We really are dead here, aren't we? Who's up for a challenge?

[donteatpoop]

I'm forwarding this to the WWE.

[PabNubAddinna]

We really are dead here arent we Whos up for a challenge

An amazing read, it goes to show how much the WWE can benefit from this, not only at a business standing point, but a creative one also. This should go in the LB, <3 for John Cena.

[Cat2000]

Could be interesting to try. I've still got this thing to try and work on, though...

[End Master]

It was originally DEP's idea, but I think the only way that would get off the ground would be if everyone individually wrote a story about the section that world they contributed, rather than a true collaboration.

Chubby would've written a story about the island chain that embraced slavery, Usoki would write about his underground city, I'd write about the Xolan Empire, etc.

You'd get about five stories set in the same "world" but they'd still be individual works. Nobody would need to worry about the stories matching/intersecting/contradicting or whatever. You could even say the stories are told from different points of view, so you'd get a different tale anyway. (Hell Star Wars & Star Trek contradict their "canon" all the time, if its good enough for them, its good enough for us)

Maybe this wouldn't be a bad idea for next year's contest.

[Usoki]

Oh, that's been in the ropes for years. I think we're all just collectively too lazy. It's a fascinating concept, but we're all to lazy to sit down and write it. I mean, in a lot of ways, it's really more of a campaign setting than a story setting. It'd take a lot of work to pull off right, and well... we all have other projects with a higher priority.

[Ryan_DuBois]

We'd certainly need Sev if we want to get a bunch of new members, but the more I think about it, the less I think I'd want that. There's a lot of nice things about having a small forum community, where you know all the personalities and can keep up with the fresh work being thrown out there.

It'd just be cool to have more writing and critiquing going on.

By the way, what ever happened to that huge ass story everyone was supposed to participate in? The one where Chubby made the world map?

[Cat2000]

lulu.com is a self-publishing site that's free, since printing is included in the price of the book. As far as I can tell, you can pay a bit extra so that it can be advertised on places like amazon. It's a good site - I'm just lazy when it comes to finishing things

[End Master]

Heh, never heard of that place before now. As far as writing goes though, I've always sort of just done this more as a hobby and fun rather than any serious idea of making a living at it.

I'll definitely let Katie know about this site though, since she's always been a little more motivated with getting published (regular stories) more than I have.

[Cat2000]

Theoretically, you could still get CYOA books published, and it's something I've been considering doing on lulu.com and calling them interactive stories. Something to think about, perhaps?

[End Master]

Look at CYS, Fictionpress, or any other writing site out there. They have just as many bad and unfinished stories as we do - more - but with a better online presence and more visitors, simple odds and statistics eventually turn up the good writers that form the cornerstones of those communities.

The catch is with those, (other than CYS) is those are "regular writing sites". The whole CYOA style isn't ever going to be really popular. (Writing wise anyway, just reading it is a different matter) CYS doesn't really have a bigger online presence so much as it just has a functional forum so new people can actually post on there. If anything we're still more "popular" than CYS since we allow for incomplete stories here and the writing engine is quicker and easier to use.

My guess is too that there's also a lot of people on those other writing sites that fall into two major categories: One, people who believe that they'll get published one day and two, people who are in love with their favorite characters on TV/movies and write crappy fanfiction. (Though they may have delusions of publication as well)

Now the people in category one are going to think of a single concept for a story and want to write it from beginning to end and not ponder different alternate realities of their own story. The CYOA style just isn't profitable anymore unless you count the actual CYOA books and they pretty much got the market covered (as well as establishing the CYOA market as a "children's field") Most people who believe themselves to be "serious writers" would find the style to be a waste of their time, so they wouldn't come here anyway or they'll come for awhile and then leave.

As for the fanfiction category people, well the less we have of them the better since we've already got our share of those that are also into the CYOA style.

All that aside, last time I checked we still had several people joining, posting new stories, adding on to old ones, and even rating them. So even with the current broken state of the site, we're still getting around the same amount of participants as we ever did, which is sort of amazing all things considered. The IS "community" has never really been big since most new people didn't post on the forums when they used to work anyway.

As for apathy, well it's always sort of existed here too, but I don't know what really can be done on our end since as you mentioned the site's main problems are more technical in nature.

I still like this site and all and I'm not leaving anytime soon, but personally, I feel I've pretty much done my bit for "king and country" as far as the site goes. I think I've already written enough stuff on here which if going by the current ratings, people don't believe it totally sucks, so I'm guessing it improves the quality of reading material around here.

