2012-01-25 [hanhepi]: [Veltzeh] and [Hedda] are going to be saddened by the news that either they don't count, or they've had their Man Card revoked. :(

2012-01-25 [iippo]: And I am saddened that Punk is so busy lately :(

[Veltzeh] has neither Man Card nor Woman Card. And I don't see why it matters which card any of us has.

2012-01-25 [Alexi Ice]: I'm glad I don't count.

2012-01-25 [Mortified Penguin]: VELTZEH IS NO MAN.

2012-01-26 [hanhepi]: meh, he's man enough.

besides, even if he weren't a man, there's me... i'm probably butch enough to count...

2012-01-27 [Chimes]: Getting a bit chatty now - if you want to continue the banter go to now. (Then I can still read it. :P)

2012-05-18 [windowframe]: Fixed, thanks. :)

2012-12-01 [The Past]: Hey guys. I got a couple of friends who want in on ET, but they have not received the emails to confirm them. One is just recently (within the last 24 hours) but one was about a month ago, and she hasn't heard anything. Is there a glitch with this at the moment?

2012-12-01 [windowframe]: There are definitely no tickets that old. It's possible the confirmation email went to her spam/junk mail folder, though - has she checked that?

2012-12-01 [The Past]: I believe so. How long does this normally take to get through? 24 hours, or more?

2012-12-01 [Hedda]: Emails sometimes get lost (or just written wrong). Tell me the email addresses and I'll accept them!

2012-12-02 [The Past]: Thanks Hedda :) But (Murphy's law of course) seemed to get itself sorted as of today. But thanks for the help guys, as it seems I am not the only one with friends affected by this.

2013-01-29 [Flisky]: You have the Halloween Poets badge already.

2013-02-05 [Mortified Penguin]: And I want to say to the Council and the Guards that I regret nothing. I've done nothing wrong and am pretty awesome.

2013-03-25 [Alexi Ice]: Welcome, Jos!!

2013-03-25 [kians mummy]: For some reason I am getting Spammy emails through from Elftown saying I have messages that I don't have, 20 of them now, what's going on?

2013-03-25 [Akayume]: Sammie, perhaps you should message [Hedda] directly? I believe he would be best to answer that sort of question, as I, for example, have no way of checking on such things.

2013-03-25 [kians mummy]: Ok hun. just found it a bit confusing lol.

2013-03-25 [Chimes]: Just to confirm what Akay said, Hedda is definitely the person to talk to. :)

2013-03-26 [kians mummy]: I have lol. :)

2013-03-26 [Mortified Penguin]: To confirm what Chimes said in regards to what Akay said, you should try talking to Hedda.

2013-03-26 [kians mummy]: To Confirm what Mort & [Chimes] said in regards to what akay said I should try talking to [Hedda].

Oh wait, I already have......

He said it must of just been a back log, my personal opinion, thumbs down to Hotmail, will be changing it soon as Hotmail has just gone down hill so may Join Yahoo.

2013-03-26 [Chimes]: After this comment, this conversation is better for now but if you're looking for a new email service, I would recommend gmail. :)

2013-08-21 [Imperator]: Recommending gmail is an awful idea following the Snowden "revelations" (as if we didn't already know). Use email providers based outside of US territory.

2013-09-17 [kians mummy]: ^Which is none lol.

2013-12-08 [Mortified Penguin]: I'm pretty sure I'm owed a veteran badge. >:o

(Ha ha ha ha... seriously though.)

2013-12-08 [nehirwen]: No you don't, you never had a coloured badge, now quit wasting my time. <_<

2013-12-20 [Mortified Penguin]: I jest.

However, as to why [Stephen] didn't respond to any messages or guestbook notes about him being a crewbie, even though he was online, that's because he didn't even know about them. There are iframes with Elftown in them on Elfpack (where he's [Hedda]'s right hand man, essentially) that, when [Stephen] loads while browsing Elfpack, make him appear to be on Elftown (probably, that or he's just logging on to Elftown and staring at Mainstreet and nothing else). I've messaged him on Facebook to let him know the situation though.

2013-12-21 [Teufelsweib]: well, if that means he wasn't active on ET anyway even better he wasn't chosen as crewbie after all :)

2013-12-22 [Stephen]: Actually - I was in the hospital.

http://puu.sh/5Uzc7.png


I didn't make a diary notice here, because I didn't see a direct reason to so it didn't occur to me. I do check Elftown at least once a day normally; however in the time period I was accepted, I was too sick to take notice.


- Editt -
Also, if I was marked as recently logging in, it's because I keep all of Hedda's (active) sites open in Perma tabs on my Firefox, and the tabs automatically refresh every 16 hours or so, so I don't miss things. :P

2013-12-22 [Teufelsweib]: We will consider you again during the next round.

2013-12-22 [Sunrose]: Wow, gallbladder and appendix removed O_o
Hope you feel better soon!

2013-12-22 [hanhepi]: Sure, sure. Major surgery is no excuse! It only adds to our list of reasons not to accept you... now you can't even do all the heavy lifting we needed you to do. :P

Seriously though, that sounds rough. :/ Hope you heal up soon.

2013-12-22 [Stephen]: Heh, thanks guys. I actually feel much better than I did pre-OP, even with the recovery being a bit rough. It's been almost three weeks now and I'm mostly back to normal.. :D

2014-02-08 [Mortified Penguin]: I noticed where someone had missed a very important and necessary Oxford comma in my badge slot, so I went ahead and fixed it for them. Get it together, you guys! You can't just go around forgetting commas like that, they're important!

2014-03-10 [Stephen]: The links to Apply to the Crew, MC and probably a few other things that I think are supposed to perma be on the Calendar, have timed out.

2014-07-12 [Stephen]: Mm, three of the four ElfChat Bosses have no badges in their house; I'm guessing they were retired. It looks kind of inconsistent.

(I'd have mentioned that on the page, but that page lacks a comment box.)

2014-07-13 [Mortified Penguin]: Not to mention everyone that worked for featured art (which also has no comment box for some reason) retired a long time ago, leaving the space on Mainstreet unedited for over a year and a half now... And I'm here literally every day, not doing anything (except working on a new contest to help Elftown, like usual)... And I've been here for over a decade and would be insanely useful on the crew (especially as town guard captain)... But, WHATEVER, GAH...

2014-07-13 [Mortified Penguin]: Here:

There's you a nice watercolor I made. Slap that shit on up there. It takes like ONE MINUTE to update Mainstreet, it's seriously not that hard. Hell, don't even worry about giving me a badge for it, I'll save you 30 seconds and badge my own damn self.

2014-07-13 [Mortified Penguin]: Not good enough? Too spiteful to feature art from someone you've mistaken as a troll that hates Elftown (you're a goddamn idiot if you think that)? Here:

Clicked "random member" all of three times and found some great art by [To the Welkin]... She's an active member, she has amazing artwork, and she's been featured before, so she's clearly fine with having her art displayed. I see no reason why her artwork shouldn't be on Mainstreet within the next two days. Oh, it's not your job? You're too busy with real life to update something once every few years? Maybe you shouldn't be on the damn crew, because you're ruining this site by being this goddamn lazy. Or maybe you really just don't care about Elftown. So how about stepping down and letting people who actually give a shit do your job for you? Because we're out here, ready and willing to help if you can ever get your heads out of your ass far enough to see us...

I don't have a problem with any of the crew members personally, but the fact that you've all just stopped updating shit and let my favorite website stagnate (no, it isn't just hedda's fault for not modernizing ET, it's the crew's too for stopping caring) makes me have no respect for any of you. Honestly, since [windowframe] retired, most of you have just given up and quit trying. As much as I dislike her, she at least kept you people in line for the most part. Anyway, point being, please get your shit together ASAP, otherwise Elftown won't be here for more than a couple more years at most.

