2012-10-03 [wolvie]: No worries :) and that woud be very much appreciated sammie :) I find it extremely difficult to edit pages via a phone

2012-10-04 [Stephen]: I believe getting the pages made would be a good idea.


Just remember that it would be a co-op effort and to work on its creation together, if you guys so choose.

2012-10-04 [sammie h!]: [wolvie] tell me where to start and I will. x

2012-10-22 [wolvie]: sorry life has been keeping me busy lately @_@ and @sammie I'll pm you and we can figure out how we want to do it :)

2013-01-31 [Stephen]: I like the idea of getting newbies involved in Elfpack, although that might just confuse them.


I really like the idea of getting newbies involved, though. :P

2013-01-31 [sammie h!]: Well want me to create it as part as the Elfpack awards? :)

2013-02-01 [Stephen]: Hm, maybe not in that way.

Ask for input about it in the Council forum? :P

2013-06-12 [DeeJay™]: btw.. the awards and stuff. why not just roll them when there's 3 entrants? no 'quarterly', no 'monthly', just 3 nominations. first, second and third. simple!
also, if you wanted to put (even) more work in, you could take away everyone's contest wins (for the main ones, anyway) and make everyone enter again ^-^ it might be a bit of a kick in the teeth to some people, but it'd get the active members participating in stuff, showing that there's still life in the old dog yet.

2013-06-12 [DeeJay™]: errr.. this isnt the page i thought it was gonna be. and i cant find the other. so this'll have to do :D

2013-06-12 [kittykittykitty]: The Elfpack Awards, you mean? We've changed the categories a little this time, and if there's fewer than three nominees in a quarter they'll just roll over onto the next quarter.

The problem with opening as soon as there are 3 nominees would be that each of those people is guaranteed a trophy, and that's not how it's supposed to work :P

We're not in the habit of taking away trophies either. Seems a bit douchey xD

2013-06-12 [DeeJay™]: i'm sure i suggested something similar on Fake. a 'winner's trophy and a 'participant' trophy. atleast then you know the winners werent just in a two horse race, and it wouldnt allow people to keep on entering until they got a winner's trophy.
oooorrrr... do it yearly, with a max of 10 entrants. first, second, third and 'participated in' trophies.

and it could be seen as 'douchey', but there's no-one here to complain :p

2013-06-12 [kittykittykitty]: People don't have to do much to 'participate' in the EPA... actually they don't have to do *anything*. So I don't see why that would deserve a trophy.

Yeah exactly, so we don't want to start pissing people off by taking their shinies and giving them more reason to leave :P

2013-06-12 [DeeJay™]: sarah, there's no-one here! lol. no-one'd even know! the other day, there was literally just me and you online. at most, i've seen 10 people on. AT MOST. generally it's about 4 or 5. the amount of DIFFERENT people i've seen in about a week is what, 30? 40? 50 tops. you cant, in any way, say that's a thriving community. something needs to be done! something needs to bring back the sense of community, of participation, of being involved. something to make people WANT to come here, and be excited to come here, which'll transfer throughout the site - on wikis, on messages, on polls, on competitions, on council member activity, on wiki-creation, and others' contributions to the community as a whole. something drastic needs to change, otherwise we may as well all leave now and turn off the lights. elfpack, fake too, is dying. and no-one seems to be bothered.

2013-06-13 [kittykittykitty]: How can you say we're not bothered after seeing Redesigning Elfpack with close to 500 comments? Of course we want the site to thrive. But there's no quick-fix for that, especially since we don't have access to the site coding (and most of the problems/suggestions people have for the site require some sort of re-coding).

EPA was never something that would draw people to Elfpack from the outside. But it was something to do while they were already here. Is handing out trophies like candy really going to make people love EP? More likely it's going to devalue the trophies and make people wonder if it's even worth the effort, especially if we sporadically decide to remove old trophies.

What do you think we can do to draw in people from outside Elfpack?

2013-06-13 [DeeJay™]: but that's the thing - there arent things to keep people here. the site is simply not entertaining enough. and the awards ARE one of the few things to keep people here, keep them active and contributing. now, i'm not saying that's the council's fault - it's not. but the numbers are lower than i've ever seen, and so there simply arent as many people contributing to the site. and even if they wanted to, there thoughts would be 'what would be the point if no-one ever saw it?'.
IF there were things to keep people here, to keep them entertained, then that would encourage more people to join - "just logging into EP to check my messages", "what's EP?", "oh, this cool website with loads of stuff going on - you should check it out!". to be honest, i'd be too embarrassed to even attempt to link someone here. the tags "oh, this old website that used to be cool but now there's no-one there" isnt gonna work on anyone.. and that, unfortunately, is the reality of the situation. you need things happening, contests, activity, a real presence from the council in the form of keeping mainstuff up-to-date, current and relevant. polls to answer, links to good wikis - maybe a 'weekly wiki watch' posting the best wikis on mainstuff for everyone to browse at their own content. stuff to do, stuff to link to outside of elfpack - interesting news or websites on the 'net for people to go look at, and make elfpack the hub of that - the place people go to find out interesting, funny, thought-provoking websites that people often miss. something that keeps people coming back to see what new stuff has been posted. 'youtube video of the week', a weekly link of a different council member's 'favourite song', get the old elfpack independent page up and running - give people something to read whilst they're here, anything! just so long as it makes the place a fun website to visit, to browse, to come to.
i'm not sure any of them require coding. all of them are perfectly do-able. and i'm sure you guys could come up with tonnes more. why not? what have we got to lose...?

