There's nothing wrong with sharing opinions, as that's exactly what I just did myself. But I'd like to see arguments be based more around what's best for the site than around concepts like freedom of speech.

With regards to saturation, Diplomacy isn't something a lot of people have heard of, at least in the UK. So I think there should be a lot of people out there who might potentially play it if they come across it. If I were one of them and came across a welcoming site with a new game I'd not played, I'd be a lot more tempted to play said game than if I came across an extremely unfriendly website with regular spewings of vitriol.

Another alternative might be to have the forum hidden from the home page, so you have to deliberately go to read the forum, which new players *probably* wouldn't instantly do.

And I argue that freedom of speech is best for the site.

Yes, there may be a lot of people who would play diplomacy if they came across it; my point was that that process is likely to be a lot slower than the process of people who have already been playing diplomacy for years deciding to find somewhere on the internet to play it. So the slowing you refer to could just be the latter process having (nearly) completed, and not be reflective of problems with webdip.

Hellenic, as for the growth of the site, it could also be because there are simply a limited number of people with an interest in playing on a website dedicated to an old board game that most people have never even heard of, plus the rise of alternate sites that will draw users. So your argument that the forum is killing the site because of your perception of growth is null and void, without support of actual facts.

I could likewise make the argument that, but for the freedom of speech, this site would be losing more and more users to other sites with more options, more blah blah blah blah, and (without any evidence) my contention is that freedom of speech is the only thing keeping this site alive in the light of competition.

Perhaps you could elaborate on why you think it's best for the site, then? I come from a background on a Mafia (the party game) website where reasoning is everything so I try to include that.

I believe WebDip has been going since ~2007 (?) so I would imagine from people who played the board game looking for it online would have become the minority of new players quite a few years ago. Admittedly I could be very wrong here, though.

I'm not saying the forum is killing the site, I gave a hypothesis that the unfriendly forum may be putting some people off of joining. I can't really get statistical data to back up why people don't stick around after joining, sadly. I gave a suggestion on how we might encourage more players to join. If you have other suggestions, please give them! The more, the merrier.

Hellenic, I've posted this so many times that I just can't keep acceding to every heckler's demand that I post it again, sorry. You can't start this discussion twice a month and then pretend it hasn't been addressed the last time.

As to your second paragraph, that's pretty much exactly my point.

The talent here as far as the game goes is the best I've seen, and the mods try hard here to route out cheating, unlike some other sites. So as long as there is demand to play the game, this site seems like the best alternative. You don't have to be part of the forum. A lot of the players I like to play with have less than 10 posts over their tenure here.

Really the only thing that makes the site more enticing is if the cd rate would go down, and people would respect the game, and finish what they start.....good or bad.

Hellenic - I gave my counter to your hypothesis -- that there are a liited number of board game players -- and I would suggest that as a society it is a dwindling number, given the number of zombies walking around staring at their damned phones -- and of the board gamers out there, Diplomacy is a rare game, if for no other reason that it takes 7 people to play, so few have ever been introduced to it in the first place to give them a desire to find a web version of it.

Therefore, given that there is a most-likely limited number of diplomacy users to begin with, there is a growing number of diplomacy sites (including some that have stolen the code from this site, from what I understand) - it is probably that the lack of growth in the site is more due to the limited growth potential, not some flaw with the site itself.

Well then, what methods do you believe would encourage more new players onto the site, semck? I haven't seen any debates about this subject lately (I admit I don't read the forums daily, however, so correct me if I'm wrong), and I'm quite interested to see what could be come up with. I agree with ssorenn that this site seems very good at removing cheating which makes it superior to a large majority of websites.

Google results for "Diplomacy"....top ranks include:
playdiplomacy and diplom on the first page - both sites you can play through. You do NOT have WebDiplomacy on the first page of results.

You want to know wht the site isn't growing? Because it has a low google rank when you google the obvious word one would use to play the game.

I agree that's possible, krellin. But if the problem is competition, should we not try to out-compete said competition? While there are lot of 'zombies' walking around, strategy games also seem to be on the rise in popularity (Paradox Interactive games are a good example of this) so I think there should be a reasonable amount of potential Diplomacy players out there still.

Riot,

Sorry for snapping -- I just get tired of having to make these points very frequently, but maybe you weren't involved last time. See, e.g., the recent moderation and speech thread started by the mods. The brief version is that this forum enjoys deeper conversation on a wider array of topics, and stronger relationships, than almost any other forum I have been on; and I think its position on free speech is strongly implicated in this, given that on many forums, quick claims of offense end any topic once that has become an endorsed tactic. There's more, but you can go find the past threads if interested.

My point is, I don't think anything can necessarily attract more users. Let me spell it out again:

i) While there were a lot of people who had played diplomacy for years and had no site, growth was fast, because those people were getting on and finding this site.
ii) That process is over now, as you say. Thus, new users are people who hear about diplomacy anew, or are introduced to it. This is an intrinsically slower process, because we don't get the benefit of a 40-year backlog all joining at once.
iii) Thus, the only way to speed it up more is to introduce more people to the board game Diplomacy (or the online version I suppose) who haven't played it before at all, and that is pretty slow. It's almost always word of mouth, and while I suppose we could advertise, I'm not sure there's a big point. Encouraging use among high school civics teachers might also help, though I imagine the mods would hate us.

