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Post by Avalikia on Oct 9, 2013 18:56:34 GMT -5
The Autumn Crash is what I call this time of year. After a very busy and active summer, suddenly a large percentage of the site goes back to school and those who don't often change jobs or something. This results in a lot of players disappearing on us, and many of those who remain find themselves dropping characters and/or slowing down on posts. Those of us whose ability to post is not changed suddenly find ourselves twiddling our thumbs and without much to do since we're so used to having more activity.
The good news is that all this upheaval is temporary - once the majority of the players who are going to leave us are gone the site tends to stabilize on a new, slow but steady pace. There will be a few more hiccups, like around finals time, but the end of December and the beginning of January tends to be another peak time and though people go back to school then too it's not nearly as drastic. In other words, this is about as slow as the site gets. Which isn't too bad, really.
But if you're struggling, I have advice on what to do in this situation!
If You Started School And/Or Have Become Busy
If You Didn't
The good news is that all this upheaval is temporary - once the majority of the players who are going to leave us are gone the site tends to stabilize on a new, slow but steady pace. There will be a few more hiccups, like around finals time, but the end of December and the beginning of January tends to be another peak time and though people go back to school then too it's not nearly as drastic. In other words, this is about as slow as the site gets. Which isn't too bad, really.
But if you're struggling, I have advice on what to do in this situation!
If You Started School And/Or Have Become Busy
- The key to keeping active is time management and prioritization. You have 24 hours a day to work with, and while some things like work, school, homework, eating regularly, sleep, etc. are clearly more important than the forum, you can often make time by making sure you're not spending so much time on things that you honestly care about less.
- Since you have less time in general, that probably means you're cutting back on how much time you spend on the forum. You've gotta do what you've gotta do, but you need to keep your schedule in mind when you're deciding how many characters and threads you can handle. Now is a good time to be picky about which threads you join so that you don't get in too many.
- Routines, posting schedules, etc. are very helpful. If you feel like you can commit to two posts per day, one post per day, or every other day, or something like that it helps a lot if you have that all planned.
- It's better to post regularly to a few threads than to post occasionally to a lot of threads - with the former you're still able to churn threads out even though there are fewer of them, while with the latter you're making a lot of people wait a very long time and you're not ultimately getting much actually finished. A good measure is the stale list - if you find yourself on it regularly, then you're probably overloaded. If you already feel overloaded, the best way to cut down on your workload is to flat out drop threads of lesser importance - anything that's not extremely critical to your characters plans. You may even consider dropping whole characters if they're not doing much for you right now. All of which are hard decisions, but it's better to make them now instead of when you hit finals.
If You Didn't
- The most important thing is to finish mourning the fact that players you like have either left or have slowed down. Just... get over that. It does nobody any good if you spend the entire Autumn Crash moping because your favorite threads aren't moving. You could be having fun. See, there are other players in your boat. They may not seem as exciting as the ones that you're waiting on, but they could surprise you. And even if they don't, at least trading posts with someone active will help you pass the time until your favorites are done with finals.
- Check the site less frequently. Over the summer you may have picked up the habit of checking the site multiple times per day. If you're still doing that, it may be getting frustrating when nothing has happened. I suggest forcing yourself to check only once or twice per day, catching up on your reading and posting then, and then killing the rest of your day on Facebook or something. I mean, what did you do to entertain yourself before you came here?
- Do not worry that the site is dying/dead/etc. Especially out loud and in the chatbox - do you have any idea how bad that makes us look to anyone who may be thinking of joining? This site, being as old as it is, has survived Autumn Crashes before, and will survive this one. You'll know when to panic because I'll panic at that point, okay?
