Hey guys!


So it's discussion time! After spending some time in the Leadership discussing different ideas and proposed changes regarding Holy Worlds, we decided to open a thread so we could hear from you, our members.

I hear snippets from you guys about the focus of Holy Worlds: what you would like to see less of, or more of, on the forum. However, I thought the best plan would be to open up a thread were you can throw out ideas, discuss what you'd like to see Holy World's focus on more - and we can gather all the chatter on one place.


What would you like to see change this year?


What would you like to see more of on the Fantasy forum? What aspect of the forum would you like to see encouraged and built on?

Are there any sections of the forum that you feel could be changed for the better? Do you think some rooms don't generate enough interest, and could be changed completely, or merged into something new, that would cater to the interests and writing development of our current membership?

What would you like to see less of on the forum?

If I was to talk about shrinking the forum somewhat, trying to prune some of the lesser used rooms away and begin to build on a smaller scale again to allow more growth, how would you feel about that?

If given a choice, what rooms do you think need pruning and what would you cut back on?

Our idea is sometimes you need to cut back and prune away to allow re-growth. Pruning isn't a bad thing, it can be healthy if done carefully. We are smaller in numbers at the moment, and we need to cater to that to allow re-growth.

Updates:


Holy Worlds doesn't have enough man power at this present time to start new projects, or to get some of the old ones going again. We aren't going to be setting up a Publishing House, and at this present time we aren't going to be able to start up the Podcast again. The Podcast isn't off the books indefinitely, but we don't have the man power to run it at the moment unfortunately; we feel that our efforts need to be concentrating on the forum at the moment, and not all the previous activities and projects we were running or considering starting up.


We had other changes and plans in mind some time ago now, but at the moment we just don't have the man power to carry them out. We feel that the most important thing at this time is to focus on the forum itself and its core - which should be writing. Other plans and projects aren't as important at the moment - we need to bring back the focus and build from there again. I know some of you will be disappointed with this - it isn't off the books completely, just temporarily.

I would love to get a discussion going on this. Don't be afraid to stand up and speak. It's okay if you only have an opinion to offer on one of the points, or on all of them! We're opening up this thread because we want to hear from you, and gather some feedback from our members.

What exactly has been/is/will be the administration's goal?

In the past the goal was to set up a publishing business on the side of Holy Worlds. However as I am looking at it, it's not going to be feasible. Holy Worlds isn't in a place, and may not be in the place ever, of supporting a publishing company and as such I'd rather not focus on a goal that we may never even achieve. It seems more reasonable to focus on what Holy Worlds can achieve, and what will be beneficial to us as a forum and work from that. I'm not saying that having a publishing company is completely off the books with finality. I am saying that at the moment having big goals and plans isn't wise; it seems silly to have big plans and put time and effort into them when they may never happen.

At the moment we'll focus on the Fantasy forum primarily, allowing the smaller forums to continue at their own pace, scaling down where we need to and building up from there. God willing we will grow and continue to build on that. There are things that I'd like to see happen in the future and plans that I'd love to see come to fruition; but it doesn't seem wise to start building on them or bringing them up now as how feasible they will be is not certain.

Are you wanting to know what our main goal will be? As a forum our main goal should be to encourage writers and authors in their craft, and to glorify God through our writing. I think that should always be our main goal as a forum. However are you asking if we have a main goal to work towards, like the idea of the publishing company? At the moment putting effort into large goals like that isn't feasible, we don't have the man power; we need to focus on our writing, and continuing to build up the forum that we have at the moment.

Does that answer your question?

Yes.

I think the main thing I'm worried about is that Holy Worlds may not be in a place where it can even "build up" one of its forums. Do we have that kind of manpower? A lot of people have either left or become scarce -- not because they want to -- but because they don't have a choice: life became too busy to invest in anything that eats up as much time as Holy Worlds. A huge percentage of "the old crew" (including myself) fall into this category.
And as most of us know, writing is a full-time job. Holy Worlds takes a lot of time to contribute to and/or be a significant part of. So when several others of our number started to become successful as authors, they had to give their job first priority and either become very scare or leave permanently.

Most of the old blood no longer have the resources available with which to input full-time, though those of us who are only scarce do what we can.