2013-06-18 [Stephen]: no-one seems to be bothered
I've spent hundreds of hours working on Elfpack, and discussing ideas with Council and normal members alike, trying to find a solution to solve that issue. I've created thousands of wiki pages, and even pages over the years that serve no purpose other than to tell people what they can do if they are bored. I hound [Hedda] about Elfpack, making sure he stays on top of things, and I'm not the only person who does it.

It's far from we don't care, it's we don't really know what to do. The BIGGEST issue we hear, over and over, on all the sites, is they look old and ugly. We have no way at all to change that. Pretty much zilch. I'm in middle of talking to Hedda about redoing the HTML of Elfpack, but he loses money keeping this site -- and the others, hosted. So it's hard to get him to devote even more time into it.

In short, I'd love ideas and input like you're giving. However, it is very, very far from we don't care. We're more at a loss. We've redesigned well over half of the official pages, applications are almost always accepted same-day, and welcome messages are personally sent to each person accepted. We revamped and revived features across the entire sites, set up and ran multiple new contests, and it's barely made a dent in the memberbase. /:

2013-06-18 [DeeJay™]: where's all this on mainstuff? all i see is an old message about 'stylesheets and redesigning' ..*yawn* and something about easter. that was about 3 months ago.
if you want a thriving community, you need to act like it IS a thriving community. no-one can see you messaging [Hedda]. and even if you are, with plans afoot for the future, what about the here and the now? no-one can see anything going on. it looks, on the face of it, like a dead site. where's the draw to bring people in, to contribute, if it LOOKS like the people in charge arent even bothering to update mainstuff?
i'm sure you guys do alot of work behind the scenes, but we need something more apparent - a real sense of presence from the council - to show there are still people here who care. we need activity, something to grab interest, something that we KNOW will keep being updated with interesting things to see, do, read, participate in. something to make people want to come back, not just from a sense of nostalgia, but something 'goofy, sexy and cool' to do, and to be a part of.

2013-06-20 [Stephen]: That's the thing.

It doesn't help. At all. Zilch.

I've had those on Main. I still have a small handful of Calendar entries. We (I) don't bother with new official contests. We made them, a lot of them. No one enters. We changed the official pages to look nicer; they still don't get used. The badge system was overhauled, and that also did nothing. [Deg] continues to update the Daily Goof with new (prior) Goofs, despite that no one ever enters it.
There's links all over Main you can click on to go to places.


I get the same comment every time: Elfpack is ugly. That, I cannot change. People won't even bother trying things out because the site is ugly and hard to navigate.

If you think you can actually figure out something to get people interested for more than two days, please tell me. I'll tell you if it's possible. If it is, then we can try it, if we haven't already. We kept weekly/daily updates going for a year -- it helped, for two months. After that, the memberbase did the same as it has been.

Telling me "Make things fun!" is not a suggestion. I'm, we are all, very well aware of what needs to be done. How to go about doing it and succeed, however, is something we try again and again to no avail.

And before it's said: As a general rule of thumb, other than make wiki's, alarm notes, ban people, and give out badges/treasury items, there's no special thing any staff, even Kitty and myself, can do. We can't do much more than make pages, other than being able to advertise them easily.

2013-06-20 [DeeJay™]: you need things here, man. things to keep people interested. sure, the site could do with a face-lift, but that's not going to draw many extra people here, or sustain interest. having things happening - making it look like there's loads going on - WILL bring people in, and sustain interest. a very simple step to that is keeping mainstuff updated with interesting articles for people to read, discuss, comment on. kitty has taken up one of my ideas posted on this or another suggestions page to do just that. whether she will or not is another matter...
another idea would be to get the EPI up and running again - not because loads of people read it, but just to show there's things going on here. a monthly update is not impossible, implausible, or unrealistic. articles shouldnt be too difficult to come by - there's a whole world of topics at our fingertips. and it'd be good to keep users updated on future plans - i.e. the stuff you're discussing with [Hedda].
two simple, achievable options, that i feel would suitably add to the flavour of elfpack.

2013-06-21 [Stephen]: I don't want to announce anything I'm discussing with Hedda unless he actually agrees to help. Which he's being frustratingly vague about.

One of your points gave Kitty a good idea though, so that's awesome. +1

Are you personally interested in helping with any of this? Toggery and the EPI would both be things that would likely help a lot, really. If you're interested, I'd be happy to have you on board with updating things.


Most of all, I want to see innovation amongst the crew. I want to see people who do things on their own, create things on their own, and actually invent stuff. We've lacked that for years. I think that'd be very helpful. I by no means need to oversee every action, choice and decision everyone makes, nor do I want to. Just.. that's lacking, really. I don't blame them or anything, I'd just love to see fresh ideas and fresh things. :P

2013-06-21 [DeeJay™]: i'm a bit rusty on the ins and outs of things - it's been a couple of years since i've been on here properly. but yeah, i cant see why not - i liked the toggery idea, and i have previously contributed to the EPI. i'm not sure i'd be comfortable running both on my own, but i could definitely help out.