The Future Of Runevillage?

hiker · **Posted:** January 15th, 2010, 2:42 am

just a little history here-- the single biggest thing i can point to that boosted our membership in the early days was that 3D picture i did of Catherby...

At the time, we had, i'd guess, around 500-700 members (most of these were from in-game advertising, btw-- it's where i met henner as well as several others)... but anyway, i'd posted that picture to the General Pictures forum, and someone made a post at Tip.it linking to that picture...

we started to get hundreds of hits from it, and many of those people stayed and joined once they saw the site/forums... and *those* people started spreading the word in-game, and soon, we were averaging about 150-200 new members *a day.*

i guess my point is that even with word-of-mouth advertising, we have to have something here that makes people come and want to stay.

so even though RV 2.0 will hopefully attract the interest of many potential new members, we still have to have not only a good community, but a content-rich site for people to join and stay.

and that's where this comes in:

sarah wrote:

The future of rv is what the community of rv decides to make it, we ARE Runevillage, if everyone isn't all working towards the same goal of making the site bigger and better for everyone then it's going to be a longer and harder battle.

lately, we've had a bit of an upswing in new members-- and we need to keep following up on that.. since we are on Jagex's "approved" list and can announce ourselves in game, those of you who play, should make the effort to do so-- and then help maintain discussions on the forums about the game as well as supporting in-game RV events-- such as resuming KBD and 'boss hunt' trimps for instance... as well as the events from RVET.

getting people here does not help if we're not an active enough site to keep them.

Skulled Robe · **Posted:** January 15th, 2010, 3:12 am

Im sorry for getting that information wrong then guys. I never actually thought it did effect the amount of members we had, ok before Jagex stopped Advertising it may have been a boost but after that, we did still have a growing amount of members.

I joined in 2006 and there were still loads and loads of things to talk about here.

Everyone is right though, we need to spread the word but I think the most important thing is to make sure we keep things up to date and better than any other forums content. I mean why use out guides when another forum has better guides... therefore why would alot of people even visit Runevillage at all.

Ive just joined the guide writers section and Im hoping to make a little contribution to the guides just to help out

Christopher · **Posted:** January 16th, 2010, 2:14 pm

Tanksandguns wrote:

It's not an argument, it's the truth. Look back at his past posts and you'll see what I mean. I apologize, but if he or anyone else isn't going to do something about this, and just sit here and degrade everything I enjoy, I'm not going to stand for it. [/rant]

I have to agree. The #1 thing that pisses me off most about RV are the members that post with criticisms and complaints, yet make no effort to help improve the site. I think that that, in and of itself, is one of the biggest factors to RV's lacking content/activity.

As great of a topic as this has been, discussing why our activity is dwindling can only do so much good. To anyone worried about "the future of RuneVillage," I just have one thing to say; Get involved behind the scenes. Help us survive and flourish.

dustin · **Posted:** January 16th, 2010, 5:35 pm

Tanksandguns wrote:

dustin wrote:

assuming that RV2 is optimized for search engines, and we start releasing or at the very least updating our guides more frequently (cough summoning cough) i can see this site coming back over time, but that takes quite a bit of work and TBH i predict it not happening as this site is pretty much a case study for the broken window effect

How about instead of posting that this site is only going down hill, and never going to recover, you start doing something about it. All you do when you post here is criticize the site in one form or another, and never attempt to help out in any way. If you actually enjoy the community and site as a whole, stop trashing it every time you post, or stop coming around.

I don't play Runescape, and i only visit this site when i am taking a break from my personal projects or really bored. Like right now.

To be honest I don't understand why you are so harsh towards people that criticize things you are involved with. I think that if you started to encourage criticism without expecting commitment you would find it to be a very useful tool. If you don't believe me then just look at how much my MSSW topics in the legends forum helped the design of the event, or if you are part of the RVET look at some of our early planning topics.

Riptide · **Posted:** January 16th, 2010, 5:46 pm

But yeah, Renskeps actions have affected us. No wild made a lot of oldies quit.No advertising. And it isn't just JaGex. Look at the economy. People's lives have changed because of how crappy it is. And we aren't the only ones suffering. But at least hiker gave us something better than a fansite.

twinArmageddons · **Posted:** January 16th, 2010, 6:04 pm

dustin wrote:

To be honest I don't understand why you are so harsh towards people that criticize things you are involved with. I think that if you started to encourage criticism without expecting commitment you would find it to be a very useful tool.

That would be CONSTRUCTIVE criticism. That is something completely different from what you've been doing recently, which is just criticizing every last detail of the guides/RV2 without giving insight for improvement whatsoever.

~DC1

Riptide · **Posted:** January 16th, 2010, 8:28 pm

Honestly, Dustin. If you wanna criticize, get off your lazy butt and fix what is wrong.

Thyker · **Posted:** January 16th, 2010, 10:03 pm

Riptide wrote:

Honestly, Dustin. If you wanna criticize, get off your lazy butt and fix what is wrong.

Let's not try and make this topic an argument in which people just bash on another.

Rayseima · **Posted:** January 16th, 2010, 10:16 pm

Riptide wrote:

At least hiker gave us something better than a fansite.

That, my friend, is the quote of this thread.

Skulled Robe · **Posted:** January 18th, 2010, 3:30 am

Try to keep this clean guys. We are not going to be getting anywhere when all we can do is argue about making Rv better and actually doing it. Its a personal choice. If people dont want to make Rv better then you can sit on a sinking ship that RV will be. If we pull together and actually work to get this site going with nice improved guides ect ect we can actually make Rv a better place.

dustin · **Posted:** January 18th, 2010, 6:25 pm

DragonCrusher1 wrote:

dustin wrote:

To be honest I don't understand why you are so harsh towards people that criticize things you are involved with. I think that if you started to encourage criticism without expecting commitment you would find it to be a very useful tool.

That would be CONSTRUCTIVE criticism. That is something completely different from what you've been doing recently, which is just criticizing every last detail of the guides/RV2 without giving insight for improvement whatsoever.

~DC1

All criticism is constructive criticism if you take the time to find out why the person said what they said.

For example my initial post

Hidden:

has the following points
- effort should be made to make RV2 optimized for search engines, and i say this because a simply scan with Raven SEO shows that we have many areas to improve upon with the current design

Hidden:

- something needs to change with the guides team, i know nothing about the team, but if it is inactive i would suggest finding a new leader that has lead a successful project in the past, if it is active then a wiki system would probably prove useful

- the broken window effect in software comes from a theory that a small imperfection will lead to more imperfections (aka a broken window will in turn increase the chances of someone breaking another window nearby). Coming out of this problem is very difficult, but assuming RV2 is of the quality that we have seen in the diaries it will help quite a bit

so those are my slightly re-worded insights for improvement, i hope you don't still view it as destructive criticism, but if you do then i apologize as that is not my intention. Either way this is my last post in this topic so best of luck

Glodenox · **Posted:** January 18th, 2010, 6:31 pm

Does the fact that I know all of those hints put you at ease? I will look into that SEO analyzer though because it is easier to have an automated program look for issues than dealing with it manually...

Greetings,
Glodenox

Archbishop of Banana · **Posted:** January 31st, 2010, 3:23 am

Such a sticky situation

Tweedy · **Posted:** February 7th, 2010, 6:56 am

Okay let's keep on topic here please.

The Future Of Runevillage?

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