Why are so few people at the stories forum?

johncmcleod · June 16, 2003, 22:35

I post a completed story and I only get 73 views, and I've viewed it several times and probably so have the people who wrote comments about it. I want more people to read it. I like the amount of stories right now, the forum is small enough that I can write a story and it won't be looked over because there are so many other stories better than it. But I wish more people would come and read the stories.

I just don't understand why hardly anyone is at the stories forum, though. Yes, when I first saw it I thought "Wow. People writing stories about a computer game, that's very nerdy." But I clicked on the stories link in the directory, saw the Chronicles of Imhotep in there, read it, and it changed my internet life. Once I started reading them I got hooked. Of course I have gone on a couple of several month periods where I wouldn't read any, but I always come back here.

I am considering recruiting story forum readers. It's the only way I can think of to get more readers. I could post a thread in the popular General forum saying "I want you! to read stories at the civ3 stories forum." Or, we could convince everyone who participates in the stories forum to put something on their signature to advertise coming to this forum. What do you guys think should be done to attract more readers?

SKILORD · June 16, 2003, 23:54

Quote:

Wow. People writing stories about a computer game, that's very nerdy."

same here bro. Apparently, though, I changed my ways.

I advertise my own stories in my sig :shrug: but I don't really post in many places other than the Civ3 Stories and the Stories and Diplo forum, which is primarilly composed of Civ3 Stories people who play NEses. Oh yeah, and those diplo guys.....

Quote:

I want more people to read it.

I can't blame you, because frankly I would rather have more comments on my stories, see sommore criticism, help me improve and such.

Good luck with your Crusade here, though I think that the contest is helping, with the newscast for it every now and again.

Bugs ****ing Bunny · June 17, 2003, 09:55

It's because we don't have an "official" stories forum. Instead Apolyton has that bastardised piece of miscegenation- "Stories and Diplomacy", in which stories traditionally sunk without trace.

Believe me, I've tried. Unfortunately the powers that be flatly refuse to consider another "off topic" forum. This means that we end up with a number of minor stories forums loosely attached to host games. When the game gets older, the activity in the stories forum starts to diminish.

It sucks.

ChrisiusMaximus · June 17, 2003, 12:13

There is also a lot who do read AND NOT COMMENT, dont know for sure how many but it certainly is a factor.

steamthunk · June 17, 2003, 20:29

John was referring to the number of views though. Shouldn't that amount be independent of the number of responses?

Ancient Grudge · June 18, 2003, 08:04

Where as i only come to Apolyton.net for the stories.....

DarkCloud · June 19, 2003, 16:22

Quote:

Believe me, I've tried. Unfortunately the powers that be flatly refuse to consider another "off topic" forum. This means that we end up with a number of minor stories forums loosely attached to host games. When the game gets older, the activity in the stories forum starts to diminish.

Lazarus, I feel your disgust.

Imran, myself and a few others tried to set up a collaborative story about a year back and it did quite well in the OT... then sunk when ming transferred it to the stories forum

Imran's frequent attempts are all foiled

and I think the lack of a stories forum is what drove off The Brain, Par4 and perhaps MasterAngel Bob...

That Diplomacy forum is the death of any tale at apolyton.

*Sigh* we can try, though.

-
Just wondering for everyone complaining at the lack of views, however; did any of you ever check out the AC-Fiction tales

If you want to support writing at apolyton, you would do well to support your AC-brethern

-
and if you're looking for classic apolyton tales, look no further than fjxorc's archive here: http://fjorxc.rooms.rubberrooms.net/...ste/index.html

SKILORD · June 19, 2003, 19:12

Speaking of tat burial heap, the diplo fora.

There was once a time, many of you see it as the darkest days of thisw fora, when NESes were here, on the stories fora, back in these days new players flooded to the games. Now, in the diplo fora the games are dominated by the old, classical players. There is virtually no new blood and it becomes boring.... as hell..... as the 'American Idol' movie i had to preveiw today.....

So there's an example of how the NES at Apolyton died, and how the Diplo fora is the death of anything.

:sigh: tough times for a writer here at 'poly.

Jonny · June 19, 2003, 21:15

Quote:

Originally posted by SKILORD
Speaking of tat burial heap, the diplo fora.

There was once a time, many of you see it as the darkest days of thisw fora, when NESes were here, on the stories fora, back in these days new players flooded to the games. Now, in the diplo fora the games are dominated by the old, classical players. There is virtually no new blood and it becomes boring.... as hell..... as the 'American Idol' movie i had to preveiw today.....

So there's an example of how the NES at Apolyton died, and how the Diplo fora is the death of anything.

:sigh: tough times for a writer here at 'poly.

Unfortunately, that is true.

