Membership

[goat starer]

what ho ladies and gentlemen,

casn i have your thoughts on membership of the monestary viz...

a)do we have enough people to be 'sustainable'

b) if no, how can we attract the right people to come for a visit and hopefully end up running he place

my view would be that one of the plus points of the venganza site was a lot of new faces.

love

goat

[DaveL]

Goat,

Good point and a timely one. Some of the Pirates have gone back to Venganza (temporarily I hope) for a bit of fun with the old site, simply because they want a bit of interaction with a larger board and readership.

The majority of Siblings are buddies from the old board. Do we simply lack a trendy web meme to attract a broader audience?

[goat starer]

must stay out all night partying more often - best ideas always come then 

[Griffin NoName]

I too hope the pirate exodus is temporary. I miss them.

I dont think its a name problem. Its more a visibility problem. We dont offer the same hooks as venganza. I dont know how we can. The nature of our "being" is much less appealing to a mass market and marketing would need to be vigourous whereas my perception is venganza doesnt have to bother.

Open Water, our visible face, isn't that much of a draw either I imagine. But that is chicken and egg.

Perhaps we need to come up with some catchy stuff that has some common key words and focus on placement in search engines?

[Aggie]

a)  We need more people. 

b)  I've been mulling for a while on how to do some advertising - my favorite idea is to drop some free or low-cost classified ads in print media, targeting specific audiences by picking 'Toadfish Friendly' type publications.  Another one would be to print up some business-card sized drop cards, and leave them on bulletin boards, slip them between book pages (library/bookstore) etc. 

Would be lovely to have some presence at festivals or similar, but I'm not sure how to get the word out easily without printing flyers or brochures (v. bad for wasting paper).  Temp tattoos would be a good handout item, and cheap - might be able to jump on the popularity of pirates with that one.

I'd rather not create some kind of catchy meme - Taddy forbid that I'd have to spend my time propping up a bloated mythology (again) of say, beer volcanoes and stripper factories... 

[Bruder Cuzzen]

Hello Siblings ! I rather think the members are a very special group , A VERY rare bunch indeed.

I'm thinking word of mouth to potential like minded individuals  that may be stumbled across accidentally  may do the trick and attract suitable novices and pirates.

There are also pirate sites  I've come across that are accepting additions to their listings but unfortunately I'm just starting to find my way around the net ( I was a complete no ob when I found TOP through the Darwin Awards , Auntie DD had to help me type!!!) and i couldn't figure how to go about it.

Some of the Defers would make great Toadfish...however I don't want to get my ass on the carpet if that sort of recruiting is frowned upon ( I'm just relatively member).

Other than that I've been telling all the zany humoured clowns with Q's  larger than their shoe size to have a visit...to no avail.

However my neighbour expressed an interest in this place , but me being one of the very latset if not the lastest to sign up , I have not felt comfortable extending invites fearing a barrage of trolls popping up.

/b], I like the mythology approach , however , you may find immature types like me though , are you prepared for such an atrocity?

Regards BC.

P.S. The pirates haven't gone away , they have gone off for raiding and boarding parties , only takes me an hour or less to do the same.

[Aggie]

However my neighbour expressed an interest in this place , but me being one of the very latset if not the lastest to sign up , I have not felt comfortable extending invites fearing a barrage of trolls popping up.

Agujjinm /b], I like the mythology approach , however , you may find immature types like me though , are you prepared for such and atrocity?

BC, I would love immature types like you (heck, where's the mature types around here?) to organically create a mythology for this place!  I should have been clearer - the Mods at the Other Place got stuck defending and trying to prune into place an 'official' and 'divinely revealed' mythology that didn't match well with the direction we were trying to take the forum (which is why we're here now).   Member-created mythology is lovely!

And don't worry too much about trolls - we haven't got to use the Smiting Stick in a while.

[ivor]

Another part of it is our hosting service and the site design.  The hosting service gives us lots of bandwidth but not enough CPU and memory to use it.  This site doesn't perform very well and I am sure that turns some people off.  The site also needs to be trimmed down some or at least have a lighter default template.

