugging along for almost five months now, so it's probably as good a time as any to take a pause, see how everything is working, and decide on our next destination.

The blog has been averaging over five hundred pageviews a day, which isn't too shabby all things considered. However, the number of new posts has dropped off considerably. That's not too surprising given that most of the original authors also have blogs and/or games of their own to worry about. The bigger problem is that no new authors have come on board after the initial flurry, for which I have to take the blame for not spending more time publicising AIF Central and generally trying to drum up interest. Unfortunately I've had less and less free time to spend on AIF, and what time I do have is mostly spent playtesting (and more recently, actually playing, which is nice).

Anyhow, there are at least three places where we could go from here.

1. AIF Central continues on as a collaborative blog, hosting articles about AIF and stimulating discussion. Ideally that would happen under a new editor who has more time to devote to making it a success.

2. AIF Central changes course and becomes primarily a site for AIF news, such as new game announcements, and so on. I think there would be a demand for this as the changes Yahoo! have instituted (particularly requiring a cell phone number for new accounts) means that there are more people who are unable or unwilling to subscribe to aifarchive (the traditional source of news). Again, this would probably require a new editor who has enough free time to stay on top of everything (i.e. check the various news sources, blogs, etc.)

3. We conclude that AIF Central was an experiment worth conducting but is no substitute for an actual website with functioning forums, etc.

4. Your suggestion here.

14 comments:

  1. I'm liking what it is so far. I didn't expect the pace to keep up, though it could do to be a bit more publicised, I guess. I feel like the format isn't ideal on one level, unfortunately, in that it's not convenient for just anyone to post things.

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    1. I do note also that things have been busier lately. In addition to a couple of releases, I've noticed quite a lot of beta testing going on. Who knows if there's any link, but it's possible that the blog has helped a little.

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  2. I've been wanting to say this for a while: how about an AIF subreddit? Would be good for discussions and releasing news about personal projects easily to the community.

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    1. I, too, feel that a subreddit would be great. I think AIF's waning popularity over the years has less to do with the content or medium, and more to do with its presentation. I can imagine new people being turned off when they find the most popular community website is a Yahoo Groups board. It just fells, well, really dated.

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    2. I've barely ever used Reddit, so I don't know all the pros and cons. However, based on the minimal research I've done it looks like it would avoid the main pain points of both the blog system and Yahoo! (ie. ease of access) so on the basis of that alone it's probably worth a try.

      So who wants to set up an adultinteractivefiction subreddit? I'm willing to if no one else is, but it *might* be preferable to have someone who's actually familiar with Reddit.

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  3. I would say 1/2. Or more specifically, I think that while it is a collab. blog, there are fairly few posters, so it more or less falls into category number 2, and I think that is fine.

    Even if we keep using Yahoo, or go to another website/source, it can be nice to have a single place where the news is being plastered for all to see and hopefully somewhat bring the community together vs. spattered here and there without a unified meeting place.

    If the site does go, I would hope we at least find a new place to congregate first.

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  4. I should probably also mention that part of the reason for this post is the fact that the number of pageviews has declined every month (despite there being more pages to view), which makes me wonder if a new approach is needed.

    My personal feeling is that option #2 suits the strengths and limitations of a collaborative blog the best. As Spike mentioned, the audience for AIF is getting more and more fragmented so I think there's a place for a central hub that brings together all the news from those different locations. That doesn't rule out longer posts, which have generated some great discussion in the past, but the clunky process of gaining author access doesn't favour that in my opinion.

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  5. The main problem with the blog format IMO is finding new posts/replies. It isn't very convenient in terms of promoting conversation. Nobody likes scrolling through pages of updates to check whether the reply count has gone up.

    I do like the idea of an AIF subreddit.

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  6. I've just had a crack at setting up an AIF subreddit, but the name I intended to use (adultinteractivefiction) fall afoul of the character limit.

    Can someone suggest something catchy that's 21 characters or less?

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  7. I just made one: http://www.reddit.com/r/AIFCentral/
    Sound good?

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    1. That's fine with me, unless there's some rule against advertising a particular website (I notice you put 'Moderation unrelated' next to the link to the AIF Central blog).

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  8. I've very much appreciated this blog.

    To me, the essential flaw in it is the linear/temporal format, as others have noted. Setting something up with a more sophisticated template (say, in WP) that would continually feature older content would have been more ideal, but at that point we're very nearly where we should be with a fully-functional forum. But since that never seems to happen, I think it's somewhat pointless to keep wishing for it. I, certainly, don't have time to do it myself.

    We'll see how the subreddit goes. But I'd encourage you to keep this going, at least for a while. It fulfills a function the Yahoo group does not.

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  9. Is there a reason why AIF can't get a forum? Does it really take that much technical knowledge to set-up? I was under the impression that much like there are free blog sites and hosts, there are free forum sites and hosts.

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    1. All of the free forum providers I've looked at prohibit adult content in their terms of service. I don't know how vigilantly that would be enforced, but it's obviously a risk.

      In an ideal world, a proper AIF site would have other features as well, such as a game database, a wiki, and so on (tfgamessite.com would be a good template). Unfortunately that would require someone with the necessary time and determination to take ownership of the project.

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