We need 1 Stories forum, not 1 for each game!

vovan · June 20, 2003, 00:05

Actually, I rather like it the way it is now.

Think about it: if we had only one forum for all the stories, there would only be one of the two outcomes: either it would turn into another "Stories and Diplomacy" forum, which means instant death to anything; or it would turn into another NationStates forum. The spam sharks would gather and the good stories would be buried almost instanteneously under the multitude of junk threads started by the PC-hunters. Nah, I rather like our little corner here. As you can see, the stories are alive an kicking. And that's just the way it should be. As for the lack of readers, well, summer's always a little slow, actually.

ChrisiusMaximus · June 20, 2003, 06:06

I think things have been a little livelier lately and there are some great stories knocking about, as I said earlier most of the people who view dont, post you only have to look at the counters to see that.

I would say that there are plenty of folk coming here but not saying so, this has always been the case.

I too would prefer to keep the civ3 stories as the civ3 stories forum, I understand the frustration over the nes's but as I have said many times before why cant we have a civ3 fiction section with sub sections for civ3 nes and civ3 Succession games similar to what they have got over at civfanatics.

I have suggested this before and it was not considered necessary by the mods but wouldnt it be a solution to what concerns people, writers and nes participants alike.

steamthunk · June 21, 2003, 12:03

Maybe it's because I'm not an "old-timer" (from the perspective of Apolyton anyway

), but I checked out the other forums mentioned in this post and all of them are much less active than this section.

Looking at how anyone coming to Apolyton might see stuff here I found that one can reach some stories in 3 clicks.

apolyton.net->apolyton.net/civ3->stories link in upper right.

Not bad. But once you get to these "featured" stories I couldn't find a direct way to get to this very forum if you don't actually view one of the stories. The only thing I could come up with was to go back and click on "Forum-General". Then look at the link "Apolyton CS Forums>Civilization III" to get the list of Civ3 forums and then finally click on Civ3 Stories.

I'm amazed anyone is here at all!

Compare this with our friends at CivFanatics. Although they don't have a big stories link, their Civ3-Stories (6th from the top) forum is immediately visible after one click on "Forums" from the front page. The point is that its easy for anyone to know that there are people doing nerdy civ3 story writing!

Might one solution be to put "Forum-Stories" on the apolyton.net/civ3 page or at least put some kind of direct link here from the existing featured stories page? The first step to getting more views/responses is to enable people to easily find this place!

unscratchedfoot · June 21, 2003, 13:33

I noticed the same thing steamthunk. To get here I had to search for apolyton general forum on the internet and after waiting a long time for it to load, I had to go to the bottom of the page and use the forum jump to eventually get to the goods. Newcomers just ain't gonna find this forum at all unless guided here by someone or some link. Like you said, there needs to be a direct link to here from the apolyton home page.

ChrisiusMaximus · June 21, 2003, 13:44

It would certainly help, good suggestions

DarkCloud · June 21, 2003, 22:21

No need to worry about bothering Mark or Dan about this... I already PMed them.

Good suggestion about the direct link from the Civ III page.

Much better idea than the link from the directory- since if you visit the directory, you'll eventually discover that it's links link directly into the stories forum

Mr. President · June 22, 2003, 03:01

It makes me sad that people would apparently rather have epic spam debates in the Off-Topic forum than read amateur Civ3 or AC fiction.

DarkCloud · June 22, 2003, 18:26

I don't think people even read the debates in the OT. I never read them except when I was responding to them- and even then I didn't always read everything

--
Oh, Dan said he has taken care of it

I'd check for myself- but the server's so slow

Thanks Dan!

SKILORD · June 30, 2003, 00:08

What if we had our own civgroup? would people covet an extra icon enough to look over here? It would ensure advertisment....

DarkCloud · July 1, 2003, 16:29

Markos is currently in the army... thus a civgroup will be hard to form. It had finally inched its way to the top of his agenda... then he was forced into mandatory service

A civgroup might be given eventaully, but not right now

vovan · July 1, 2003, 20:23

Quote:

Originally posted by SKILORD
What if we had our own civgroup? would people covet an extra icon enough to look over here? It would ensure advertisment....

Never going to happen, SKI. I've been asking for it since January, and DC - February. So far, Markos always either ignored me altogether or said that there were technical difficulties creating any civgroup at all (which is not true, of course, for since then a few civgroups have been created). I hope you are right about the top of the agenda, though DC.

DarkCloud · July 2, 2003, 20:54

Um... there were some difficulties- but Gramphos got them worked out. Then Markos joined the army

Metaliturtle · July 10, 2003, 02:46

well, seeing as I've been here as long as most or longer, I feel I should put in my 2 fifths of a nickel.