2014-07-13 [Nioniel]: Mort, what's the name of your piece?

2014-07-14 [Mortified Penguin]: Let's go with "Indoctrination".

2014-07-14 [Nioniel]: Thank you.

2014-07-17 [Sunrose]: Actually those Elfchat bosses are still active in the chat, just not on Elftown. I wrote a posting in the forums about it somewhere. I didn't have the privs to badge them, but no one stepped in to do it for me.

2014-07-17 [Sunrose]: [808182] here it is. Could you undo the veteran thing and give them the normal badge? Sometimes you're just going too fast :P

2014-07-17 [Nioniel]: Thanks for the link to the post. Everyone's Elfchat badges should be properly updated now.

2014-07-17 [Stephen]: Oh, sorry about that.
Had it backwards!

2014-07-17 [Sunrose]: No problem =P

2014-10-03 [Imperator]: A year ago I posted in the suggestions forum a request for the council to take action to revive ET since I couldn't see anything going on except renaming wikis (and killing the Elftown Academy). [Sunrose] told me to quit being so bossy and telling people what to do with their busy lives. Although I'm about two and half months late to second Mort's opinion above - I second it. I would like to point out that after the death of the Elftown Academy, the obsolete link has remained on Mainstreet. I never mentioned it before for fear that it would be removed because I treasure it. However if any of you need a bit more evidence of how right Mort is (or appears to be right from the perspective of a humble serf) then that should be it. I know some of you despise me because I was an asshole kid who shouted my ridiculous political opinions in the general debate forums - but that was like... 8 years ago. Just because Mort and I tell you things that are uncomfortable does not make us WRONG. Apparently this site is down to about 280 active members. How low is low enough for something to change?

2014-10-03 [windowframe]: (The only person who can edit the particular part of Main street where the link to the Elftown Academy is is Hedda. So that's just evidence that the crew still have just as hard a time getting Hedda to do stuff as you do. But you already knew that). I don't think you're telling the crew stuff that makes them uncomfortable, you're telling them stuff they already know and can't do anything about. It's depressing for all concerned. And hey! Maybe that's why sometimes the crew has little motivation to update some things: because in the grand scheme of ET they're pretty tiny and irrelevant and why bother spending your time updating one tiny part of a clunking outdated website that you know is never going to be updated in any significant way?


ET died a long time ago guys. It ain't coming back. There's just some of us still hanging around waiting for it to finish rotting so we can grab the bones and put them in display cases. <_< 

2014-10-03 [Sunrose]: I doubt I used the word bossy, but indeed you can't demand people to devote their free time the way you want them to.
It's kind of odd you want the Council to revive ET, when it's always been the members who made ET alive. You can't expect less than 10-15 people to do what thousands did together before.

No one actually denied Mort's claims above, at least not here.

I don't remember you from general debate btw, I remember you from a tank drawing you had up if I'm correct that was you :P
-Edit: considering it's still there it seems I'm right x)

2014-10-03 [Paul Doyle]: A morbid sense of belonging keeps me here on Elftown, though the original artistic e-community spirit died back around '05 when it was decided pandering to idiots and hangarounds was more important than keeping a good rapport with those who made those art contests, RPGs, Elftown Academy, Town Herald and so much more, such great ways to constructively waste time on the Internet. You know, before all the petty shit and conniving and the rest killed this place.

In any event, if this place now exists primarily to generate revenue for shitty little ads that nobody likes, then that is how it is going to be. I'm still not going to get really active again until there IS a drastic reboot of this website and a modern, secure user-friendly appearance, but at this point I'm not going to waste my time waiting. Real life beckons. Elftown, you helped me get through some dark times in my life (my mother dying, my marriage going through some rough patches before drastically improving) and you inspired me to start writing and drawing again, from scratch, in the last few weeks of my mother's life in 2003. Unfortunately, nearly all of the artistic-minded people I hung around with, are no longer here. But these memories keep me here. Elftown IS morbid. But the memories were very good memories, before Elftown jumped the shark by ignoring its core artistic members and pandering to those people unwanted by the former core audience.

I may bring you memorial flowers, Elftown, but there's no way in hell you're going to come back from the grave. Any time a Junk Forum frequented by a handful of chatty people is one of the most happening places on Elftown, then it's safe to say this website ought to be put out of its misery if the ad-revenue generation isn't working out as planned.

2014-10-03 [Teufelsweib]: everyone has been putting up these dramatic 'everyone has left, this place isn't what it used to be, it hurts me to see what has happened, fare thee well!" messages for the last... what, 4-5 years?
Let's try something else!

I love the way Elftown is right now! All the people I really didn't like have finally left, and now it has become our own playground to do whatever we want in the forums and with the wikis with a small, pretty close group of friends!
Please, council, don't change anything to this site. I'm already on all these state of the art fancy social network sites and I'm missing the broken links and 90s lay outs.

2014-10-03 [Mortified Penguin]: Oh sure, but whenever I use Elftown as a playground to do whatever I want in the forums and wikis, people get upset with me for some reason!

2014-10-03 [Mortified Penguin]: But I will single handedly revive Elftown once I'm vice mayor, don't you guys worry.

Except Sunrose. She should worry.

2014-10-03 [Teufelsweib]: that's because no one likes you! then again, no one likes the vice major, so I guess that would work.

but not before [hanhepi] is made major, you're going to have to respect that :/

2014-10-03 [Mortified Penguin]: I'LL RESPECT NOTHING!

2014-10-03 [hanhepi]: XD Thank you Tuffles. It could work, having Mort as my vice major. I get the love and adoration, he gets to do all the work. Yes, yes this could work out nicely.

2014-10-03 [Teufelsweib]: Within days we'll have +100.000 active members again, all actively contributing to contests (all following the set themes of course), writing extravagant poetry (that rhymes), sipping iced teas, and philosophizing the intricacies of romance, politics, personal goals and desires.

2014-10-03 [Sunrose]: I love you people haha :D

2014-10-09 [The Black Goat]: "I love the way Elftown is right now! All the people I really didn't like have finally left, and now it has become our own playground to do whatever we want in the forums and with the wikis with a small, pretty close group of friends!"

I believe that would be the root of ET's problems right now :D a close knit circle jerk that kicks out people who disagree with said group of friends.

2014-10-10 [Imperator]: @Council: The possibility that I'm just an idiot is always a possibility, however, it seems to me that you guys don't particularly communicate your problems to the community. Maybe you catch unjustified scorn since your abilities versus the abilities of Hedda are not known.

2014-10-10 [Sunrose]: Again it is so silly to blame a 100.000 people leaving on these few crew members. I could also say that the few that are there have actually managed to keep a number of people around.
Lastly, you're interpreting it as if she meant to say that this playground is a place to be an asshole to non-crew. She actually meant that because the community isn't as big anymore it has become more intimate (like it was in the beginning).
It has become clear though that your sole purpose now is to just 'hate on' people. So, whatever anyone would say you'd find some offensive interpretation.

Actually there have been numerous times on numerous places where at least I commented that crew can't change Elftown's graphics (we can make them and send them to Hedda, but he has to implement them and this is not being done. Which is also why people like [True, plain and simple] left all together.), yet crew is still being blamed for the outdated look it has (which is super motivating to hear all the time). So it doesn't seem like it matters what we say anyhow.

