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If it worked better on a phone it might help. Unless I’m at home using my desktop, the site is difficult to navigate. It would also help to get more women on the site.
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That’s hard to achieve. The leading reason for going with this new theme was that it worked much better on mobiles than the previous one. It works fine on my phone (well, as fine as any site works on a mobile, which isn’t very well).
Basically, I cannot fix that one. We’ve already been through four themes. Also, changing themes is around 2 weeks work for me.
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Just done some research. I’d have to lose the forum, the navigation pane, the Master Dare List results page and all forums to make it mobile-friendly.
Jeffery Curt likes this
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Honestly, what it will take is something happening on the site more than what has been for the past couple of months, or longer. It is really hard to see any real benefit to being a community supporter right now. It appears that most people either don’t even stick around and/or are not active, and activities that might entice people to are not active or ongoing.
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Quite often, I’ve thought that your posts have sounded like you have given up already – that you are just asking someone to make the decision for you. The bottom line is that it is your site and your hobby, no one is going to tell you to give up or not. But, if it is no longer enjoyable for you, you are not getting what you want out of it, it is too costly, or otherwise too much of a burden for you to continue, those things are worthy considerations. And, maybe, there are other doors that will open and other interests to pursue.
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Actually, I’m really keen to keep things going but I get beaten down by almost daily PMs, e-mails and posts telling me how the site doesn’t work, how I’m not putting enough work in, that everything needs improving (that’s all a simplification obviously). Also, over the past few months, I’ve had some very rude private messages which can be very demoralising. I’ve had people accusing me of only running the community for money, which is funny on several levels. Of course, many (probably most) websites only exist because they make money, but in the case of the Naked Experiment community, it still costs me more than it makes – It’s certainly never gone any way to pay me for my time. I’ve had people accusing me of being fake, pretending there are women here (if I was, I’m doing a VERY bad job of that!), not posting enough content and many other things, even including that I work undercover for the FBI!
I don’t have much time to work here and don’t visit as often as I would like. Sometimes when I call in, I have 5-10 or so comments to reply to (and messages to answer) and not enough time to do it. It can make my answers terse and not always conveying the meaning or emotion I intend. Sorry about that.
We have a very small core of long-term members of the community who I would feel I have let down if I close this community. I enjoy interacting with you all and, given the option, I would love to increase that core to many more people. I’ve failed to do that. I’ve tried so hard, tried so many things over the past few years, put so many hours into it, but I’ve failed and I feel that is my fault.
I still believe this community has potential, that it fills a niche that isn’t covered everywhere, that it is is a worthwhile idea, but I just can’t seem to make a go of it. Maybe I’m just not cut out for it? I genuinely don’t know what to do and I really don’t want to let everyone down.
On a lighter note, we gained a Community Supporter today (1st one for approaching 2 months)!
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I’ve been trying to think of what to say about this. I still don’t know, for sure, so I’m sure this is going to be a bit jumbled, and maybe harsh, but it is intended constructively. Whereas you seem to be concerned about “letting down” a “very small core of long-term members”, 1.) Where are they? I think I can pretty much count the number of participants in the short couple of months I’ve been here in the low teens. Where were they when you were trying to get the vote-off going? 2.) Is closing the site down really letting anyone down much more than simply letting it fade away due to lack of ongoing activity and engaging content that discourages new visitors while driving away existing ones?
I take you at your word that you really want to keep the site going, and I hope you do if that is what you want, but whatever the goal, doing something is almost always better than doing nothing. I think you need to get something/anything going and revel in the activity you get, rather than lament that you don’t, and see what happens, what doesn’t work as well as what does, and use it to advance and grow the site. Id start by getting what you already have going, the master dare list and challenges. Keep them going and expand them so that anyone can jump in at any time, at any level they are comfortable with. As you may have seen from the recent vote-off attempt, trying to organize it by Comittee and appeasing everyone doesn’t always work. Inevitably you will always make some happy and others not. But taking too long to gather consensus and decide grows tiresome to people’s short attention spans and they loose interest. Also, there s nothing wrong with keeping it simple and making it happen. Don’t listen to the negative garbage from people because it will likely never go away.I totally understand the concerns of some of you mentioned detractors, and you should too. You are dealing with subject matter that simply lends itself to anonymity, secrecy, uncertainty, and a lot of online abuse and fraud. A lot of other sites DO generate fake members and activity to lure in new people, and a lot of them also use and share private information. That you seem very concerned about costs and funding through community support, that you yourself are as anonymous as he rest of us, that you use Koffee and/or PayPal, or whatever which may cause concern for many, doesn’t help. I can see people being concerned that you might get their real names, or other info, from third party payment sites. But you don’t have to explain any of this (or at least not as much) if you have a thriving site where clearly a lot of others are trusting enough to join in and participate. Without that, new visitors will question why there aren’t.
