As well as streamlining the groups, I do think it would be a good idea to relaunch the short story group, perhaps with a bit of fanfare. Perhaps a competition, a new host or specialist who knows his/her stuff, a fresh new avalanche of faces, something positive and new.

I think this site needs to play to its strengths. It has a smaller community than it used to, but it's an incredibly friendly, supportive one. A more tightly refined set of groups would be a good way of heading into the future.

Does David or anyone have any thoughts?

Adding to my previous comments, with a refined set of groups we could do away with the book review group, replace it with a general "non fiction" group, it would make a lot more sense, and be open to a lot mroe work. All these groups should then be free from threat of the graveyard, and left to flourish and build.

I do think the site needs to refocus and streamline a little. Unless anyone thinks otherwise, or has any other ideas, I could send David a message, ask him what he thinks...?

 

As it is school holidays, the WW team are playing catch up with each other but rest assured are reading this thread and making decisions, and will respond very soon.

Thought I'd bump this thread. Might be interesting for new members to read, also good to show them during a quiet period for the site, that people are invested in it and looking at its future... :)

I did notice that there were a couple of out of date items on your site, and also some tiny text links that are painful for the eyes.

To help promote your site to writers, it might help give greater confidence in the WriteWords service if perhaps the job/competition section was kept up-to-date - and possibly separated - i.e. Jobs on one page, while Competions listed on another. 

One look let me see a couple that are over two years old.  Here's one example:

Rethink Press is looking for three brilliant new novels to publish in 2012/13

Yes, hopefully David or someone will reply to some of these suggestions at some point, he did start this thread after all...

Hopefully there will be a lot more activity on this site after the School holidays. :)

A couple more questions, should anyone want to talk about improving the site...

Why can't we upload more than one piece of work per day? Why are so many inactive members clogging up the groups? Why is there no help page for new members? Why do we need to be group members, when there are now so few groups, why not just have immediate access to all of them, wouldn't this be simpler for new people?

I'm not active in any groups at the moment but it is purely because I've been concentrating on my writing and I'll  be participating again when I'm in a position to do so. In answer to Bazz's question about why inactive members are clogging up the groups, my feeling is that if you've paid your money for the year you'd expect to remain in the groups you joined for the period of your paid membership. If you're a temporary member I guess it should be different. 

you'd expect to remain in the groups you joined for the period of your paid membership

Hi, yes of course, I'm not suggesting otherwise! I'm talking more about people who haven't used the site for over a year, and have not seemingly rejoined, but are still in the groups...

A couple of responses to various points raised throughout this thread:

1. Groups - There has been a problem with groups filling up with inactive members, I've taken some steps to improve that now, so that shouldn't happen so much going forward.

2. Fees - Most members seem to lean towards keeping the fee. This is still something we'll have to keep considering, as income is very low these days. For the record, yes the site was set up as a business, but one entirely aiming to keep writers' interests at heart. Most experts in the early days came to the site voluntarily, we eventually offered a small monthly honorarium, which was all the site could afford, and certainly nothing approaching a reasonable working rate per hour. The rest of the funds the site receives have covered jobs+opps+directory editing time, site admin time, and again, the hourly rate involved would make amazon/walmart seem like great employers. We would love to encourage new experts to contribute to the site, if anyone knows any, please send them our way! You need to find people with experience and knowledge, but also the time to read members' work and formulate comments. One suggestion I think has some potentital is retirees, who might relish the chance to pass on knowledge and have the time to do so. Hunting down suitable candidates is the challenge, but maybe you can help?

3. It's heartening to be reminded (in the opening of this thread) of the value of the site to people like Freebird, Jenny and many others. I hope we can all find a way to make it flourish again. Keep the thoughts coming!

Hi David, thanks for helping to streamline the groups. :)

I do think something should be done about all of the unused groups in the graveyard, new members are joining these groups and i'm sure they're quite confused. As i said earlier, I think we could pare the existing groups down to just nine, delete everything in the graveyard, and do away with the concept of the graveyard altogether. The book review group could become a general non fiction group, and the short story group be completely relaunched and overhauled. I think the site needs a smaller sharper focus, for the small (but still dedicated) members that it has.

Any thoughts on this?

 

Anyone had any thoughts about removing the old groups...?
 

Also, will anything ever be done about the "part time" members who just flood the site with spam, adverts, links, etc...?

Here's an idea for dealing with that:

If someone posts spam of that nature, other members can report it as spam. The site admin checks the posting, and if it contains a link to a commercial website, the poster's account on here is locked out and they have to pay a "fine" (say, £5) to get it unlocked.

We could allow a "white list" of acceptable commercial websites, if such a thing exists. Posting a link to any other site, though, incurs this lockout/fine penalty.

I notice we can report posts when they're comments, but not when they're in forum threads, this is something that could be updated to help out with the elimination of spam posts (of which i've seen a couple in the last few days).