The instance that precipitated the decline was the buyout. Prior to that, we were reaching server capacity, and struggling a little, but upgrades were happening, and the community at large was supportive of us. We could do no wrong, and the site was one of the last percieved bastions against RMT out there.
The buyout of us was beyond botched. Asde from the core issue of a tenuous connection to the hated IGE, immidiatly after they delayed our new servers for almost a year. That delay alone lost us 75% of our traffic. Even now we aren't back to where we were. That, coupled with the proliveration of workplace internet filtering sites blocking us, and we lost a huge pocket of our potential forum lurkers and posters.
This didn't affect the core usage of the asylum and OOT as much as it did the other forums, but what it did do was dramitcally decrease the number of potential asylum lurkers by a huge amount. No lurkers, no future mainstay accounts. Many of those people are gone forever, off to competitor boards, never to return.
At this same time, the OOT, which had mostly lain fallow since the split, suddenly was discovered by a group from FFXI. The core group was fairly low post count, and started out mostly with the usual "new oot forum stuff" like forum games, "what color do you like" posts, etc. Easy fodder posts that lurkers can get drawn into. They grew in numbers quickly, at the expense of the Asylum.
The Asylum was in their "Death to all who oppose or condone us!" phase at the time. Part of the problem was that we have all done the standard threads to death by now. You can only do a "what is your favorite music" thread soo many times before someone snaps and kills everyone in the room with a mallet. So we turned instead to flaming. Lets be honest here, in it's peak, Asylum took it to an entirely new artform, and for a time that drew lurkers and newbies eager to try thier luck. But eventually the regulars got bored with the newbies. Its also hard to get in a knock down, drag out argument with someone you have met in person and shared a beer with.
The asylum turned inwards, to politics and somewhat more mature topics than had been the norm, and turned somewhat more isolationist.
Meanwhile, the OOT was still growing in numbers. Spurred on by encouragement from some Admins such as Magi, they grew bolder in their posting and post pharming. For a time, there was a very "Anti certain Admin" sentiment in OOT, which in turn caused certain Admins to either refuse to go in OOT, or to treat them with some disdain. The pot was being stirred behind the scenes, as we would later find out, but this is where the whole "Asylum Favoritism" fiasco began
At the same time, The asylumites saw the OOT regulars rocketing up in post count. Where our model had been maybe 1k, 2k posts per year, but many people contributing. OOT initially was a core of maybe 12 people who, lets be honest, spammed the crap out of the forums and rocketed up in post count to the same post count levels of the people who had been here for years. This caused resentment amongst some of the long term regulars. There was also resentment against what was percieved as Admin inaction against people who were "cheating" the system. In truth, at the time our hands were really tied. A premium member was pretty much untouchable, and after the first few times of blatant post pharming up to thousands of posts, they knew it.
We were eventually able to introduce the "mute" system to counter much of the post count spamming, as well as easier methods of post count reduction, But the damage was done, and led to the creation of "the sanctuary"
There was much debate about what to do about the sanctuary at the time. The OOTers had their secret forum posting locations, so at the beginning, we decided to let it be and see what happened. It did not go well in the end, mostly due to the presence of the same type of rate camping that was occuring in the OOT. The problem was it was percieved that we cracked down on OOT, but not on the sanctuary/asylum posts. In truth, the sanctuary as a whole was hammered much harder than the OOT was being, mostly because the participants should really have known better. most of the worst threads were locked and nuked to prevent reuse, and most of the posts inside were so far below the filter that non admins couldn't see them even though they were still technically positive numbers.
So resentment pooled and built on both sides. OOT posters who ventured into the Asylum were karma bombed. OOTers regularily karma bombed entire Asylum threads. Admins were pulling hair out and considering mass bans. But eventually, the OOT started shifting more into the draditional OOT forum progression, and slowly, inexoriably becoming more and more like the Asylum. A few overture posts by both sides occured, and both sides started to see that the others weren't really that bad.
About this time, the OOT experianced a sharp decline in female posters. Most of us admins were baffled as to why it happened. One admin apperently knew exactly why, being at the core of it. Magi did mroe harm to the OOT than any one person in there before or sense, but the incident did serve a purpose, in resolving many of the issues the OOTers and other admins had with eachother.
Prior to the Magi fiasco in the fourms came to light, we had been dealing with the ******* in Admin IRC for a few months. Now our IRC work environment is not your typical office environment, and some of our conversations in there might raise a few eyebrows if they occured in a brick and morter office, but there are definite lines and we all know where they are. Magi didn't. He was really adept at manipulation though, and managed to turn the situation to his advantage, shirking his work, blaming it on others, turning admins against other admins by heresay and inuendo. It was not a good time. He is the only admin I have ever been outright overtly hostile to, and while I am not proud of that, I am even more annoyed that I did't find out what he was doing to our forum members earlier. Had he not been fired for conduct in the forums, he would have likely been fired shortly after due to a sexual harrasment lawsuit and a mass exodus of Allakhazam employees.
The drama generated fromt aht incident really sparked an improvement in OOT Asylum relations, at first due to curiosity on the part of the Asylum to see what had happened, then later due to the ASylum people having mostly decided that the OOTers really weren't that bad, though few at the time would publicly admit it.
After that, The OOT began to enter what I like to call "we hate you all and wish you were bagels" phase (in memory of Angry Hippo) and began turning on themselves, and newcomers. Partially due to natural progression, partially due to having somethign to prove, and more than a couple chips on their shoulders. They seem to have moved on past that point by now, in part due to some gentle behind the scenes taser action, and just starting to mature more as posters.
Where we are today, is really the OOT has the numbers and the newcomers from the feeder forums, but they lack some of the estableshed poster background that Asylum brings to the table. Asylum on the other hand has that long term membership, but no growth. Asylum also has more of a tolerance for newbies than they once did.
I suspect a forum merger between OOT and Asylum would be a turbulent, but ultimatly productive and benificial move on our part at this point. But we don't really want to do anything drastic without careful thought.
As to my own roll in the periodic rise and decline of OOT and Asylum, in Hindsight I might have done some things differently. We needed the ability to temporarily mute individual posters far earlier than we had it. I needed to consolodate Admin authority earlier than I did, but at the same time, the methods I used to accomplesh it the first time might have been too harsh in some cases, and that might have led to a few more people leaving than otherwise might have occured. If I had had the ability to temp mute dracoid, etc for a month or so the first time, who knows what would have happened by now? At the same time, there were a few people we lost, like Stok, who were just not going to quit makeing sockpuppets, or skeet, who went ******* insane that we were going to lose regardless (and good riddance).
I keep reevaluating how I admin. Do I post too much as an admin? Was that the right call? Did I make things better, or worse? Overall I stand by most of my calls, and all the major ones.
The viewer numbers in OOT and Asylum have actually been going up. we are in a bit of a slump at the moment, still recovering from hollidays, but that is normal for here.
There are a few things we need to do to revive things further. A mobile phone version of the forum is in the works, and I think that will help immensly. Other things we need to do are draw people back. E-mail notification on PM reciept. E-mail notification on reply to threads you are monitoring options. A quick reply box at the bottom to make it easier for logged in people to add that extra post. A modernized interface in line with other forums. Some of these things are in the works. Many of them are pending more programmers. Some might never happen. Who knows?
Long and rambling, I know. But that's where I think we are and how we got here.
and watch, it's like an accident, you can't pull your eyes away.
