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Forum Relationships with One Another


Josie
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I've always liked the idea of actually getting to know your affiliates and the community you've decided to associate yours with. It would be lovely to be able to hang out in an affiliate's chatbox and have a talk with the members there, I think. On occasion, I do make attempts to get to know the admins behind the other sites and will sometimes add them to Skype/what have you.

 

What do you guys think about this? Why don't sites do this?

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I did it with a couple of sites. We were affiliates, and we were mutual fans. They read our monthly chronicles, I read theirs, we discussed in the c-box (or in other cases on the site's FB page).

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I feel that the sense of community that affiliates used to be is now just a link exchange. That's how it feels nowadays (and probably should change names if we're honest about it). However I've personally just never thought about it. I do go randomly jump on other peoples sites and talk to them as a guest. I think sometimes I scare them or make them feel like I'm joining if I do that and it can be upsetting if I never join.

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I have joined a few sites I'm affiliates with. Though the last time I went to the site unaffiliated with us so I decided not to join afterall. Time before that the site I was eyeing closed before I had my character ready to post. (Like I had started writing the character on a Friday, stopped due to work, came back to the character on Monday and went to visit the site and it was gone... replaced with a standard "We're closed" message.)

 

I'd like to offer more, some kind of real reason to affiliate but I have no idea what it would be. Possibly a static ad on our site or something? But I have no idea for certain.

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I've had affiliates do it in the past and I pop into their Cboxes and give them hell now and then. I like chatting them up and making friends. I'll consider joining a longtime affiliate long before one that just opened.

 

@Blackjack Bart and I started as affiliates and now we're weird The Initiative buddies.

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Years ago, I was a member of a Star Wars site which allowed people to have their own forums on it (mainly for fan fiction, a personal, blog-type forum before blogs were invented and if you had a fan site, you could have your own board for that too.) It had a great sense of community while the prequels were being made, members helped each other out by making graphics for each other and affiliating with each others' sites. That is what I consider a proper affiliate.

 

There was also a time when I would be very enthusiastic about sharing my fan sites with forums on the appropriate fan sites because I thought that forum members would enjoy them, but although some sites were nice and accommodating, others weren't and the moderators would treat you as a spammer even if you contributed a lot of good things to the forum. I also used to do fanlistings (mainly joining them, sometimes making fanlisting sites) and again, sharing my fansites with them. However, I found that some people in that community would be nasty and accuse people of copying layouts or refuse to add your site link (I would understand the latter if they were squeamish about mature content, but the site had nothing like that on it.) This kind of behavour made me weary of interacting with the admins behind sites. Sometimes, instead of liking what other people do, and supporting them, whether it be fansites, fanlistings or rp sites some people like to shoot others down. I think that sometimes admins are very invested in getting their own site to work, and don't have the time to visit/interact on other forums. If that is why an admin keep their distance from other sites, I don't mind it, but I just hope it doesn't happen because people see other forums as rivals to their own.

 

Sadly, Morrigan is right to say that it now only appears to be a link exchange. I try to affiliate with forums of fandoms/subjects that I like, so there is the possibility I might join them, but it would depend on if I had the time for the site, or if the time era, etc, of the board interests me.

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I like the concept of being closer with our affiliates and it's what is hoped for in our 'sister site' section. However,  I do wonder if it is only a static advertising tool now and/or a means to lure regular RP types to another site. 

We had one affiliate that was of similar genre and initially we were happy to support them. Unfortunately,  the manner of the admins toward guests in the cbox and a few other elements about that site left a lot to be desired.

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Back in the hay-day when people put links to the sites that their members/friends ran, it was great. It felt like branches of a community.

 

But now its really just a link exchange, to be perfectly honest.

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It feels like, with the way MMO's have been growing or changing, and the type of mobile games people can play, the number of members in our writing world tends to go down every year. I have no basis in saying this, but it seems like a lot of people I meet are getting older, or trying to keep their board together by either trying to get guests to join or chasing them off so as not to "shark" them. I think with things like Pokemon Go, and other mobile games or more modern games like Overwatch, as things get more and more advanced in the glitz-and-glamour of video games, we're, in some ways, an "endangered" brood.

