Aicanor wrote:Azur is taking the conservative path to wait doing nothing and see if a miracle happens.
What is at stake here is to try this miracle.
Not doing nothing. Putting considerable effort into keeping Ulthuan afloat. It is working too, we were worse than we are now.
Ulthuan's preferred course of action based on our members reactions to the discussions is keeping Ulthuan.net and setting up a Facebook group, or join an all-elf one if you have us. Try out some activities there an see how it works.
Indeed. Just because nothing visible to the outside happens doesn't mean we're not doing anything. Our main responsibility is keeping U.net going. The most important thing here is simply creating content for the site, which takes enough time as it is. Next to that, we're looking at ways in which we can improve traffic to the site, but there is no golden bullet that will fix everything. Also, we have had a lot of discussion on this topic. But, given timezones and lives, reaching a conclusion on such an important topic takes a fair bit of time.
Our decision is that we're not moving away from the Ulthuan.net domain name. Our biggest asset is our name, and we don't want to give that up unless there is a very good reason to do so. Everyone is welcome to join in, and if D.net and/or A.org want to move to U.net we're happy to have them. We'll look for the best way of giving them a home which does justice to their heritage and members.
Just because we're not moving to a new domain (and thus not merging as it looks now) doesn't mean we don't want to work together with the other elven sites or see potential to work together. A joint facebook group is an obvious one. But I'm sure there's more initiatives we can think of.
About the new domain name, one thing no one has been able to make clear to me as what we hope to achieve with a new domain name. In a sense, what a site is called doesn't really matter to the content of the site. After all, what does a very big river in brazil have to do with buying books? Or what is a "google"? And yet, both sites still see some traffic. Numerous similar examples out there. What matters is the content, having people find you and the members, not the actual name. As long as it's easy to remember, anything goes.
What changing a domain achieves is that the content stays the same, you become harder to find (since currently D.net ranks relatively high on google, something a new site yet has to manage) and members won't suddenly increase and will likely decrease with a new domain name. Changing a domain name doesn't solve anything. People won't magically drop in and start writing lots of posts. What's the plan for after the name change? How will you mobilize people to visit the sites, drive traffic? What is your unfair advantage? And how will changing a name actually change that? Why will someone who doesn't visit Druchii.net suddenly visit elvesonline.net?
People don't think "I need an elven wargaming forum, let's type elvesonline.net and see where I end up". People think "I need an elves wargaming forum, I'll head to google, type 'elven wargaming forum' and head for the first hit I get." It doesn't matter what the name then is, people will likely not even look at the URL. Same with a facebook group. Having an active group with useful content will drive more traffic your way then having a quiet group with no content but a great name.
Prince of Spires
head loremaster Ulthuan.net