What of young blood? I don't have the time to even so much as peek in often, so I haven't been able to see if there are any whippersnappers who might join the ranks soon. Even if there are a lot of new people joining, becoming ranked requires a full-time commitment to training and then maintenance. How many of the new people are able to devote that much of their life to HW?

I'm not at all saying growth is a bad thing, I just think that when our primary goal is "encouraging writers and authors in their craft, and glorifying God through our writing," sometimes temporary, indefinite stasis of growth is the best course of action.


As for what I think could be changed for the better... I think I want to see an emphasis on part-time involvement.
I was one of the many who had been calling for the elimination of the Honor Roll Rank, but now I can see we lost several valuable things along with the rank. Perhaps the most valuable thing we lost was the primary avenue by which committed people who were people-minded (rather than mod-minded) and/or scarce could benefit the forum and maintain its purity of spirit.
I'm not saying we should bring back HRMs, and I'm not saying we shouldn't. That's not my point. My point is there are people who want to help the forum, but are too scarce to be trained full-time. That's a resource ripe for the taking, if we can only develop whatever would be necessary to mine it.

*thinks*

When I think of the core mission of HW, and what manifestations of it are most closely related to that, I think of the blog, and the Fireside.

...I'm not sure how helpful that is. I remember Roager wanting to do some things with the Fireside, but life has eaten him alive.

But I guess what I was thinking is... I don't wanna drop out of HW entirely, and I think maybe the best place to focus limited energies might be on writing blog posts that will encourage writers (maybe have small contests or challenges through the blog), and then more inner-circle have people committed to reading and critiquing in the Fireside (even just one short story a week or something, Idunno).

And, I get that many people won't even be able to do that...possibly including myself, but those are my thoughts. And I guess those are what I'm going to try and pray about doing, and hope happen.

*praying for HW, and our Admin*

I completely agree, Sui. Moderating a forum should not even be a part time job - we are a smaller membership at the moment which means there shouldn't be as much work for mods/MLs to do, which is why we just cannot start looking into building more projects and so on. We do not have the manpower for it. When I say 'build up' I meant our membership base. It's true we have lost members due to life and busyness amongst other things. I don't mean we should concentrate on building up the forum to being 'as busy as it was'. I think at the moment we're fine as we are, when you look at the membership base we now have.

Look at it like this: I work a part time job, and then I come home and work with my business. At the moment I'm working 11 and 13 hour shifts. I used to come home, log into Holy Worlds and keep (attempt to keep) up with all three forums. HWHF was very quiet so I'd pour time into posting on that forum, and yet when I was away for a week I'd come home and there's be no posts or one or two posts. As we are, it seems to be a waste of energy for me to pour my time into a forum that currently doesn't have a member base. I'm not saying we should ignore it, or course, it's still there as a resource, but we don't have a membership base there really at the moment, so putting a lot of time and energy into it when there is no one there really isn't wise. Which is why I said I was going to be pulling my attention back to the Fantasy forum. Not because I want to build it up content wise, make it mega busy again etc; but because I think this at the moment has to be our main base because we have shrunk in size, and we don't have the manpower to run three forums. The two smaller forums can continue to run at their own pace. At the moment, our Fantasy forum will as well - because I think the pace it's at at the moment for the member base it has is manageable. As you said, we all have jobs - I work full time and many of our other members have full time studies, are embarking on new adventures of their own or are writing full time. Holy Worlds should not pull people away from their writing, or from their work for that matter. It's supposed to be a tool to be used to help you writing, not to pull you away from writing.




So yes, I have to agree with you there!



I like this. I don't think working on a forum, whether modding, editing, or etc should ever be a full time job, or be seen as a part time job. Perhaps the emphasis in the past has been too much on the job/rank and not enough on the important stuff? I don't know, but I agree with you there anyway.



A lot of people were calling for the elimination of the HRM rank. *Nods* When Airianna left, an opening for several jobs that she ran came up, and we did not have the manpower to fill all those jobs - like the podcast and the HRM. Finding someone to run the rank of HRM would have meant me finding someone else to run that job - the HRM didn't have a specific purpose at that time, it was very up in the air, as Airianna was in the process of changing their rank to handle User Handling and the like; with so very few of them active anyway, the man power it would have taken to run and recruit more people into the group didn't seem to warrant keeping the rank open.

