I would imagine that a nice compromise to the mailing list vs. forum at the start would be to use a forum with a single category. This would provide the benefit of the mailing list in drawing everything together to make it look beefier; it would also negate the attrition switching venues might cause because you could just fold out forums and shuffle topics slowly to the correct places without loosing archives.

Just my sleepy 2 cents
~Seth Drebitko~

They’re mixed bags. You need to police them more, and they’re going to reflect on your brand. As a brisk example, on JBO we had a “touchy topics” sub-area for a while to quarantine the fact that people like to talk about highly emotional issues, but not everyone wants to read that. It worked for a while, but eventually we concluded — particularly after talking with Jim Himself about it — that we just didn’t want those topics discussed on the JBO forum because of that brand reflection pattern.

We definitely lost a few forum-goers over that decision, but I’m fine with that — if they were coming to JBO solely for that kind of discussion, they were coming to the wrong place. By snipping that subject matter out, we’ve restored the balance of our off-topic area to “pub-atmosphere friendly” discussion. But the barkeep always has one hand on the baseball bat under the counter, and has to.

“Also, where do decentralised *fuzzy* sort-of-communities around blogs, Facebook or Twitter fit in?”

Another blog post.

Also, where do decentralised *fuzzy* sort-of-communities around blogs, Facebook or Twitter fit in?

But I’m not understating that — I’m just not stating it, because that’s a whole post of its own (at least). My focus on the idea of critical mass is what excluded it.

I understand your point about timing and “grabbing a hold of something big” both being key. I suspect those are the two key hurdles in this equation.

However — I think you might be understating the degree to which a positive and restrained online persona can help maintain the goodwill and social capital that makes it possible to sustain a community and gently guide it towards have a similarly positive tone.

Wil Wheaton’s Law (“don’t be a dick”) appears to also just be smart business advice.

That said, what you’re talking in your example about is fine, and I’d recommend you pursue a course of action along those lines. But here’s the thing you HAVE to do in order to insulate your confidence against damage: don’t get worked up if you get no response.

In many ways this sort of thing is like advertising, where you send out 1000 ads in the hopes of generating 1 to 10 responses. It’s not high yield, but the genuine responses — the “hits” — are going to be high-value.

That “think of it like advertising” thing is a good model for answering other aspects of your question, too. You’ve got to sell yourself/your ideas as a part of the message, and you’ve got to construct your message so that it interests but doesn’t annoy. You don’t want to be the LOUD CAR AD that shows up on the local radio station every 15 minutes. So fire off your message, make it pleasant, and forget about it. If someone responds, great. If someone doesn’t, *that is not a judgment on you*.

People are busy, and we don’t get to see that across the internet unless people are very chatty about their being busy (like I am). Silence does not signify that you were unworthy. It signifies that someone has a life. So don’t put yours on pause waiting for theirs to slow down.

Make sure your message actually says what it is you need; don’t make your first message, “Can I ask a favor?” without explaining what that favor is.

I think your lingo in your “e.g.” does the pleasant message thing, and it says clearly that “I need help, and here’s how you could help”. So you’re already past all my caveats. Send it once, to each person; give at least two weeks; then do a follow-up; then forget about it.

I know this is some pretty grass-roots stuff here, stuff you probably don’t remember having to think about (if you ever did), but even if you don’t remember I bet you’d have an opinion worth hearing.

To elaborate and summarise, I’m trying to encourage a community but when I get positive responses from people I don’t know what to do with the authors of those responses. I’m a green-horn, so nobody knows me or trusts me, and I’m not sure how to represent myself online yet (as in, I think I have represented myself badly in social networks). Should I chase up the enthusiasts and ask them to help me out with my work? How do you go about soliciting without being a bully?

E.g. “Thanks for coming to the playtest at RandomCon. I really appreciate your contribution and I had a great time. Would you be interested in helping me out from time to time with the rest of the project? I need someone to check if the corrections I’m making seem like good or bad ideas. Would you be interested in popping onto my website from time to time to help out?”

Is that the type of thing people want to hear in an email? I mean, I really do need people’s help, but should I start soliciting it like this or will that just turn people off?

Goddam it, sorry Fred. I’m asking a lot of you and I know you’re busy with layout. If you have the time, I’d really like to hear what you think.

Kind regards,

Sebastian.

For a forum however you have to remember to visit the forum. It means that you are getting a much more active group of participants (because they attend the forum in order to participate), but it doesn’t serve to remind me of the existence of the game, and thus it means I’m likely to be distracted by other bright shiny things instead.

;^)

Seriously, though: really interesting. Thanks for this.

Personally, I haven’t been putting the effort in to making the Silver Branch Yahoo group feel lively. But the products do get some airplay at RPGnet.

This is super powerful. You don’t do anything but manage your entry and participate in a useful fashion as a member of that pre-existing community. You lose some control but gain, I think, by being just another participant.

The big problems I foresee about shuttering the individual game-lists are roughly:

1. Just because one likes ZoZ doesn’t mean they’d like T&J, S7S, DI, or MNPR:RPG. (While I’d love cross-pollination, I’m concerned that some fans may be allergic — that is, if they like superheroes, they don’t want interminable threads about musketeers.)

2. Loss of message archive for each list.

Also, in truth, I haven’t given a full strength push towards the general group yet. Hm. Perhaps that should change.