2014-10-10 [kians mummy]: People would listen if you was less strict, also the fact that the Council need to interact more with normal members, you tell us to contribute, how about you contribute by talking nicely to members, having good convastations, getting to know them instead of judging them by what other people say, this is another reason why people leave, as the council are like a little group of there own who dont communicate with most normal members.

2014-10-10 [Sunrose]: I have had more non-council friends than council friends. But, at some point when you have worked with someone you often end up friends. So it's not strange a lot of friends now are also Council.
Maybe it would also be nice if members spoke nicely to crew, getting to know them instead of judging them by what other people say :((
When I was a n00b I took the initiative to talk to lots of crewmembers myself. It's easier for one member to get to know 10 crew, than for 10 crew to get to know 300 members.
That being said, I checked my member statistics.
I wrote 93.276 messages to 10.158 unique members. Of course I've done a lot of Guardwork with 16.572 guard reports written (for almost every report a private message was sent). There have been 4.635 unique members who sent me a message. Let's assume half of them were replies to a guard message, that still leaves some 2.000 unique members that I have had some sort of a conversation with.
How many did you write with?

2014-10-10 [Mortified Penguin]: Personally, I have quite literally reached out to every single Elftowner. Every. Single. One. Through messaging, wiki invites, forum invites, wiki invites, helpful wiki comments, and even wiki invites. I've also messaged and friend requested every crew member, some more than once. Some more than like six times! I've never once turned down a friend request from anyone either, no matter who they were or how much of a problem I may have had with them. And in all this, only a small handful of the crew have been positively responsive to my constant attempts at establishing casual acquaintanceships. I've reached out to all of them, trying to give them the opportunity to get to know me for themselves and not just by the hearsay spread behind my back, but my efforts have been entirely fruitless, like that one fig tree Jesus jacked up. I've even been blocked and trash talked by current crew members for messages as simple and innocent as, "Why do you hate me? Is it because I'm too handsome?!" Not gonna name names, but you know who you are, [hanhepi]!

I've watched closely over the years and observed that the crew is nothing but friends picking friends, there are no real merit or skill based crew members anymore (except Stephen). Yes, you need to be able to work with other crew members, and yes, the easiest way to do that is to hire new people who are already your friends. I'm not criticizing the crew for its nepotism, it's a legitimate strategy, albeit not the best and one that will lead to stagnation. I just want them to be aware that the dozens and dozens of Elftowners that have made these accusations of the crew being an essential "circle jerk" are not as crazy as the crew always makes them out to be in their private forums and public diaries.

2014-10-10 [Mortified Penguin]: In fact, what say we fire the current crew and make everyone reapply if they want to continue helping out. Then have someone neutral pick the new crew based on actual qualifications. Or hell, why not dismantle this oppressive dictatorship turned oligarchy and allow the members themselves to select who they think is competent enough to be in charge of maintaining Elftown? Then let's see just how many members of the current crew still have jobs. Rabble, rabble, rabble!

2014-10-10 [Mortified Penguin]: In the end though, let's not forget we're all equals here (except Hedda, he's a little more equal than the rest of us) and this isn't real life. We're all essentially roleplaying the characters of our usernames here, so stop taking everything so damn seriously and let's try to enjoy the broken remains of this town together while it still lasts.

2014-10-10 [Paul Doyle]: Occupy Elftown

2014-10-10 [Mortified Penguin]: Well, okay, Paul's username is his real life, so pay him no mind.

2014-10-10 [Teufelsweib]: but what if I am a bot and who I am on here is who I really am

2014-10-10 [Mortified Penguin]: Then I will be meeting up with you to perform some studies. Particularly to determine whether or not you even have a rectum in which I can SHOVE MY FOOT UP.

Sorry, I have some bizarre fetishes.

2014-10-10 [Teufelsweib]: I think I do, but it's pretty small :/

2014-10-10 [Mortified Penguin]: That's okay, we can make it work. I'll bring some WD-40 and motor oil and we'll see how far I can get up there.

2014-10-10 [Teufelsweib]: ok :<

2014-10-10 [Sunrose]: Actually I've been accused of pandering to trolls for talking to you (by non-crew), whatever that means. Not like I have any choice as we can't get rid of you (I tried). So obviously it's impossible to make everybody happy.
If someone violates the rules the way you have done, it will be brought to the attention of the rest of the crew. They were things you actually did, so I don't understand how that's hearsay. You and I both know you could have been crew a long time ago if you had taken a different approach. You could for instance inform us about security issues, rather than letting us find out about them because you have actually abused them.

Wiki invites and forum invites don't count as a way of reaching out to people, I'd consider that spam :P

If activity is a skill, then yes Stephen is the most skilled one of the crew.

Then just fire me already haha, as mentioned before the amount of guard reports alone have resulted in a lot of enemies. Does that make me a bad crew member? xD

Do you have any crew suggestions, besides yourself?

2014-10-10 [Mortified Penguin]: It's hearsay when the conversation goes along the lines of:

Crewbie: What about Mort for crew? He seems active and knowledgeable.

Crew person #7: No, he won't work. He's caused too many issues.

Crewbie: Like what?

Crew person #7: I don't know, it was a long time ago. But I think he hacked Hedda and posted a list of passwords.

Crew person #§: Yeah, I remember hearing something about that. Didn't he also destroy Mainstreet and set fire to the Elftown well?

Crew person #7: Yeah, I think so. He's not to be trusted, apparently.

Crewbie: Whoa, I didn't know about all that! Thanks for letting me know!

Yeah, I did some stuff, but nobody ever gets it right. If I'm going to be hated and mistrusted, people should at least know what actually happened, not the version their friend heard from someone else a few years ago that they don't really remember that well. Actually, go ahead and call me out on the things you guys are under the impression I've done, so I can let you know if it was actually better or worse than what you think happened.

But I actually had listed you along with Stephen originally in that comment, but I deleted it, because I was only talking about the current crew.

As for the bugs and stuff, I always have let [Hedda] know almost immediately, just not anyone else. Then, while he takes two weeks to read my message, I play around with it and see what interesting things can be done with it until he fixes it.

And for crew suggestions, the ones I've recommended in the past have already been added or have declined to work for the crew, so I'm out of ideas except possibly that weird Turkey guy.

2014-10-10 [Mortified Penguin]: But the only way you people are getting rid of me is if Hedda personally bans me. I will respect no other banning as legitimate.

2014-10-10 [Mortified Penguin]: Also, I'm only a "troll" because that's the role I've been given to play on Elftown by everyone, despite my protests. Give me something else to act out if you want to see a different performance!

2014-10-10 [Sunrose]: Why don't you come clean and tell us everything you did in your own words? Takes a lot less time than collecting everyone's input :P
Not everything was years ago though, it's not like you have been a model citizen for years now :P

Hey I like you as a troll, maybe the role of a troll isn't even that bad =p

2014-10-10 [Sagacious Turkey]: I dunno, I've heard that Turkey guy once katnapped Lilo and bombed the Elftown Academy.

2014-10-10 [Sunrose]: Messaging Hedda and Hedda alone isn't the best approach, I think you could've figured that out by now :p
We do have the Elftown bugs forum, or you could have poked me, and I would have poked him if it was a serious thing.

Hey I supported one of your suggestions and was accused of power grubbiness. I mean seriously. How would adding someone to crew actually result in me having more power, if this person isn't exactly supportive of me personally. I was willing to put everything in the past, because at some point you just have to move on. But all I really got was a complaint about how Elftown looks, which isn't my fault..how am I supposed to fix it? :S

2014-10-10 [Mortified Penguin]: Already did: Let's let Mort be a crew member!. The crew just doesn't retain information all that well.