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The original aim of using KoFi was anonymity and ease. If, like my other sites, I accepted card transactions, there would be no anonymity at all. Also, getting this site passed for v*s* and m*sterc*rd (sorry, contractually obliged NOT to use their names) would be near impossible and very expensive these days. User-posted content is a major barrier there.
Of course, any kind of anonymity is being stripped away by each new update to the banking regulations. Paypal offers a decent level of discretion because you can simply transfer some money to your Paypal account in advance, make a purchase later and no details of that purchase will appear on your bank statement or credit card statement.
I’m concerned about costs because this site is running at a loss and, currently at least, that only seems to be getting worse. It would be easier to justify the whole operation if the site contributed to my time too, but I’m realistic about that one. As it stands right now, if I close AMOC and SGC (the two sites which cover the shortfall), this community site will go too. It doesn’t get anywhere near covering the cost of a dedicated server.
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There’s an easy way to prove that I want to keep this site going. It would take me about 2 minutes to delete the site, get rid of a big workload and make me a little better off. If I didn’t want to keep it going, it would already be gone :))
According to script stats, almost 70% of activity (posts etc.) here is me.
The Master Dare list was supposed to replace the dare challenges (one big one instead of a list of lesser ones). Also, I just don’t have the time to manage the weekly dare challenges. I tried but it was a killer.
I keep adding stuff to the community. I keep tweaking and repairing the site. I keep adding security and update patches. I spend roughly 2/3rds of my NE time on marketing and spreading the word. Unfortunately, a side-effect of the subject matter is that we don’t get any word-of-mouth marketing going. I try to be here several times per day and I do my best to answer any posts etc., where I can.
Joseph likes this
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As site administrator/moderator, There is not any good reason you shouldn’t post and be a participant. But the mechanics of the site, the costs, the problems, probably should not normally be a subject of discussion. If it isn’t bad enough that there is dwindling participation by both new and existing community members, complaints about the work and cost just add to the problem. Most who visit don’t want to be a burden to you, or listen to your problems. At this point, you are not going to get inundated with new members. Rather, they are going to straggle in slowly, likely if at all. The trick is going to be making them want to stay and not look elsewhere for whatever they are seeking.
So, with all you ARE doing, having run the site (and others) for several years, why do YOU think the site is not doing as well as you’d like.
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If I knew that I might be able to fix it! This site has never done as well as I wanted, but it has on several occasions looked quite promising. Usually, it’s when two or three people join who post useful information, embed videos and start discussions. If I could get another couple like that to join before the first ones give up (because no-one is commenting on their activity) then things would probably build up.
We had a good year or so when the community had a female moderator (Louise) but eventually, she got fed up with half the new members hitting on her.
It’s hard to defend the site against the many points made over the past few years without mentioning the mechanics of the site. I’ve never made it a secret anyway (apart from the security systems). When people start telling me that I’m exaggerating the running cost or making a huge profit on the site, then I feel the need to share, probably more than I should.
It’s hard to talk about encouraging more people to get involved, more people to stick around and more people to become supporters without mentioning why the site has/needs Community Supporters.
What I do find is that when I don’t post anything for a few days, all activity stops completely. I’ve essentially run out of material to post and no-one else is posting anything. I want to keep trying but I have no idea what I should be doing now that is within my scope and capabilities.
One thing I can assure everyone is that if the future of the community was safe, I wouldn’t be raising any of this.
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