Hey,
I noticed this thread yesterday and was wondering what kind of reaction Wades post might get, let me offer one from my end:
This threads title is "the Power of the loops", and even tho axenvocs mentions that things have changed, he also mentions the good things like the nice contacts and the motivation to improve his recording / musical skills he was able to "take" from wikiloops.
Now, I read those to be the "power" part, and as far as I can tell, they still exist and we can witness new generations of wikiloops users getting "drawn in" and experiencing what axenvocs describes.
I believe we humans do not like changes, ideally each christmas should be like that one time when we were eight years old and the world was still allright - and whenever something we like changes, we will feel irritated at first, feel we lost something.
That is part of human nature I guess.
What axenvocs describes by saying "many of the loopers I started with are not around any more", and what may be seen with an emotion of loss might as well be called "member fluctuation", and that does not have to be a bad thing.
What you make out of that really depends on your perspective, let me try to ellaborate on that a little deeper:
If we were running a car dealership kind of project here, we would be used to short customer appearances, maybe consisting of one or two visits to check out our offers, then in the best case followed by a visit to buy a car, and then hopefully not followed by another visit to complain.
We would probably appreciate visitor fluctuation in such a scenario and would not think how to improve our car park so people come back over and over again - its OK if they come back whenever they need a new car.
The second example that springs to my mind is a dentists... very different expectation towards fluctuation there as well, right?
So, let's come back to wikiloops and wonder what a healthy user fluctuation on wikiloops should look like, and if we are really that far away from that.
If we focus on "how many tracks are uploaded to wikiloops every day", then that number doesn't seem to be negatively affected by user fluctuation. No need to complain about any lack of new material there, so that doesn't seem to be it.
From what I have seen, the "problem" which Wade addresses is of a rather social kind, and it is a phenomenon that has more to do with the long term users than with newbees (and that's what axenvocs describes, too):
We all have careers of entering the loops, making positive contact with the currently active group at the time of our arrival, building musical friendships with a sub-set of the active community. That's the best phase IMO.
Now, we probably wished we could freeze that moment in time and hang out with our buddies exactly like that until we die.
Any change to that golden state will naturally appear as a loss to us, and since that feeling may come unexpected after having been very excited, I have seen a lot of long term users who expressed irritation about the experience.
Maybe I'm risking to over-simplify the process, but I'd try to sum it up with a pinch of humor as:
- I notice some folks have turned to other hobbys, "it is not as it was before" - some folks turn away at this thought (who wants to be the last to leave?).
- If I decide to try to revive my experience by collaborating with some other folks, I take a carefull look beyond my homely newsfeed and notice "holy cow, I'm overwhelmed, theres just too much out there now, and I hardly know anyone anymore" - some folks turn away here. We have forum posts stating "I feel so bad I can't keep up with all the stuff", and such negative emotions tend to drive people away, even tho they are quite irrational.
- If I still stick around, I might share my experience by opening a forum thread to publicly wonder where the good old days have gone and focus on "there must be a problem" (sorry, now that was mean - but there are quite a number of such posts). These posts rarely end up in anything constructive, there simply is no way to keep the loops from changing and the members from coming and going as they like.
Now, if you read the above and feel like: "yeah, that somehow does sound like my experience of change on wikiloops, and somehow I have found a way not to get stuck there", then it would be interesting if you would care to share what did the trick for you.
What seems the most constructive advice to avoid the experience (and let me say again, this is a long term user experience, not a new member integration issue) can be summed up like this:
- try to never end the "discovery" mode on wikiloops. If you can make it a habit to collaborate with someone who's new once a month (meaning you'll have to look for new peoples stuff first), your pool of contacts will be constantly evolving. Tying your wikiloops experience to the presence of your preferred three guys is simply not recommendable, nor does it wikiloops justice.
