Given the current attention being drawn to working Bulbagarden into a better website, I thought the matter over in full, assembled them into a long essay during this slow day at school, and felt it would be a good idea to share my conclusions with you all. Implement them or reject them, I only request you give them thought first.
Currently, Bulbagarden is nothing.
Bulbagarden has well established itself to be community-driven. The primary aspect is the forums, which is a dynamic community that discusses topics of concern, the bulk of which are relevant to Pokémon. Its two other primary aspects, Bulbanews and the Bulbapedia, were also added with the community in mind, being open-door wikis which everyone is allowed and encouraged to contribute to. Even our lesser projects, like the Bulbacast, have a strong focus on the community - one of the main ideas behind the Bulbacast was allowing other Bulbagardeners to 'call in' and voice their thoughts. There is nothing on Bulbagarden which is cold, hard content. It is all incredibly dynamic and easy for new ideas to grow in, much like a real garden. Bulbagarden does not just depend on the community, it is the community. With no community, Bulbagarden is nothing.
But whenever I look at the front page of the Bulbagarden forums, my eyes often wander down to where our user statistics are, and I always see the same thing - more guests than users, most of which are web-crawling search engine spiders, and about half of the active users being moderators or administrators. This is a very unbalanced ratio - we have a huge gap where all the regular users should be. And not many people are as surprised or concerned by this as they should be. What the rest of the Pokémon fandom knows of Bulbagarden seems overshadowed by our elitist reputation, a characteristic highly unbefitting of a community-driven website. We are doing too much in terms of construction and too little in terms of rolling out the welcome mat and drawing people in to what we already have. We are building a metropolis and populating it with a small village. We do not have our community.
So, with no community, Bulbagarden is nothing, and Bulbagarden has no community. Therefore, as it is, Bulbagarden is nothing. Damian mentioned we are like a ship without a captain, but I feel we are like a ship with more people navigating than swabbing the decks, and no one's trying to patch that big hole we've had on the side that's been making us take on water.
In short, before we do anything else, I strongly believe we should direct our attention to two areas - fixing what we already have and regaining our community, the very essence of Bulbagarden.
One main part of this is increasing flow between the wikis and the rest of the site. If you'll allow me to continue the metropolis metaphor from earlier, the Bulbapedia is a wonderfully large library which sits in the back corner, cut off by a big river and with a small bridge to connect it to the rest and a few signs pointing towards it. We need to better bridge the huge gap between the wikis and everything else, and while a main page would help, it's a small solution to a large problem. They don't even look like part of the same site. We need to find a way to make the colors of the forum skin of choice feed into the wiki skin - or, failing that, have skins which correspond to the forums skins that change based on the skin chosen at the forums - or, failing that, have skins corresponding to the forum skins which users can choose to match their forum skin of choice - or, failing that, change the standard to match Bulbagarden Neoclassic - or, failing that, at least make the background dark blue. This is just the tip of the iceburg - I propose external links on articles to relevant forum threads, articles on some of Bulbagarden's best known threads and areas, a renewed campaign in encouraging people on the forums to contribute to the Bulbapedia, and perhaps, despite Zhen Lin having mentioned this being a very bad idea, a global account for all Bulbagarden aspects, which would allow new users to access all of it without having to register for each and permit moderation to ban a user misbehaving on one part of Bulbagarden from all aspects of the Bulbagarden community, hopefully giving greater incentive for users to not come just to stir up trouble. If none of these are acceptable in solving the problem, fine, but the gap is there and it is hurting Bulbagarden's growth.
Besides filling in the gap, we need to get the word out to the bulk of the Pokémon fandom that Bulbagarden exists and they are welcomed and encouraged to become a part of this community. For all the time I've been here, Bulbagarden's strategy in this has been, "If you build it, they will come." This isn't working. We have built more than enough. What I feel is the best thing for us to do now is to hold off on the production, clean the place up and make it look nice, lay out a nice, big red carpet and yell to the rest of the Pokémon community, "HEY! We've got an awesome site for you guys to visit, and it needs you more than Brock needs a woman, so come check it out!" Personally, I've always felt contests and other short-term community activities were good at catching eyes and warrant loud, blatant advertising. Free-use signature banners for Bulbagarden and its most popular aspects for people to use at other forums would be helpful as well. However we do it, we need to step up advertising and if we start any new projects or campaigns there should be at least be one focusing on this.