2014-10-10 [Sagacious Turkey]: Hey, I've been a pretty model citizen for the last half decade, since my seventh consecutive banning on this account alone! How many reports could I even possibly have acquired over the last few years? I barely talk to any of you jerks. And the troll pandering thing came from Paul over you unbanning me, I thought.

*bats some yarn around*

2014-10-10 [Sunrose]: Oh, well you two are kind of the same person to me...same category. It seems I unbanned you after 2,5 years of being banned. I don't really remember it though, it didn't leave an impression on me. I didn't even know people were (still?) upset about you :P
What did you do to him? I thought Mort was the asshole.
Well whatever, both of you are unbananable anyway, I only gave you your original house back.

Oh didn't know about this wiki. You're basically saying what I have been saying, but you already know that if you were in the forums :P

2014-10-10 [Mortified Penguin]: But I don't want to be a Turkey. D:

But no, of course I'm not in any of the forums! Though, you guys should stop just simply changing the passwords on some of them. That's not really going to cut it. And be glad I reported the forum bug where I could add myself to any forum! Had I not told Hedda about that one, nobody would have ever known and I'd still (allegedly) be in all of them.

2014-10-10 [Sagacious Turkey]: So, you seem to think that Mort could have already been on the crew had he just straightened up his act for a few years? Well, what about his better, who actually has? Not only that, but the things I did in the first place weren't really that bad. So why not Turkey? I know far more about Elftown than even Mort, but I've never abused that knowledge. In fact, give me a free pass without consequences and I'll tell you what every guard's password is in under a week to prove that I can, but simply have never done anything like that out of principle.

2014-10-10 [Sunrose]: I didn't know you were interested, I guess Mort was a whole lot louder than you about it :P

I never bothered to change it, if you were able to get it anyhow. Neither of you need to prove it to me.

2014-10-10 [Mortified Penguin]: "Principle".

2014-10-10 [Sunrose]: Hmm?

2014-10-10 [Sagacious Turkey]: "Corpse with stab wounds".

2014-10-10 [Mortified Penguin]: More like "Knife with Mort wounds"!

2014-10-10 [Sunrose]: Are these movie quotes or something? I don't get it :p

2014-10-10 [Mortified Penguin]: I was just mocking his use of the word "principle" to imply he's actually a slimy scumbag.

2014-10-10 [Mortified Penguin]: He then threatened me, like a slimy scumbag.

2014-10-10 [Sagacious Turkey]: I'm not slimy, I'm just scaley. Like the noble, majestic, trustworthy snake! And I'm not now, nor have I ever been a bag! Except that one time I became a bag for a few weeks. But that doesn't count for some reason.

2014-10-10 [Sunrose]: Oh wait now I see the last line he wrote and how you repeated that word. I didn't read that stuff into detail, sorry not sorry :P

2014-10-10 [Sagacious Turkey]: D:

2014-10-12 [Imperator]: So it seems that when Mort says something, [Sunrose] says, "yeah, but I'M not a dick!" while the rest of the Council hides from the correct and valid points Mort and others are making. Then the Council wonders why it has bad PR and blames the community. Is the Council capable of accepting responsibility for ANYTHING? Is Mort to blame for ET's failure? Clearly not. Is the Council to blame? Council says no. Is it Hedda? It has to be, who else if not the Council?

So where is the moral condemnation of Hedda for destroying the site? What I said a year ago is that the Council is the only group of users who could possibly create change by confronting Hedda! At risk of [Sunrose] telling me to stop bullying the poor, stressed, helpless Council: The Council should demand the flexibility from Hedda that is needed to fix the place. Every Council member should demand this ceaselessly until he relents. Call him out! The Council's failure to do this means it is also culpable for ET's demise. If he truly never would give in, all of you should resign and stick it to him! He can't keep this place alive without your contributions, right? That's POWER over him.

2014-10-12 [Sunrose]: I can only speak for myself, I don't know what everyone else does all of the time :P
Also, some consider me to be a dick as I can be very direct (which is considered a virtue in my country).

It's his website, he can do (or not do) as he pleases with it. Hedda was approached many times, as I already pointed out this is actually why some crew have quit here. Did you see any change in Hedda's response afterwards? It seems the inactivity only got worse in fact. I think we can simply conclude he doesn't care that much to invest his free time, and would rather spend his time on other things. Much like how many members have chosen to redefine their priorities.
To say that it is the Council's fault that we can't force his hand implies we have the right to do so. I don't know what you base this right on.
I understand your frustration, we all share it. But we have as much power over him as anyone else here.
Besides, personally I would want him to be happy. If he's not happy here, I'm not going to make him miserable.

2014-10-12 [windowframe]: while the rest of the Council hides from the correct and valid points Mort and others are making.

The rest of the council repeatedly tells everyone they mostly agree with them but can't do anything about it, but apparently people only accept an answer if it's the one they want to hear, so instead they just ignore what the council keep saying.

2014-10-12 [hanhepi]: Is Mort to blame for ET's failure?

No, of course not. Nor is it any one person. The fickleness of the internet is to blame I think. I don't even think people stopped loving us because we're kind of ugly. We were never all that big (by internet standards) to begin with. People got bored and moved on. That happens to a lot of sites, sites that were way bigger than we ever were. Myspace is a prime example. 

As far as no one else speaking up, Sunrose was doing a much nicer job of saying what I wanted to say. She's a lot better at diplomacy than I am, so unless I actually disagree with her, I'm usually pretty happy to let her do the talking. I'm not going to claim not to be a dick, because anyone who has ever interacted with me knows I'm mean as hell, with the vocabulary of a drunken sailor. I'm not a dick in the way Mort was talking about, but I am a dick. I like Mort! Even if he does accuse me of not being his friend. :P I even admire Mort... he's super smart, I like his sense of humor a lot of the time, he's even more stubborn than I am (and that isn't just a skill, that is art), and hell, even he has better diplomacy skills than I do. So yeah, I leave the talking to people who are better at it than I am, and fewer people come away hating me.

Other than that: what Sunrose said.

2014-10-12 [nehirwen]: Sometimes people get the feeling we're ganging up on them when multiple councilpeeps are reacting, it's a lot less messier when one person does the talking, so unless we disagree we keep quiet, not hiding. :)

2014-10-12 [Mortified Penguin]: I actually prefer when the entire crew comes at me at once. It just makes me look that much more awesome when I win the debate/battle to the death.

2014-10-12 [Imperator]: Well alright, so let's have the truth. Why is Hedda happily letting ET rot? What was his response to the Council members who approached him? Communicate with us lowly beings down here!

2014-10-12 [Sagacious Turkey]: Ever since he grew his hair out, he's been too busy with all the sex to pay any attention to his townsfolk.

2014-10-12 [Teufelsweib]: Last thing I heard was that he 'liked the site the way it is now' and did not find any modifications necessary :/

I believe that [iippo] contacted him on getting our own Heddate site, like Elfpack or Fake, except then we can adjust the code ourselves. So we can revamp the whole website and make it look squeaky clean again, and Hedda can keep Elftown the way it is. But didn't want that either, I believe :/

(though if anyone has heard anything else please correct me)

2014-10-12 [Teufelsweib]: Right now we're trying to clean up Mainstreet, to get rid of all the unnecessary links and clean it up a bit to make it look more approachable, but even that is taking months already -__- (needing Hedda's permission again I believe)

2014-10-12 [windowframe]: I'm pretty sure he also told me once that cleaning up coding and faffing around with the look is work he finds fairly boring, and he's much more interested in working on brand new features. But that's not what we need right now. :/

2014-10-12 [windowframe]: Going through some forum archives, other standard responses include: just ignoring the suggestion completely, and acknowledging something should probably work better but effects so few people so he cba.

