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So 2 years ago, JJJ had a vision to improve the “culture” of this site. A lot has happened since that time and he's been absent for half of it, but let us see if the current admin regime (and regular site members) have indeed succeeded in this task.

Here are some of the things that we will be looking to excise from the website:

    •    Low quality storygames

Mostly purged. An ongoing process to be sure, but it is definitely WAY better than it was before.

    •    Low Quality or Freeform forum games (The Tavern can stay on a probationary basis)

Purged. Thanks to completely eliminating roleplaying around here.

    •    Warrior Cats and poorly conceived fan fiction in general

Purged. But vigilance is the eternal price we must pay to be kitty free.

    •    Sexual roleplaying

Purged. Again mostly thanks to eliminating the roleplaying forum. Even the shipping threads are gone.

    •    Mindless bickering

Meh, that’s going to happen from time to time. Not nearly as bad as it used to be.

    •    Empty forum threads devoid of meaningful content

Again, going to happen from time to time and again not nearly as bad as it used to be.

Here are some of the things that we would like to see:

    •    High quality storygames

Yes, this has improved.

    •    Sophisticated or intellectual debates

This is probably about the same, they just tend to be a little more fun now.

    •    Sophisticated or exceptional forum games

Well since we purged the forum games, this isn’t a goal anymore. However the closest “forum games” we have now are stuff like Berka’s Sanitarium so it’s definitely a big improvement.

    •    Events (such as the book club)

Well the book club is dead, but we definitely have more contests now, so special events have improved.

    •    In progress threads for upcoming stories

Yes, we have a lot of these now.

    •    Discussion about the better stories on the site

Yes, this still happens.

    •    Good conversation between mature people

Sometimes we actually accomplish this now.

To sum up, CYS is doing better than ever, our CYOA/IF culture is obviously the most superior one on the internet and everyone keep up the good work.

I think jut about the only thing that didn’t go as planned were the Orders. Aside from that, I definitely ageee. I joined a little over two years ago, and the site is a completely different beast now than it was then.

Eh, the Orders were more of an experiment and it wasn't obvious at the time how unbalanced they were. That was before Minnie and Thara blew past everyone with just featured comments, and the issues with commended stories needed more time to come to come to light.

I think the plan was to eventually adjust the system, 3J just vanished before it became obvious that it was needed.

IIRC it was immediately obvious within the first day how unbalanced the orders were/are.

According to 3J the idea was that it would balance out in the long run, because being active on the forums has little to do with publishing stories.

Featured comments give too many IMO but I'm not sure the Minnie/Thara flood was predicted there, and at any rate there's only so many stories on the site high enough quality to get them now so it's slowed down.

The real issue is with the longer commended stories not giving anywhere near enough compared to the effort they take (But the site has always calculated things weirdly...story length scale makes no sense) and admins now preferring not to commend them at all for other reasons. That one is IronPanther's fault.

"... but when the site needed him the most, he vanished."

A couple years passed and my master and I discovered the new admin, a programmer named Dvorak. And although his coding skills are great, he has a lot to learn before he's ready to moderate anyone. But I believe Brad can save the forums.

I'm not sure how I feel about getting this immediately, when I haven't seen the show in years and yet at the same time can't even remember what I ate for breakfast this morning.

Feel proud. The show was golden.

Oh there's no question the site has improved 120%. I would be able to actually recommend it to people now, in a theoretical situation where I voluntarily spoke to people.

Funny how most of the improvements can be traced back to purging roleplayers. Think how much farther along we'd be today if 3J had just axed that section all at once during the original Purge.

I do with we had a little more life in the Parlor Room but that's about all I can think of. (Reading Corner is always doomed to be the site graveyard due to the odds of enough members to carry a discussion happening to have read the exact same books, but we all have access to an identical pool of storygames and it would be nice to occasionally think or talk about them...)

Well worth the carnage, I'd say! ^v^

From what I can see the site is doing really well, the only glitch if the order-commendations-points thing needs to be worked back out (I've only gone up by about 100 Points in the last year instead of the usual 1000 or so which is frustrating being only 11 Points from Grandmaster of the Written Word, an achievement which towers over all other achievements in my life up until now, why is it that meaningless titles are so damn addictive?) but otherwise everything is hunky-dory. I just wish I had more time to achieve my life goal of making the Edutainment section the biggest on the site :D

Nah I think that one is working as intended. You haven't been very active on the site this year, so you made less points. I'm not sure exactly how many I've made, but I know it's got to be over a thousand, without really even trying beyond normal posting / reviewing activity and a few crappy stories.