I feel like that is really important too. Once your site is built and open and has loyal members, it really does become less "this is my site" and really more "this is our site" as you stated. And that makes pleasing those members just as important. However, you still have to make sure that you're not just catering to the members you already have, but keeping an open mind to draw in new people too.

It's definitely a really hard line to walk. Taking in the suggestions of others to improve your site and also trying to make sure that you don't lose sight of the intended theme of the site and why you feel in love with it to even make it to begin with. Sometimes too many suggestions from others can drown out what you wanted in the beginning. I love a site with staff members who have a clear vision of where they want to direct the site and how it can correlate with the plots of their members. C:

this is gonna sound cruel but nah i don't care about members i don't have.

if my site doesn't work for people who are not on my site, i'm not changing it to attract people that don't RP with me yet. if it works for my members, I'm keeping the site the way it is.

besides with members you don't have, there's no guarantee that changing your site is gonna make those possible members join? what's the saying? "a bird in hand is worth two in the bush" and that's honestly my policy when it comes to staffing. my members, for instance, think my character slot system is forgiving and encourages them to use the OCs they already have rather than just make 10 OCs out the gate. it's how they self-regulate, and they say they have no real problems getting characters in play because i make want ads free to create. i'm not going to get rid of it so someone who doesn't like character slots could *maybe* join.

I'm not saying that I don't currently cater to the people I already have, but really I only make changes to attract new people based on my current member opinions. I will ask them where they found us at, what drew them in, and what they think should be changed to bring in new people. What they find appealing in a new site. If my members don't tolerate the changes, how would new people? I always make sure to include what my current members think over others. It is hard to please everyone, yeah. But finding a nice middle ground isn't so bad either.

I think accommodation and concept are a tricky balance beam, regardless of the tenure of members. I've seen plenty of times where sites stagnate because they are afraid to innovate and only cater to their inner circle just as many times as I've seen underconfident admins fiddling with things because they are unsatisfied with site growth rate.

I'd say right now it is an "admin's market". Competitioin is relativly low. We don't even have a successful demon slayer site, and I don't know how that is even possible. You can take risks and stick to your guns and still achieve growth. I think a lot of times we think growth has to happen at a rapid pace or we are failing, but it really doesn't.

If I could talk to past me I'd bonk myself on the head for a lot of things but specifically and tell myself to stop fiddling so much and spend more time posting. Presence and activity is a more valuable use of time that should take priority over getting into the weeds.

For the first month or so of opening, I was very much stuck in a mentality of "no one's joining, what rules can I bend to make people like the site more, but still stick to my original vision", but even though there's only about six of us with characters, including myself and my co-admin, I've reached a point where I'm pretty zen about it. Could I change the site to give it more general appeal? Yeah, maybe, but we've got a handful of good people making fun plots together and that's really all I can ask for, honestly.

See, I almost feel like it's harder to have an Original RP over like a Fandom based RP. Y'all can come at me for it if you want but compared to like 10 years ago, it's harder to find original sites. People just seem less interested in them. I wonder why. It isn't saying that they're not out there, it just... seems harder to me compared to back in the day.

On a secondary note, guys I actually finished my autumn crap before autumn started. I'm so shocked that I'm actually ahead for once IDK what to do.

Sometimes I wonder if it has to do with like.... the amount of reading that people would have to do? Fandom RP, if you like the fandom, you kind of already know a good chunk of the lore and base concepts. Original RP, you gotta read everything in order to know what's going on. And no tea no shade, but for such a literary pastime, when I ran an Original RP, I had so many people complain about how much they had to read (which, imo, wasn't even that much).

As someone who's done multiple original rps, this is the most told reason that people don't join. I'm someone who will drown everyone in lore, have a ridiculous timeline, etc, etc.

This is /not/ for everyone.

Over time I've really reined it back the best I could and even my current project has gone through multiple iterations to make the lore as compact as possible. Another thing I've really noticed is a lot of people spread out multiple very important bits of information through like 9 threads/pages. Sometimes make a chonkier paragraph is the better solution because you really didn't need to put important xyz into a thread where no one's going to click even if there's some important bits.

Really in my experience, someone is happier to read a chonkier thread/paragraph than going through 10 pages of lore - because at least 7 threads/pages aren't really needed or used for their character.

Fandom sites are usually through a game/visual/story that's basically newgame+ so there's already knowledge coming into the game. People are going to always be attracted to what is more comfortable for them. While you don't need to be overly obsessed in making everything as small as possible nor you don't need to be concerned when your base obviously already has enjoyed what you've put out - but I think it is important that you're measuring your game with people's interest, NOT just yours. If you only cared about what you wanted to do, write a book or a fanfic!

o.o I did not expect so many replies to that.

As a reply to the replies, I have to agree. I used to do that, where I had so many different pages of things and drowned people in lore, but eventually they just went "this is too much to read" so I've culled it down to three different pages. One for plot lore/setting lore, another for group lore, and the last for species lore. So far this works.

However, there is a toooon of lore, because I am writing a book/book series based on these. So there's a lot of stuff that isn't on the boards. Plus my current site is based 10 years after a previous iteration, and that throws people off too. But we have a pretty even member base. Half of the members were on the previous one, half are brand new within the last year, on this one only. I really do try to balance information so that it isn't necessary to know that much about the previous one in order to join this one. But it's still a huge turn off sometimes. I wish I knew why.

This is a long reply but I actually have a different topic to touch on too.

As a staff member, do you ever just want to... Start something else? Like activity dips for... ever. And you're bored. You find yourself working on other projects, but no one wants to commit so you decide that maybe you just want to do something else too because you're bored af and have nothing to do? Yeah. Fun times. I'm sitting here debating whether or not I want to open another site, but can't really decide what I want to do, and I don't want it to take away from my current site and man I'm bored. What do...

When I ask for feedback or just general opinions... And no one really participates. ;-; It's hard running things by myself, and almost makes me just want to give up. Again. Why is it hard to find reliable staff members or people who match my enthusiasm? I don't think I'm hard to get along with... u.u Bums me out.