Edit: The last posting by Hedda in the suggestions forum was 983 days ago. And I think the last thing he implemented was the ability to block wiki invites from members.

2014-10-12 [Sunrose]: Often he doesn't even get approached here, but through facebook/skype. And he'll say 'not right now' or 'I don't feel like it', to then never get back to it again. I recently asked him if he could change the entrance image (tired of seeing his face in the bushes), but he'd just talk over it about a different personal subject.

2014-10-12 [Mortified Penguin]: And I think the last thing he implemented was the ability to block wiki invites from members.

See, this is why I'm good for Elftown. I'm the only one getting [Hedda] to do things around here.

2014-10-12 [Imperator]: I just don't get why he doesn't allow someone else to do these extremely trivial changes, even something as mundane as the Main Street links... That he likes ET "the way it is" is such a cop out on his part. What does that even mean?

2014-10-12 [Sunrose]: Here's an example of one of the conversations I had, nothing of which was suggested has actually been worked on as far as I know (at least nothing was implemented or changed): HHWD.

2015-04-19 [Sunrose]: I'll repost something I wrote as a comment on that wiki:

A posting from 2,5 years ago from [Hedda]:
One thing to remember though is that I definitely say no to a total redesign. Changes must be made step by step, both for the sake of testing and for the users that can gradually adapt.
And I will not change something just because 51% think it's better that way... It has to be obvious improvements.

2015-04-20 [Mortified Penguin]: There is no such precedence in place for declaring that there is no winner (for the Christmas competition) and you (the crew) and I both know that if I weren't the one that was going to win almost every category, someone else would have been declared the winner instead of nobody. These constant slights against me are what perpetuates what you consider to be "trolling" on my part, whereas in reality, it's merely digital vigilante justice. Do you think it's beneficial to the site to declare that when not enough people enter that the entire contest will be shut down and nobody will be allowed to win? That's asinine and counter-intuitive and such actions will lead to further deterioration of Elftown and the exodus of its few remaining members. You're essentially declaring here that Elftown will, most likely, no longer be having official competitions. And if that's the case, you're basically signing Elftown's death warrant, because the official competitions have always been an integral part of the community.

What good will come of denying me what I'm owed? And what bad would come of allowing me to win? And if there is no bad, why not allow it? Why deny a simple reward for artistic contributions? And how does such a denial benefit Elftown for the greater good? If you cannot rationalize your actions, then I will assume they were made out of spite. And if that is the case, I will take matters into my own hands and claim what I'm owed by any means necessary. Thank you for your time. Have a nice day! :D

2015-04-20 [Mortified Penguin]: And while you're at it, I'm also owed a donor badge from many, many months ago. Pay up. And don't forget my fancy colors either.

2015-04-20 [Stephen]: Hm. Mort, so you know - you're not being ignored.
I'm just going to bring this up in the Council forum. :P

2015-04-20 [Mortified Penguin]: Alright, I'll check the forums shortly.

2015-04-20 [Flisky]: The contest should have been properly opened and posted and voted on in time. The past few have been very late. It's a bit disappointing.

2015-04-21 [Paul Doyle]: Even though Mort's entries were a tad inappropriate to the Elftown Remnant as a whole (though I personally had no issues with the charged/satirical content), there were no stated restrictions. So he does has a very valid point. And so does [Flisky]. Also, every time you have sitting council members winning various official contests, you are setting a very bad example, and discouraging even more people from entering. (This was similar to how Elfwood Moderators used to give themselves Mod's Choice on a regular frequent basis. Look what happened to Elfwood since then.) And let's not forget the contest-rigging. I got fed up and stopped entering years ago for these reasons.

When combined with some of the blatant contest-rigging that used to go on Elftown 5-10 years ago, no fucking wonder why these contests don't get more entries? This is something I mentioned years ago, but was made to look like some kind of crazy person with conspiracy theories. In retrospect, I am correct. I won't be smug about that, but it's gallows humor seeing Elftown in freefall because of the very things people have been complaining about since around 2005.

Knock off the nonsense and reboot this site. If not, put this site out of its misery, and "fttp" the stories and pictures so their rightful owners can reclaim them.

2015-04-21 [Stephen]: I agree with you on multiple points Paul, however:

What do we do about Council members entering contests? It's not very fair to say that anyone on the Council is disallowed from entering any official competition - I'm somewhat sure I'm the only totally non-artistic member of the Council, so I'd be the only one not being blocked out of one the favored aspects of the site. Since contest winners (exempting this contest in question) aren't at all controlled by the Council, I don't see a reason to say that Council members can't enter due to possible self-favoritism. As is being on the Council really isn't all that fun; we get blamed for a lot of things. x)

2015-04-21 [Mortified Penguin]: You need a wider variety of people on the council then to help prevent unintentional self-favoritism. Maybe a few more guys. Me and Pauly here could be guards. Until we go rouge and get gunned down taking down an art theft ring.

2015-04-21 [Stephen]: We don't need more Guards. :P We probably could use more Council, but the Guards we do have aren't very busy as is.

2015-04-22 [Sunrose]: The precedence is there now. It's not beneficial to Elftown to let a contest run forever, nor to announce winners on a Christmas theme in May.
Is it about the badge you feel cheated out of? I'm sorry you were disappointed, but would you not feel more proud of a badge if you had been challenged? The attempt to make it about you personally, makes your comment here seem more like an attempt at trolling though.

As the contest page of poetry explains; the entries are judged by the literary judges, which consist of both crew and non-crew. The entries are made anonymous before they read them on their voting-wiki.
If that is not considered enough to prevent favouritism, then you are suggesting crew can't compete. So crew should consist of people who don't care about participating in official contests, but still prioritize the artistic side of Elftown.

Considering we went from thousands of members to a few hundred, I think that is a far more valid explanation to why there are barely any entries rather than the accusations of contest rigging or crew favouritism.

I already suggested for Paul to be crew before, he's not interested unless we can force Hedda's hand to do an update. Besides, I'm on crew and despite me being open to start anew there's little chance he is too.
What are any new crewmembers going to do, that will save Elftown from going further down the toilet? Unless they can program Elftown, I'm pretty sure very little. I could be wrong though, I'd love to know :)

2015-04-22 [Sunrose]: PS. What donor badge are you missing, Mort?

2015-04-23 [Mortified Penguin]: Nobody said anything about the contest running forever, but what harm is there in rewarding the few of us who at least tried to enter for our merits? And if you attempt to set this precedence now, it will make members far less likely to put any effort into any future contest, knowing that most likely nobody will enter and there's no guarantee of a badge or any point to it at all. Besides, I never suggested leaving the competition open that long. Close them at the appropriate time, regardless of the amount of entries. If only one person enters or even if nobody enters, so what? There's no reason it can't be maintained to at least allow people the opportunity to still win and earn badges. Denying them that ability does nobody on the site any good.

The entries are made anonymous before they read them on their voting-wiki

That's all well and good, except that they can easily see who wrote what (and probably already will have once voting rolls around) by just viewing the contest wiki. And as you can see here (by reading the comments and looking at past page versions), they clearly know when it's a Mort original and when it's one of their own: hpdiscussion

The regular one. The one that costs real monies and comes with fancy colors.

2015-05-17 [JajaJulie]:

Poor Elftown. <3

2015-05-17 [Stephen]: In regards to the news article posted;

(Please note this is my personal opinion and doesn't mean I speak for every member of the Council. Don't take it as such.)