One of the things people kept mentioning to me was simplifying the ranking system, which was why the rank of HRM was dropped - do we need members who are 'people minded' to have a rank, do they need authority? It didn't make sense to keep them as a rank really. I understand what you mean about something now being missing, however I'm not sure bringing back the HRM rank (or something similar to fulfill their role) would work. It would just create another job, with more people to find to fill that role.

Maybe if we focused more on part time involvement, more members would have the time to be involved? Do we actually need a group of people dedicated to being people minded? In what way do you think they would benefit the forum, and what would their role be in your mind?

Thanks for taking the time to reply! I hope I replied to all your points there.

*Pokes her head in*

I can't say I know what we really need to change - heaven knows I'm not an expert in the least - but perhaps if I might say something...?

As has been stated, many of the 'senior members' have grown busy. I, sadly, have somewhat become one of them. Full-time college and life in general keep me frazzled until I have no energy to write or to post creative replies in threads. But I want to be involved in something. I may only be able to be here on the weekends. Okay, that's a start. What can I add on the weekends, or whenever I have time? I'd like to find something - however small it may be - to do to help out. For example, my patrols are all fairly quiet. I could either take on more area and watch silently, or I could dig in where I am and try to post quality posts every now and then.

I think that's really what needs to happen. Threads need commented on. They don't have to explode in activity, but slow, steady discussions can be good. I happen to know that there are an awful lot of stories that would love to be critiqued. It takes a long time to critique one. But perhaps we could work through them slowly rather than not at all. Even though we sometimes get too busy to add much, I think we need to do our best to add what little we can.

Personally, my eye is set on the newcomers. I remember when I joined, Airianna was there with a cheery, warm welcoming message just for me. Now that she is no longer here, I would like to pick up where she left off. We want the members to feel wanted. So, perhaps that is what I can contribute.

I...don't know how much sense that made. It seems to me I rather rambled a lot. So sorry!

(On a side note, if we could get the member list updated or fixed or something, that would be a very useful thing to have on hand. It seems to me that it cuts off at the date of the merge, and the list in the Citadel does not pick up where it left off... so I don't know where to find the new members. Sorry, don't want to derail the topic. Carry on!)

This is an excellent idea.



Elanor would have to give her okay, but I think that this is an absolutely awesome idea. If you are willing to greet each of the newcomers, or even possibly put together a small team of 2 or 3 people to do so, I think that would be great. Even if you can only do it on the weekends and someone joins on, say, a Monday, I know I would appreciate a "welcome to HW" PM on Saturday.



It all made perfect sense to me, Calista. Thank you for "rambling".

I think the idea of getting involved even part time in general is a good idea. I'd do it for sure but I will be honest I'm fairly clueless. I'd need to know exactly what I'm supposed to do and how to do it depending on what it was.

Forum Shrinking - The idea is good. I was thinking have a single forum and multiple sections of it as opposed to 4 different ones. Historical and Citadel or very very quiet and I think as such some of those sections could be merged. I'm not totally sure but I think phpBB which this forum runs on has an integrated chat so you won't lose that either.

Podcast and Publishing House - I think the latter could actually be more useful long term as is (possibly?) closer to the core of the forum.

Just my two cents, I'm no expert by any means

Part of the man-power problem is that Holy Worlds is a place that attracts budding talents and gives them room to grow. But talents grow up, leadership matures, life gets busy, and frankly, many people just outgrow Holy Worlds.

I'm not implying the Holy Worlds is childlike, or that it's only for early teens or early writers. Many of us simply move on in our lives. Others (like many of our published authors) find that their craft and platforms have matured beyond the scope of assistance that the HW community provides. Instead, Holy Worlds is one of the places they come to market their platform and establish connections.

My hope is just that Holy Worlds can continue to do the basic things that it has always done. The roles that mature members fill will be passed on to next group of mature members, and the primary resource that Holy Worlds provides, a community of people sharing a common passion, will continue on.

Just to say, I am one of those members who would like to help, but because of time constraints and other reasons, I cannot commit a lot of time to HW, at least, not as much as I think I would need to, but I am willing to help and contribute however I can.

Making the forums smaller is a great idea, but truthfully, I would rather we get over that technical hurdle of the 'forum combination' thing, y'know, changing the usernames back to what they used to be. I'm pretty sure we're waiting on someone whose account got deleted or something, so we can't change the name...?

Sorry, bit of rabbit-trailing...