In a couple more weeks I will know if my significant other is getting a promotion which will come with a move to Atlanta.  I will have to wait until then to get business FIOS.  If I get business FIOS I can just host the site in-house and we'll be running on a dedicated server.  That'll be much faster and we can have more people online at the same time without timeouts and server errors and such.

[Swatopluk]

Apart from pirating, squidophilia (with or without Lovecraftian touch) could be our second trademark.

Given that a few significant and active members of our order are not in the state of optimum health, I see our company as rather fragile without expansion but can't do much personally (I tried recruitment for TOP but with no real success). Colleagues are not into web fora and other people I know in the real world are usually not active on the net at all.

Do we have any experts here that could produce something for Youtube with monks, pirates and squids?

[Griffin NoName]

I have found word of mouth hasnt worked well too. Although that may be just the people whose ears I have access to being non webby type as others have mentioned. It takes a special sort of person.........

I agree with MB. We don't want to be premature and get a rush when the server can't cope. So that means time to PLAN !!!! (turning it into a positive).

As one with fragile health it concerns me two ways. I find this site hu_gely beneficial to me, so don't want to see it go down the pan, and also if I were to float away (inevitable for all of us at some stage) I'd hate to think it was going to leave a bigger gap than merely my ruminations.

The other aspect is a perception that we are slowly losing people and they are all people I value highly. I know in some cases they are busy elsewehere but I wonder if that accounts for all of them.

Smiting Stick usage might get the pirates back - they like the trolls

[goat starer]

how many times have i told you there is no need for a smiting stick when you have goat 

[Bruder Cuzzen]

I think it is the young 'uns that bring traffic to any web forum .
Start there an you will find an avalanche of traffic . I think exposing people to toadfish values in their younger years should prove positive .

The boys / teens love ninjas and pirates , developing a pirate/ninja /monk platform may uncover toadfish .

Perhaps a Utopian/romantic visage would capture the attention of some . Can we find a way into some Utopian network or affiliate with such ?

Heroes and Heroines and games[/b ]for the kids .

Regards , BC

[anthrobabe]

Do we have a cafe press store--- I mean does HOT have a cafe press store-- I know there are issues but we could upload some images and see what happens-- any funds gained could go to a cause mutually agreed upon my all siblings.

We are a pretty tight knight group- I visit the other place some but always come back to the M

If we could somehow get FOX news (definately not balanced) to give us some "press" even negative as it would surely be with them then it might be some fuel for some to find HOT, I'm only half jesting here when I say let's sick Black Bart and Qwerty on them and see what happens

[Griffin NoName]

What's the feeling on a direct approach to someone in the media?

I'm thinking flyer that I could shove in the hand of someone I might get some time with soon.

A selling point on Tolerance might be timely given events in the UK recently.

If we could come up with some short sharp phrases Why joining the Monastery would be a good thing, I'd have a go. A bit whacky, eye-catching phrases. If you can bring in the Economy, Terrorists in Cambridge and the History of Modern Britian, so much the better.

Just floating it= I may not get the chance to try anything. But there again I may.

Background thoughts: publicly linking Toadfish * Monastery * Tolerance * in an attractive package. It's daft but daft things appeal. Marketting: make Toadfish Fashionable. Build up some momentum. Get Toadfish something people "might have heard of".... ie. slow exposure, **rumbling* along.... gaining momentum ....

Anyway, if anyone has some FLASH ideas please post and I may print a flyer.

[Opsa]

You guys are right. I think it's time to get out the word.

We have been mulling over logos and various media for a while and now and I think we can go ahead and start making them. We were thinking that thing one to do with any money we might make is to pay it back into the running of the site, which MB has been donating so generously.

By the way, any Any ANY registered Toadfish member has every right to recommend this site to anyone she/he might think would enjoy it. Seniority makes no difference. Enthusiasm does.