An Open Letter to Gaia.

[One Winged Asuka]

npulse

Gaia has never had that many uses online at once...and when they did have a lot of users online it was later found out that many of the numbers was from bots and not legit users.

Anyways, Gaia is already trying to get back to it roots. But these things take time. They are communicating with us more, they are making more active events, they are running more community events, ect.

Off topic: I'm going to MetroCon this year emotion_kirakira

I am also going to Metrocon this year. Sadly, Gaia will not be attending. This made me quite sad, as they've been there every other year I've gone, up til now sad ..

[Ariel Yardena Davidson]

It could very well be simply that the audience it had, the 13-18-year-old's from 2004 onward, just simply grew out of Gaia.

i find myself jaded about Avatar Arena because it's no longer exciting. i organize Cards Against Humanity games with my guild in their spam section.

In a period of Tumblr and Facebook and Youtube, doll dress-up doesn't seem as enticing. There is a major need for immersion.

[Nomadder]

Sakura Parfait

TheAntiHeroJD

I'm so tired of Site Feedback, this s**t is ridiculous. Not you, you made a very nice and respectful post suggesting some ways Gaia can gain some popularity, and telling it maybe it should focus on it's story.

I'm talking about the people who gave it a "</3". I swear to god, the Gaian community especially in Site Feedback has some of the rudest people I will ever meet. Holy hell.

In other terms, your suggestions are all fit, and I definitely agree it's more of a store than anything else. It's how alot of great sites fall. Well made thread. Sorry some people can't take the fact that if someone suggests something that is medicorely against Gaia, it doesn't mean the OP "hates" Gaia.

People are allowed to upvote and downvote a thread if they so wish. There is nothing rude about disagreeing nor downvoting a thread. In case you are not familiar with Site Feedback, people are allowed to disagree with certain issues. You cannot come in here and expect everyone to agree with you. Regardless of how calm the OP was, people are still allowed to voice and vote their disagreements towards her thread. Meanwhile, you need to stop trying to defend any users who are getting negative feedback.

We're hardly rude, either. A lot of us are actually nice people. However, respect has to be earned around here as well. Coming in with a bad attitude and throwing a fit will lessen other people's opinion of you, as well as refusing to listen to reason to the other side's argument.

I'm not going to derail this like I've done another. All I wanted to do was just say, she handled it calmly. I know some people might not like the heart up, heart downs. I just kinda went overboard, and didn't see any reason why this deserved any kind of rude or thumbs down option.

I know not everyone agrees, and I realize this is Site Feedback. I saw an image that really suits Site Feedback in someone's signature that even pretty much states what I'm saying. However, I agree with you. You're handling it rationaly, I'm taking it a step too far. I'm just kinda fed up with some of the attitude and how some people handle Site Feedback.

This is probably why I left Gaia for a long time, because I couldn't stand most of the community. Believe it or not, Gaia has some of the worst people I've ever met online.. and offline at times. I don't get it.

[Bluecandescent]

One Winged Asuka

Zandykins

While I agree with what you said about re-establishing community within Gaia, this has never had 500000 let alone 250000 people online at one time sweatdrop .

Yes, it has, I distinctly remember it. I wish I had a screen shot.

You can look it up, Gaia did a 'Facebook like' campaign around that time and accumulated almost 500k likes. Gaia genuinely had that many active users at one time.

I'll look up their usage statistics later, but trust me, summer used to draw an average of 200k online users during the day.

Are you sure those half a million FB likers simply logged on over a period of time (days, weeks, months), and weren't actually online at once? There's a difference between "active users" and "online users." A big difference.

If you're talking about 2008 (that's when I remember the FB thing) there were 30k-50k users online at peak. 500k users online at once would destroy the servers. It's impossible, I can't believe it without a screenshot, sorry.

As for the actual topic... idk active users in any form don't bother me. I enjoy the community, I enjoy what Gaia does, I support them by buying Cash, so it's not a problem for me.

It doesn't seem like a problem for Gaia either. They aren't going bankrupt, so I guess it's just up to the user whether they want to continue being active in the community regardless if Gaia can "fix" it or anything of the sort.

[Bluecandescent]

AHA!!

