Unsatisfied with growth

Sigh.

I'm not an expert on social media. Therefore, I can't present you with how to grow a social media platform or use one effectively on a plate. That's where expertise comes in. Same reason I couldn't explain what Matthew does, I am not skilled in it.

As far as I know social media is not skilled labour. I'm not going to hire someone unless a reasoned case can be made as to what they would do that the current team isn't doing. Appeal to ignorance is not an argument.

 

But that was one very small issue within a whole host of issues, and not even the main one.

As I recall the other main issue you group had was that I expected you to self organize and run the site -- which is the job of the admin and staff team. You couldn't do that and then you quit.

It should also be mentioned that this group was the staff at the time we moved to xf and most of them didn't bother to learn the new control panel properly.

 

If anyone has legitimate suggestions as to how to improve user engagement, having read this thread first, please PM me your ideas.

 

[Tyler]

Exit interviews are a good idea but I don't think there's any specific thing that would cause people to stay longer.

Fair enough, we can make assumptions about why new users don't come back. But if there's any sort of trend with staff this would help uncover it. I'm interested to know why so many ex staff are "salty"

This is open to all staff members current and past, but I only give honest references. Some staff take this seriously others do not.

This is concerning as somebody who may ask you for something like this in the future. (Any kind of PR work helps as a restaurant manager) If we are using this thread as an open means of communication I can tell you that it appears you are not involved with your staff much other than being the highest decision maker and you don't give reviews to us at all (only have peer reviews and modscore). So how am I to trust that your honest review would actually favor me?

 

As far as I know social media is not skilled labour. I'm not going to hire someone unless a reasoned case can be made as to what they would do that the current team isn't doing. Appeal to ignorance is not an argument.

Then look in to it, at least? I don't care enough to look in to it personally, but there are people out there who are very skilled at gaining several hundred or thousand real followers a day on social media.

You can then capitalise on this social media growth to get people signing up to participate in things, access guides, access events, access the markets. You get people wanting to feature their businesses and products on your social media because you have a large, interactive audience external to Sythe that creates another stream of revenue that can be put back in to the community...

I'm not asking you to blindly invest in expensive labour, but at least look in to it and consider it without not deeming it valuable. Social media is the current trend to jump on, it's massive untapped potential to anyone with a business.

 

Fair enough, we can make assumptions about why new users don't come back. But if there's any sort of trend with staff this would help uncover it. I'm interested to know why so many ex staff are "salty"

Most of them aren't. Just the bloc from the move to xf.

This is concerning as somebody who may ask you for something like this in the future. (Any kind of PR work helps as a restaurant manager) If we are using this thread as an open means of communication I can tell you that it appears you are not involved with your staff much other than being the highest decision maker and you don't give reviews to us at all (only have peer reviews and modscore). So how am I to trust that your honest review would actually favor me?

If you keep your head down and never do anything of note then that's the review I would give you.

 

As I recall the other main issue you group had was that I expected you to self organize and run the site -- which is the job of the admin and staff team. You couldn't do that and then you quit.

A slight exaggeration, let's be honest, but this is way off -topic so it's pointless discussing it. Happy to discuss it with you in pm's somewhere if you're interested though.

 

Then look in to it, at least? I don't care enough to look in to it personally, but there are people out there who are very skilled at gaining several hundred or thousand real followers a day on social media.

You can then capitalise on this social media growth to get people signing up to participate in things, access guides, access events, access the markets. You get people wanting to feature their businesses and products on your social media because you have a large, interactive audience external to Sythe that creates another stream of revenue that can be put back in to the community...

I'm not asking you to blindly invest in expensive labour, but at least look in to it and consider it without not deeming it valuable. Social media is the current trend to jump on, it's massive untapped potential to anyone with a business.

I setup a osrs discord (osrs.chat) and attracted 2100 users to it most of whom aren't sythe users. Let's see if PR/CDT can get some of these relevant users to join? If we can't get them to join then trying to grab random people off social media is not going to work.