As sad as I am to admit it, with TSS_Killer currently lacking internet access and little community participation through call-ins and the like, perhaps the Bulbacast should be mostly moved to the back burner. Casts have been irregular, so I don't think it would be disastrous if this became bi-weekly at most, and expanding it - yes, even through the Radio Drama, I am saddened to admit - should wait until we've gotten our act together and we have more people involved. There was only one entry to the Radio Drama Contest, and I find this unacceptable, even given that the deadline was not particularly long - the community showed an utter lack of interest in it, and I blame this on a lack of community. If we change the Bulbacast right now at all, it should be to integrate it more with the Pokémon community at large and vice versa.
Lesser aspects of Bulbagarden, like the oekaki and the chat, need to be given more attention pronto, since there are great ways for people to take interest in Bulbagarden but currently they are lost in the shadows of our large projects - there are still people who are surprised and delighted to learn that we have a chat and oekaki. In fact, the [HASHTAG]#bulbagarden[/HASHTAG] channel has proven itself to be very useful in discussing issues relating to Bulbagarden itself, and I believe it would be an excellent idea to have roundtable discussions in the channel regularly to stimulate more communication between the moderation team and the rest of the community. We need to know how the community feels about Bulbagarden, be it comments, criticism, confusion, or what they would like to see it become, and it is best to hear that by listening to the community itself. And I do mean listening - what upset me about Damian last night was when he dismissed what another person saw as an issue because it disagreed with what his personal view of Bulbagarden's issues are, when what we should be doing is considering these views and encouraging the average member to speak his or her mind. I admit the moderation can be scary at times, but we never bite without warning, and we need to make it clear that we won't get upset with anyone for saying how they feel about it and their opinion does matter. It not only matters, we want it.
Because no matter what, Bulbagarden is ultimately powered by the community for the community, and we need to make an effort to establish a much larger, stronger community if we want Bulbagarden to grow. It has been mentioned Bulbagarden needs focus - I propose that this be our focus, because this appears to be our single greatest problem, and I find it foolish to assume it will fix itself if it has not done such already.
This is my stance on the issue at large, and you may take it or leave it - I only ask that thought is given to this issue. And I would like everyone to consider and feel free to give feedback, since limiting this discussion to just amongst the moderators and administrators would be entirely against my point.
Currently, Bulbagarden is nothing.
Bulbagarden has well established itself to be community-driven. The primary aspect is the forums, which is a dynamic community that discusses topics of concern, the bulk of which are relevant to Pokémon. Its two other primary aspects, Bulbanews and the Bulbapedia, were also added with the community in mind, being open-door wikis which everyone is allowed and encouraged to contribute to. Even our lesser projects, like the Bulbacast, have a strong focus on the community - one of the main ideas behind the Bulbacast was allowing other Bulbagardeners to 'call in' and voice their thoughts. There is nothing on Bulbagarden which is cold, hard content. It is all incredibly dynamic and easy for new ideas to grow in, much like a real garden. Bulbagarden does not just depend on the community, it is the community. With no community, Bulbagarden is nothing.
But whenever I look at the front page of the Bulbagarden forums, my eyes often wander down to where our user statistics are, and I always see the same thing - more guests than users, most of which are web-crawling search engine spiders, and about half of the active users being moderators or administrators. This is a very unbalanced ratio - we have a huge gap where all the regular users should be. And not many people are as surprised or concerned by this as they should be. What the rest of the Pokémon fandom knows of Bulbagarden seems overshadowed by our elitist reputation, a characteristic highly unbefitting of a community-driven website. We are doing too much in terms of construction and too little in terms of rolling out the welcome mat and drawing people in to what we already have. We are building a metropolis and populating it with a small village. We do not have our community.
So, with no community, Bulbagarden is nothing, and Bulbagarden has no community. Therefore, as it is, Bulbagarden is nothing. Damian mentioned we are like a ship without a captain, but I feel we are like a ship with more people navigating than swabbing the decks, and no one's trying to patch that big hole we've had on the side that's been making us take on water.
In short, before we do anything else, I strongly believe we should direct our attention to two areas - fixing what we already have and regaining our community, the very essence of Bulbagarden.
