i have a few thoughts and ideas here, and it's taken me a little bit of time to spin them about in my head until they crystallize. over the past year, this site and its community have grown to be very important parts of my life. the speed at which this has happened has surprised me, somewhat. i know there are others like me in the world who would have similar experiences if they found the library. here are some of the things that make this a particularly special place:
1. a willingness to invest in users as individuals. the people who join and interact with the site are more than just the breadth or perceived quality of their creative outputs. the majority of regular users genuinely care about the people who are here, and part of why that is possible is that the community is relatively small. if the library grew too large, it would be difficult to have the same level of personal investment — both from typical user to typical user, but also from the staff to users and vice versa. that said, we could have double the regular userbase or more and not yet hit an unmanageable level on this front.
2. an acceptance of, and enthusiasm for, unusual and sometimes challenging creative efforts. there exist quite a few users on the site who, at least sometimes, write pieces that are not particularly accessible or penetrable. the community here at large tends to be appreciative of this type of output and willing to work a bit to find meaning and interpretation within it (some examples of what i mean here, here, here, or even here.) as a community grows very large, if there is not some sort of balancing act with how "quality" is determined, pieces like this might be in danger, since they are not immediately accessible and thus don't inspire quick clicks of the upvote button. in particular i worry that poetry on-site, both with a large-enough userbase and without some review of how pieces remain on-site, would be in danger, which is a real shame to consider.
3. a kind, welcoming, accepting environment that is deliberately open and enthusiastic about including people from various nationalities, sexualities, genders, ethnic backgrounds, heritages, and general life histories. this is not something that concerns me going forward providing the people who are at the helm stay at the helm and that new people on staff also share a commitment to fostering this sort of community.
if the site continues to keep these things intact as the community grows we will be able to maintain the heart of what i find to be most special about this place.
some things i would love to see: more reading clubs. i know that a very special experience was having my first story here read on the reading club that happened shortly after i joined — that mattered a lot to me and i know it would matter to others, too. i know events are a lot of work but the past two contests have been excellent and generated a big flurry of interest that has swept at least a couple of new authors into the community.
as for comparisons and perceptions to scp: some people might see us as scp-lite or something, but the kind of person who looks at the body of what's been created over here and draws //that/ conclusion is a distinctly goofy kind of person, which means anyone serious-minded who feels that way is unfamiliar with us. i think the moderation team already does a good job of handling people who think "hey, i got banned/ostracized/whatevered from scp, maybe i'll bring nonsense over to wl" so that's not a contingent im particularly concerned about. i certainly wouldn't be on this site if it weren't for scp — that's how i found this place, and i'm in the probably-overwhelming majority of wl-users in this regard, so a full-on separation is probably deleterious. it would be cool to draw from other wellsprings, but i'm not sure what those are — this place is unique.
thanks for all you do, and long live the library.