New ways to bring attention to LoK

[trunks2585]

How about a poll asking users what keeps them coming back? Granted polls arn't going to get filled out by every person here but it might give us some idea as to their reasons? Personally I argue it's just for the porn.

[whatdontlookaatme]

Initially, guests enter this website with the intention of seeking porn games. Hell, I found this place from an LoK game on the you know what site (I dare not utter its name.) I've been here nearly 2 years and this place has indeed grown, I do not see the reason behind retrieving more members. The frusteration trunks displays with the "transformation", if I may be so bold, is quite understandable. Even if other projects sprout up the chances of them being completed is slim to none, given there are very few completed projects on this forum. BUT, these projects are enjoyable even if they are unfinished, like Napsii said the guests will want to provide input and register. I do think it is time to continue work on the LoK project, at least supply a glimmer of hope, but not too much that if it stops development the entire site explodes and fire rains down upon the sky.

[OwnerOfSuccuby]

For continue work with lok project it is good if some body who works with it post some plan for it. People have to understand what they can do for it and how can they make any profit to project.

And attach it some where becouse in other way nobody will know what is it about / what to do / what kind of game it is and etc

[napsii]

Perhaps half the reason those projects fail is the unappreciative/demanding attitude of people. The other half is that virtually everyone who has posted a project here is an amateur game developer with real lives and other priorities -- game creation is just a hobby for them. I firmly believe that a lot of people would be more motivated to succeed if they're being encouraged.

I agree with Trunks' idea of a poll, but I feel it won't give an accurate measure unless you present the right selections to choose from. I think most users participate for the erotica in some capacity, but there are those like myself who ended up staying for the community and the more platonic aspects, don't regularly browse the Creative Corner and often don't participate directly in erotic content elsewhere, like the Roleplay section.

As for the LOK project itself, that's up to whoever decides to take up the challenge. I am not sure on the state of the original LOK team members. There is plenty of Krystal content in the CC otherwise.

[GoRepeat]

I think it is a flaw to assume bigger is better. While more visitors and popularity is of course "good" it also brings a whole host of issues to the table... such as.... hosting! We are already causing fires in Ren's basement with the current server load. Nice quiet communities have their benefits too, you know~ Personally, I would rather have a site where 40 artists, writers, designers and programmers get together to mess around and make half assed projects than have a site where 5000 lurkers come to piss, moan, and troll about projects not getting done.

[Thaedael]

I guess I am one of the members with the "big e-penis" then. People do what the fuck they want, when the fuck they want to do it. The website went from people waiting for a game forever to making their own games, and to have the community grow in ways we did not originally plan. If anything the site is working as intended the way you say you want it to grow, just people don't give two shits to see it unless it's something directly related to their interest. We have had to upgrade the website dozens of times, and now we are stepping into a new era where ads may have to begin to pay for the web traffic we receive.

Source - years of moderating here.

[Renara]

How about a poll asking users what keeps them coming back? Granted polls arn't going to get filled out by every person here but it might give us some idea as to their reasons? Personally I argue it's just for the porn.

Good idea! I've posted a poll here for people to provide/discuss their reasons for joining and staying with the site (and any differences between the two). I couldn't really fit everything I wanted into the poll so people should feel free to reply with any extra detail they want to give. Although I think it's safe to say that the guests/lurkers would be mostly voting for creative corner games in general, though this may include copies of LoK from various sites like funny games etc.

[Renara]

I just wanted to add as well that I do actually have one feature I had been planning to add to the forums but, like many others (LZMA, dice-rolling for role-players…), I've had to keep putting them off to focus on keeping the site running smoothly, but basically I was considering adding some "like" buttons for various services, mostly for the creative corner so people can mark favourite games. This is partly since with the caching of guest pages download counts and view counts are now a lot lower (or going up a lot more slowly) than before, so actual intentional "likes" may be more useful as an alternative.

That said, I dunno how useful more social network integration is, as I expect a lot of people may not want to be throwing up links to creative corner games on the same facebook account they use for school for example, though we do get a surprising amount of traffic from links on social network sites, such as Blogger/Blogspot.

