Hi, everyone. Today's April 18th, 2022 — twelve years to the day that the first forum post was made on SCP by DrEverettMann and
Pair Of Ducks announcing their new SCP spin-off site, the Wanderer's Library. And twelve years later, here we are. It hasn't exactly been a straight road - I mean, hell, for about half of that time the site was completely inactive and getting maybe an article or two a month. Then, in 2019, the three R-admins decided to kick it back into gear — I can tell you it wasn't easy, but I'm really proud of how far we've come as a site.
So, to celebrate the Library's 12th anniversary, I decided I'd write a little something up — a sort of address on the current state of the site, what the past year has given the site, where the staff are planning on going from here. I'd like to make this an annual thing; a regular display that staff are invested in the going-ons and future of the site, short and long term. So, without further ado…
2021 was an incredible year for the site, right off the back of a series of incredible years. You can check the numbers for yourself on the Library Calendar, but I'll quickly break it down for you:
- 365 surviving articles posted
- 915 new members joined the site
- 4 new staff members
- 3 contests/events
And that's just from January to December of 2021, not even including the four months of 2022. That's nuts, needless to say. I'll be honest in that while all of us on the site staff hope and work for growth, seeing the results of it is kind of… staggering, but in a good way. But raw numbers only tell part of the story; there's context and history that's important to acknowledge.
In the last few months of 2020, Rum and I felt that posting and activity had winded down a little - the calendar agrees, posting had dropped into the single-digits since September '20. A contest is like adrenaline for a site — too much and too often, it'll kill ya, but used sparingly and strategically, it can be a real shot in the leg. So, that's what we did. In January we ran the Scavenger Hunt Contest, which was basically an import of the SCP Jamcon formula by ARD and ProcyonLotor, modified to suit the Library's unique format (or lack thereof). It was a resounding success — 123 posts in one month, completely blowing the previous record (52 posts in August '19) out of the water. The participants agreed - the freeform nature of the Library made it a lot easier to get freaky with themes.
Stuff calmed down for a couple months on the user end, though we saw a significant uptick in new members joining as a result of the contest. The six months from February-August were pretty average from you guys' end, though behind the scenes we were at work — or, trying to be. In terms of long-term projects on the staff end, 2021 was dominated by trying to figure out a navigation system. Trust me — much easier said than done. There's about a billion things to consider and balance — usability, intuitiveness, future-proofing, technical execution, ease-of-access, originality, and so on and so forth. We talked and talked, and finally came into a product as a group we were all happy with - but more on that later.
September, we ran our first team contest. Well, that's not technically true — the old Library ran one or two team contests prior, but this would be the first one in recent memory. As a little insight, some of the other ideas for the team contest I discussed with Rumetzen were picture-prompts, working together to invent new 'wings' of the Library, and a contest that involved series jumping across the Library and SCP Wiki. Maybe next time. Wandercon 2021 was also a success - not nearly as many posts as the Scavenger Hunt, but a lot of lasting lore and characters emerged from your minds that people still read and talk about. A real sense of community and collaboration emerged from that contest that made me intensely proud to see as we moved into the end of the year.
As winter set in, I also ran the Library's first Yuletide Gift Exchange — another thing I'm hoping will be a tradition. It's basically the same as the SCP Art Exchange, but people visibly had a lot of fun making gifts for their friends and in some cases, for stranger — and I had a great time matching everyone to their gifter and giftee based on their desires. Just a really fun time all around.
There were countless miscellaneous improvements and additions — the site theme changed to have the title and icon in the center, we re-added the sidebar, we created the Notable Patrons character page and ironed out a lot of staff policy on deletions, the site rules, and more.