- Take a different view on your own role within wikiloops:
Being around for more than two years and having witnessed the positive power of wikiloops, you have something to give back. The question wether new members will get to experience what axenvocs described rests in your hands, you know it took friendly and motivating users to keep you going and improving, so instead of dropping into some kind of "I feel its not as good as it was"-emotion, you have the option to move on into
"now that I am a veteran user, I can pass on that wiki-power". There is a zillion things one can do in that field, and I believe we wouldn't be here today if there had not always been people who embraced the role of the experienced passing on the wiki vibe to new folks. Going in this direction, you will not end up back in the golden days stuck in your memory, but you may notice there are different aspects to discover about wikiloops, new challenges and a lot of room for creativity. The good old days are not coming back, but we can try to make today a good one instead of circling around that.
From the top of my head, let me list a few things you can do to re-engage with the changing community:
- If you have benefited from people giving you constructive feedback (sometimes on tracks which were really...*cough* below your todays quality level), dare to give such friendly feedback to new users. "Cool track" may be encouraging, but maybe you got some more advice to give by now?
- If you have felt "the power of the loops" the moment you had uploaded your first track, and then BOOM some phantastic veteran member remixed your first try... well, realize that you are in the position to make someones day very easily. I openly admit to having done remixes on new members wich I found phantastic players, just to motivate them.
- If you share the feeling of "It has become hard to keep track of new members" and noticed you are not alone with that, why not go back to recommending findings of new and old members tracks via the shoutbox and following those if some other veteran recommends something. I hope its clear I am not talking of self-promotion here.
Write a continuing "new members I spotted you should not miss"-blog-type of forum post. It is in your hands, and theres a lot of potential reward coming from other veterans who appreciate that.
If you follow some of those hints for a few weeks and actively play a new role of being a veteran member, I would predict you will not feel any lack of activity or have reason to overly miss your initial crowd.
I do hope it is understood that what I have been doing in this post is to try to suggest you question your perception of what the "problem" is. Of course I am monitoring and evaluating user fluctuation, and I have an interest to keep engagement as high as possible, but my role is a little different, too.
It may sound very provocative to say it this way, but ask yourself: What is better for wikiloops, someone who has a great time and takes benefit from the power of wikiloops and then moves on to something new, or someone who takes the benefit and at some point starts complaining that things are moving on?
In the end, we all need to keep moving, and wikiloops offers a great playground to move on and on.
Now, last before I end, I'd like to comment on the slight off-topic move Wade introduced by connecting the "user fluctuation" aspect to the "wikiloops funding situation". That caught me by surprise in a way, especially because I do not recall having said anything along the lines of "this site is likely to disappear".
The thing is, this site exists for 6.5 years now, and it has always been very likely to disappear since it has always relied on a few people who put in great amounts of money, time and love to keep it going.
Right now, it is not any more likely to disappear than anytime before, so I was surprised to read that's how you feel.
I'll openly admit that it does also sound a bit odd to me when people seem to be certain wikiloops will be around ten years down the road, but to predict "disappearance" is wrong in the opposite direction.
I do understand Wades visit to what you know as "the wikiloops headquarters" and the direct experience of meeting me and seeing the kind of price I'm paying for having started wikiloops must have caused the concern, and I do appreciate that in some way.
Even if you would like to offer a post on "How I felt different about wikiloops after spending a day with Dick", I wouldn't mind, and maybe that would be interesting to some.
Still, it seems important to keep two things separated:
When speaking about wikiloops, there really is no need to predict anything scary. wikiloops is online, engines running smooth, and I can see little benefit in creating doubts about that, "disappearing" has never been an option that has been publicly presented, and I have little intention to do that.
If you feel the urge to address the funding situation of wikiloops, which is indeed closely tied to what me and my family have to carry, then I'd like to ask you to do that right-out.
It definetly is one aspect belonging to wikiloops, but let's please not confuse that one aspect with the whole of wikiloops.
Not sure if you can follow my thought here, but to damage the way people see wikiloops by predicting disappearance is something I have to reject.
To try to round up support for wikiloops is something I know needs to be done (dont ask how many hours I've spent), and I appreciate any efforts to keep the thought present, just not necessarily at the expense of irritating people - just think of some potential sponsor stumbling on your statement... not done wikiloops any good there, then.
Last, to end on a constructive note:
For those who may have missed the feature, let me end by once more stating that it is quite easy to check out new members quickly, just visit the member search page at
https://www.wikiloops.com/members/finder.php
and switch the "ordered by" selector to new members.
