Hey guys. Doing a research project and was looking for some help!

[MunDane 0]

Hi all, my name is Dane. I'm a college student and I have to do a research project (due tomorrow, of course) on an online community, and I was wondering if you guys would be willing to help!

 

I'd like to preface it by saying I'm not here to defame this site, the MLP fandom, or any members here. My paper is completely neutral and I hope to remain professional and respectful.

 

First of all, did anyone happen to see how many users were online around midday today (it's about 9PM in California. A time around lunchtime 8 hours ago would be ideal) or otherwise, a reasonable estimate as to how much typical user activity there is on a given day?

 

Do you ever have real-life member meets? If you guys could direct me to some specific examples it'd be great. Or, if you guys have ever met at Comic-con or other such events, that'd help too.

 

I may need to lurk moar, but how off-topic are you allowed to go? Is all talk necessarily MLP related, or is discussion about personal life or other interests permitted anywhere? The chat, perhaps? (I'm not allowed on, I'm still a Blank Flank)

 

This is more directed at administrators or high-contributing members, but how much effort is put into maintaining this site and community? If specific examples for this could be shown, it would be much appreciated.

 

Thank you in advance for your help!

[Chigens and Kay 3,831]

Umm...I think somepony else should handle this one..but uhh...you're in the welcoming plaza Sugarcube Corner now so...I have no idea...

 

Sorry for not being able to help.

Edited March 8, 2012 by Chigens

[Twilight Sparkle ✨ 8,520]

Hi Dane,

 

I've moved your thread to Sugarcube Corner, because it really isn't an introduction at all. I'm the owner of MLP Forums, so I think I can answer most of your questions for you.

 

MLP Forums has 2000-3000 unique visitors every day, of which 500-600 are registered members. Throughout most of the day, we tend to have anywhere from 120 to 160 users online at once, though that number goes as high as 180 on some days. The users here usually make between 1500 and 3000 posts every day, and our daily pageviews are between 40,000 and 50,000. All of these metrics are constantly growing, and our long-term reports show exponential growth.

 

You might find this traffic report I put together a few days ago relevant: http://mlpforums.com...y-2012-edition/

 

Additionally, I also put together a report on the costs of running this site (though it is a little out of date now, as I recently got a second server for this community): http://mlpforums.com...hensive-report/

 

MLP Forums does not have any official meetups of its own yet, but it is an idea I have been looking into. Some of our members, however, will be attending the next BroNYCon and I presume they will try to find each other there. A number of members here also know each other in real life.

 

Just about any type of discussion is permitted on MLP Forums, as long as it doesn't break our site rules. We've had discussions here in the past about drugs, piracy, and politics, just to name a few topics, in addition to the show itself. I suggest taking a look around the site and reading the various sections' descriptions and browsing around within them to check out the huge breadth of topics our members discuss.

 

This is more directed at administrators or high-contributing members, but how much effort is put into maintaining this site and community? If specific examples for this could be shown, it would be much appreciated.

 

Exactly what kind of answer are you looking for here? I'm not sure how one can quantify the amount of effort that my team and I put into maintaining MLP Forums. Could you please elaborate on what exactly you'd like to know?

[Doctor XFizzle 8,651]

This is more directed at administrators or high-contributing members, but how much effort is put into maintaining this site and community? If specific examples for this could be shown, it would be much appreciated.

 

As a high-contributing member, as I like to imagine myself because I'm The Doctor, the effort Feld0 and the moderating staff is...well....I guess they would have to quantify and expound on that. As for a non-staff contributing member, there's not much effort involved when it comes to basic posting replies and interacting with the community. Some people exert extra effort such as draw pictures of other users (or their OC ponies), facilitate a debate topic, or do tiny quirky things like switch up their username/avatar picture/signature to follow a theme or running gag or meme (like I have done since the inception of the site).

Edited March 8, 2012 by Dr. XFizzle the Bearded

[MunDane 0]

Thanks Feld0, this is perfect! Also, I was just on the verge of editing my post asking if the introduction board was fitting and if not, if an administrator could move it to a more suitable location. Seems you beat me to it, thank you and sorry to post in the wrong board.

 

Exactly what kind of answer are you looking for here? I'm not sure how one can quantify the amount of effort that my team and I put into maintaining MLP Forums. Could you please elaborate on what exactly you'd like to know?

