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Seems like a large percentage of stories I've read have authors that have not been active since publishing, which leaves me wondering, how many of us are actually here?

Sadly, we appear to be a dying breed.

I miss James.

I've been stalking the forums, his name comes up often. What do you miss about him?

Crocker was a funny dude and was always active on the forums. Then he just disappeared off the face off cys in 2016.

I can see myself disappearing for a year, life can get busy, hopefully he'll be back,

LOL.

He went insane(r) and threatened to devote his life to destroying site unless his demands were met. The main one I believe was banning me for not being sensitive enough regarding poor, sweet Harambe's tragic murder.

Later he told Kiel he was off his meds and agreed to take a break from the site. Might have scrambled his password too, not sure. He was far more entertaining than most of you however, that much is true.

This site always gets large bursts of people whenever someone decides to advertise it on reddit.

Most people end up becoming too busy to pursue writing on here or like beta, just get tired of actually writing or lose interest because what kind of sane individual writes for fun.

It also dosent help that CYS type stories aren't really mainstream in the writing community or at least in my opinion

Writing can be draining for sure, good writing especially, thinking up stories comes easy, translating your brain into English however, is exhausting

Which is why we have romance Fanfiction for counter balance.

Eyyyyy

This guy gets it.

Writing is time consuming and CYOAs can be 1000X more so.

Lots of stories were by people who have jobs and families now or for people for whom writing was A hobby, not THE hobby.

It's an old old site and I'd say we actually have a surprising number of old members still at least semi active. And there will always be some name I don't recognize and yet when I click expecting a newbie I find an account from like 2013. The vast majority of users are always going to be here for reading and mostly invisible.

Because there is no more daily points fake internet points, and tired.

Wait, what happened to the daily points?

Gonzo.

Now we have Daily Commendations.

...and by daily, do you mean whenever the mods actually see something worth commending? Or should I be sure to post on a quiet day if I want to try to get one? Seems like an odd concept...

The Mods have to see it as a pretty cool thing.

Like a good story or thought-provoking forum post.

Also helpful posts sometimes that provide information or solutions to problems and/or questions.

So, Occasional Commendations, not Daily Commendations. Which makes more sense, so, good.

No, no. You get 3 points for the first commendation you get in a day.

Huh. That seems like an odd choice... if someone makes two commendation-worthy posts in a day, I feel the site could afford to give them another three points. But not my call, obviously.

You get another 2, I think.

Wait.

No you do not.

You also get 10 points for being the person on the site with the most commendations in a 24 hour period, which is surprisingly easy to do. It's possible to reap waaaay more points just participating in the site normally than the daily points ever offered.

Commendations were kind of an experimental thing and if JJJ were still active probably would have eventually gotten some tweaking (I support the changes End mentioned, particularly about rewarding stories...the fact that it just automatically calculates by word count rather than quality was never something I liked).

Still, points are dumb and it was dumb people attached value and ~~~personal worth as a site member~~~ to them when the bulk were gained by simply clicking a button.


(Tim: my condolences on your brother. That must be hard to live with.)

JJJ got rid of them when he was overhauling the site.

Huh. Did he say why? I mean, it wasn't exactly a core feature, just seems odd that he'd go out of his way to remove it. Just curious if someone found a way to get more points out of it, or something.

I think he wanted people to earn their points through activity rather than just pressing a button. That was sort of his idea when he came up with commendations.

There was one person called Kumquat who never missed their daily point. I think they got like in the 3000s just by doing those (And the birthday bonus)

...that's a whole lot of (possibly automated) clicks. o_O

supposedly it was not automated he would just do it before bed every night.

Wow. I hope he's found a replacement for his daily ritual!

Rumour has it he hasn't slept since January.

I'm not here.

As someone who has barely interacted with the site for several years until this very moment...

I don't really have a good explanation. I wish I did.

I'm kinda active but not as much because life gets in the way. Still I miss the daily point because it rewarded being involved regularly with the site (no matter how briefly), without it there is less motivation for using the site on a regular basis. Commendations are good but entirely lopsided to the Sages, extremely challenging to earn and basically require more time and effort than many site members can afford :) Still as life gets less busy members like me will have more time to be on the site again :D

Thank you for answering one of the biggest questions I have had since coming back. Why did the daily point get axed?