Click the "Forums" link.

Scroll down to the bottom.

"Most users ever online was 77,655 on Sun Nov 07, 2010 7:31 pm."

/thread

[Ariel Yardena Davidson]

Bluecandescent

One Winged Asuka

Zandykins

While I agree with what you said about re-establishing community within Gaia, this has never had 500000 let alone 250000 people online at one time sweatdrop .

Yes, it has, I distinctly remember it. I wish I had a screen shot.

You can look it up, Gaia did a 'Facebook like' campaign around that time and accumulated almost 500k likes. Gaia genuinely had that many active users at one time.

I'll look up their usage statistics later, but trust me, summer used to draw an average of 200k online users during the day.

Are you sure those half a million FB likers simply logged on over a period of time (days, weeks, months), and weren't actually online at once? There's a difference between "active users" and "online users." A big difference.

If you're talking about 2008 (that's when I remember the FB thing) there were 30k-50k users online at peak. 500k users online at once would destroy the servers. It's impossible, I can't believe it without a screenshot, sorry.

As for the actual topic... idk active users in any form don't bother me. I enjoy the community, I enjoy what Gaia does, I support them by buying Cash, so it's not a problem for me.

It doesn't seem like a problem for Gaia either. They aren't going bankrupt, so I guess it's just up to the user whether they want to continue being active in the community regardless if Gaia can "fix" it or anything of the sort.

i was around when the peak was about ... 109k in a day. At this point, since it was during my college days [2004-2008], i'm sure most of them were bots.

i like parts of the community. i just wish there were a few more ways for me to enjoy sticking around.

[hibi-tea]

It would help if you gave some more suggestions as to what you want to happen as opposed to "You should make be care about this stuff again Gaia". Like what kind of NPC interaction are we talking here? What kind of plots? Like the trial with Ian?

The comic for this site has always been a primary staple, so I'd rather they kept updating it, or at least continued on with some of the damn story-line.

That being said, they're coming back to their roots. With the new CEO is seems they've regrouped their efforts back into the site despite the lay-off of staff and are trying their best to cater to the whims of their users as they can.

Trying to say that Gaia has strayed from their roots because they have one Event in many that was based primarily in their re-imagined Towns space is kind of ridiculous. Gaia has always had and will continue to have forum-based events, that much I would put money on, but them doing a primarily flash based event to both test the system they've made based on requests of the users and to help identify bugs with heavy use is not them "straying from their roots".

Additionally, Gaia's popularity years ago was primarily from hype and bots. They haven't become "less popular", its a matter of the people who came because of hype have left because the novelty wore off. Also, the getting rid of bots. What you're left with is the people who actually enjoy this site as a whole and were not just razzle-dazzled by something new.

A lot of the things you address in your OP are things that are not relevant, or that users have specifically asked for. If you don't like those things, that's well and good, but it's not like Gaia decided on a random to do them. They're fulfilling user wishes with their projects and trying to build community by giving them some of the things they want.

[panoptes]

i would be cool to see NPC accounts posting in the forums and talking to each other like regular users... probably better they keep to their own threads though, for archival purposes

[One Winged Asuka]

Bluecandescent

One Winged Asuka

Zandykins

While I agree with what you said about re-establishing community within Gaia, this has never had 500000 let alone 250000 people online at one time sweatdrop .

Yes, it has, I distinctly remember it. I wish I had a screen shot.

You can look it up, Gaia did a 'Facebook like' campaign around that time and accumulated almost 500k likes. Gaia genuinely had that many active users at one time.

I'll look up their usage statistics later, but trust me, summer used to draw an average of 200k online users during the day.

Are you sure those half a million FB likers simply logged on over a period of time (days, weeks, months), and weren't actually online at once? There's a difference between "active users" and "online users." A big difference.

If you're talking about 2008 (that's when I remember the FB thing) there were 30k-50k users online at peak. 500k users online at once would destroy the servers. It's impossible, I can't believe it without a screenshot, sorry.

As for the actual topic... idk active users in any form don't bother me. I enjoy the community, I enjoy what Gaia does, I support them by buying Cash, so it's not a problem for me.

