Positive Adminning and Why it Works!

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There is this common trend among roleplay admins, we all have unrealistic expectations for what we consider a 'successful' site. When we don't meet these unrealistic expectations we feel terrible, we think that we are failing, we feel that maybe we should just give up.

This is bullshit!!!

Things that we think should happen to determine that site is successful and the reasons they are BS.

• The moment I open a site I should have 10 members and I should just get more and more from there. Only about 25% of roleplay sites get more than 10 active members (at one time), ever, throughout their entire lifespan. It's even less as the numbers go up. Additionally, member count doesn't make a site, members do.
• I advertise everywhere and none of my guests join my site. It's a pretty well known fact that statistics are skewed when it comes to guests online. Spiders/bots count as guests and are most likely your biggest fans. They love when you update content so they will visit regularly.
• Everyone hates me. If you believe this then you shouldn't be an administrator. This isn't meant to put you down but seriously if you think people/the world is against you then you will always feel the negative and none of the positive parts of being an administrator. As an administrator you get the really shitty stuff. You have to deal with the bad things and the problem members and the problem problems, your job is already shit, if you stack that with a "nobody likes me, everybody hates me... I guess I'll go eat worms" mentality there will never be a moment that you enjoy roleplaying, enjoy your site, or enjoy being an admin.
• My site is failing, I should just shut it down. Yes, absolutely. If you aren't behind your site, no one else will be either. You need to be the advocate for your site and so you have to believe that it's going to be successful in order for it to be. No one else does this but you.
• We don't have 50 posts, hell 10 posts or even 5 per day. My members must hate me or be lazy or flaking. Not really. We all know that life comes first and even your most rapid fire posters will get burned out. Power through, continue on and keep going, that's all that you can do to get through any slump. Thinking the site is dying because of the slump? It's wrong. Every roleplay has slumps (even if they don't appear to from the outside looking in).

The reality is:
You choose if your site is successful!

This may sound insane but it's one hundred percent accurate. Your site is as successful as you say it is. No matter the numbers, how quickly people join, how they post or really anything. If you open your site and you say "my site is successful" you've succeeded. Congratulations! You have successfully run an RP.

When you start to go down a negative administrative route you actually start yourself on a very destructive path. Honestly, this path is the only path that I believe may lead to a truly unsuccessful site. Basically by being overly negative you start to run your site into the ground. The following things start to happen:

• You start to see fault in all of your members like they are out to get you. Your members joined your site because they like something about it. Becoming paranoid, or similar will actually push those members away. If they had a problem you would know already.
• You start to blame yourself for not living up to obscure, non-standardized, inaccurate, success standards. As stated above, success isn't deemed by numbers or people or characters or whatever, it's by your sheer attitude. When you blame yourself you start personifying this into places you shouldn't. Your staff, your cBox/chat room, your members, resource sites. When they see that you are losing faith they lose faith and they look for somewhere else to be. By losing faith in your site or yourself you tell your site members not to believe in too.
• You start to see fault in your site and it's features. Thinking that your features are the specific reason people are not joining, staying etc is a really bad way to go. Changing a lot, and often, will not only start to push away your existing member base but it will start to mix and match things that may not be overly attractive because you see things on "successful" sites that have this or that feature and that must be what makes them that way. Unless you know for sure the change you are making is a good thing it's always a good idea to at least seek advice from your existing members. While not everyone will agree you can get a more basic level of understanding from what they provide you as to what changes would help them enjoy your site more. If your existing members love your site, then new/potential members will likely love it too.
• All my members left to make another site, this fucking sucks. Hell yeah it does. It's often, not because of you, it's because they are fickle and they wanted something else but it seems like it's all your fault. I won't say, for sure, it's not you or your site setup but this often isn't anything that can't be corrected moving forward. Request a review and see about getting some feedback from any members that are willing to talk.

You can go back and forth on features and options and shoulda dones and coulda dones but in the end? You are the reason your site is successful or not and it's all in how you see it. You see that you're successful. Then you are.

I know this feels more like a "feel good" but doesn't give you any information sort of guide but that's sort of the point. The number one reason for site death is administrators losing interest in their own sites because they feel bad about it, they feel like they are doing something wrong and that's why "no one" joins. Unfortunately inspiration is a fickle thing and so is life which is what makes roleplayers so selective with the sites that they put their time into. You could run the most amazing site and still only get 3 members over the course of its history. Yeah its a bit frustrating if you had big plans for it but it shouldn't take away from your focus on the existing members, that will likely become great roleplay partners, and growing it from there.

You never know, the special care that you put into those three members may get you your next ten.