Hellenic - do you work for a living? I'm just curious? You must live under some assumption that a products quality is what makes it sell. If that were true, then about 95% of the shit in stores would disappear and the stores would close.

What sells, what causes growth, is appropriate marketing to mind-numbed sheeple.

WebDiplomacy does not advertise, and clearly does not SEO the site.

It doesn't grow because it make zero effort to grow, period.

The best way to encourage more people to join the site is by having current members encourage their friends to join. I think our overly strict rules against metagaming often dissuades people from doing so, which is probably more harmful than the peanut gallery in the Forum.

^Says abge, the member, not the mod.

You are posting too frequently, please slow down.

@krellin, is there a way to get this site on the first page of the googling "diplomacy"

@Krellin, yes, I work for a living, in a sector where Quality is a massive seller (Chef).

@Semck, thank you. I can understand those points and agree that maintaining deep discussions is an important thing. Compromising between this and between having certain extreme posts being disallowed would be a good thing, in my opinion, though. There are websites which are brutally overmoderated which kill off all discussions and that's important to avoid, but I think a little bit of pruning here and there can help make said discussions better in the first place.

Does anyone know if there a particular reason WebDip doesn't advertise?

I guess the real question is, what do Kestas and Zultar want for this site, and what direction do they want to take it? Is growth their objective? Or are they content with the status quo?

Advertising costs money, and if you want to have a free site.....you got it, no advertising.

Riot,

I've yet to see moderation that didn't quickly become overmoderation. There are too many psychological reasons playing into this. This site is fine. It doesn't allow anything illegal. Otherwise, it expects people to be adults and deal with some offense. That is reasonable. I do not really believe in the possible existence of the happy medium.

As for advertisement, I'm sure one reason is that it is a volunteer enterprise that has no money. I imagine a second reason is that it's a violation of Hasbro's IP, and Hasbro is only allowing it to exist by the good grace for which major international corporations are so well known. Drawing too much attention to itself in the commercial arena could be unwise.

If they would approach Hasbro and tell them about the 60,000 plus users I'm sure they would find a way for a licensing agreement.

Dear Kestas,

Thank you for informing us about your site. While we found your proposition interesting, we regret to inform you that there are simply too many poo-flinging libtards and teenage daughter-mother sex sequences for us to enter into business with you. Our lawyers shall be sending you a cease and desist forthwith.

Sincerely,

Hasboro

That's very risky, though. It is easier to ask forgiveness than permission. If Hasbro said no, then we'd be screwed, as they would be more or less forced to shut us down. Moreover, big corporations are (again) not known for their love of the GNU Affero license; there would have to be ads so that they started making money; and Hasbro would probably take quite a big interest in the forum, since (once again) corporations are not fond of people being offended on their forums.

The most likely outcomes, I think, would be (a) Hasbro just said no, and shut the site down; or (b) Hasbro said, "Wow, there's that much interest in online diplomacy? Sweet! We'll make our own site. You: shut down."

"@Krellin, yes, I work for a living, in a sector where Quality is a massive seller (Chef)."

And yet McDonald's has sold over a billion burgers, has restaurants all over the world, and the owner of your quality establishment probably struggles to pay the bills...

It ain't quality that sold a billion burgers, my friend.

Abge - hate to correct you, my friend, but it is poo-fling dance monkeys. While I will confess that the Libtard often is a dance-monkey, not all dance monkeys are Libtards. It's a subtle, yet I think important, distinction.

I was thinking more small-scale advertising than large-scale ads that would draw the attention of Hasbro. Just a few links on related websites etc that google loves to use to increase page ranking.

As for McDonalds, I wouldn't call that food in the first place ;). The fast food sector and the restaurant sector aren't really the same thing to me. I work in an upmarket pub restaurant, and we don't really deem McDonalds to be a rival, but other pubs and restaurants are. Quality and Price tend to be the biggest factors differing them around here. We're a more expensive place, but the food you get is much higher quality. By comparison, there's a pub just up the road which sells entirely bought-in frozen food, but at a much lower price. Both of us do pretty well.

Hellenic - I think that is what abge is talking about -- social networking, reaching out to friends and communities that you know might be interested.

Paid advertising? based upon what I've ever seen/read around here, it isn't ever going to happen.

But I'm curious why there are some around here that have this obsession with "growing the site". Are you at a loss for a quality game? If so...instead of advertising on the internet for strangers to play with, maybe you should go host a tournament....

I've never failed to have a game when I want one, and I know enough quality players around here that are willing to play a game that I don't need to rely on "strangers" for a game anymore either.

So what exactly is your obsession with growing the site....what, to you, is the benefit? QUANITY =/= QUALITY....I can assure you this is true.


As for "The fast food sector and the restaurant sector aren't really the same thing to me"......whatever....food snobbery doesn't change facts on the ground. You know those billions of hamburgers you think are unworthy of recognition? Well, it seems to me that you are just **dying** to bring a bunch of hamburger eaters to WebDip....and frankly, I think you would be mostly disappointed in the result.