[BlueLight]

I just wanted to add as well that I do actually have one feature I had been planning to add to the forums but, like many others (LZMA, dice-rolling for role-players…), I've had to keep putting them off to focus on keeping the site running smoothly, but basically I was considering adding some "like" buttons for various services, mostly for the creative corner so people can mark favourite games. This is partly since with the caching of guest pages download counts and view counts are now a lot lower (or going up a lot more slowly) than before, so actual intentional "likes" may be more useful as an alternative.

That said, I dunno how useful more social network integration is, as I expect a lot of people may not want to be throwing up links to creative corner games on the same facebook account they use for school for example, though we do get a surprising amount of traffic from links on social network sites, such as Blogger/Blogspot.

I believe i've linked to LOK using my blogger account.

[OwnerOfSuccuby]

But what for you want global attention - what do you plan next ?

[BlueLight]

But what for you want global attention - what do you plan next ?

world domination!

[trunks2585]

I'll support adding a like button, only if a dislike button is also implemented.

[Reaver]

Personally I came to this site after seeing Playshapes' game on Newgrounds. I stuck around until I saw that the project was getting postponed or split off so I left for around a year or more, hoping if I came back the project would be back on track. Apparently that wasn't the case and a Rp section had been put in place which seemed like an easy way of taking interest away from the status or the project. The rp section and the CC is nice but it isn't what the site was made for, hence its website name. "legendofkrystal" How the mighty fall. Also I too would love dislike button.

[IrrelevantComment]

This is partly since with the caching of guest pages download counts and view counts are now a lot lower

I didn't realise the caching was for guests as I'm usually not logged in, so I've been changing the URL each time I load a page so that it shows the newest cache and not one from hours ago

[Renara]

I didn't realise the caching was for guests as I'm usually not logged in, so I've been changing the URL each time I load a page so that it shows the newest cache and not one from hours ago

It shouldn't be out of date by more than 2 hours (usually less), which is more of an issue for roleplayers I think. But yeah, if you want to keep up to date then you should really login as that bypasses the caching entirely; 75-90% of our traffic comes from visitors that don't login, so it's kind of the main thing that needed optimising.


As for dislike buttons; that's kind of missing the point, as I'm not sure of enough social networks have "dislike" options, but all you really need is to "like" or "+1" something to link to it, if something has lots of likes then it's more popular, if you need to infer unpopularity then it's as a simple matter of reversing how you view the figures

[napsii]

Something that rubs me the wrong way about a like/dislike feature (which I would support in general, mind you) is mindless trolling by spamming the dislike function.

Personally, I'd rather there be a like function solely. As Ren said, determining how unpopular something would be is a matter of simple inference and it might be more encouraging to content creators if they only had to look at a tally of thumbs-ups.

Addendum: I should also clarify I'm more referring to an in-house "thread rating system" rather than social media links. I've seen numerous forums where threads can receive a rating of 1 to 5 aggregated on votes, but I've also see systems where people can +1 a thread/individual post if they think it's helpful/useful/entertaining. I'd prefer the latter, personally.

[BlueLight]

I know what nexus does is that it allows a thumbs up and thumbs down but thumbs up is the only thing looked at. You have to be looking for thumbs down number to find it!

[trunks2585]

Personally I think these forums are enough of a hugbox already without adding the option to only like something. Also the like button could get spammed just as easily as a dislike button to give false reports. So how about we stick to just leaving comments and look at the number of replies in topics to gauge popularity?

[BlueLight]

Edited my post... small mistake was fixed

[napsii]

Personally I think these forums are enough of a hugbox already without adding the option to only like something. Also the like button could get spammed just as easily as a dislike button to give false reports. So how about we stick to just leaving comments and look at the number of replies in topics to gauge popularity?

*shrug*

Since not all users provide input, a "Like" function would be a simplistic way for them to show encouragement. Many users just stop by to say "Great work!" anyway. If someone has negative criticism to offer, it's likely going to be more productive to actually explain their issue in the thread rather than say "I don't like it!" using a "Dislike" function and provide no further critique.

As has already been stated, unpopularity is something you could infer. I'm just trying to avoid people being discouraged because people chose to hammer a thumbs-down function senselessly.