I agree, Balec. We need to smooth all the rough patches that resulted in the forum merge before making more technical changes. There are still a lot of things that don't function properly because of the merge.

I'm relatively new here, so I don't know how much I'll be able to offer, but right now and for the next couple months, I'll be having plenty of free time to spend online if you need short term help... I think HW is a good investment of time, and if you do decide to go ahead with the welcoming party, I'd love to be on that team.

Just my little offer to help.

Cool, Kya! I think we're waiting on Elanor's thoughts on that...

I promise to catch up on this tonight. I'm working until 7 so will be after then. I love the welcoming idea! (I'm on my phone and can't see what I'm writing properly so sorry for any typos!) Ill be here tonight and will also be available to chat on FB or HW for those of you who have requested a chat about this.

7PM GMT is at the moment 3PM Eastern people. I'll try to get on HW chat if I don't have too many browser tabs open. See if we can add to this welcoming idea which is awesome I must say.

I'd also suggest a promotion of the quieter sections as well. In other words those into Sci-fi or Historical Fiction should deliberately set out to post content and promote the post via the FB group and posting to FB, G+ profiles. Maybe take a few of the posts and feature them in the newsletter as well for maximum penetration.

Short Term, I'm with Kya. I have the time for quite a bit, though not the skill necessarily. Best bet is to just throw something at me and see what can be worked out.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Lycanis, and thank you for praying!

Yes, I'd love to do some more with the Fireside side of the forum - someone our FB group mentioned doing more contests and the like; however I'd also like us to work on things without contests, prizes, winners and etc. Like, doing workshops that people can get involved in in a side of writing that they struggle with. One of the things Roager and I talked about was the length of the posts in the Fireside. I think it would be good to have a words per post in the Fireside that you have to keep to. So even if people are posting novels, the editing of each section will be easier as they will be smaller. Make sense?

Encouraging more blog posts would be good. Blog posts don't have to be really long either.

*Nods* Yep, I understand that completely!



I definitely think smaller portions would be best as well, so rather than a whole novel being posted, only small portions at a time can be? Do you think that would make a difference? I definitely think that a lot of people would be more likely to read and critique part of a chapter of a novel, rather than a whole chapter of a novel and etc.



I love this idea; I have more on it later, but I'm going to explain in a post after I've replied to all the other replies on here haha!

P.S You're not rambling. It made sense to me.

(At the moment, click on the HWF Member list, select Find a Member; click Joined Date and also change ascending to descending. The new members are listed in order from there.)

Merging the forums into one isn't a popular idea. When we say shrinking that means forum specific. So maybe removing rooms that are never used, merging a couple of rooms on specific forums, shrinking the forum to fit the membership base/Leadership base we have at the moment.

Maybe, *Nods*. We'll have to see what the future holds for us first.

Thanks!

You're welcome!

Yes, that makes sense. I like that idea of doing workshops targeting specific aspects of writing, and yes I think a word-limit for posts would be a good idea. that way I can know somewhat what I'm getting into when I click a link to a story and hope to read all the way to the end...


I was also thinking that it'd be neat if people were encouraged (again? it's a sort of like the author accountability partner idea that I think was done awhile ago) to make small writing groups that would work together and critique each others' work, possibly even after they are less present on HW. I don't know how this would/should look exactly, but I think writing groups can be powerful things when done right, and I think they would fall well within HW's goals.

What if the writing groups were gathered together where specific people critiqued others' work? I know my main problem with Fireside is I cannot bring myself to read an entire story through forum posts. I'd much rather read it on my computer in a word document. If someone gathered together writing groups (say 4-10 people per group) and those groups performed critiques of each others' works (maybe sort of like an expansion of the Author Accountability group that kind of died out), I would be willing to do that. Also, this way each person kind of has stories they can critique rather than being overwhelmed by the multitudes of stories already in Fireside.

Yes, and I think that's what has happened a lot this past year. So many people that used to be around a lot a couple of years ago are either full time writers, or going into college/other careers. So like you said, it's just a time for new blood really.




Thanks, Balec! Hmm, I wasn't aware of that. We should be able to work around the user who was deleted for now (I wasn't aware someone got deleted). It shouldn't stop the work being finished, I don't think.




I think the main thing is the Profiles, right? I need to talk to Andrew about that and see what he says would fix it.



Thanks, Analea!

Elanor loves the idea of a welcoming team!

