City of IF

Vishal Muralidharan · Joined: 24 Aug 2010 Posts: 867 Location: City Of IF!

Please feel free to post your questions as well!
Please refrain from commenting on other questions, or giving us your 'correct' answers.

Now, I have 2 questions.

1) How are you going to hold the IFys? Are you going to hold them? How will you move forward with the last mayor started?

2) What'll be your main focus on improving activity on the site (this crops up every election, and no one keeps up their promises)? Are you going to try to get new active members to the site? Or are you going to try to get more out of what we have, because out of the 750 odd members we have, hardly 10 are active. (That's a staggering 1.3 %)

I'll also be posting Vikas's question.

1) How are you going to deal with the Forum Mods?! Do you think that they are necessary, or that they can be removed with no real hinderance to the site?

Andolyn · Posted: Wed Jun 13, 2012 12:51 pm Post subject:

I want to start this out by saying that I intended to keep this to myself until after the election. I didn't want to make any of those promises you mentioned. I wanted to be elected for the fact that I am a trusted member of the community who has been faithful to the City since she started her life here...but I knew eventually that would be a naive thought.

Anyway, on to the questions.

1. I do very much plan to carry out the Ifys. That will be the first action on my agenda if I'm elected.

2. I plan to pm all members of If, possibly email them, inviting them back to the City. There was a plan in the works for this some time back and I plan to carry on with that. I will need your help, though. It feels like I've said this 1000 times, but Activity breeds Activity. Those who want the City to be active need to be reading and commenting. Otherwise, how are we supposed to encourage others to be active when they arrive?

3. For Vikas's question, I've already skimmed the top of this question in Lil's thread when I said I would be slimming down the City's layout a bit. With fewer forums, there will be fewer mods. Those mods will be governors of their own realms reporting to the mayor when any large issues arise. We can always flesh the site out a bit as necessity dictates.

Vishal Muralidharan · Joined: 24 Aug 2010 Posts: 867 Location: City Of IF!

Andolyn wrote: I wanted to be elected for the fact that I am a trusted member of the community who has been faithful to the City since she started her life here.

It feels like I've said this 1000 times, but Activity breeds Activity. Those who want the City to be active need to be reading and commenting. Otherwise, how are we supposed to encourage others to be active when they arrive?

Yes, you have been a trusted member of IF, and you've always been faithful to the site ever since you arrived, but its easy for Bizzy to make the same claim. What do you think puts you over him?! What do you think should make me want to vote for you and not for him?!

About the second part of the quote, I completely agree with you. Everyone's been saying that everytime this question arises. However, that wasn't my question. What I had intended to ask was whether you had a more concrete plan, something more than just asking people to come back and be active. Do you have an idea or something to set of this activity breeding activity pattern?! All we need is just that little push, and then we can watch the activity snowball. Is there anything you have in your mind to stimulate that first wave of activity that should lead to everyone being more active?! Because I don't think that the wave is going to 'just happen'.

Andolyn · Posted: Thu Jun 14, 2012 5:17 am Post subject:

The first part...well, there's not much I can say that won't be a "claim" that Bizzy can easily duplicate. We have much the same policies to my knowledge, we've both been here...so I guess it's really up to you. What have YOU seen that's different? You have all seen us both in action. What do YOU think sets us apart? Right now I think it's how much we comment and read, but that can easily be changed.

For the second, I'm not quite sure I understand the question. We're holding the Ifys shortly after the election if I win as a hope that it will inspire people to get back to writing, but outside of that, what would you like us to do other than ask people to come back? We can't exactly FORCE the citizens to write. That's where YOU will have to push YOURSELF to write and hope that others do the same.

Tikanni Corazon · Posted: Thu Jun 14, 2012 5:55 am Post subject:

Very well, removed.

Vishal Muralidharan · Joined: 24 Aug 2010 Posts: 867 Location: City Of IF!

*sighs*

I've seen too much debate here on IF to be offended by anything, but I specifically asked for only the candidates to voice their opinions on the question. If you have a question PLEASE do post it, but I don't want this to turn into a thread for debate. If you still want to talk about this, you can send me a PM or we can chat about this in the Inn. Our POVs are almost exactly the same, and the slight difference in it is what I was posing as a question.