One main part of this is increasing flow between the wikis and the rest of the site. If you'll allow me to continue the metropolis metaphor from earlier, the Bulbapedia is a wonderfully large library which sits in the back corner, cut off by a big river and with a small bridge to connect it to the rest and a few signs pointing towards it. We need to better bridge the huge gap between the wikis and everything else, and while a main page would help, it's a small solution to a large problem. They don't even look like part of the same site. We need to find a way to make the colors of the forum skin of choice feed into the wiki skin - or, failing that, have skins which correspond to the forums skins that change based on the skin chosen at the forums - or, failing that, have skins corresponding to the forum skins which users can choose to match their forum skin of choice - or, failing that, change the standard to match Bulbagarden Neoclassic - or, failing that, at least make the background dark blue. This is just the tip of the iceburg - I propose external links on articles to relevant forum threads, articles on some of Bulbagarden's best known threads and areas, a renewed campaign in encouraging people on the forums to contribute to the Bulbapedia, and perhaps, despite Zhen Lin having mentioned this being a very bad idea, a global account for all Bulbagarden aspects, which would allow new users to access all of it without having to register for each and permit moderation to ban a user misbehaving on one part of Bulbagarden from all aspects of the Bulbagarden community, hopefully giving greater incentive for users to not come just to stir up trouble. If none of these are acceptable in solving the problem, fine, but the gap is there and it is hurting Bulbagarden's growth.
Besides filling in the gap, we need to get the word out to the bulk of the Pokémon fandom that Bulbagarden exists and they are welcomed and encouraged to become a part of this community. For all the time I've been here, Bulbagarden's strategy in this has been, "If you build it, they will come." This isn't working. We have built more than enough. What I feel is the best thing for us to do now is to hold off on the production, clean the place up and make it look nice, lay out a nice, big red carpet and yell to the rest of the Pokémon community, "HEY! We've got an awesome site for you guys to visit, and it needs you more than Brock needs a woman, so come check it out!" Personally, I've always felt contests and other short-term community activities were good at catching eyes and warrant loud, blatant advertising. Free-use signature banners for Bulbagarden and its most popular aspects for people to use at other forums would be helpful as well. However we do it, we need to step up advertising and if we start any new projects or campaigns there should be at least be one focusing on this.
As sad as I am to admit it, with TSS_Killer currently lacking internet access and little community participation through call-ins and the like, perhaps the Bulbacast should be mostly moved to the back burner. Casts have been irregular, so I don't think it would be disastrous if this became bi-weekly at most, and expanding it - yes, even through the Radio Drama, I am saddened to admit - should wait until we've gotten our act together and we have more people involved. There was only one entry to the Radio Drama Contest, and I find this unacceptable, even given that the deadline was not particularly long - the community showed an utter lack of interest in it, and I blame this on a lack of community. If we change the Bulbacast right now at all, it should be to integrate it more with the Pokémon community at large and vice versa.
Lesser aspects of Bulbagarden, like the oekaki and the chat, need to be given more attention pronto, since there are great ways for people to take interest in Bulbagarden but currently they are lost in the shadows of our large projects - there are still people who are surprised and delighted to learn that we have a chat and oekaki. In fact, the [HASHTAG]#bulbagarden[/HASHTAG] channel has proven itself to be very useful in discussing issues relating to Bulbagarden itself, and I believe it would be an excellent idea to have roundtable discussions in the channel regularly to stimulate more communication between the moderation team and the rest of the community. We need to know how the community feels about Bulbagarden, be it comments, criticism, confusion, or what they would like to see it become, and it is best to hear that by listening to the community itself. And I do mean listening - what upset me about Damian last night was when he dismissed what another person saw as an issue because it disagreed with what his personal view of Bulbagarden's issues are, when what we should be doing is considering these views and encouraging the average member to speak his or her mind. I admit the moderation can be scary at times, but we never bite without warning, and we need to make it clear that we won't get upset with anyone for saying how they feel about it and their opinion does matter. It not only matters, we want it.
Because no matter what, Bulbagarden is ultimately powered by the community for the community, and we need to make an effort to establish a much larger, stronger community if we want Bulbagarden to grow. It has been mentioned Bulbagarden needs focus - I propose that this be our focus, because this appears to be our single greatest problem, and I find it foolish to assume it will fix itself if it has not done such already.
This is my stance on the issue at large, and you may take it or leave it - I only ask that thought is given to this issue. And I would like everyone to consider and feel free to give feedback, since limiting this discussion to just amongst the moderators and administrators would be entirely against my point.
