2old2play A relationship and should be treated as such (urgent call for community input)

I love this place.

Ya'll know that. 2old2play is a community and a second home to many. Before 2old2play I had never heard about a clan and I never would have played an FPS. Today I am a clan leader and last week I helped to run a FPS based community event. What happened to me? You guys did. For that I thank you. In return I work hard at this relationship that we have.

And it is a relationship, and every relationship needs hard work to make it better. Sometimes you have to stop and take stock. How are we doing? Where are we going? Can we make it better? And it has to be true input, not just "oh yeah baby, ya know I love you." type of stuff. REAL input. Hard to hear input. The "umm... yeah sweetie that dress does make your ass look fat, maybe we should go out for a walk instead of sitting on our asses and eating burgers." type of input.

So... Lan is on like tron and yeah: it may be a smaller event than usual. Meh: Less people I have to buy a round for, less people telling me how fan-fucking-tastic I am. I am very much looking forward to seeing those that are going. Those that aren't maybe next year. I know that there are quite a few people here that want to go, but can't. And because of that "the usual suspects" may not be able to go to Lan, where in previous years, it wasn't as much of a problem. The economy sucks: I get that.

BUT the economy can't account for everything. Theoretically there are 16,000 members: we should be able to wrestle 100 people to go to lan from that number. Ah-ha! you say! 16,000 but not all of them are active! so our pool is much smaller. That begs a question that has weighed on my mind for a really, really long time.

Why are people leaving and not coming back? Why out of 16,000 are precious few active? And few of those seem to be active outside their clan. How do we get people from being lurkers and turn them into community leaders?

Are we doing what we can to welcome new members? To make them feel welcome to the site as a whole? Are people feeing connected only to their clans, but not to the site in general? I have heard it said that 2old2play has changed: it used to be a villiage, now it's a metropolis.

If 2old2play has evolved from a villiage to a metropolis, are we doing a good enough job at getting everyone around the council table?

So, let's not use $ as an excuse. What else is going on? I know that everyone here loves 202p: I would never quesstion that. but that doesn't mean that we can't improve. What do you want to see? Doodi is working tail straight out on V3.0: so lots of the site mechanics are going to get better.

I honestly love this place. I really do. I have had people tell me that I have GOT to step back a whole bunch: to be less invested. But if my gut is right: I think we have some excellent opportunities to make this place better, but ONLY if the rank and file want it to be better. And we have to determine what "better" means. The feedback here will determine my actions. If my gut is wrong, then my gut is wrong and that means that I can relax a whole lot this summer. But if I'm right: say so. Then we can work on it.

edit: I hate not having the thumbs: if I was totally offf base with this and people are hating: I can't tell. BUT I also can't tell if people are loving this blog either. please: can I has thumbs?