As for what I'd expect you to do to stimulate activity, I have no idea. I don't know how to get people writing, and that's mainly why I probably will never run for mayor. Please note that this is just a clarification to my question and you can still keep your first answer if you wish. I understand you can't exactly force people to write, but people will need inspiration and motivation to either write or read. No-one can (well, perhaps you can, but I can tell you a lot of people can't) 'just start writing'. They can push themselves to write horrible stuff, but quality needs motivation and inspiration. That's what I was looking for. The reason we see threads like this being debated upon a lot is because everyone wants to see IF improve, but no-one really knows what to do. Thunderbird had a lot of ideas to stimulate activity, and they did work to an extent, but everything fizzled out because of a fight. Despite that, the stimulation did work and I was looking for something like that.

We recently had a return of a member who went by the name of Reiso. He was back, and he said he was going to finish writing Sector 17 and he appeared all excited about finishing a story that he started long ago. What happened?! He posts an "emergency delay" and we haven't seen him ever since. Apart from the wave of newbies who never posted, we've had people who I believed were going to stay. The Airwings Oracle, Logan Ethan Kane, kc9cra, Midnight, UndeadCowboy to name a few.. They did stay here for a while and then left all of a sudden and I can't fathom why (I can, but I won't be posting that here)

So to rephrase my question, What will you do to make sure that those who join the site stay, and those who return don't leave again?

Andolyn · Posted: Fri Jun 15, 2012 7:42 am Post subject:

I'll stay with my same answer. The Citizens have to choose to be active. I can hold all the tournaments and contests and awards ceremonies i want, but if the Citizens don't choose to get into gear, there's nothing the mayor can do about it. True, you have to be inspired to write, but how inspired do you have to be to read and comment? That really doesn't take much effort. And what excites you to write more than when you see a comment on your SG? The chain reaction has to start somewhere. Go read and comment...then when you're inspired, WRITE! The pattern will repeat itself.

misterbiz · Posted: Tue Jun 19, 2012 9:32 pm Post subject:

1. IFy's will be one of my top priorities as well. Not number one, but definitely in the top five.

2. There was Pope's advertising idea, other than that it really is up to others. As has been pointed out a couple times. You can't force people to write and you can't really force them to come on the site. Sometimes, the real world is an unrelenting bitch and takes people away from this place...sometimes from their craft entirely. I used to be very Active on another site: Tome City but writer's block hit hard...and I came here...and just haven't been back yet. As my old theater director said, shit happens.

3. I plan on keeping most if not all of the forum mods. Probably all if all of them are active citizens and have actually done something besides log-in in the last month.

Crunchyfrog · Joined: 12 Dec 2006 Posts: 3998

A question of mine that got overlooked from the other thread...

If you lose the election, what will you do?

Andolyn · Posted: Wed Jun 20, 2012 6:13 am Post subject:

It didn't get overlooked, it was decided that questions besides Lil's would be in a separate thread. I've been waiting for you to post it elsewhere.

In answer to it though, if I lose, I'll still help Bizzy go forward with any of my plans he desires to persue. My plans are for the good of the City, not my own glory. I'm sure Biz feels the same, but I'll do whatever it takes to get the life back in the City regardless of my status. It helps that Biz is one of my best friends here. ;)

Vikas Muralidharan · Joined: 29 Aug 2010 Posts: 600

misterbiz wrote:
3. I plan on keeping most if not all of the forum mods. Probably all if all of them are active citizens and have actually done something besides log-in in the last month.

Considering the number of people involved in IF, having all forum mods would mean many of the users active on the site would be administrators. Dont you think there are too many people "in power"?

Coming to think of it, to both Andi & Biz- Is "The Council" really necessary anymore?

Andolyn · Posted: Wed Jun 20, 2012 9:31 am Post subject:

If I get elected, the coouncil will consist of about 5 people. Considering my plan to cut the number of forums, that might actually be all the mods. We'll see when we get there. I do think they're necessary to avoid a dictatorship, but I do agree that there are way too many people with power. That's why little has gotten done recently. Too much debating.

misterbiz · Posted: Wed Jun 20, 2012 12:29 pm Post subject:

If I lose, I'm going to assist Andi in any way she needs to make this city better as for that, I will continue to do what I do day in and day out...write. I will also continue to strive to be better at reading and commenting but I will stick to my strengths.

The council is totally necessary. T-Bird hardly utilized the one he had and look at the fallout. The guilds, the dark forums, pointless competitions. He didn't listen to us or the people of the city and as a result of the pointless items he implemented may have driven some of the attendance down. So I will keep a council, maybe less as Andi has said, or maybe the same. I don't know yet.