Six months after the launch: Goodbye

[JMarston64]

> The members are simply not active.

By that I take it you mean authors, not registered users. Or do you mean registered users who rarely visit?

I get what you're saying about joining a community and being active in it, versus treating the forum as a mere library. I feel that may be difficult for many people. There will always be many more lurkers than posters as with all other social media. Writing is a talent; one I admire but have long since realized I do not have. Readers outnumber authors. And you have to admit this particular fetish takes a little more courage to talk about than the local knitting club, even anonymously. Not everyone has learned to be comfortable with their own kinks.

It makes sense that strongly encouraging people to rate and comment on stories may help with author motivation and site momentum. But that's not an easy ask for someone like me. Well-written or not, the vast majority of stories I simply don't like. There's a very specific type of surrender / loss of control light erotic narrative that speaks to me. I don't find it every often, and when I do it's almost never in a story to be found in a 'gang bang' forum. So I know I'm an atypical user here. Searching for my particular needle in the haystack, I hate the thought of rating every story I read with a 0 just because it wasn't my thing. I would have a hard time thinking of how to comment on a story I didn't particularly like, and I'd much rather say nothing than offend the author and the people who were into it.

[Vela Nanashi]

@JMarston64 When it comes to me as a writer/author, I really don't require a well crafted comment, any comment will be motivating, even those who critique me are better than silence. If you commented on stories you do find enjoyment in, and told the author why, it might make them more interested in writing more stories like that, and if you comment on stories by other authors, who maybe write adjacent stuff, and tell them that you would have liked maybe a little less rough or maybe a little more surrender/loss of control (in say a consensual story) then that perhaps would make the author consider exploring there. Also when it comes to ratings, only admins/mods and the author of the rated post can see you rated it, and you can put a secret comment there too, if you are scared of commenting out in the open, but would like to say something to the author alone, of course there is also PMs for that, though maybe for some it can be slightly more motivating to get a little bit of rep and a comment at the same time, though for others the PM is more powerful, sadly the amount of PMs we can store forever is limited here on the forum, and of course we could move to PMs if we want to after the rating comment as well.

I used to be a lurker once upon a time, but then I commented on things I read and that felt good, and then started to write and now I have been mod and admin on several boards. I do so under a pseudonym that allows me to be anonymous, and if people really want to do that in a more anonymous way, they could get a free proton.me account, use the free email and vpn, that should make you anonymous enough unless some powerful government want to get to you, and maybe even then, and honestly I don't think they would look for people writing things, doing more illegal things sure, but not things within the rules of this forum, that is highly unlikely.

At any rate, please comment and rate on stories you enjoy, don't feel obliged to do it on all stories you read if you don't like them, and if you don't like a story except maybe one small thing, you could tell the author you liked that small thing but not the rest of the story, that also will help authors know of that one thing that was liked and maybe be motivated to write more such things or similar things.

Silence though that actually kills motivation for some, not all authors, but I suspect many. Also comments even 'silly' ones can be motivating, as can rep/ratings. So yeah, I hope more will comment and rate on things.

Also if I was the boss I would actually make it much much much much harder to get stories, so only a few would be in the public board, and registration would require you to prove you are human by writing a comment to a public story, any public story, before you even get to have your account activated, but that is me, I am maybe a bit extreme there, but that is my current feeling on things, lurkers can have scraps and the few crumbs we choose to share from the true registered users board This would of course take more effort from us admins, and we would have to set up an email to get said comments to, but that at least would force everyone to pop their comment cherry, and lurk no more Also prove they are human at least to some extent

[Claire]

> The members are simply not active.

By that I take it you mean authors, not registered users. Or do you mean registered users who rarely visit?

Both. The main problems with authors is that the vast majority only post their own stories but don't comment at all or very rarely on other authors' stories. Just think about this mathematically. When every author posts more stories/chapters on the forum than they leave comments on other authors' stories/chapters AND pure readers don't comment at all, then the number of comments per story on average is lower than 1. And that is exactly the behavior that probably 90% of authors show on the forum.

Now pure readers could theoretically compensate for that, but the forum currently has one or maybe two users who are pure readers like yourself who are active. So what's happening on the forum is a very common dynamic in the world that is known under various terms: The prisoner's dilemma, the free-rider problem, the tragedy of the commons. All of these describe accurately what the issue is.

In general, the forum has almost 700 registered users now. Usually, over a 24 hour period 40 to 60 registered users log in. Over the course of a week that number increases to 150.

And you have to admit this particular fetish takes a little more courage to talk about than the local knitting club, even anonymously. Not everyone has learned to be comfortable with their own kinks.

Oh absolutely! But I could list you easily 60 registered users for whom we know that this isn't the case, probably more than 100 if I put some effort into it. If you just take all the authors who are obviously comfortable putting their stories out there in public you easily get enough people to keep the forum active.

So yes, you are right, people being hesitant to register and post on a forum with adult content, and even more so on a forum with a darker kink, is a real thing. But we also know that we have more than enough people who have no issue with that. And the thing is: The best thing we could do to motivate new users who might still be hesitant because they maybe feel ashamed of their kink would be to project that posting and participating here is normal. If new users see that normal adults are having rich discussions and fun with their kink here without being total creeps in the process, then that makes it easier for those who are still hesitant to join.

It makes sense that strongly encouraging people to rate and comment on stories may help with author motivation and site momentum. But that's not an easy ask for someone like me. Well-written or not, the vast majority of stories I simply don't like. There's a very specific type of surrender / loss of control light erotic narrative that speaks to me. I don't find it every often, and when I do it's almost never in a story to be found in a 'gang bang' forum. So I know I'm an atypical user here. Searching for my particular needle in the haystack, I hate the thought of rating every story I read with a 0 just because it wasn't my thing. I would have a hard time thinking of how to comment on a story I didn't particularly like, and I'd much rather say nothing than offend the author and the people who were into it.

I really don't want to convince you personally and I no longer have any stakes in all of this. I have given up on the forum. I'm just trying to explain to you why niche communities like ours die. If you think about it it's not complicated: No community can survive without having engagement from its members with its core content. Just think about it in any other context. Could a forum for model car collectors survive if the registered members refuse to talk about model cars? Or could a community of Star Wars fanfiction authors survive if nobody talks about the fanfiction stories? Of course not. And our community is no different from these examples. It's only because people view forums like these more like porn streaming sites and less like a fandom community or a niche hobby community that this obvious insight seems strange to people.

My bottom line is: I'm not saying all this to call you out personally. I'm giving you the structural reasons why communities like ours have such a hard time surviving. And I've learnt while running this forum that many people have trouble thinking about an issue structurally and not taking those structural issues personally (I do that for a living every day, so I might be a bit detached from how difficult it is for people to think like that.) So what you do with that insight is up to you. And if you come to the conclusion that ultimately the continued existence of a forum like ours in an active state is not that important to you, then leaning back and watching things play out is a perfectly fine decision. That is kind of what I did, right? I was invested in this forum, I was willing to put my own time and effort into this, and I encouraged others to help me. And when most of them decided not to help me out in building something larger, it wasn't worth it anymore trying to do this alone. So if you for yourself come to the conclusion that helping out the forum is not worth it for you, then that is perfectly fine. I only ever tried to reach out to those people who claimed that they have a strong interest in a forum like this existing and encouraged them to act like it. That is it.

[Quinotaurus]

This is one area when the board design works against itself. Leaving a +1 rating with the comment "I like that" and a post saying "I like that" feels very much like the same thing so it feels awkward to do both. And if you're not doing both, it makes more sense to do the rating on which makes "number go up".

[Shocker]

This is one area when the board design works against itself. Leaving a +1 rating with the comment "I like that" and a post saying "I like that" feels very much like the same thing so it feels awkward to do both. And if you're not doing both, it makes more sense to do the rating on which makes "number go up".

Getting the reputation is nice, but nothing beats a quick written comment when it comes to creating happiness in an author. Also if someone is starting to dig deeper in a bibliography, that I like it comment has the chance of bringing a story I really enjoyed reading to other readers attention by bumping it back to the front page.

I’m very grateful for a user currently reading my older stories and rating them positively, but not many do that. So something that vanished from the front page is slowly sinking into oblivion.

[Claire]

This is one area when the board design works against itself. Leaving a +1 rating with the comment "I like that" and a post saying "I like that" feels very much like the same thing so it feels awkward to do both. And if you're not doing both, it makes more sense to do the rating on which makes "number go up".

This will occasionally happen, but ratings are rare in general. Ratings without comments are even rarer. And we just don't know which share of ratings without comments replaced a comment and which share reulted in a rating instead of nothing. But if that ever turned into a quantitatively relevant phenomenon, it would most likely solve itself quickly. Why? Because then we would have Community Favorites. And to access those, the users would need to earn reputation themselves. And you can't get that reputation by rating stories, only by commenting on them.

But you are right in principle. There is a trade-off there and if this ever became a quanitatively relevant phenomenon, it would make sense to think about making changes.