We really have no idea what to do. I don't believe some of you guys realize that, to be honest. It's true the Main Street features can go months without being updated, but that's because really no one seems to care about them. Contests don't get enough entries to even make up for the amount of time and debate it causes us to open and monitor them. We, the Council as a whole, want Elftown to succeed. I can say that for sure. You guys are the members, you guys are the ones we're trying to keep interested in the site and recruit more of. Besides graphics, which we cannot, at all, even slightly, control what do you guys think we should do? Without input - which we're really not getting much of overall, other than a few people making a point that the site's dying and things are going downhill, we're not going to be able to suddenly make a fantastic stab in the dark to fix anything.

2015-05-17 [kians mummy]: Find a sponsor and set your own website up that's more reliable but almost exact of elftown usage.

2015-05-17 [Stephen]: That's not very realistic. =P

It's easy to say, but we'd need a good hosting company, at least two well-versed web designers to start with and an entire team of people to add content to the site before we could even try to find members. Also, all of the content already on Elftown (existing friends, wiki-pages, messages, uploaded content, etc.) wouldn't be on the site nor would we really be able to transfer it easily.

At that price and amount of time/effort, you'd be better off just bribing Hedda to do the work on Elftown. xD

2015-05-17 [Mortified Penguin]: Make me vice mayor and I can guarantee Elftown's recovery.

2015-05-17 [Mortified Penguin]: Hell, I don't even need all the privs. Just the title and control of/loyalty from the remaining crew.

2015-05-18 [JajaJulie]: Honestly, I'm not sure there is much anyone can do.

If the person who created the site isn't willing to put forth the effort...or the desire to change the site for the better. It's kind of a losing battle.

Sure, everyone could try and recruit members. But the site is, for the most part, outdated. 

So, how are members supposed to suggest what to do? When the person who made the very site doesn't want to implement anything that seems to be suggested thus far?

At least, that's just what I have gathered from reading this wiki.

It just really seems like it all boils down to what [kians mummy] said, everyone bands together and somehow make a Elftown sister site. Or [Hedda] lets those who are remaining get their little hands on the site and allow us to make the changes.

Oooor, we all just kind of stay here, sitting around in a pow wow. Smoke some pipes, shoot da shit sort of thing. Talk about the good ol days. :3

2015-05-18 [Zab]: I still like Elftown as it is... not that it matters much since I'm never here anymore. Talking of the good old days seem fine to me :P And find someone enjoying the type od rp that kept me up for days on end.. I don't even know if I'd still like them.. oh, how we tortured our poor characters.. Sweet memories.

I think Elftowns best bet is to eliminate facebook.

2015-05-18 [Nioniel]: "Oooor, we all just kind of stay here, sitting around in a pow wow. Smoke some pipes, shoot da shit sort of thing. Talk about the good ol days. :3"

That's pretty much what we're down to. We don't have many active members, but we do have enough that we can make small changes based upon their feedback. We're willing to put in the effort to make this place fun (though obviously very different from how ET used to be) for the handful of people left.

So what do you come back for? What would you like to participate in? Silly competitions, goofy polls? We don't have many ideas, and we understand that you may not, either, but the least we can do is ask.

2015-05-18 [Mortified Penguin]: Some useful data: Elftown Survey

2015-05-19 [Stephen]: Some more concrete information on that:

Out of the 84 people who voted how active they were on site:
12 people voted 1/5 (14%)
17 people voted 2/5 (20%)
24 people voted 3/5 (29%)
17 people voted 4/5 (20%)
14 people voted 5/5 (17%)


Out of the 81 people who said what they think of the graphics:
18 people voted 1/5 (22%)
18 people voted 2/5 (22%)
30 people voted 3/5 (37%)
10 people voted 4/5 (12%)
5 people voted 5/5 (6%)


Out of the 81 people who said how often they use the wiki:
14 people voted 1/5 (17%)
15 people voted 2/5 (19%)
11 people voted 3/5 (14%)
9 people voted 4/5 (11%)
32 people voted 5/5 (40%)


Out of the 82 people who said how often they use the forum:
53 people voted 1/5 (65%)
14 people voted 2/5 (17%)
4 people voted 3/5 (5%)
2 people voted 4/5 (2%)
9 people voted 5/5 (11%)


Out of the 81 people who said how often they role-play:
31 people voted 1/5 (38%)
6 people voted 2/5 (7%)
7 people voted 3/5 (9%)
5 people voted 4/5 (6%)
32 people voted 5/5 (40%)


Out of the 82 people who said how often they PM others:
9 people voted 1/5 (11%)
17 people voted 2/5 (21%)
26 people voted 3/5 (32%)
17 people voted 4/5 (11%)
13 people voted 5/5 (16%)


Out of the 82 people who voted on the layout of Main Street:
21 people voted 1/5 (26%)
21 people voted 2/5 (26%)
26 people voted 3/5 (32%)
9 people voted 4/5 (11%)
5 people voted 5/5 (6%)


Out of the 82 people who voted on how often they enter art contests:
55 people voted 1/5 (67%)
17 people voted 2/5 (21%)
7 people voted 3/5 (9%)
3 people voted 4/5 (4%)
0 people voted 5/5 (0%)


Out of the 81 people who voted on how often they submit poetry:
52 people voted 1/5 (64%)
15 people voted 2/5 (9%)
6 people voted 3/5 (7%)
6 people voted 4/5 (7%)
2 people voted 5/5 (2%)


Out of the 80 people asked how often they submit photography:
59 people voted 1/5 (74%)
16 people voted 2/5 (20%)
3 people voted 3/5 (4%)
2 people voted 4/5 (3%)
0 people voted 5/5 (0%)


Out of the 77 respondents to how often they submit writing:
50 people voted 1/5 (65%)
18 people voted 2/5 (23%)
5 people voted 3/5 (6%)
1 people voted 4/5 (1%)
3 people voted 5/5 (4%)


Out of the 72 people asked how often they post diary entries:
28 people voted 1/5 (39%)
17 people voted 2/5 (24%)
16 people voted 3/5 (22%)
8 people voted 4/5 (11%)
3 people voted 5/5 (4%)


Out of the 73 people to respond how often they comment in a guestbook:
31 people voted 1/5 (42%)
18 people voted 2/5 (25%)
14 people voted 3/5 (19%)
8 people voted 4/5 (11%)
2 people voted 5/5 (3%)


Out of the 74 responses to how often Main Street is viewed:
25 people voted 1/5 (34%)
13 people voted 2/5 (18%)
16 people voted 3/5 (22%)
11 people voted 4/5 (15%)
9 people voted 5/5 (12%)



---

For the most part, no one is interested in entering any photography, art or writing contests. Also, other than a small handful of users, most of the forum-base is Crew.
Role-Playing seems to be popular - more or less. Members either tend to do it quite often or not at all, with little variation in between.
The graphics aren't nearly as hated as I had personally expected..

It looks like, without really doing much more time consuming cross-referencing, the majority of the members just hang out "quietly" with friends and aren't really involved in much else, outside their own little thing.

Important part down here if you skipped all the crap up there. :P

So to better phrase my question: Is there anything we can do that seems fun that will help people make new social connections on the site? Ideally also give new members a reason to stay, since it seems most of them end up lost and confused and then never log back on after a few days. We've had ideas of different types of contests that are much easier and more fun to enter and trying to focus more on the wiki / add more help and clarification to the wiki, but past that we don't have any ideas that I'm aware of. :P

2015-05-19 [Mortified Penguin]: Except my idea list I keep sending you! We need more collaborative contests. Probably something roleplay related.

2015-05-19 [Mortified Penguin]: And Amazon gift cards for winners of contests. And maybe free commissions too.