3J believed that it didn't reward people for meaningful contributions to the site, and tried to entice more people to be productive by replacing them with the commendation system. It actually worked out fine in the beginning, but I think 3J was the mod who did most of the commending at the time. Now he's gone, there's less commending going on.

I'd actually be fine with reinstating the daily point system, and I'm not only saying that because the overwhelming majority of my points came from daily points. If it gets people to the site, it's worth having, even though users might devise an automated way to get them. 

Well I know for my first few visits to the site the only reason I was around was the daily points and then I became invested into the community. It is my humble opinion that it helped breed activity but JJJ always did know best.

The problem is there isn’t really any way of giving out a set amount of commendation points for a story.

For story purposes the person gets more the bigger the story is, which doesn't always mean better. Also you can’t take away commendations at all.

This cropped up during Berka’s commending on one of IronPanther’s stories where it seemed like a pretty good story at first, but after some deeper clicking it was apparent that it was a bit dull. It was too late though, IP got those points and they couldn't be taken back. (And IP has now since taken down that story anyway)

This is pretty much the reason why I only hand out commendations to the story comment suggestions (Which is a steady automatic 3) or occasionally posts since those are only 1 point and it doesn't matter quite as much.

If admins could give out a set number for commendations to stories (ALL stories not just the new ones) and take them away if needed, I’d be more likely to hand them out.

Sort of surprsed anyone misses the daily point thing, I usually forgot where you were supposed to click to get them so I didn't have many points based on daily points.

Ha, it's not like CYS points have much in terms of value (apart from, I believe, adding some weight to ratings you give to stories), but the points are a nice thing to have. Besides, even the stupid 'gameification' of CYS by awarding points for visiting might make people visit more often.

Also, in relation to the dwindling user numbers in the OP, I think the frequent issues with viewing story categories if a story has fewer than ten ratings, might scare off quite a lot of people as well.

i pop in from time to time just to check up on things. i’ve noticed the lack of members also. i’m not worried, just a bit nostalgic. y’all have fun, i’ll go back to lurking.  

I dunno, this topic comes up every few years or so and once again I’m just not seeing the doom and gloom of “lack of members.” I’m constantly seeing new names pop up at the bottom every day (And most aren't even alts!). Old names too. It’s just not everyone posts on the forums.

Also you need to take into consideration that the place might seem “empty” because some of the louder members of the forums aren’t around to argue and debate (or bitch about whatever is pissing them off at the time).

People come and go on the internet all the time, tis the nature of the beast I’d say and the place is going to have quieter periods at times. It’s happened before the past and it felt a lot emptier than it does right now.

I can’t remember the exact year it was, but there was one year where the only major posting going on were by the same few people playing Mafia on here and the rest of the forums in general were pretty dead.

Summer is always quiet. With the number of school age members here you'd think more freetime would equal more activity, but...IDK it's one of those weird things like the way the site is always dead on weekends.

Anyone who feels the site is boring now could always strive to be more interesting. Just a thought.

I mean I've done my part, I made a thread about this year's apocalyptic destruction to give you all a place to post cool videos of other people having their lives destroyed, but you're all boring assholes and couldn't be bothered.

Three historic hurricanes, plus fires and earthquakes and everything else. Puerto Rico is just gone now which seems like kind of a big deal.

Also, the world was supposed to end today, but I stopped it. You're all welcome even though visiting the site made me instantly regret that I bothered.

Yeah the activity on the site fluctuates from busy to quiet and back. I am sure when there's a wave of new competitions, initiatives, updates and whatnot site membership will snowball but I expect everyone is just busy with the back to school thing atm :) I know last year I earned probably 1000+ points and this year since the commendations thing I've earned about 200 points and I'm in the top ten commendations earners list thing I did so I do miss the Daily Point :D The wave of improvements and good comments have sort of been made to the site and most of the stories now making there less stuff to get commended for anyway and since the Sages will always be ahead anyone who isn't a Sage hasn't got a massive amount of motivation to earn them unless they've got tons of free time to try and go for number one place. I'm sure in time they'll be another update that makes them relevant again though :)