One of the ideas someone in Leadership proposed when the HRM rank was removed was a series of clubs. They'd be official HW clubs that people could request to open. They'd be vetted by a Captain of course, and they'd have to remain active to stay a club.

So say you decided you wanted a welcoming team. You could have a club for that - Calista proposed it so say she led the team, added new people who wanted to help out, and had the time to do so. Someone mentioned a birthday/anneversary club where people kept up with members who joined/their birthdays and etc. Those would be more 'fun' groups, but then you could have some on a more serious note as well.

Each club could have a different purpose, so there could be an Editing/Critique club of people who wanted to be asked to review/edit novels that people had finished on HW and needed reviewers and editors for.

HW related things like that. We talked about it when we removed the HRM because people wanted something that was less elitist, but something that members could still be involved in, and officially help out with. Even if they didn't have a massive amount of time they could still be helping out in the community.

I'm only bringing this up now as you're suggestion reminded me of it.

The reason, once again, that we haven't followed up on this idea is the man power issue. It creates another job when we're wanting to shrink somewhat at the moment. However, you mentioning this reminded me of what we talked about back then. Sui talking about the issue of the HRM being gone and filling its place maybe also brought this to mind. It's something we could have 'in the planning' for the future, but not immediately, God Willing. What are your thoughts on that?


But yeah, for now I love the idea of a Welcoming Team. Feel free to go ahead with that!

Yes, smaller portions would definitely help. I honestly get scared of huge portions of writing that need critiqued - especially if they're copied and pasted directly into a post because there's no way to mark my place in it. I think it would be good to encourage people to post smaller portions of their stories at a time. A chapter, or even half of one, might be good. If someone is looking for an editor to just go through the entire story (like a beta reader), it might be better to do that through messaging (once attachments function in the messages again). That seems to work better, from what I've seen.


I like the idea of an official Welcoming Team, as long as we can come up with some sort of organization to see that no one gets neglected because someone thought someone else was going to do something and they didn't. Otherwise, I would be happy to just do it as a personal project thing. If anyone has some suggestions, I'd love to hear them!

I'm not able to type up a response to the thread at large right now, but I had a couple small-ish thoughts about what y'all are discussing that I have time to type and might be of some use. * grins *

For me personally, it's a bunch easier to critique something if it's been put directly into the post, rather than attached.... I may be the only one. But sometimes attachments don't work for me, and sometimes when I download it I put off reading it instead of hunting it up just then, and sometimes I lose it, and it's harder to do quotes in the critique, and... things of that sort. Maybe it'd be good to recommend that people do both?

But I definitely think that encouraging people to post smaller bits rather than bigger bits would be helpful. Sometimes when I critique I just break it up myself, according to how much time I have at the moment, and do it in my own arbitrary portions... but it's a bit of a hassle, and it still looks overwhelming. * grimace *

* nods * I like that.

Yes. Good, this.

I do like the idea of having a Welcoming Committee, and I'm with Calista here. There could be some misunderstanding when it comes to who welcomes who. I don't know if it would work to have just a few of us who welcome every newcomer. Not too many, because I know I wouldn't want to be completely swamped just after I joined. That could get overwhelming, especially if the member is trying to decide whether or not they actually want to be a part of the forums (no offense to HW!).

I'm still keeping up with what you guys are saying! I wanted to reply some more to your comments tonight, but I ended up grooming all my own dogs after work (when you are a dog groomer, everyone's dogs but your own get sorted!). It's gotten too late now, and I have to be up at 5.30 again tomorrow, so I need my sleep. I've been enjoying hearing your thoughts and ideas though, and I am really excited that I'm hearing what you guys want and are interested in!

I like this idea very much, and would certainly be interested in participating in one of these groups.

Awesome! They might be harder to arrange, but I think they'd definitely be beneficial if people were interested in doing them. We could even ask people who write for different genres and ages to do some. So ask some people who write children's/teens books to run a workshop on writing for children and so on; we have a lot of people on HW who focus on so many different aspects of writing I think it would be a way of expanding our writing experience in different ways through different HWers knowledge.

I think a word limit is a good idea then. I'll look into fixing that up soon. I have a quieter week at work this week, I didn't take on as many hours at my part time job so I can get some things done around here on some of my quieter days.