2015-05-19 [Zab]: Is there any way to easily find other roleplayers? Maybe creating/promoting some wiki for that could be a way to help new members that doesn't know what to do.

2015-05-20 [Stephen]: Yes, you've sent me an idea list Penguin. :P I'll have you know I not only read it, but I've brought up things you've mentioned to me to the Council. xD

[Zab] - We have Text Adventures, which is sort of like that. It was on Main Street, not sure if it still is. Even if it is, there's so many things on Main Street it's hard to notice any one thing. But yeah, that's as close as we have, to my knowledge.

2015-05-21 [hanhepi]: I have to say that Mort might be right, and some sort of collaborative roleplay-related contest might interest the most (active-ish) members (40% of them potentially) judging by the numbers.

And while I might regret this Mort, I don't suppose you'd be willing to send me that list of ideas?

Text Adventures is on Mainstreet, in the box right above the poll.

2015-05-22 [Mortified Penguin]: Here are some of the many suggestions from the last few years:

<sub><sup>"I would like to see a lot more information on wikis, like comment per day averages, the first time a particular person commented, who all has ever commented or edited, how many comments were made in a selected span of time, how many times someone has edited the wiki, how many times someone has commented, how many comments have been deleted, how many times that wiki has been linked to, and several other things that interest me. It would certainly help with the status reports at the end of the friscal year at Bob's Diner. Plus, I still want a wiki comment search function, so I can use keywords to find things in past comments."

"I would like to be able to comment on mainstreet news (daily poems, featured members, art, etc.) in a wiki/poll style comment box under each item, rather than having to post a thread in a forum to comment about something. Like have the box hidden (to keep mainstreet less cluttered) until someone clicks "comment on this".

Like this:

"

"Getting to use color tags on wikis would be nice. Just sayin'.

And also add a function that will let you send a message to a random, active member! This will serve to help people make new friends.

And a game of message tag would be fun. If... if anyone wants to play. Or hide and go seek in the wikis."

"We should be able to see the most active wikis, or the wikis with the most comments, or the most watched wikis, or the wikis with the most page versions, or the last edited wikis, or the last commented on wikis, or the oldest and newest wikis... or a lot of other things involving wikis... I need to know these things..."

"I must suggest once more that a chess function be added. One that's kind of like a wiki-poll that anyone can simply add to a wiki by typing <chess> or something... And then, any two people can join the game. I'm telling you... it'd be fun! We could even have tournaments! And it would attract new people to Elftown (maybe)...

Perhaps something like this:

"

"New members should receive an automatically generated message that links them to stuff like official competitions, now, and maybe guides. The message should mention things like forums, wikis, polls, diaries, and give a link to some kind of help or FAQ wiki. Give them something to stick around for."</sup></sub>

2015-05-22 [Mortified Penguin]: Admittedly, most of these aren't possible without [Hedda]'s help though. I know there are others that don't require [Hedda], but I don't remember where they were suggested at. Make [Stephen] look for them!

2015-05-22 [Mortified Penguin]: Here's some others:

[810925]
_{^{Instead of having contests that pit members against one another in various areas, how about having some sort of collaborative event or project that unites the community? Maybe a collaborative piece of art, where everyone in the community can add their own flare. Or possibly an Elftown themed comic, where members could add new panels onto a page to continue the storyline (I would of course be willing to moderate it, having made many comics in my life and being a self-proclaimed expert on the subject). Perhaps even a sort of round-robin story could be composed by Elftowners, updated by whoever would want to further the story (which would be mostly me with amazing plotlines and excellent storytelling). I guess that would almost be a roleplay, but not necessarily. It could also be a competition to see who can write the best part/paragraph/chapter of the story. Or maybe there could be some kind of team based game, to get members who might not usually interact to form life long friendships with new people over strategy and domination of other members!}}

[808911]
<sub><sup>How about we make an official contest where members get to design their own Elftown badge from a template and, possibly, describe what it would be for if it were official. At the end of the contest, there would be a public poll to determine the winner and we could turn the winner's badge into an official one with their permission.

Also, on the subject of badges, maybe we could start allowing unofficial badges in badge slots, like the ones I made for Chess Tournament. It would be great for members who make their own contests as well as those who enter them and might even inspire others to start making contests as well, which would be very beneficial to the community and inspire a lot of much needed creativity.</sup></sub>

[808908]
_{^{But the only reason for the application system in the first place was Turkey making infinite clones. Why not just do away with it now, as he is unbanned and hardly comes here? It serves no real purpose anymore. It just makes potential Elftowners wait several days to be able to view the site, which causes them to quickly lose interest. The internet and television have made this generation insanely ADD and fickle and until people are able to instantly join Elftown (not through the stupid invite process), we will continue to decline until there's only one new app every other month or so from someone who forgot they had already sent an application two months prior.}}

2015-05-22 [Mortified Penguin]: How likely would [Hedda] be to implement slight changes, such as adding that chess function (assuming someone else did all the coding for him and all he had to do was copy and paste)?

2015-05-22 [Mortified Penguin]: I wonder how successful a contest contest would be, where we have a contest where people submit contest ideas that they would like to see and at the end, we all vote on the best idea and the implement the winner as a new official contest...

People should also be able to submit their own contests and wikis for approval for official status. Like Death Poetry Competition or something. If it's submitted and the crew decides it could work as an official wiki, the owner could then be badged and the wiki could be advertised on Mainstreet and participants could then get official badges for entering.

2015-05-23 [hanhepi]: Sorry, thought it was going to be a simple copy/paste the message you sent [Stephen]. lol . Well, thanks for making it small so it eats up less of the page.

That first group I have no idea how to even implement. Like you said, they pretty much take him to do. But they are all pretty good ideas.

I still really like the collaborative event idea, I remember seeing it in the forum. Hmmm. Maybe that could get done. If we could get people to participate.

2015-05-23 [Mortified Penguin]: That's what the Amazon gift card is for.

2015-05-23 [Nioniel]: Who's providing the gift cards?

2015-05-23 [Mortified Penguin]: [Stephen].

2015-05-23 [hanhepi]: Good deal, as long as it isn't me or Nio footing the bill, I say we go for it. *snort*

2015-05-24 [Nioniel]: True that.

2015-05-28 [Velvet Muzzle]: What I find odd is that the remaining members aren't more connected. You'd think that with only a few of us left, we'd all be more social with one another. An effort to unify the remaining members may help activity. Lastly, the random house suggestions should be made up of active members, not people who haven't logged in for 10,000 days.

2015-05-30 [Stephen]: Hedda will make slight changes, he's already said he will. However, I don't know how prompt he will be nor what he defines as small. :P

---

Community based contests sound fun. Also, the idea for a contest based on suggesting a contest also sounds fun. We could give a Builder's badge to the person who wins, since that kind of goes in theme anyway.

---

Elfpack has a "contractor's office" where members can submit self-created pages as long as they're in some way community-minded (RP's, contests, etc. Not photo galleries or something.) and the page gets labelled recommended - kind of like a Council stamp of approval. Pages would get put in the Main calendar and the creator gets a badge. (There's a "Volunteer" badge there for non-Council members who still help tend to official things / make recommended pages. We could have a "Design the Volunteer Badge!" contest, or something to that effect?

---

Hedda will NOT remove the application system. I've tried. Actually, Elftown gets a decent amount of spam-bot registrations anyway, so I can't really blame him for not wanting to remove it.

---

We have so few new members atm that the Guides could just send new members a message upon approval. Or the Guard who approves them could. We do that on Elfpack, it seems to help keep newbies there.

---

I can see if Hedda is willing to add a comment box on the articles themselves. I think I mentioned that before and didn't get a response, but I may be wrong.