It doesn't seem like a problem for Gaia either. They aren't going bankrupt, so I guess it's just up to the user whether they want to continue being active in the community regardless if Gaia can "fix" it or anything of the sort.

The peak of "online" users was around/above 200k, but yes, I meant 500k "active" users. I may have mispoke this in the first post, I will re-read it and correct it if necessary.

Gaia isn't going bankrupt, but a site can only go on so long without new interest. They are a business, after all, and businesses rely on fresh interest and new markets- I don't feel like Gaia is using all of it's available assets to appeal to new users.

[One Winged Asuka]

Bluecandescent

AHA!!

Click the "Forums" link.

Scroll down to the bottom.

"Most users ever online was 77,655 on Sun Nov 07, 2010 7:31 pm."

/thread

That is actually incorrect, as I know for certain there was an event for when we had 100k users online at once in 2008. We received an item, the Watermelon hat, as a 'prize' for the accomplishment. The peaks I am talking about were in 2009&2010. That counter has not been updated since 2007.

[Bluecandescent]

One Winged Asuka

Bluecandescent

AHA!!

Click the "Forums" link.

Scroll down to the bottom.

"Most users ever online was 77,655 on Sun Nov 07, 2010 7:31 pm."

/thread

That is actually incorrect, as I know for certain there was an event for when we had 100k users online at once in 2008. We received an item, the Watermelon hat, as a 'prize' for the accomplishment. The peaks I am talking about were in 2009&2010. That counter has not been updated since 2007.

If the counter hasn't been updated since 2007, how does it say "Sun Nov 07, 2010"?

[Ariel Yardena Davidson]

Bluecandescent

One Winged Asuka

Bluecandescent

AHA!!

Click the "Forums" link.

Scroll down to the bottom.

"Most users ever online was 77,655 on Sun Nov 07, 2010 7:31 pm."

/thread

That is actually incorrect, as I know for certain there was an event for when we had 100k users online at once in 2008. We received an item, the Watermelon hat, as a 'prize' for the accomplishment. The peaks I am talking about were in 2009&2010. That counter has not been updated since 2007.

If the counter hasn't been updated since 2007, how does it say "Sun Nov 07, 2010"?

i'm sorry but i don't feel that's the point of this thread, so could you take this elsewhere?

i remember that watermelon hat event, actually. It was fun.

[panoptes]

One Winged Asuka

Bluecandescent

AHA!!

Click the "Forums" link.

Scroll down to the bottom.

"Most users ever online was 77,655 on Sun Nov 07, 2010 7:31 pm."

/thread

That is actually incorrect, as I know for certain there was an event for when we had 100k users online at once in 2008. We received an item, the Watermelon hat, as a 'prize' for the accomplishment. The peaks I am talking about were in 2009&2010. That counter has not been updated since 2007.

iirc that number was later struck from the records because bots made up a chunk of that count

and if that counter hasnt been updated since 2007 why is the record high recorded in 2010...

[Nomadder]

Bluecandescent

AHA!!

Click the "Forums" link.

Scroll down to the bottom.

"Most users ever online was 77,655 on Sun Nov 07, 2010 7:31 pm."

/thread

Okay, not trying to push my luck or anything.. but does her really getting that number wrong totally take away the positive suggestions she gave on the thread.

I'm just saying. I mean.. I think people are ignoring the insightful post because of the number.

[Bluecandescent]

TheAntiHeroJD

Bluecandescent

AHA!!

Click the "Forums" link.

Scroll down to the bottom.

"Most users ever online was 77,655 on Sun Nov 07, 2010 7:31 pm."

/thread

Okay, not trying to push my luck or anything.. but does her really getting that number wrong totally take away the positive suggestions she gave on the thread.

I'm just saying. I mean.. I think people are ignoring the insightful post because of the number.

While I do agree that the number isn't everything, it's supposed to back up her claim of how many people were on in the past which leads to the feedback of the dwindling community. If so many people back then were bots, and even the total numbers were lower than claimed, then there technically isn't much change in the community in terms of actual activity level. Things were bad years ago with all the botters. The stats weren't as legit as they are now. Only memories can serve as "proof" of what we were like in the past, which means it's up to each individual user and their personal experiences to decide if we're bettor or worse as a community.