Community Poll: How do you want the site to grow?

page 1 of 212next »

Community Poll: How do you want the site to grow?

rumetzen 19 Nov 2024 05:51

Pretty much what the title says. I'd be interested from hearing feedback from the community about the directions they'd like the site to go in, things they'd like to see from staff, ideas they might have. Today my specific question is: How would you like the site to grow going forward?

Some ways to think about this might be: Is there an ideal size or pace of growth you'd like to see for the site? What kind of people do you want to try to attract to the community? Is there a point that might make you think "The Library has gotten too big?" Any ideas you have that you think might help attract/integrate new users? But really at this point I'm just curious to see what YOUR visions for the Library are, what you'd like to see it becoming that it isn't already.

---

read YONQ

Re: Community Poll: How do you want the site to grow?

(account deleted) 19 Nov 2024 18:26

I haven't really been here long, nor am I that established, so take what I say with a grain of salt here.

I think that splitting off from the Foundation as a whole, which I know some people are for, is generally not the best idea. I feel like this is a very good place for people to grow with their writing, and cutting off our main piece of support with that isn't really a good idea. As I see it now, at least, there's not really that many people who comment or give constructive feedback on a lot of posts, which I think will only be made worse if we stunt our growth, thus giving us less room to grow. And if people do, it's usually the same few that do it. Having said that, I do see the annoyance with people coming into the WL and speaking non-stop about SCP, which is understandable, but I think there needs to be more clarity on the differences / rules on it since it happens so frequently.

A little more lighthearted, but I think more engagement would help the community here a lot and get us to do more. (such as interacting with others, taking on more creative challenges.) I think having more frequent contests / prompt events would be really helpful for everyone, and get us to know each other a little better. I know that's a rather big ask due to the size of the admin / mod team, but I honestly think that that team might need to be extended as well.

Re: Community Poll: How do you want the site to grow?

UncannyClown 19 Nov 2024 06:05

i like the library as a kind of niche writers' circle-type community, and i think the benchmark for it getting too big would be nobody being able to keep up with every new piece/addition to the community anymore like what's happened to scp. that said, i think the library has room to grow before it hits that point, but i'm not sure how best to go about achieving that growth. the library is privileged to be attached to a much larger creative project from which we can siphon members, but i also feel like this disadvantages us in the way that it leads to a large portion of outsiders perceiving us as just a dumping ground for lore that isn't quite as connected to the foundation, and i guess my main hope is for the library to take steps toward breaking that perception. maybe we could do an event dedicated to something outside the scope of genre fiction, like creative nonfiction or more grounded stories. i'm obviously biased as someone who enjoys writing and reading those things, but i think it would be a nice way to get people to step outside their comfort zones more wrt both reading and writing and show off the diversity of work that the library can encompass. maybe fragmenting the scope of the library will drive away some people who are only interested in the fantasy/sci-fi stuff, but i can personally live with that.

---

poet

Last edited on 19 Nov 2024 06:07 by UncannyClown Show more

Re: Community Poll: How do you want the site to grow?

Gaffsey 19 Nov 2024 11:25

I want the WL to be a place where fledgling writers (who either come here on their own, or who are looking to escape some of the restrictions that SCP stuff places on their work) come to develop their skills and grow. One element that I think we sometimes underrate is that while there is The Library and all that, there's very little in the way of established lore or settings, which can lead to choice paralysis but also discourages authors trying to find their way by aping popular stuff. The WL seems to help you develop your skills as a writer, rather than as a writer for the WL, if that makes sense.

Size-wise, I agree with Uncanny that a big concern would be it growing so large that no one can keep up with what's being posted. However, I do think that even more than that, my concern is that we lose some of what I see as a pretty good culture of thoughtful critique. Strongly encouraging readers to not just review but to leave thoughtful comments is imperative. It's not an issue at the moment, but I really don't want to see either the performative or overly glib/shitposty reviews you sometimes see on SCP.

I also think that ratings modules drive people insane, and we would be better served with a star rating system like the Russian wiki has.

Last edited on 22 Nov 2024 15:01 by Gaffsey Show more

Re: Community Poll: How do you want the site to grow?

FleshMaddAvalon 19 Nov 2024 14:25

Im with both gaffsey and UC on both the site size and membership attitude.

I think if possible the WL should splinter away from SCP and like. Publicly announce it's seprration on the SCP main site? I get really really tired of being seen as the baby SCP or the lore dumping ground— we are far more than both of those.

In addition I think the rating module of one up or one down has kind of lost its appeal to me. An alternative like the star system or just removing the rating system altogether (which is decently manageable due to our small size) might work? I see so many comments with "+1~" that I think it's fair to say an alternative would be approved by the community at large.