Just because you don't see anything happen from your vantage point of logging on once every 4 months doesn't mean nothing is happening. And incidentally I would not mind if you did not login again.

 

I setup a osrs discord (osrs.chat) and attracted 2100 users to it most of whom aren't sythe users. Let's see if PR/CDT can get some of these relevant users to join? If we can't get them to join then trying to grab random people off social media is not going to work.

That's a good start, you should start making more of a fuss of these kinds of things and letting everyone know how they are going; otherwise how are they expected to assume anything other than:

don't see anything happen from your vantage point of logging on once every 4 months doesn't mean nothing is happening.

Though with something like that comes a lot of effort, it's about getting it to start happening and then incentivising the process otherwise folks will just get burned out. Whether that's recognition, SytheGold, miniranks or whatever works then whatever; but there needs to be *something* for the voluntary positions.

 

That's a good start, you should start making more of a fuss of these kinds of things and letting everyone know how they are going; otherwise how are they expected to assume anything other than:

If I make a big deal about what I do then I get told I have a god-complex.

It's literally impossible to keep this group of users happy.

 

If I make a big deal about what I do then I get told I have a god-complex.

It's literally impossible to keep this group of users happy.

What I see as making a deal out of it:

Posting a news thread announcing this Discord, have some kind of bot on the Sythe discord letting us know every day that it's a thing

Maybe have a thread somewhere where you can log all the behind the scenes work thats happening

People get the impression that you have a god complex because you don't take negativity at all well. You just jump in to I've done this, this and this and you're not happy, therefore you're wrong. And I do that myself a lot, too.

 

What I see as making a deal out of it:

Posting a news thread announcing this Discord, have some kind of bot on the Sythe discord letting us know every day that it's a thing

Maybe have a thread somewhere where you can log all the behind the scenes work thats happening

People get the impression that you have a god complex because you don't take negativity at all well. You just jump in to I've done this, this and this and you're not happy, therefore you're wrong. And I do that myself a lot, too.

You're right I much prefer constructive criticism not just "you're doing it wrong".

I'm happy I finally figured out why this ex-staff bloc is so salty. You couldn't figure out the new xf control panels and you expected me to teach you. I was busy coding the site and expected you to read the manual which you didn't do.

Mystery solved you can stop posting salty threads now.

 

You're just diverting and going off-topic. I had no issues with learning XF..

 

When staff are doing a good job I do thank them and let them know. If you were never thanked it's because you didn't do a good job.

 

Some people don't want their public twitters to be associated with Sythe, seeing as theirs an issue with Doxxing, etc...

Re-reading this thread the above was the only genuinely insightful thing said.

Our PR team's primary issue is that people wish to remain pseudonymous when trading virtual goods. And therefore they do not want to link their real social media accounts with sythe. And for good reason.

There's not some magical pool of 100,000 new users just out there waiting to be snapped up. Most games already have well established online communities and virtual goods markets for that particular game. This is the established market for Runescape. We have mostly Runescape players, and most Runescape players already know about Sythe. Encouraging them to use it through grass roots efforts is the way forward as far as I can see.

Most businesses that attempt to branch out beyond their flagship fail to do so irrespective of the talent of their employees and the amount of funding backing them. A very very few succeed. A good example is Microsoft and the Zune or Windows Phone. Being first to market is the most common thread of success stories. It is amazingly difficult to be first to market if you are already busy maintaining an existing user or customer base for a different set of services or products. It is even more difficult because the incoming new users will not get along with or have anything in common with the existing users.

To the critics: If you care you might take some time to legitimately think over this issue and consider why it is that most community sites only have one active game on them. And consider if you can think of any examples of sites with more than one highly active game, and find out what they did right.

Some users have suggested we need to move away from Runescape, however IMHO this would be a death blow to the site. General interest sites like 4chan, reddit already mop up the "general interest" crowd. We're a specific interest site and our specific interest is Runescape.