Reasons the average browser (assuming they find this place) doesn't reply to stories.

1. These stories have improved dramatically, some like CBRaund have always been well written and thought out, but most of the writers (myself DEFINITELY included) are constantly improving technique on here, which, sooner or later, results in long, elaborate stories that are more like small novels, even SKILORD, who I consider one of my best friends, has stories that are good, but they are LOOONNG, by the time you finish reading them you are either too tired to reply, or you took so long that you have to get offline to deal with the real world.

2. The length is one thing, another possibility is that the people reading the story are new to the forum, and new to writing, if they are looking for advice, there is reason to believe that they won't actively give it out. Grammar and Spelling is just a small piece of this, but a new writer is not going to want to give advice about characterization or plot development without experiencing the writing process firsthand.

3. Most newcomers probably have experienced game-related forums before, and are afraid of being called a "n00b" by "1337 d00dz" that declare the newcomer "pWn3d" so rather than make an ass of themselves, they just troll.

4. I actively troll these stories, but I don't usually reply unless someone has asked me to, and I would be just as comfortable asking them. If I REALLY don't like something about a story I'll point it out, but if it's overall good, I don't want to nitpick it to death either.

5. sometimes AOL is extra evil and forces me to click something 20 times before it reacts, and amazingly, that many windows pop up soon after, and poof, jacked up viewcounts!

Samuel Johnson · July 15, 2003, 21:07

The question isn't so much why are there so few people here but why are there so many? Why isn't there a similar story forum for, say, Rise of Nations? What is it about CIVIII that has inspired an amateur community of story tellers? Answer that any you will answer your original question. Perhaps this forum needs to migrate onto another site that accesses a wider community of story tellers. On the other hand, from adversity comes art.

Myself, I'm going to go back and read some more stories!

Jeremy 2.0 · July 18, 2003, 00:18

There is a link to the Story Forum page on the main page. Was that always there?

I would love to get more traffic and stories and feedback going here. With all of the outages I found myself going to another civ site that seemed to have a pretty healthy story forum. And speaking of that forum, is it at all common to post stories to both sites? Is there some reason not to?

SKILORD · July 18, 2003, 00:42

here's no problem with posting it on both sites. I used to play games with Legacy where I would write different versions of each chapter (1 from each pov) and post them on CFC and here seperately.

trickey · July 19, 2003, 21:28

This used to be one of the only forums I visited, back in the Crazed Greek Wandering days and such (good times

).

I'm not really sure why I stopped posting here, I think it might just be because some of the authors I was farmiliar with stopped writting for a little while. Well, they didn't stop writting, it's just they all seemed to take a break at the same time. And if the story wasn't written by someone I knew, I usually wouldn't read it (stupid, I know).

Then when the Nes' left this forum, I left too.

It's kinda funny how much time I spent at this forum, yet I didn't write a single story (I think I had one failed attemp to, though). Tells you something about the people here.

steamthunk · July 20, 2003, 12:45

Quote:

And if the story wasn't written by someone I knew, I usually wouldn't read it (stupid, I know).

This confirms a feeling I've had about this forum actually. Well actually most forums, but I usually lose interest in other forums (for all kinds of topics) after a month or two so I haven't been able to observe over time at other places. In my unproven opinion I think it's harder for new people to break into the established group and get views and comments. My hats off to Chrisius who seems to be the true egalatrian amongst us and comments on everything!

johncmcleod · July 20, 2003, 17:50

Yes, Chrisius has made a comment on all of my stories. I feel terrible for starting this thread and then not comment on anyone else's stories for a while. The reason is I'm currently working on a story but I have become very frusturated with it and I just don't want to think about stories right now. If I finish it I will come here and read everyone's stories, I promise.

Kaos XIII · July 20, 2003, 18:48

Quote:

Originally posted by johncmcleod
"Wow. People writing stories about a computer game, that's very nerdy."

That’s funny!!!

I should of read this thread earlier.

Anyway, I’m one of the ones who reads and doesn’t comment much.

The reason is, I’m no writer, so how can I possibly give out criticism. In fact, I wouldn’t know how to give constructive criticism.

I only reply to interesting parts in a story, and it’s all positive.

DarkCloud · July 20, 2003, 22:18

Quote:

There is a link to the Story Forum page on the main page. Was that always there?

DanQ added it after the stories forum people requested it. You can thank him for the link

Quote:

And speaking of that forum, is it at all common to post stories to both sites?

lots of people post at both civfanatics and here- but apolyton's the only forum wiht a stories competition

(at least last time I checked

)

-

Quote:

"Wow. People writing stories about a computer game, that's very nerdy."

If you want greater exposure you might try this site

http://www.fanfiction.net

(I think that's the link)