#6
Post
by Jolteon » Thu Jul 25, 2013 4:55 pm
I think a lot of good things have been said, so here's my 2 cents (or 6, if we're doing a per-thought rate)
1) I think we need to tailor how we sell Poliwager to prospective members to what the forums do well--which is purely social discussion. the lead-up to the X and Y releases has stimulated some strictly Pokemon-related discussion, but other than that, the overwhelming majority of forum activity is friendly banter in the General Chatting section. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing at all, in fact if it was just Pokemon stuff I wouldn't have stayed. I keep coming back because of the people and the friends that I've made.
I'm not an advertising genius so I don't know exactly how we'd do this, but if we're trying to get people from gtsplus and marriland and wherever else you guys are flying the Poliwager banner, then we should be trying to attract the ones who are looking for a small, tightly-knit community where people talk about real life more than Pokemon, rather than billing it as just a Pokemon fansite.
2) The adoptables are a great asset, but again I think a subtle tweak to the way it's advertised would go a long way. Getting people to spend time on Poliwager's adoptables rather than GPXPlus is a matter of creating a unique experience, not necessarily a better one. Yes, GPXPlus is a lot fancier, but their community is a raving mosh-pit and I haven't posted there in something like three years. Back when I did RPs, those people were the ones that I interacted regularly with on the adoptables site, and later it was people from here. But the advantage of Poliwager's lesser size is that you start to get to know people from the adoptables, and you get a personal relationship that you don't get with a userbase of thousands.
So, to up forum activity through the adoptables, two things should happen. First, get more people from the larger sites to join the adoptables by advertising its small, personal aspect. And second, get adoptables people to come over here more, by a) adding "tight-knit, personal forum community" to the original sales pitch--this will catch the eye of people looking for a more meaningful combined adoptables-forum experience, the people who don't post on the gtsplus boards because personal conversations get swept away by the sheer amount of the activity, and b) make the forums more visible on the adoptables site--maybe a sidebar, titled "Recent Adoptables Discussions on PF" with related threads. Just a thought.
3) Bring in waves of visitors with events and other cool things; these visitors may realize they like it here and become long-time members. The Press would fall under this heading, and maybe we could promote it a bit more--post it on affiliate forums too, or something similar.
Another good way to bring in people would be a Minecraft server. I know smeel, Zman and I have all tried at various points to get that going, without much success, but if someone could get a full-time server up that could bring in new people. Advertise it around the Minecraft community as a small server for Pokemon fans, and maybe some of the newcomers will post on these forums.
What Asha said about reviving the spriting forums was also good--start up Asha's Sprite School and advertise it on other sites. People come in to learn how to make splices and chaos and whatnot, and end up staying because they like the atmosphere here.
And, since I've been busy saying what everyone else can do, I'll toss in my own project.
Some of you might remember when smeel and I organized small WiFi battling tournaments a while back, but they fell apart because there aren't that many people here who are interested enough in battling to participate. I don't plan on starting them up again just as Poliwager events, but my idea is to find other forums like Poliwager--small to medium in size with fluctuating or just plain low activity levels--and organize a tournament rotation.
In this rotation, each of the forums (there'd probably be four or five at most) "hosts" a tournament. All that really means is that the thread for the individual tournaments would be posted on that forum, and maybe the local organizers would decide on rules and format if those aren't consistent across the entire rotation. Things like that would be hashed out with the other people, obviously.
But this means that the participants from other communities will make an account on the hosting site to participate. Maybe they'll become active members, and maybe they'll just post in the battling section when the tournament comes to Poliwager. Either way, it's people coming into the Poliwager House (which has been rebuilt for the 3824987th time), and that's never a bad thing.
I think other communities would be interested in participating, because everyone sees an increase in people coming into their site, and it connects them to a larger network of small Pokemon fan forums. Additionally, if these sites are as indifferent to online battling as Poliwager is, it won't result in a fiery downward spiral--two or three people from each community is good enough for a decent-size bracket.
So, there's my suggestion dump, make of it what you will. Slix is already doing a great job, and I am happy to have met all of yins through his site. All I'm doing is throwing out every idea that's occurred to me, and if even one of them helps the forums I'll be thrilled. Further discussion on anything I brought up is welcome, especially the tournament idea I'll be refining and thinking more about over the next few days. If I'm off my rocker, just say so.
Gawd that was a wall of text, wasn't it? Sorry.
I have returned as you can see and now I have full access to a computer I shall try to remain as active as possible and maybe even start by giving the spriting section a boost as that is my area that I "govern" so to speak. 