 

[Pain]

This thread is boring and I cant be bothered reading all of it.

The age of forums is over, Sythe is old and is built like it, its not a social platform like reddit, facebook,twitter, Instagram and stuff. Not even for the virtual markets.

Everything else is simple when you just embrace the fact that the age of the online forum is done for, its outdated, a new product has come along that's bigger and better.

All the teams are useless ultimately(not in the sense that they do a poor job), the money spent to gain users would be a waste, at the end of the day even with the best PR team on the planet that's paid very well they eventually simply wouldn't be able to keep Sythe afloat, its an old forum in a new online world.

The only useful thing that might help Sythe is some form of app and much more friendly mobile compatibility, if its not 1 click accessible to post and do things from mobile then people are going to use social medias and other platforms beyond forums.

Mobile is the future. Social platforms are the future, not forums. My own sites receive over 1/3 their traffic through a tablet or mobile device and that is all Runescape related traffic or LoL or other Mmorpg's, its probably safe to say that Sythe probably reflects similar statistics and that number will only increase. The day of going on a desktop to browse a forum are behind us.

Simple.

 

[Mohanarajas]

You want to know the reason the site is dying? Too many bans. Too many banned users. For every person that join like 3 people get banned.

- Too many projects/teams/events that come and go or do nothing. (Reddit/Twitter/PR/Technical core)

- Sythe staff throw out bans like candy with a lot of them being just stupid mistakes.
Ex. Signup on VPN? Twc. Don’t post on home IP? Banned.
Ex2. Oh we are no longer banning people for blackhat etc. Yet there are members being banned because someone reports them for selling cracked accounts in 2012 or because they had a couple of posts on HF showing interest in something in regards to blackhat.

- Bias, staff act out of bias

- Too many staff members it’s a circlejerk of clowns, no reason to have 5+ globals or a dozen mods. Absolutely no demotions and once you get a position on staff you have it forever. They don’t act professional and nobody takes them seriously, it’s a circus.

- Too many dead subforums

- Pardon system lacks a backbone and is stupid.

- No new updates

 

You want to know the reason the site is dying? Too many bans. Too many banned users. For every person that join like 3 people get banned.

- Too many projects/teams/events that come and go or do nothing. (Reddit/Twitter/PR/Technical core)

- Sythe staff throw out bans like candy with a lot of them being just stupid mistakes.
Ex. Signup on VPN? Twc. Don’t post on home IP? Banned.
Ex2. Oh we are no longer banning people for blackhat etc. Yet there are members being banned because someone reports them for selling cracked accounts in 2012 or because they had a couple of posts on HF showing interest in something in regards to blackhat.

- Bias, staff act out of bias

- Too many staff members it’s a circlejerk of clowns, no reason to have 5+ globals or a dozen mods. Absolutely no demotions and once you get a position on staff you have it forever. They don’t act professional and nobody takes them seriously, it’s a circus.

- Too many dead subforums

- Pardon system lacks a backbone and is stupid.

- No new updates

We have a rule reform system. The rules are the way the community wants them to be.

 

[Mohanarajas]

We have a rule reform system. The rules are the way the community wants them to be.

There you go once again. Someone gives you a basket of eggs and you take out only one egg. The real root problem is you, you aren’t willing to change or take constructive critiscm. You always have to be the smartest person in the room. Just for the record, the rules are not what the community wants them to be.

You don’t care to grow Sythe, as long as you still get the $$$. You are working going to focus on your other projects.

You forget people know you too well.

 

I find it astonishingly absurd how you someone read our answers and reply to it in a fashion that isn't what we're talking about at all. It's like you're ready what you want us to be saying so you can just dismiss it. We're trying to help and give you advice on how to actually grow this website and you're dismissing us as people who are attacking you.

I've attacked you before. For some reason I actually like this site and want to be part of it, god knows why, so I try to help. It's increasingly difficult when you see yourself as infallible and won't accept any criticism whatsoever