Earlier this week we sent out a site wide survey and had over 200 responses! This survey was meant to gather data so that Kestas and I as well as the mod team would be better informed about the community’s usage of our site and what we should do to make the site better. It was meant as an internal tool but I thought it would be nice to share some of what we found with everyone.

For the people who responded to the question of when they joined the site, it was a fair spread of 24% in the last 6 months, 18% in the last year, 16% in the last two years, 30% in the last five years, and 12% longer than 5 years. The majority of our users come to the site to play Diplomacy (83%) while a fair number use the site to play Diplomacy as well as participate in the forum (16%). The vast majority of our users are satisfied or very satisfied with our site (91%) while 7% are neutral and 2% are dissatisfied. Many of the “satisfied” comments were generally about how they really like the site but would love to see game improvements such as the preview feature, reliability rating, a few more well-tested variants, etc.

As far as what people like most about the site, 49% like the active user base, 11% like the competition, 29% like the technology of online play, 7% like the variants, and less than 5% the lively discussions on the forum.

In terms of updating our philosophy on the forum moderation, specifying the forum rules and specific forum moderating that we have taken over the past several weeks, 59% say that they either don’t care/no opinion/I don’t use the forum, 19% say it is better than before, 13% about the same as before, and less than 9% say it is worse than before (some comments in the "worse then before" category are that not the forum changes are bad but the complaining about them is bad, but this will be stabilized). When asked about the current moderator level of forum moderation, 50% say they either don’t care/no opinion/I don’t use the forum, 5% say it should be higher, 30% say that it is just about right, 12% say that it should be lower (some comments in the "should be lower" category" are that it should be lower if not for the few individuals who do not respect the site and other users), and 2% say there should be no forum moderation.

When asked what should be the priority of the site owners (Kestas and myself) and the mod team, 77% say it should be making game-side improvements such as more game features, a few more variants, and catch cheaters, 21% say it should be more quality games and about 2% say it should be on moderating the forum.

These results and the comments that we received in the survey greatly complemented what Kestas and I as well as the mod team have thought about the site and where we need to go next. We are happy with the forum changes and the mod team feels the same way. Therefore, we are going to focus our energy and effort in making game-side improvements and encouraging/sponsoring more quality games and tournaments. The mods can put in the time and energy to moderate games and help Kestas and I to add site and game features. I don’t want to make a promise that I can’t deliver or give anyone false hope, but over the next few weeks, we are hoping to add some significant additions to the site such as the preview moves feature.

zultar
Co-Owner