Your costs info and the fact that there is an administration team are basically what I needed. It was a very general question - I'm basically weighing whether the site is tightly well-managed or if it is more laxly attended to. It's obvious that this site is more towards the former. I was just wondering if I could get some examples of how much time and energy you or other members put into maintaining the site, which I'm assuming from what you said on the issue is quite a fair bit. This could range from managing the site's coding and design or handling the rule-breakers and trolls. Recent spam attacks, maybe? It's a pretty vague question on my assignment's prompt, so really anything you could say on the matter would help. I think your response and Dr. XFizzle's are all I'll really need on the matter.

 

Thanks a lot for all your help, I didn't think I'd actually get a response from the site's owner, let alone this quickly. You've been very helpful!

Edited March 8, 2012 by MunDane

[Twilight Sparkle ✨ 8,520]

Your costs info and the fact that there is an administration team are basically what I needed. It was a very general question - I'm basically weighing whether the site is tightly well-managed or if it is more laxly attended to. It's obvious that this site is more towards the former. I was just wondering if I could get some examples of how much time and energy you or other members put into maintaining the site, which I'm assuming from what you said on the issue is quite a fair bit. This could range from managing the site's coding and design or handling the rule-breakers and trolls. Recent spam attacks, maybe? It's a pretty vague question on my assignment's prompt, so really anything you could say on the matter would help. I think your response and Dr. XFizzle's are all I'll really need on the matter.

 

"Tightly well-managed" is definitely more like it. Although MLP Forums isn't a business, I run it with every bit of care, attention, and discipline as if it was one. We have several tiers of staff here:

• owner/admin - in charge of hosting/IT, software, design, finances, promotion, allocating staff, site changes, staff allocation; has final say on anything
• Super Moderators - assistant managers, essentially. They don't have access to the deeper areas of the site and do not handle anything off-site, but they essentially manage the forums on my behalf, and ensure that all the other moderators do their jobs.
• Forum Moderators - in charge of moderating specific sections and the chatroom. They have moderator capabilities in every section so they can take care of any trouble they see, but are only actually responsible for their assigned sections.
• Specialty Staff - staff members who are in charge of off-site entities that belong to MLP Forums. For example, Jonke is our Minecraft server admin and I currently have an opening for the position of TF2 server admin. Not too many of these positions, but they do exist and require a lot of dedication.

All my staff are members who spend several hours a day on the forums (or at least look like it) and are very dedicated to the community. The exact number of hours is impossible to determine, but I can safely say that I spend at least 2-4 hours on MLP Forums every day myself.

 

Creating the site's design took a few weeks of focused work prior to the site's launch in October. Since then, I've only made minor adjustments to it which haven't taken more than a few minutes each. The site is powered by a commercial forum package called IP.Board (there's a link to it in the footer) and a variety of third-party add-ons and modifications to it, so I've programmed none of it outside of a custom chatroom stats tool for my super moderators.

 

I don't normally handle moderation, so one of our super moderators would be better able to answer how much time goes into dealing with troublemakers. But to my knowledge, we have very few rulebreakers and trolls here and they are usually dealt with quite swiftly.

 

Our preferred way of dealing with any kind of trouble is through IP.Board's report system. When a member clicks the "Report" link on any piece of content on the site (post, calendar entry, gallery image, member profile, etc.), a report is generated in the moderator control panel that includes the comments the member left with the report. Multiple reports on the same piece of content are compiled into a single report on our end, and the report has a discussion section that lets staff discuss what to do about it. Here's a screenshot of a report from some time ago, if you want a peek into the jobs of my moderators:

 

 

Best of luck on your project! Are you planning to stick around and participate in the community afterwards, Dane?

[Marcato 2,143]

That is so cool Dane! It's great having some one so interested in our community to actually use it for their school project. In fact i might have learned some things myself from this.

 

Feld0 pretty much summed up the really important stuff here already.

How our discussions work is essentially you stay in the right area and on topic then you are fine. If some one make an extra or douplicate version of an already made topic, the moderators remove it. If some one goes off topic or repeats things some one else said too much, it gets removed. Although swearing is something not appreciated, it is still allowed provided it isn't unnesesarily repetitive. Same with inappropriatenes. They generally allow a little reference or joke, but never anything too awkward or pornographic.

 

I wish you luck on your project! I'm sure it will turn out great. If your getting your info directly from the site owner, you can count on it being pretty accurate.