Then again, it's often been said I live in a cultural wasteland, which I can't entirely disagree with, since where I live when it comes to gaming it's either shooters or sports or 3ds mmo's/grinding games or phone/tablet games like Pokemon Go. There are, as far as I know, no other text-based roleplayers anywhere within a 50+ mile radius of me. The ones I know online, they use chat services like Discord to play games together online or to play DnD together.

It seems and feels like sometimes like most forums outside of the "what's popular" archetypes like "warriors cats" or "once upon a time" or  "harry potter" or all those "mainstream" ones are essentially competing with each other in a way or they all try and follow the same idea/design. While I don't think forum roleplay is going to stop within the next few years, I think it's past its golden age, and now it's just, "loyalty to the site".

I've said it before, and I still feel the same: i think this world is changing too fast lately. Not all of it is bad, but it's certainly hard to keep up, and it feels like it's creating a lot of displaced people, who are losing a place to fit in with the world. At least, where I am, anyways.

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Guest Archaic Cyborg
10 hours ago, Rune said:

I've had affiliates do it in the past and I pop into their Cboxes and give them hell now and then. I like chatting them up and making friends. I'll consider joining a longtime affiliate long before one that just opened.

 

@Blackjack Bart and I started as affiliates and now we're weird The Initiative buddies.

 

 

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@Sparky Muse I don't think that we are archaic or the world is moving too fast for us. I certainly believe that we are still a staple in life because we create together. I will say as I get older there are things in the text based that you see more. I've been roleplaying for 20 years. Things aren't the same as when I started. Things I am happy are gone, like 12 paragraphs equaled an advanced roleplay and how one liners are the devil. I love a good one liner now and loathe something that is 12 paragraphs with nothing in it to get me moving forward.

 

Obviously we've lost some of our closeness, I feel like the RP world is bigger now than it used to be. It's something I hope my children get involved in when they are old enough and move forward with things. I feel that the fact that you can write collaboratively is fabulous! I personally wouldn't give it up for the world.

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I think that it's easy for affiliates to become just a link exchange, and that if you're not careful that's exactly what most are. For some people that's absolutely fine. I've only affiliated with other games that I am active in, and I was the one to ask them if they wanted to do the link exchange. I know not everyone feels this way, but I feel that if I provide a link on my page, I am saying that the linked game is run by good people, so I only do affiliate links with people I know and trust to run a good game.

 

And that's not to say that people I haven't linked to aren't good people, it just means that I do not have first hand experience to tell me they are, yet.

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"Sister Sites".

 

Yes, our affiliates are simple link exchanges but we have sister sites, too. We know the admins, have worked with them, or have some sort of positive relationship.

 

Occasionally, we interact with affiliates, by shooing away guests that aren't a good fit and suggesting the site of the affiliate we like the least. : P

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On 2/21/2017 at 7:44 PM, Gothams Reckoning said:

Why don't sites do this?

 

Personally?

 

Because I'm shy and/or lazy. 😰

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I love, love, love talking to people we affiliate with. Sometimes when we get an affiliate request, I'll quietly lurk for a while and then eventually make conversation in the cbox. Or if I find a site that I think is fabulous, I'm right there like, "So listen I really want to affiliate". I adore most of the sites we've linked with and will refuse to add a site I can't/won't personally endorse.

 

This community thing is what my staff will talk about a lot. It's super important to us. We will go and talk with peeps in, say, Shades of History or For Queen and Crystal, or they'll come in our cbox. Often we drop little loves or random comments, and one night we even created an inside joke. It's the best. We'll go quiet for a week or so, then start talking at each other in various cboxes between us, and also go to compliment sites of others we've affiliated with.

 

The thing is, too, that most people are leery of "poaching", especially if the guest in the cbox is a staff from another site who will talk about where they came over from. It's a worry that staffers have, I suppose, but I've never cared if they talk to my members about their sites. Hell, in my site's Discord server alone, some of my own members and a mod run their own sites and we all discuss it in general channel. I haven't lost any member over it and I adore the excitement that's shared among us. A group of them has started up a really great idea for a forum and began the planning process of it, including me in it. I'm mostly there as, like, morale support, honestly.

 

All this to say... we don't believe in just mere link exchange, we already have advertisement stuff to do that with. When we affiliate, we reach out most of the time. We just got two new affiliates and I love their sites, but haven't communicated with them yet (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE).

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