Also, one of two more writing cons? I find myself desperate for contests every time they come around but they might just be me and my Need lol.

Anyway, tysm for running this beautiful site. It's changed my life and I hope to never leave.

---

I watch the yonder hills
See foodwrenches toil in dust
Let their cacophonous calls
Rend our bodies to rust

Re: Community Poll: How do you want the site to grow?

NotAnOligarch 19 Nov 2024 19:38

Agreed with all above. I should like to see as much separation from the SCP Wiki as possible (aside: though, upon further thought, this may be logistically and pragmatically impossible, I still retain the spirit of my statement: I think the Library is and can be greater than the SCP site, and that necessarily implies a degree of independence), as too often we get "lore-dumpers" or people coming in for whom the rules of the SCP site are too strict (little do they realize we have even higher standards here). Perhaps this is simply my personal bias against the sort of fiction produced over there, but I really think we ought to be distinct. And I too want the site to grow. It is an incredible place we have here, and of course I wish to share that incredible-ness with as many as possible. In order to facilitate such growth, we would need an active cast of reviewers and critics. But we also want it to be organic, not forced, growth. With regards to rating modules and the like, I think they are useful as-is simply as a metric for deletion. Perhaps some other way (such as a quality committee or even just by comment consensus) could be contrived but I have no strong feelings either way.

Additionally, outreach of some kind would be pretty cool… perhaps on social media platforms like tumblr or whatever (I don't use social media idk) or perhaps on other collaborative writing platforms, if they exist? Or encouraging site members to reach out to others in the real world or otherwise to add them to our little circle.

---

Fires rage just below the surface of the ice.

Last edited on 25 Nov 2024 16:02 by NotAnOligarch Show more

Re: Community Poll: How do you want the site to grow?

zipzipskins 19 Nov 2024 20:26

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.

Last edited on 19 Nov 2024 20:50 by zipzipskins Show more

Re: Community Poll: How do you want the site to grow?

longravery 20 Nov 2024 08:49

this is just from my perspective as a newcomer and new into writing, i think it's better to have the review and feedback happen after the user post their stuffs not before it, this will make the site more alive, maintaining a perfect image in front will just make other people who just realized their passion for writing stay away from this site. this site feels like an elite company who only accepts those with years of experience. also the deleting threshold should be more than half of the active user of the site, deleting a post just because 3 random person didn't like it is just disgusting.

edit: or better just don't delete the posts at all unless it is really against the rules. as a writer, i think it's a good idea to have something to look back at so we can see how far we have come and how much we improved.

edit again: just saw the rule that says only 'completed works'(dumb me) but i guess it's already clear what i was trying to say.

---

trust the process
ignore the mess
know that you're blessed
by the highest

Last edited on 20 Nov 2024 10:18 by longravery Show more

Re: Community Poll: How do you want the site to grow?

UncannyClown 21 Nov 2024 04:49

this is just from my perspective as a newcomer and new into writing, i think it's better to have the review and feedback happen after the user post their stuffs not before it, this will make the site more alive, maintaining a perfect image in front will just make other people who just realized their passion for writing stay away from this site.

we have forums and a discord for this purpose! i would encourage you to take advantage of both, particularly the discord — i promise we're not an intimidating bunch once you get to know us.

this site feels like an elite company who only accepts those with years of experience.

i promise you that this is not the case. it is absolutely possible to write to the general standards of the wl readership without years of experience if you're willing to seek out and listen to feedback.

also the deleting threshold should be more than half of the active user of the site, deleting a post just because 3 random person didn't like it is just disgusting.

how do you define "active," though? there are people in the wl community who only read/write every so often but are active in the discord — should their opinions count?

i'm sorry that your first piece didn't get the reception you were hoping for, but i would encourage you to give it another shot and better immerse yourself in the community before advocating for sweeping changes to how wl operates.

---

poet

Re: Community Poll: How do you want the site to grow?

Plilt 23 Nov 2024 00:28

I'm strongly against trying to split off the site from the SCP Foundation or attempting to broaden the focus.

What initially attracted me to sites like these was the promise of a collaborative writing community. I was already a member of deviantArt and Dreamwidth; if I just wanted to write something and submit it I had places to do that. Collaboration wasn't just being able to get reviews and feedback on your work; while that was important even more important was that other people would build off what you created. They'd riff off your ideas when writing their own work and use characters and places you'd created. They'd crosslink. The Wanderer's Library has never had as strong a culture of that as the SCP Foundation, but when I first joined the site was very small, it had freshly splintered off from the SCP wiki, and pretty much everyone (but me) was a writer for both sites.

