TBH I think a lot of it comes down to time commitment. The game Wusti posted, which I am part of (and part of the problem, too) has a lot of NMR just due to the fact that Diplomacy is a pretty time consuming and long-running game. You sign up, have time, you're good. Three weeks or more later, the game is showing no signs of being close to over, you're busy, and you kind of just don't care any more.

With all due respect - with a 2 day phase length the time commitment is miniscule. I am often guilty of NMRs through mistakes, not setting orders then just missing deadlines and stuff - but there is no excuse - the time to place a set of orders and read press isn't THAT massive - and frankly if it is - don't play games that will obviously extend into months.
Your motivation or lack thereof is not really relevant - you committed to play the game - so play it out. Anything else is just plain rude.

There also has been a lack of GR games and tournaments lately. Those tend to introduce new players to others, which in turn may prompt later invitational games.

I was in the finals of the 2014 webDiplomacy tournament, the 2015 Online Diplomacy Championship, the 2015 Gunboat Tournament, and the 2016 Live Game Tournament, and ran the 2016 Local Tournament, so at least from my end it looks like there's been quite a few.

We don't talk about the Leagues.

Tournaments run an entire 8 months for 3 rounds of play at 24hours/phase, and it only increases at least linearly for higher phase times (which most people want). So there can only be so many; not to mention that someone leaving the site/CD'ing ruins them so we have to balance between new players and not killing the fun for everyone.

Anyone can propose to run a tournament if they email webdipmod. Free of charge :)

For about 18 months I ran the GR games and we barely got three boards, much less top 100 GR players who were always too haughty to risk their precious imaginary wrothless points.

What tournaments are we missing?
What kind of tournament do people want?

I actually would love a league Valis. I don't mind putting my points into a situation like that, I just want to make sure I have enough points to continue playing the league requirements, as well as some games outside the league/tournament.

There needs to be site sponsored tourneys again.

I have tried in the past to run games that anyone can join. Maybe besides the games menu that people can join, we create a list of players that might be looking to certain games and then can agrigate them to start games I.E. ( I'm looking for 48 hour Dss games) then a list develops based on that criteria

I've been trying to get people to join a game for the last 4 days and it hasn't been working. Maybe the RR rating's too high, but the game I joined and tried advertising on the forum is one of the only classic games I found with full press. The rest were either people playing variants or password protected. I joined around 2 years ago and back then it would be easy to get a game started :(

And what's this about the site leaders not allowing forum discussions about various topics not related to diplomacy?

What's the point of this fucking site if you people start games but keep them anonymous, password protected, and don't advertise on the forum? What's the fucking point? I've been trying to play a game for the last 4-5 days and I haven't been able to. Would you like it if we all left and just left the site to you few people who seem to be easily making it into games? To everyone trying to join a game or start one but seem to be unable to, let's just join playdip. The reason I left playdip is because of the constant NMRs but maybe that's changed by this point. At least over there it was easy to play whereas here you have to fucking do God knows what THOSE PASSWORD PROTECTED ANONYMOUS GAMES WHO'S PLAYING THOSE?!?!?! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD YOU PEOPLE ARE WONDERING WHY THE NUMBERS ARE GOING DOWN MAYBE THATS WHY

Maybe this site to get a downvote button...
No particular reason I bring this up

Well to state the obvious, passwords games allow friend to play with friends without meta concerns

I've always loved this site a lot, and it means a lot to me seeing as I started playing this game when I first left my country and (parents sisters) to live in the US with my grandparents. I was really miserable, but this site and this game helped me cope. There was just something about the way it's so organized. The site of people tearing each other apart on the forum and then getting along well in games or on other threads was beautiful. However, if I can't get a simple classic full press game started, I'm going to have to try some other site and it breaks my heart to say that it really does.

Deleting NMRs after 12 or 18 months would be nice.

@Zultar or the Mod community- I like ssorens suggestion we discuss how much a one time developer would cost. I think a significant portion of our community would be willing to help pay for it if it meant improving the sight indefinitely.

You can have forum discussions on non Diplomacy subjects..eg Orathaic started a discussion on Gore Vidal.. And are there such terrible problems with this site ? ( apart from dropping PPSC scoring ? )

And the discussions that would take place on this forum were gold. I learned so much from just sitting there and reading every little thing. Why site leaders? Why?

owners*

@MajorMitchell yes but it's not like it once was.

What this thread has done had alienated some potential causes or atleast user perceived causes. Most game developers ignore their user base for statistics and such but I implore the site to hear this thread out your community has pointed to some key game mechanic and interface issues that could be fixed:
-RR needs overhauled to allow for transgressions to be forgiven overtime or weighted based on age of incident.
-Rating system is needed to help incentivize the play of the game.
-updates that fix bugs and possibly improve the interface (even if it's cosmetic)
-add a new variant to spice up game play.

Those seem to be issues brought up. And I agree with ssoren ATC should not be held solely responsible to fix ALL of this. So maybe we can get a quote of a developer and then the community to crowdfunding the overhaul.

On a seperate note this site could be modified to be a F2P game with a purchasing store. Some ideas for things in the store:
-100 diplomacy points (sure these are free to start and you never go under 100 but let's say you have 234 and want to join a game with 250 point requirement, might as well make it so someone can by buying the points. The points are not and as I've heard never were meant as a ranking system so this shouldn't hurt any ranks)
- access to a purchase only variant. This may be a bit hard to implement but it would be a way to raise funds for more development and even getting our site to the top spot on Google.

Please don't do this ^

"So maybe we can get a quote of a developer and then the community to crowdfunding the overhaul."

Sounds like we need a broad expert.

@Wusti: I know what I signed up for. I organized the game. Sometimes other things get in the way. It's why I've been begging for vDip style NMR-handling forever (automatic phase extensions)

@Chaqa that's a really good idea. Cancelling a game and then getting everyone together to join again has never worked in my experience. Except maybe once. I think.

vDip has these features already. There's no reason we couldn't port them over, or more variants.

The concern with more variants is that you end up fragmenting the player base. Obviously vDip is smaller, but it's really difficult to get the variant you want going. It's worth considering interesting variants we don't have (I'd be in favor of having some with rule changes rather than map changes, like fog of war), but I think it's a bad idea for the total number to go up too much.

As for porting vDip features, it's a matter of making sure they're up to snuff security-wise and that nothing breaks when we plug them in. If you're interested in working on that, we can help to make it happen.

@abge- My theory on the above is that it will give incentive to donate. consider it like the "donate a dollar , get X" marketing schemes. You can view it as you purchased X or that to thank you for your donation you received a free X. The 100 points makes sense. maybe not the variant idea. but atleast the point idea. the current system would still stand just with the added ability for someone to purchase 100 points. this also would allow more active players such as Hannibal to play a higher point game or more games in general making the site appear more active to a new player. I know I for one never play more than half my points at a time because I want to make sure I have points in case a cool tournament or event comes up. Allowing purchasable points would make it so people like me play all of our points and then when something cool comes up just buy more.

@abge- and further before it is brought up that it would allow noobs to buy a ton of points and join high ranked games.... thats what RR and an actual ranking system would be for. The points shouldn't be considered a rank of skill but rather a currency for play. the RR and a ranking system should be how a group of 7 elitists can play together without having a noob jump in. then you have the obvious: a noob buys 30$ worth of points and then gets bored and leaves.... webdiplomacy just made 30$ toward new updates and adding features you and I will end up enjoying.