---

I don't want to buy Amazon Gift Cards, sorry ~ although I might be willing to from time to time. I did that with a few things on Elfpack. We can also offer donor status (colors in house) as contest rewards. At least we do on all the other sites, so I imagine we can here.

---

Velvet - Random Member shouldn't display inactive members, ever. If it is, there's something wrong with the search.
Also, I really like the idea of something to get the community to socialize more. I just have no idea what we'd do. xD

2015-06-02 [Hutch]: There is a gigantic community of roleplayers on the internet, complete with databases that categorize and advertise other RPs. I mostly came to Elftown to RP. &&I've noticed from joining other RPs that contests and writing submissions were secondary to the games, but an active part of the community as well. Maybe reaching out to these databases to get will more foot traffic, but I'm not sure about keeping people.

Most successful sites have a very warm opening community and I've always seen Elftown as meeting people in the elftown breeze! Though once linking up with them we stayed fairly close on the site with our activities.

I'm surprised there is resistance to changing the graphics to the site. Other than moving some links around, what is really being done to let people know what elftown is about? What is being used to entice people to come and stay?

I was on here years and years ago, and I can find very few changes. Sure I love Elftown, but if I were to come across it fresh right now? It would look dead and abandoned to me, and 80 or so active members is NOTHING to snort at! Elftown's gotta grow and adapt!

2015-06-15 [Sagacious Turkey]: I hereby declare myself Elftown's interim mayor.

You probably think I'm joking.

But just try and stop me.

2015-06-16 [Sagacious Turkey]: Since nobody tried to stop me, I would like to go ahead and retire as mayor. Please give me my retired mayor badge and priv 0. Also, I think [Hedda] is missing his retired mayor badge too.

2015-06-17 [Mortified Penguin]: Yeah, yeah. I'll priv you later.

Anyway, how about an invite contest? Where the person who invites the most new members (NOT CLONES) over the span of, let's say, a month, gets a FIFTY DOLLAR AMAZON GIFT CARD. Not provided by me.

I'm only providing one for Chess Tournament, because nobody can actually beat me, so I'll never have to actually give anyone anything. Don't get me wrong, if by some miracle some genius comes along and can actually beat me, then I'll definitely give them a $50 card. Not that they'll need it, considering they'd have to be a savant or something with an IQ of 200+... but yeah. Nobody will beat me. Ever. Especially not [Stephen]. So if any of you guys have a friend that's great at chess and you think they stand a chance, by all means, invite them to Elftown and let them have at it. It's $50, nobody can turn that down! NOBODY. ESPECIALLY NOT [Stephen].

2015-06-17 [hanhepi]: I'm not sure anyone could beat you at the invite contest either.
$50 is a heck of a prize. In order to get that much money to use on a gift card, I'd have to beat you at the chess tournament...

2015-07-10 [Stephen]: I've had a busy month. :P

How about I beat Mort at his Chess Tourney and then use this imaginary 50 dollar card as the prize for the invite contest? o:

2015-07-10 [Mortified Penguin]: HOW ABOUT I BEAT YOU WITH A 2X4 IN THE PARKING LOT AND USE YOUR INTESTINES AS STREAMERS AT THE PARTY I THROW TO CELEBRATE YOUR BRUTAL, YET HILARIOUS, DEATH? o:<

2015-08-12 [Mortified Penguin]: I still need my donor badge, if there's any crew members left.

2015-09-16 [Stephen]: Is there a badge you're deserving?

2015-09-16 [Mortified Penguin]: [Hedda] already took care of it.

2015-09-18 [kians mummy]: Wow captain of the Guards has not been seen for 182 days....

2015-09-18 [kians mummy]: And another around 214 whats going on?

2015-11-16 [Stephen]: Not much Guardwork to do at the moment. :)

2015-11-24 [kians mummy]: I see tis is going down hill to, this is bad :(

2015-11-24 [Alexi Ice]: I feel like it's fine. ET has been quiet:dead for...a year or two now? If one day the community miraculously revives itself, great. There are enough of us left to do the work. If not that's cool too and those of us who are around can continue doing what we do (for me submitting poetry and posting in my RPG's. the decline of ET is sad but not very surprising. It's not near what it was when I joined fifteen or so years ago. And I don't see that changing anytime soon.

If you want to help try seeing how many people are here and what they want/are interested in. Maybe make a wiki and do some polls on your own. See what you can drum up.

Or go enjoy a meal at Bob's Diner?

Maybe you could make your own photo or contest of some kind? There is a lot you can do here on ET without worrying about things we can't or simply won't change. So go out and have some fun.

2015-11-24 [Mortified Penguin]: Elftown Survey.

2015-12-11 [Alexi Ice]: Christmas Competition - Up and running. Deadline Feb. 1 2016

2015-12-11 [Yuriona]: Sweet. :)

2016-06-23 [Alexi Ice]: If any council is still active I posted a question in the forum.

2016-06-30 [Mortified Penguin]: I know, I know. I'll get to it soon.

2017-09-01 [Killopkie]: bump

2017-09-07 [Q_Q]: Is fake down???

2017-11-17 [Imperator]: *Listens carefully, hears nothing...
Peeks over the top of the trench into no-man's land, stand up, waits a moment...
Crawls out of the trench, looks around, spreads arms wide and screams into the sky:
"I CAN POST UNRELATED COMMENTS WITHOUT BEING REPRIMANDED!!"

2017-11-17 [Mortified Penguin]: Please keep this comment section free for official business. Don't make me ban you.

2017-11-17 [Yuriona]: O_o

2017-11-20 [Alexi Ice]: Thanks for helping, Mort lol

2017-11-20 [Imperator]: Don't thank him! He might come back if you do that!!

2017-11-21 [Yuriona]: There's no harm in thanking Mort. He tends to come back no matter what we do really.

2017-11-21 [Mortified Penguin]: *brutally stabs Alexi*

2017-11-21 [Yuriona]: All right now that's just uncalled for. *brutally stabs Mort*

2017-11-21 [Imperator]: "If someone jumped off a cliff would you follow them over the edge?!" *brutally stabs self*

2017-11-22 [Mortified Penguin]: *Hamlet brutally stabs Laertes before succumbing to his own brutal stab wounds*

*the two collapse on the increasingly large pile of bodies lying about*

2017-11-22 [Mortified Penguin]: *[Yuriona] is crowned the new king of Denmark*

2017-11-22 [Yuriona]: O_o

2017-11-23 [Imperator]: *[Yuriona] immediately goes about consolidating power by eliminating potential rivals and implementing draconian laws on the peasantry*

2017-11-24 [Yuriona]: Rivals tend to eliminate themselves and implementing draconian laws is far too much effort since laws require enforcement. Its better to delude the populace into adoring you so they willingly do whatever you want them to.

2017-11-24 [Alexi Ice]: *Bows to King Yuriona while slowly bleeding to death*

2017-11-24 [Mortified Penguin]: Don't you just love it when rivals eliminate themselves?



*Mort's death, despite the stab wounds being in the back of the head, is ruled a suicide*

2017-11-24 [Imperator]: "Despite" is a very biased word, Mort. I expect you to keep this kind of racist language off of Elftown in the future. If you can't keep your bigotry to yourself, [Yuriona] will reconsider those draconian laws.

2017-11-25 [Mortified Penguin]: #notmyking

2020-08-17 [Alexi Ice]: What keeps changing

2020-08-17 [Yuriona]: Public opinion.

2020-08-23 [Sunrose]: Haha x) @[Yuriona].

2020-08-23 [Yuriona]: