One month after the launch: Headed for closure

[Claire]

I told myself that I would evaluate whether this forum is worth running after three months. After one month, I sadly have to say: Currently, it is headed for closure because of the utter lack of engagement from the vast majority of users.

If you want to know more about why and what needs to change, read the second post.

[Claire]

The Ravishment Academy is now 1 month old (28 days to be precise), so we are one third of the way to the final evaluation date. Where do we stand?

It is not looking good. Things are fine when it comes to the number of stories on the site. Even getting consistently 2 to 3 new users daily since April 14 is good for a forum this young. The problem is of course the lack of engagement from the vast majority of users. This hit a new low with the voting stage for the Quarter-Final of the Ravished in a Flash Tournament.

The winners of these three Quarter-Final matches were essentially decided by the votes of the contestants. Besides our admin @Vela Nanashi who voted (and commented) on all the stories provided by our contestants, there was only a single vote on one of the stories from a non-contestant. So one vote from one user who didn't compete themselves and was not a member of the team.

Reading all the stories in this Quarter-Final would have taken the average reader less than 30 minutes, closer to 20 actually. Even if that was too much, anybody could have used the roughly 6 to 8 minutes to read the two stories of 1 match and could have just voted on that. Of course, there are always reasons why someone individually might not have had time to be online here over the course of 3 days. But over the course of these 3 days, on each individual day more than 25+ different registered users were online and spent time on the forum, not counting guests who could have registered and voted immediately. I also tried everything in my power to make the contest stories easily findable and easily recognizable, promoting the contest to the utmost of my ability on this forum. I pinned the story threads to the top of the board, created an announcement banner linking to them, had people play secret santa with pen names so that the anonymous accounts would have fun identities with custom avatars, and tried to encourage people to read and vote on these stories.

The result? The number of people rating these stories (7) was equal to the number of authors participating in the competition (7) with two of the people voting leaving only a single vote on one match-up. The bottom line is: A community can't work like that. A writing community that shows no appreciation for the content provided by its authors can not function.

This is not me saying that I will close the forum definitely. I stand by this three month testing period. But if this is still norm two months from now, I won't bother to put any more time and effort into this.

[Blue]

Hallo Claire, ich denke, es ist noch viel zu früh, um über eine Schließung nachzudenken. Dafür hat das Forum noch viel zu wenige Mitglieder. Und wenn du dich im Internet umschaust, gibt es nur wenige Foren, in denen tatsächlich eine rege Beteiligung stattfindet.
Mich selbst stört es nicht, dass kaum Feedback zu den Geschichten kommt. Das bin ich aus anderen Foren gewohnt. 1000 x gelesen, keinmal kommentiert.

[peterfrisk]

I really hope that the closure will not happen. Give it time, i think a lot of people are yet to discover this page. I found it by pure luck less then 24 hour ago. I still don´t know how you "advertised" it, i found it when trying to find out what happend to RU.

[CFarmwood]

In strong agreement with above comments. One month is much too early to consider closure. Let me know if you need help with site support and I will be be submitting stories here very soon. I also only found the site because another contacted happen to mention it in a note. And many thanks for putting this together.

[John_F_Drake]

I hope it survives, I just found it by luck!

[LtBroccoli]

It takes time to build a community. We're barely a month into this place and still working out the bugs. It takes time to build interaction and a devoted base. And it's a lot of work for those of us to bring over our stories. Most of us don't have time to be on this site repeatedly throughout the week. I'm lucky if I get two hours per week away from work and everything else to hang out here. And this is on top of the other bugs with the site.

You realize that at most of the other sites I've been on that the only people who ever took part in the contests were the participants themselves? I've lost count of the number of them where the votes and the number of participants was almost a 1:1 ratio. There's many reasons why, but in the end it takes time to build those out.

Rating the success of the site based on a friendly competition between a few online friends and how many new people get involved is the wrong KPI. Focus on building out the story database, encouraging comments and interaction in the forums, and working on growth should be the focus. Story contests are nice but they're not the end-all-be-all.

[HistBuff]

Really low commenting is now the norm all over erotica. One example, my story "Mongolian Bandits Attack Train" in its AO3 version. First published 10 months ago. It has 8,232 views, 21 kudos and 4 comments. Of those four comments, two are replies by truly yours, so really, two comments... Two comments from THE SAME user! Lol. And it's the same on all sites where I'm present. Five years ago on Ravishu, there was a lot more engagement from users. I was just starting out, and yet I had a lot more feedback than I'm getting now even though my English has vastly improved and I'm a much better writer than in 2020.

And yes, most users can't really hang out a lot on this forum. I work full time, I have a wife, I'm a retired Olympic weightlifter who still trains 4-5 times a week, etc. I keep posting stories because writing some scenes and developing characters bring me personal fun and pleasure. If I did for the feedback, I'd have quit two years ago. Fact is, I barely have time for posting chapters.

Everywhere I'm present, barring AO3 and Literotica, there's a small group of users who hang out a lot and in many cases they'll mostly give feedback to each other, because they're like-minded. Being on this space seems to be very important for each of them so they make time; you'll see them a lot on chat. AO3 and Literotica are different because there's a much much larger pool of users, and there are pros and cons for being there. I personally prefer those sites with a larger pool without a close-knit circle of regulars, this for many reasons, one being my fantasies involving famous actresses and femmes fatales who lived 70 years ago -- I'm far more likely to stumble into someone sharing those fantasies over there.

Also, sites that prefer, or are forced by their host, to forbid anything under 18 for characters don't tend to do very well as to longevity, unless they're "too big to fail" like Literotica. I suspect there are a heck of a lot users who keep looking for sites allowing UA. I'd say allowing characters 16-17 years old under specific caveats *, if it's possible, would be a huge game changer. Because then, this forum would offer something that most others don't. But I'd be surprised if our host would be OK with this. AO3 can run the way they do because they own their own server. * Maybe Consensual only?

I would advise against advertising that "the forum is headed for closure" on the Campus main page. If a new user starts posting here and sees this header, I don't think this person is going to feel like getting more involved.

Most users keep it a more casual thing, and they should. The field I work in is demanding, and if I started giving more time and effort to an online forum, my performance on the job would begin to suffer, and I'm the sole breadwinner in my household. I've known a Tony V. (on RavishU) who is a lawyer and when he changed jobs, his new employer required that he refrained from any involvement in any "morally dubious" activity, including online, and thus he was gone.

I've noticed we now have better visibility on Google. If I search Ravishment academy, I see this site pop up. If I search for Ravishment university, then I stumble in this site too thanks to the Ravishu Memorial Contest. I'm personally expecting a slow build-up over time. At least we're getting some new members.

[bob202]

Hopefully engagement picks up, I found forum tonight by accident

[LtBroccoli]

I would advise against advertising that "the forum is headed for closure" on the Campus main page. If a new user starts posting here and sees this header, I don't think this person is going to feel like getting more involved.

Yeah, making a post phrased like that sounds really off-putting. My plan for tonight was to go through a couple of my stories and post the first chapter or two in a couple series. I log on and see an announcement that the site is headed for closure, I'm not posting anything. Why should I bother posting if the site is going down soon? Why should I reformat every single one of my stories if this site isn't going to last more than a couple months? If you want to have a discussion about getting engagement, that's one thing. Posting an announcement that the site is headed for closure because there's not a lot of comments scares people off, including and especially those of us gunshy because we've been burnt a few times before.

Also, not everyone is comfortable making comments. Let's be honest, we're making porn. There's a lot of readers who just want to read, bust a nut, and leave. A thumbs up or kudos is more than a lot of readers will ever give. It's great to get comments and gives us that high to keep us going, but I know that outside of a few people we won't get tons of comments. It's across the entire genre.

Site growth is what we should be striving for. New threads, new stories, new users is what we need. Having a post about how we're heading for closure kills all that momentum.