Writing groups would be good. I am not sure why the previous one faded out, does anyone know why it didn't continue? Maybe we could try to work out why the other wasn't successful and try to change things about the next one?



I'm the same actually, Paz. I work better on my word document than a forum post. I always just copy and paste it into my word though, when I critique a story from here. I think one of the problems might be that not everyone would have time for it every week, but maybe we could have groups that change and swap so you don't have the same group of people critiquing each others work all the time? That would mean that some weeks/months some people could take a week off or so on if life was just too busy for them. I think sometimes it's the commitment that people find hard if they are really busy? Thoughts?

Yes, I agree. I definitely think if people have an entire novel that they need critiquing, it would be best to have a couple of people read the entire thing via another way than posting it all in the forums. I think you'd actually find someone more willing to do it through PM, and it would be completed. If you post an entire novel in the Novels section of the fireside, it will probably have parts that you won't be sure have been critiqued.


Well, for the Welcoming Team you could have a room to yourselves on The Citadel maybe, and we can trial run the clubs idea? It would not be something we'd expand on for now, but we could see how it goes. In the room you can arrange things, update on who is doing what and make sure everyone is welcomed and whatever else applies? I'm willing to give it a try if you would like.

I definitely think it would be fine to accommodate both.





I agree, only one person needs to send a welcoming PM. The room would help with that, for you guys to discuss and update on things like that.

I wasn't really thinking to put you through all that work, Stephanie... XD I was just thinking to do it as a personal mission type thing with maybe two or three people max, to tell the truth. How big of a project are we thinking now?

Nope, a small project with two or three people is also fine! Whatever you want to do. Sounds fantastic, thanks, Calista.

I think the easiest way to do the workshops would be via the blog. Have authors experienced in those fields write up a blog post, and then those with questions can comment underneath. This would make more blog posts as well as provide writers with ideas and means of accomplishing goals. Really, it wouldn't be that difficult if whoever is in charge of the blog PM'd published authors on HW (of which there are quite a few). People might turn the blog down, but some might agree if asked whereas they wouldn't take initiative to write a post on their own.


I think the main problem with the Author Accountability thing was there was not really anything to do. The authors were supposed to PM each other and 'encourage' but that was really never qualified what to do. Perhaps if there was a specific task for the groups (critiquing, brainstorming, etc.) they would last longer.
As far as the time requirement: I think the groups would operate where a person would put up a story for critique and 1-3 people would read it over and critique it. Not everyone would have to do every story, and since not everyone has an output of a book a week, there wouldn't be a 50,000 word requirement (writing or critiquing) per week. A person with a little time could critique someone's 5,000 word story, and someone with a lot of time could critique someone's 100,000 word story. Of course, if someone has no time at all they would say so (or choose not to join in the first place).
Does that make sense?

Cool. I don't have time to reply to everything right now but I'll throw a couple thoughts in.

It sounds like we want to build up critiquing? Which I totally agree with. There's another forum that I'm on (OYAN) that has a 4 for 4 sub forum which was pretty cool. Basically you post four pages and critique four pages. If you post something you have to critique something. It's a smaller and more manageable amount to critique. They recently did a critique contest which was neat too. I don't know how that would work for Holy Worlds but it might be a cool way to promote use of the boards. I also prefer critiquing in a document, it's easier to read and mark up.

Critique/writing groups sound really cool! I don't think I could commit to meeting on a weekly basis right now, but every other week or once month might work. I think someone may have mentioned this earlier, but critique buddies or something along those lines would be nice for people who want a critique of their whole book. So two members commit to reading and critiquing each other's novels in their entirety. Now you would probably want to try and compare word counts so each person is critiquing approximately the same amount.

Well that's my little two cents for now.

Not to change the subject, just a quickie, I know Kya would like to help with welcoming - was there someone else? I'm a little disorganized at the moment, but if I can figure out who all was interested, we can work out details via messages.

I think a big issue was that it was a /lot/ to keep up with, and it was fairly inflexible "submit by ____ and edit by ____" and each person could submit up to 3k I think? I just know it was way too much to keep up with. If we had smaller (I think 3-5, most preferably 4 in each) groups, each could work out among themselves what works for their members, and when they could "meet" next, etc.