And then, 2022 slid into our lives. This is the "present and future" part of the thread description. Four months into the year, a lot has changed. The Library is visibly different from how it was before then. I started it by proposing my final plan to the rest of staff and, a few days later, to you guys: the new navigation system for the Library. Partially modelled after the SCP series lists, partially a unique creation, I felt it hit the best balance between all of the qualities we wanted in our nav system. The rest of the staff team agreed, and apparently so did you guys. I, admittedly, declined to mention in the proposal itself that I was planning to freeze posting for a week while I implemented it because I didn't want to accidentally cause people to freak out and post a bunch of stuff, thereby running over the 1000th entry. The posting freeze wasn't a decision I made lightly, even though in all reality the consequences were…. really not that big. Still.
Then, of course, the Wing One page dropped and the Wing Two Contest (!) shortly thereafter. I admit that I was a little sad at the time that I couldn't participate in indubitably the Library's most important event in years, but it's the cost of doing business. I also admit that you guys had me spooked by barely posting for the contest until like, the last few days. We needed at least 10 entries to hit all the placeholder spots in Wing Two, but we made it — and to great fanfare! Looking at the page now and its wonderful borders, I have trouble believing I was worried about it. People are posting like hell — we're averaging about 20-30 entries a month right now in 2022, which is a far cry from the one-two entries a week I'd hope for in 2019. You guys are also incredibly active in the Discord, which is also great and it's grown and developed its own culture over the years, a sight that's wild to see.
Right now, the major project we're working on the Section 2 of the navigation plan, the Tag Revamp. I'll be upfront in that we haven't made as much progress as I would've liked this far into the year, just because of how busy everyone has been with class and work and such. But we're working on it! List of tags are drawn up, volunteers have been contacted, and discourse is occurring on how best to execute it. I'm hopeful.
But that's just what we're working on now. Longer term, there are a bunch of spheres we need to touch on as staff and as a community. I'd like to establish the site's social media presence, as right now it's basically just the Twitter that's regularly active. More guides for writing are also something that I think would be good for the future - build the Library not just as a place to publish fiction but as a place to grow and develop fiction-writing skills. I want to take steps to shift more activity to the forums — seeing Discord chatter is awesome, but right now our community is highly centralized on Discord which leaves the comments of the site itself presenting the illusion of inactivity. To that end I want to think about restarting the old biweekly discussion threads on Library lore we used to do — encouraging people to shift their draft critique stuff to the crit forums has been pretty successful on that front. Poetry has seen a resurgence on the Library as of late, which is exciting but carries with it certain understandings about how it's considered and critiqued in relation to more standard articles. Nothing we can't figure out as a community.
Based on the community surveys, navigation remained the biggest hurdle for people getting into the site, and while I think the new system has addressed a lot of that, there are still issues like the topbar and sidebar being pretty much redundant that I'd like to sort out. Navigation remains the single largest issue for us as a site, because of the admittedly slightly idiosyncratic way the Library is structured, but the amount I can do there is limited to present solutions for present problems.
Thinking even longer term, I want to ingrain and codify a lot of staff structure and policy. Right now, we play it mostly by ear, which is good in some respects for a smaller site because it avoids the glut of red-tape and bureaucracy, but it also means that a lot of decisions are made ad-hoc and not written down. Not great for future generations of Library staff, as you can imagine. I want to eventually build things into a position where they can function self-sustainingly — for the past 2-3 years, stuff has been run through me, but obviously having all that decision making resting on one person (particularly on me, nutcase that I am) is a lot of bus factor that is worth reducing. I took a monthlong break in December of 2021 which was really nice and stuff didn't burn down, which is excellent and a testament to the rest of our amazing staff team, but stuff slips through the cracks and patching those leaks is a priority as we continue on.
Whoof, that got… a lot longer than I intended it to. But a year is a long time, and this year in particular had a lot of big events to cover and future directions to theorize about. Like I said, I want to turn this into an annual sort of check-in from me (or whoever the lead admin is after me) to you guys, update you on where we've been and where we're going with the site. The Library's birthday seems an excellent time to do such a thing. I don't know if anyone will want to read all this, but if you do, thank you — you're the people that make this site go 'round, and I couldn't be more excited to see how the Library grows and develops, whether it be along the directions I foresee or into something else entirely.
Happy birthday, Library.
(account deleted)