As the site expands I want to see more of that. Rather than the site growing in scope and size, I want to see it grow more interwoven and tangled. That's not absent on the site (we have the canons, most notably), but it happens a lot less here than on the SCP wiki.¹ Some people find validation in vote totals or feedback, I find it in how people use the material I write and how much of other people's material I'm using. I'm concerned that trying to expand the focus of the site by getting people to write nonfiction would further weaken that collaborative aspect. It's less related to everything else that's been written, after all. So would a formal split with the SCP Foundation. For all that it's not as expressed on the Wanderer's Library, the SCP Foundation has a collaborative culture and anyone coming from that site to this one brings that with them, at least a little.

For concrete suggestions, I still think having a writing contest where you're assigned a list of entries and have to write something that uses elements from, say, three of them. Update the Groups of Intrigue, start creating hub pages, and create a Catalogue of Worlds too (we have hub pages for world-centered canons but that's not quite the same thing).

This isn't turning the Wanderer's Library into a place for cast-off SCP Foundation lore. It's turning it into a place that revolves around the Library and the worlds it connects to rather than the SCP Foundation. While there's overlap and it's in the same setting, they'd still be distinct. Nor would it eliminate the culture of the site; the site could still be small, close-knit, and a place for people to improve their writing.

Footnotes

1. It's possible that one reason it seems like this to me is because I'm not as much a part of the site's social circles and am less active here than some of you, but I don't think that's all of it.

Last edited on 23 Nov 2024 00:55 by Plilt Show more

Re: Community Poll: How do you want the site to grow?

UncannyClown 23 Nov 2024 01:05

adding onto the disagreement i expressed on discord: are these things really mutually exclusive? the library already accommodates pieces both within and without the sphere of genre fiction; is it not possible for it to both expand the scope of what can be written for it and accommodate some more interconnected ecosystems of work? scp managed both at the same time.

---

poet

Re: Community Poll: How do you want the site to grow?

Plilt 23 Nov 2024 01:22

In theory, not they're not. Practically, they're still in tension and that trying to balance doing both at once is inherently more delicate than just doing one or the other. The SCP Foundation was also expanding beyond horror and into adjacent forms of genre fiction while still using the SCP article format as a base; this helped preserve site theme and accommodate interconnectedness.

Re: Community Poll: How do you want the site to grow?

Gaffsey 23 Nov 2024 13:04

For concrete suggestions, I still think having a writing contest where you're assigned a list of entries and have to write something that uses elements from, say, three of them.

While there's plenty that I disagree with, I think that this is a really good idea.

Re: Community Poll: How do you want the site to grow?

(account deleted) 23 Nov 2024 14:15

I vehemently disagree with the idea of us severing our ties with SCP.

Re: Community Poll: How do you want the site to grow?

Din-Bidor 24 Nov 2024 21:18

I do believe that, while it's definitely essential that we keep our identity as a site distinctly different from the SCP Wiki, it would be a complete mistake to sever ourselves from the other site. It's not only that a lot of really good works drink directly from lore that was originally envisioned for the SCP wiki (I ain't gonna feign false modesty by denying a lot of mine are among those), but because we do need to encourage people to come here, even if it's through the SCP Wiki. I, for one, found my way here after years of reading SCP articles and tales, and only ever got to work on my own stuff because I felt that I could be accepted here and grow as a writer despite my style clashing severely with the more clinical tone expected (or thought to be expected) on most SCP articles. We must ensure that people find their way here, though it would be convenient to be even more clear about what makes WL unique and not just an extension of the SCP Wiki: that it's grown beyond it, yet it remains intimately connected.

As for diversity, a big complaint I've heard from fellow Latin American writers on SCP is that a lot of readers only want to read "what appeals to them", meaning that canons like Our Open Veins and the stories associated with it or with non-Western perspectives are often overlooked in favor of what appeals more to the average white male straight audience. This has so far not been an issue here, since I've even been allowed to create a hub specifically for Latin American writers to post stories constructed from our own experiences and identities. I would encourage WL to keep promoting this approach to multiculturalism, and make people from the countless different backgrounds that also populate SCP to find a space here that they might exploit to make their voices heard.

In that same vein, we need more outreach. The how is what concerns me. While SCP has spread out into a lot of media (podcasts, youtube videos, art, etc.), WL has comparatively lower reach. We're a smaller community, and it's a given we'll have less people speaking about us and creating additional stuff that inevitably leads to someone stumbling upon the site, but I would like us to branch out like that and reach more people through stuff that transcends our writing while also leading people to it.

page 1 of 212next »