Who's Online Game (Ver. 2) Options

[Shiidou Hikaru]

I'm all alone right now, here and at home. I'm still on vacation but everyone else is at school or work. It's been a quiet day, but I enjoy the quietness sometimes.

[Shirotatsu]

"Randomness" obviously doesn't work for this board anymore, since members don't come in regularly enough to hold any kind of random conversation, and random is not so random if you have a week (or, in the case of this board, a month) to think about what you're going to put, so what a good topic might be, I'm not sure...

...really, at this moment, the board seems to be at such a standstill that the greatest way to let everyone else know how we're doing and just say what's on our heads, relevant to anything other members say or not, is just to go and create our own "[Name here]'s Journals" in the Grand Bazaar...

[Shiidou Hikaru]

Along the lines of the fashion discussion I had earlier, people are restless by nature and are constantly looking for new and exciting things. This is fine but unfortunately when we do find something new it leaves our old things behind to gather dust in the closet. So I guess that's pretty much what happened - all of our regular visitors have found new things to do. It's a little sad but at the same time I realize that there needs to be a constant attraction of new people to make up for the losses. Also MKR isn't exactly on top of the popularity charts these days, although new fans have come here recently due to MKR's enduring attraction as a series. Hopefully our new friends like Dyeka and Itena won't get bored with us too quickly. v_v

[Shirotatsu]

They had been coming in regularly enough. Everyone has been joining in on the deadtail spin maneuver though.

Deadtail spin maneuver:

1) People begin to post a little less for whatever reason.
2) This causes other people to perceive less activity, and thus limit their posting.


Rinse, repeat, and eventually you have things stall out which given we basically just had a week where no one posted we are in very serious danger of.

I admit my error from a post back; that is noticeably right, and I'm not one to say I had no part in it. But whether I have or haven't, I haven't welcomed new people to this board just to let it die, even with my increased inactivity. And I'm in no way bent on killing this place. On the negative side, a slow death seems to be what this board is heading to or already undergoing. On the positive, a permanent standstill is not something I'm looking forward to - so as dead as this place may get, it shouldn't completely die unless we all just give up on it, whether we put the effort of the sort into it that Batou-san did, or not. Since, despite your efforts, it has become like this, I apologize that I haven't really done anything to aid them...

To Hikaru-san, I can't remember what we did to keep the spammers out and all that stuff or if we've been doing anything at all about them but have we basically killed advertisement for this board? I'm just a little curious... I remember at least being under the impression that this place had become a more private board for its current members at the time, but with more than 50% of us either gone or not regularly posting or whatever circumstances have overcome us, I wanted to know...

[Shiidou Hikaru]

Partly what you say is true Shiro-chan. While my intention wasn't to eliminate promotion of the board, I believe my little campaign against spambotters may have had that effect. I was able to get at least a conceptual idea of how spambot software works and it utilizes what is called a search engine optimizer (SEO). SEO's essentially google keywords and the horrible result is that search engines like Google provide millions of links for the SEO to harvest. This was how spambotters were able to find us in the past. To combat this, I had henheart.com disable web crawler bots like Google. Does anyone remember how Google.com always used to appear in the who's online list down below? For a long time now they haven't because Google was essentially banned from the site. Since Google and other search engines can no longer harvest links from the forum, SEO's can no longer harvest links to our forum from them. It has been remarkably effective - in the last six months only 40 spambot accounts were able to be registered and only one or two spambot posts were actually made.

The downside of course is that real human users can not google us anymore than an SEO could. While advertising wasn't directly prohibited, our forum is now largely unsearchable. I was so scared that a younger person would accidentally see some of the dreadful filth that was being dumped in here by spambots that I viewed the loss of searchability as the lesser of two evils. Maybe I went too far in banning search engines? Should I think about letting them have access to the forum again to help attract new members? I'm not really sure, please let me know what you guys think too.

[Shirotatsu]

Oh, wow, it is...

I personally am not a Google user, so if ever I lose the link to this place, I have to go through a somewhat long and partly complicated process of locating old boards and other things to find it, being a Yahoo! user. This place doesn't show up on Yahoo! when I type that.

[Docs Fox]

Just me...


Use Google Shiro-chan. It's a much better search engine.

[Shiidou Hikaru]

It is Italian, but it's a really cute board though.

[Shirotatsu]

Looks like Italian, like Hikaru-san said. Some of it stumped me though..."utenti" ("the ones using" in Latin; I guess you would say "users" for board terminology), for example, made me think twice about answering "Italian" right away.

---

I'm way too used to using Yahoo!...I'm told frequently to use Google, and I have no argument against it 'cause Yahoo!'s powered by Google...this must be why "to google" has become a verb and why "to yahoo" hasn't.

[Shiidou Hikaru]

0 guests, 1 members 0 anonymous members
Shiidou Hikaru

Yes, for sure it's Italian because I went and posted on their board and some of them know English well enough to respond. Curiously, they wanted me to stay even though I don't know any Italian and can't read any of their topics. ;;

[Shirotatsu]

Ah, I see. I did notice that you were a member, and well, it appears you're still the newest member.

---

I need to study Latin again. Being eight months out of practice sure ruins Latin skills. I'm not particularly fond of the language anymore, but it was something I was good at...

[LantisEscudo]

Just me right now, it seems.

Yeah, language skills deteriorate really quickly if you don't use them frequently. I studied Latin for four years in high school, and I'm lucky if I can remember most of the first two declensions and conjugations now. My French (three years in grade school) is in even worse shape, despite my hearing it fairly frequently. There's a few programming languages I barely remember, too, but those thankfully are either really obscure or are close enough to other ones that I can pick them back up if I wanted (or needed) to.

[Itena]

0 guests, 1 members 0 anonymous members
Itena


Wow, you mean to say you were online at the same time that I was on Batou-chan?? Cause ever since I joined this forum I've never seen anyone online with me. ;_;

And no, you're not intimidating, Batou-chi! <3 *glomptime!*

[Itena]

0 guests, 1 members 0 anonymous members
Itena

Alone today too...

How many times a day do you guys get online?? Personally, on weekends I check at least 6 to 7 times (eheh ^^;;; did I ever tell you guys that I'm an internet addict?).

[Itena]

0 guests, 2 members 0 anonymous members
Itena, Shiidou Hikaru

Holy girl-fish There's someone online at the same time as I am! *tears of joy*

[Shiidou Hikaru]

0 guests, 1 members 0 anonymous members
Shiidou Hikaru

Whoops, I guess that I missed you Itena-san. Mee sorries v_v

[Shiidou Hikaru]

Hiya Batou-san!

[Itena]

1 guests, 1 members 0 anonymous members
Itena

Aww man, I go and empty the dishwasher; and suddenly everyone has gone! ;_;

[Itena]

0 guests, 2 members 0 anonymous members
Itena, Batou

Wow, I keep posting... ^^;;;

[Itena]

Good...afternoon! It's 12:00 so it should be more like, Good Noon! But nobody says that ^^