I've made an effort of telling others about this site on various other forums and making sure they don't delete the link to this place at wikipedia.

As far as "community spirit" stuff, I'm sure I don't give as much feedback as others, but that's mainly because I'm not very good at it. I usually like something or I don't, I don't really have any deeper constructive criticism than that. However, I have tried to help new people when they posted questions and participated in all the contest events. (So far)

I used to donate a yearly sum of money to the site, but I didn't this year. Really why should I bother now, if the current site isn't even being up kept? While I'm sure that may seem petty to some on my part, but hell I've got more important things in the real world I could better spend my money on that gets tangible results.

I mean really, the ball is in Sev's court. At this point just fixing the bugs and problems of our current site would probably be more helpful than trying to create a new one which seems like it'll never get done.

[Cat2000]

Yes, I do remember you... Unfortunately, I can't actually remember which of your stories (if any) I've read. I'll have to check out your new one(s) in the next couple of days.

And, Locke? I agree with what you're saying - but I also think we can get more people into the site by advertising ourselves - like by sending links to some of the good stories, for instance. I think originally, we did have something like that - but it fell into disuse

[Ryan_DuBois]

Oh yeah, that's right. You probably remember me better as YazZMaN, and that's the name all my stories are still written under.

You could have read ExShin back when I had it public, but I think that's the only quality work I released back in the day (When Zombies Attack is my best friend's writing). Right now I've got a story called Quelnine, which is public and the beginnings of two short horror stories, which aren't, but which I think you can still find a link to some way or another.

[Locke]

Though I've historically contributed little in the way of actual material to IS, it would be great to see the site come back from this long hibernation. The absolute best way to do that involves Sev, or someone, finishing the new Infinite Story site and getting us some hits from the search engines. That may be wishful thinking at this point, but I see it as a completely necessary part of the solution; when's the last time we had someone involved and active join the community? We've run off a couple of newbies, true, but with MRH as a possible exception, none of them were willing or capable of contributing much, anyway. Look at CYS, Fictionpress, or any other writing site out there. They have just as many bad and unfinished stories as we do - more - but with a better online presence and more visitors, simple odds and statistics eventually turn up the good writers that form the cornerstones of those communities.

Once we start getting more hits on the site, particularly at the beginning, we do bear some responsibility as core members for keeping them here with actual decent writing, but the real problem is one of inertia. Simply put, nobody at IS believes anyone else cares. That's probably as true of Sev as of the rest of us; he likely sees little to gain from finishing up the site, considering the size and current activity level of the community. It's a cycle of complete apathy, and we are perpetuating it, but the most important aspects of any attempt to break out of this rut and get some positive inertia going are, at least for the moment, out of our hands.

We have a number of really good pieces here at IS; though none of us likes the ratio of these to the bad, pointless and unfinished ones, there have always been enough to keep the site respectable. I think comparatively few people actually see them right now, though. The main site has been pretty much permanently broken for over a year. As a writer (if, as previously mentioned, a historically noncontributing one), I find I have even less motivation to try anything here when I feel like it won't get read. "Ninja Lengend" (yes, that is how the author spelled it) has as many hits as "Country from Hell" because it happened to be on the front page when everything froze. If you still have questions about the quality of that story, here's a link: http://www.infinite-story.com/story/3495/

Sev, we've kept the candle burning for quite awhile; through last year, the fact that others here on the forums cared about one another's work kept us moving and writing, in part because we were all convinced that, while the site had issues, there was still someone at the helm legitimately trying to solve them. I don't think anyone actually believes that anymore, and that lack of faith and motivation has been necessarily self-reinforcing among the core members, to the point that, as I said near the beginning of this post, nobody cares because nobody else cares.

We can all promise to do more and try to write the CYOA version of War and Peace. We've tried to rally before around that sort of thing, and continue to do so with the annual contest, at least, though I'm sure many of you feel, as I do, that even that's about to go. At best, those attempts only caused a momentary uptick in our own output, before things died down again. I still care, and I'm willing to pledge my part in the solution, but if any of you want to break the cycle and make IS good again, I think the website itself has to improve for any of our efforts to have a sustainable effect.

[Cat2000]

Hehe.

Btw... Where's your work?

Ryan, I mean. Or am I just totally not with it and have already read your work?

[Ryan_DuBois]

Well... it's better than nothing, I guess.

"I hereby swear to give feedback, in some shape or form, on any new works posted by any regular forum members (except Megaman), as long as I'm aware that the work exists... Unless I leave the site again or Sev comes back and we get like 500 forum members or something."

Let's hope this works.