The thought just crossed my mind... if we were to advertise our site, what exactly would we try to sell the public on? Besides the dwindling community, what features does our site offer anymore that would warrant a passerby to stick around?

Perhaps it's time we start thinking of things we'd like to see the village offer eg tools, information, guides, etc.

Creativity - flow.

But seriously. What would we try to sell people on other than our obviously dashing personality?

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and this is me testing fun stuff.

I know I'm the only one who thinks this, and I've said it multiple times, but our dashing personality is the biggest thing we've got going. I'd like to see a future version of the site that emphasizes the community aspect to its fullest extent, particularly when it's known that value of something is often judged by the perceived involvement of others (for example, an MMO that no one plays isn't going to have people willing to pay 15$ a month for it).

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Interested in playing Dungeons and Dragons playtesting paper and pencil rpgs playing Dungeons and Dragons with your fellow villagers? Drop me Eadwulf me a pm!

How would you suggest making the site emphasize the community in your vision?

Current avg daily stats for the homepage:

Avg page views: 1020
Avg unique visitors: 135
Avg spiders: 310

Most calls to our site are from old sites who tried to steal our content and images. They still link to our images and every page load pulls up 20+ broken images from our site.

I chose not to include traffic within the forum simply to isolate the activity on the homepage. I was interested in seeing if people actually stop by and look at anything - if they do, most only check either 1 article or none at all. Fun fact.

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and this is me testing fun stuff.

Honestly, I think the best thing about The Village is the community, and how friendly everyone can be here. It is somewhat like a family. I mean, The Village has some people who have been on this site for seven years or more, and people still come back to it.

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The question is, how do we monetize on that?

Without everyone posting on social media about us and contributing articles and stuff we just look and feel dead.

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and this is me testing fun stuff.

Create a sitcom!

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I am willing to get naked to save RV, just sayin'

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This changes things.

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I think we'd all be okay with this.

On another note, I'd say we get a bit more active into other games. Currently Steam has been adding a lot of things to their "Community" part of the program. I'd say we maybe make some guides for different games, post them on there, and maybe link them here? EX "For more guides, visit www.runevillage.com" or something like that. We should really hop to work on other games and whatnot.

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Add me on Steam! Click this thingy!
If you're in the Runevillage group, it makes it easier to identify you!

Hidden: 

Kikori wrote:

Topsummoner wrote:

Riptide wrote:

I used to get you and J@n mixed up. Except your funnier. And nicer. Happy 21st bro!

Oh man Jan, you just got zinged by Riptide. How much does THAT suck?

Well, statistically speaking, slightly more than a giant suckusaur. A dire one.

PenguinGuy wrote:

Lets see if I remember how to play...

EX REX IS MAFIA SCUM FOURTHVOTER UNVILLAGE BLAH BLAH BLAH SCUM BLAH WINE IN FRONT OF ME BLAH BLAH META GAME BLAH BLAH BLAH SMELLS OF ELDERBERRIES BLAH

Right?

If you want to see the site more active, then do something about it. Start a topic every now and then or post in a subject you understand even if you're not particularly interested.

There isn't a magic fix that's going to restore the activity we used to have, if there was we'd have found it by now.

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"What? Men dodging this way for single bullets? What will you do when they open fire along the whole line? I am ashamed of you. They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist..."- The last words of General John Sedgewick, killed by a sniper in the American civil war

Ah, there it is, the bottom of the barrel. I was wondering why the air reeked of mould and collective desperation.

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Imagine a perfect beach
Without a mermaid
Imagine a perfect hideaway
Without a time
Imagine a perfect Eden
Without a friend, without a serpent
"Feeling lonely and content at the same time,
I believe, is a rare kind of happiness"

I think the bottom of the barrel could be quite nice. >:}

www.runevillage.xxx

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and this is me testing fun stuff.

Really though have we considered a Member/Legend of the month calendar?

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In all reality, if the site were to continue as more than 20-30 people entertaining each other its going to need to draw in users from more than just one area. We can focus on games sure, but we need to expand to all kinds of games.

We should also look at what other areas we can go into, perhaps we could look into some kind of graphic community here as well? I don't mean just Sigs either, I mean actual graphic design discussion, talk about what works and why it works, different techniques etc.

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I have to agree that our biggest assets is our community. Everyone here come back because they enjoy everyone's company. Anywhere we go would have to capitalize on that, something that we can all (most of us) get behind to grow. We have to look at what we have, and expand on those fronts. Off the top of my head we have activity and people interested in literary/role-play games, video games, and like Scar said I know there are several people here with graphic arts knowledge. Those seem like places to start if we want to try to reinvent ourselves.

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I recently dropped an idea on the Administrators of the community, but have not got a response yet.. So I might just pitch it on you guys.

Very simple - RuneVillage Activity Awareness Week.. codenamed: RAAW

Excuse my lack of 'internet' language, but would it be hard to sprawl a standard email - to all users registered emails. Pushing that during a specified week, or time period - it would be good to stop by at The Village, to check up with old friends.

During the week, activity could be ramped up to host parties within Steam, on Runescape, possible WoW (if parts of the community still play these games).

Bringing the community together to do things, and just poking those that may have sidelined RV for a while, might bring back more of the community that made this place special - whilst establishing new links to a broader gaming community.

One email, and a little effort from people already active - could create a small influx.

Surely its worth a try..

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You're better off messaging me or just posting it publicly, at this point since I do most of the updates/changes to the code and thus the direction of the site.



I wouldn't be against this... perhaps including a link back where they can 'turn off emails' or something so they don't get any future notifications from us (there is a similar checkbox already in the registration if you want emails from admins, users, etc).



The RVET tried this and it wasn't really met with much enthusiasm.. people made guilds and clans etc on games and invited people to play with them and tried recruiting in the game itself, but it hasn't helped much. We do have a steam group still, I believe where they host (typically) TF2. Not sure if they still do.

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and this is me testing fun stuff.

For the record, I'm against mass-emailing 43,304 people. RV has my e-mail so that the board can automatically notify me when I get a PM. RV does NOT have my e-mail so that its administrators can do with it as they please. I consider that an incredible invasion of my privacy.

I agree it would cause some people to check in. But in this day and age I don't think it should be allowed.

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.

.Legendary themed months are back! Maybe.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It depends on how we approach it. Checking whether they have allowed for emails to be sent to them from other emails, or whatever the 'other' option is for emails.

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and this is me testing fun stuff.

On most websites these days, your provision of an Email address includes you in any marketing, or mass email lists, unless you opt out. Thats what emails are for, information delivered to you.

How do you consider it an invasion of privacy? How do you feel about junk mail?

Most websites, fansites etc send out blanket emails to there registered users. I do not see the issue?

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Coding ≠ site direction, so let's keep these discussions public.


About the mass-email idea, keep in mind that that approach would only be concerning two groups of people: Those who are already active, and those who don't visit anymore.

Personally, I see these sort of emails as being only one step above junk mail. The only reason I open them is so I can find the "unsubscribe" link and just hope that it isn't too long of a process.

Our inactive/old users will still drop in for a visit every once in a while, so they'll see the changes we've made and decide for themselves if its enough for them to stick around for a little bit longer, and maybe even become active again.

However, what I'm more interested in is how we can attract new users.

For those of you who are still active, what keeps you coming back? Why did you visit RV today? For me, the things that have kept me entertained lately are Monopoly games and the Mafia game that I'm hosting. But new users wouldn't really know about those games unless they had a friend on the site or did some of their own searching. What's the best way to bring these sort of things to the front page? If we were to create a dedicated page for our Mafia games, what would it contain and look like?

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