Any good organization has hierachy, it has structure, it has order, the way things are designed here at Kolyma reflect a lack of proper coordination and integrity. Ideally, for a organization like the Kolyma Network, it would be arranged in a way somewhat resembling the first picture.
However, due to lack of english-speaking volunteers, it looks something more like the second. Currently, on English Kolyma and all its subsidaries, there are only 3 volunteers. I dont really blame anyone here but myself. In a way, I think it is like spread on a piece of toast, we have miles of toast in which to apply the spread, but only a couple spoonfuls of spread—i.e. we have lots of space to grow, but growth is not occuring. We have the infrastructure and plans to accomidate many people on Heyuri, KNN, and other english knet projects, but the people themself are missing. Like a ghost city fit to hold millions but only holds several hundred. Even setting up a banner on this site AND heyuri has only pulled in one new volunteer.
Where are the people? Well, there are thousands and thousands of regular KolymaNET users, such as the ones who use apiru and KolymaBBS, but the problem arises in the demographic, most of them dont speak english, and most of them dont fit into the rather specific niche that Heyuri seeks to fulfill.
So obviously, the solution would be to gather new Heyuri users, but thats where the problem arises, not only do I seldom have the time to go out of my way to find like-minded people to populate Heyuri, but the task in itself is often difficult for a number of reasons;
- Heyuri has a terrible reputation
- Heyuri has a very niche topic and strict moderation
- Proper advertising
Its true, Heyuri's name is often a taboo to be mentioned on other sites. I attribute this to users spamming heyuri advertisements on other websites against my wishes, and the general attitude that usually comes up when someone heres "nostalgia" in a site. They will likely assume that it is a carbon clone of all of the other numerous retro-4chan copies and will stop reading there, or even go as far as to shit on Heyuri without having checked it out. Many people also dont remember the awesome, great, original things that have came from Heyuri, they instead remember the drama that was left in the wake of my departure and akimas ordeal. Unfortunatley, bad news makes headlines, and it oftens smothers the dim light of heyuris good side.
You could say the "official" rules on Heyuri are quite straightforward, but fitting into board culture is a much more difficult task, it might take a week to properly understand how to post without looking a fool, I believe this is the primary reason Heyuris retention-rate is so low.
Unlike most imageboard websites, I believe that spamming your link everywhere to get attention is an absolutely horrid way to attract users, I already wrote about this here. So, what would be a good way to attract users to Heyuri without offending website owners and disturbing peace? These and more questions I would like to hear your answers to in /q/.