I think this would be something encouraged by HW rather than something organized by HW--we'd have maybe a place dedicated to forming and finding those groups, and then those groups would do whatever worked best for them. (HW could need to be involved making sure good matches were made, though--not sure how that should look)

Also, the flexibility that could be achieved with these smaller, autonomous groups would allow for an individual member, or the entire group, to take a break when needed (if a group consisted of people in School, they might only operate during Summer vacation, etc.).

First off, I apologize for just now seeing this thread.

You all have some very wonderful ideas. I'm proud of each and every one of you who stopped by to voice your opinions and give input.

Now for my thoughts:

~I really like the idea of smaller excerpts for critiquing. I am with Lady Rwebhu, I prefer having the excerpt/chapter directly in the post. I don't visit the Fireside very often, but I would be willing to change that. It would be a great idea to have a little list of things to look at during critiquing. I may remember seeing something like that on the forums... ?

~The welcoming group sounds like an awesome idea! Do you need someone else to help out, Calista? I'm available if you want another person in the group.

~I do miss the HRMs, but I won't get into that right now. =)

~As for shrinking the forums: I don't really think that's needed, or at least not now. I assume we were thinking of combining sections of the forums, instead of doing away with them?

~I wholeheartedly agree that editing/modding HW should not be a full-time job.

~We definitely need something new to interest the users... be it a contest, event, etc.

I think we're covered on the welcoming thing, thanks Elly. People don't join too often, so we should be good. I'll look you up if we start getting a rapid inflow of new members though. Sound good?

Sounds great!

I'm tentatively in favor of some sort of merge. "Shrinking"---combining essentially-identical "rooms" to reduce duplication---gets my unqualified approval, but even beyond that I would like to see some way of looking over all four forums on one page. I have too many tabs in my browser that I don't feel I can close at the moment, including 14 "pinned tabs" at the moment, and of those 14, 4 are open to a Holy Worlds main page. (And this is after one of my task-management apps added a new multi-project-workspace feature that let me reduce its usage from three or four tabs to one.)

Hey guys. I've been sort of MIA for a while now, so take my thoughts with a grain of salt (and an aspirin if need be). It took me a while to read through the whole thread, but now that I have, I feel I can comment.

Lots of good ideas floating around. The welcoming team is one of the best and I'll explain why. When I first joined HW just over a year ago, I found it fun when I could have a bit of a back and forth posting spree with a select group of people. It was more of a socializing thing for me, but it centered around creativity which was fun. I found a few people with whom I enjoyed creating content in the various forms of role-plays and similar things.

The problem I have found with HW is that there is no way to keep in touch with people (at least not to my knowledge). It may be asking way too much, but could there be a way you could follow someone, i.e. get notifications when they post or something of that ilk? The main purpose would be to get to know people through HW. I frankly have no idea what anyone's interests are in writing apart from trying to dig through their past posts. For example, did anyone know that I was mainly interested in writing because I want to create films, television shows, and webisodes? Of course I have other interests, as does everyone on HW, but is there a better way to make HW more community focused? Could we have profiles or something that you can just click and then get a better idea of who's who and what their interests are?

I just found out today that there was a Facebook group. I still don't really know where the blog is, or what it is about (I'm not really into blogs anyway, but still). Just in general, it would be cool to see HW become more of a community where you can chat and bounce ideas off of each other in a casual setting. Something more like a social networking site I guess. Maybe I'm asking for the wrong sort of thing. Let me know if I'm off base with this.

Hey guys! Just a quickie to let you know that since a week on Monday I've been really ill. I was in hospital on Saturday and I'm really just sleeping and trying to cope with my headache, earache and tonsillitis at the moment. I haven't been coming on HW much because I can't concentrate on reading the posts and pages. I'll be coming back to catch up around here soon I hope - I just don't know how long it's going to be until I'm better exactly. Thanks for keeping up with posting on this thread, I will catch up with it. I don't want you to think I'm ignoring you guys, I've just not been well.

Oh, Lady Elanor. I hope you start feeling lots better soon! Prayers for your quick recovery.

I've just skimmed through the thread real quick. I love the "world building" & "character interviews". I'm an organizational-nut. I love things to be simplified & streamlined.

1. Mathematically - we only have so many hours in a day. This is a great ministry, but with all ministries, you don't want your leaders to burn out. I'm not sure how many leaders you have, but make sure to delegate as much as possible. Limit yourself according to your personal priorities and make sure part of your time is in delegating smaller tasks to others.

2. Vision - Nine goals as a forum. It looks like it is the "topics" that actually get out of hand. Maybe limiting who can start a new topic would be a good idea. Have a general "topic starter ideas" in each forum and a moderator could decide when there is one really worthy of starting a new topic. Maybe make a policy/practice of archiving one topic each time a new one is started?

3. Map - It's a bit confusing and time consuming sifting through it all. Some kind of map would be nice.

Oh there is a chatroom and it works plus a Skype group chat. I don't get in either much because of time issues but several are regulars.

There's a "profile" button under every post; clicking that takes you to the user's profile, and you can view that user's posts (sorted by date with the most recent at the top) by clicking a link (on the right, I think) there.

The main way for users to learn each others' interests, other than discussions in the subforums dedicated to those interests, is through the "signature" attached to nearly all posts. You can edit your signature in the User Control Panel. My signature, for example, points to my blog and mentions my fantasy-series-in-preparation, my poetry, and the strategy game I'm developing, which is "my main interests in a nutshell."

And, as was already mentioned, there is the chat room. (Which, while I'm here in this thread requesting ideas, I'll mention I sometimes wish I could use my "third-party" chat client to participate in, instead of having to open a browser tab.)


The blog is at this link, but nearly all posts are mentioned and linked to in the "Updates and Announcements - Must Read" thread in the "Official Chatter" forum.


"A community where [one] can chat and bounce ideas off ... in a casual setting" is, now that someone has come up with that phrasing, a way I might describe what Holy Worlds already is. And if it were more like Facebook I wouldn't have joined .


The moderators (and I in particular) could do a much better job archiving old and defunct threads. But I really don't like the idea of limiting who can start new threads---and, while the amount of "traffic" on HW is more than I like having to keep up with, in the 'rooms" I follow thread drift (posts followin tangents rather than their nominal topic) is more of a problem than too many new topics.

(Sorry this post is sort of all over the place. I'm finding it hard to say what I'm thinking at the moment.)

kingjon, I was aware of many of these functions. I'm sometimes bad at communicating what I'm really thinking. Since one of the topics being discussed was getting new members, I was more so commenting on that I don't think these resources are the best way to get to know people. When I joined, I tried the chat room, PMing with people, sorting through people's old posts, and even subscribing to threads I'm interested in. None of it really helped me feel like I was ever connecting with anyone. I think it is because things are really hard to find on the Forum. It takes an enormous effort for someone to get plugged into this community (at least I felt this way when I joined). There is a plethora of information to sort through, and it seemed (at the time) like there was already a Holy Worlds clique.

My suggestion is to attempted to move the focus to the members of Holy Worlds rather than the posts (which is sort of a convoluted idea given that the whole idea of Holy Worlds is to make posts and communicate through them). I just feel like there could be a simple little change that could make Holy Worlds even better than it already is. I don't know exactly what that change might be, but I think it has to do with networking and building community.

When someone joins, they should feel like they are joining a community. There should be very little work they have to do to feel like part of the Holy Worlds "team". I'm not saying that people aren't doing this already, but when I joined, it was really hard to become part of this community (again, this is a personal problem, but I think people should be aware of it). It was hard but totally worth it. Now I know a few people and can get more involved with the threads more often. I think a bit of organization and simplification would go a long way to help Holy Worlds be less intimidation to new members. One thing that would be cool is if you could subscribe to another member like you can subscribe to a thread (again, just a suggestion).

Thank you, Dawnita!

Thank you for your comments, and your advice.

I am not keen on limiting topics either, as Kingjon said. I know they did that on the Rebelution, and a lot of people felt it really stifled the flow of the forum. At the moment I don't think much is getting archived. I've been working through the past couple of days archiving some of the old topics that should have been disappeared some time ago. However on HW we've had a policy for some time that most posts in the writing related categories don't get archived. It's almost like a library full of information, people can browse through all the old topics and glean what they want from them. That is something we could change, but I'm not sure it would be beneficial to archive them, especially if they're a helpful resource for other writers.


We used to have an Index page for quite a few of the rooms, which I think was helpful - especially if you were looking for a specific topic that you needed help with. I think they haven't really been kept up with though recently, so updating those would probably be a good plan.

Just as an update, I have now opened up a Critique Group in the Fireside. You have to PM me if you want access to it, so if you'd like to be a part of that, bob me a message and I'll give you access to the room.