The future of PPT

[ZH!]

So, I was perusing the Internet when I decided to check and see how PPT was doing these days, and what do I see?

The most recent miscellaneous topic is about the disarray of the forums, and it's five days old.

I haven't been around since I was maybe 15, and I stopped playing Neopets not long after. However, when I sunk into severe depression a couple months ago, I started playing again. Because PPT was so important to me when I was most active on Neopets back in 2003, I was hoping to find another community outside of the actual site.

There was none to be found.

The demographics have changed -- when I was active, I knew people on here from 11 to 30 and older with various interests and backgrounds. Now, it seems as if it's only annoying kids or wives with too much money to blow that are hanging around on the Neoboards.

It's frustrating. I would love to find a community to get involved with again, but there isn't one with the maturity and activity that PPT once had. Without PPT, I never would've learned Photoshop or had the great conversations I did (some of which continued for years). It's sad to see that most of the ol' gang has moved on, but if there's potential to create a new thriving community, I'd gladly become a part of it.

Neopets isn't the community-building site it used to be, and it's important to acknowledge that. I like the idea of emailing members with a friendly reminder -- maybe to announce a new forum format, less Neo-centric and with more general discussion?

[Blue]

The demographics have changed -- when I was active, I knew people on here from 11 to 30 and older with various interests and backgrounds. Now, it seems as if it's only annoying kids or wives with too much money to blow that are hanging around on the Neoboards.

It's frustrating. I would love to find a community to get involved with again, but there isn't one with the maturity and activity that PPT once had. Without PPT, I never would've learned Photoshop or had the great conversations I did (some of which continued for years). It's sad to see that most of the ol' gang has moved on, but if there's potential to create a new thriving community, I'd gladly become a part of it.

Assuming you mean the Neopets Boards on PPT, I rather resent that remark. I am none of those.

PPT has become rather stagnant of late, and it is rather frustrating. Several of us have made multiple posts per day goals, only to find ourselves as the only posters. If more people such as yourself were to post regularly, this community could come back and could increase in activity. Over the last several months, I can easily name the small handful of people who post regularly. In days past, I could not. These are not those days.

Siniri challenged everyone to post at least three times per day in various topics to generate some traffic. It worked for a short while, but again, the same people are here. We simply need more people such as yourself to come back and post regularly. True, some great people have left, moved on, etc., but there are plenty of people who can contribute and make PPT active again. If you would like to "do your part", all it takes is for you to post regularly. It will make a difference.

[Mongrel]

I'm sorry. For a forum to keep going, it has to have a reason for people to join and stay.
First there was the site. The main site is now essentially useless. Most of it has been useless for years; the news posts generated something, but not much, and now they're dead. Other subsections survived for a while, and some still do. But there's nothing bringing people to PPT.
Unfortunately, the forum stagnation began a long time ago. The problem, in my opinion, rested on the lack of new blood on forum staff. We needed mod applications to be opened at least once a year, not sporadically every few years. The 2007 hirings were desperately needed (it had been something like three years since new mods were hired?) and by the end of the year half of them were gone. The moderators chosen were all wonderfully competent people, but many if not most of them were about to graduate high school and go off to university. They didn't have time to devote to both postsecondary education and as much modding as PPT requires. But we didn't hire more mods to help; instead, as each mod drifted to work on their studies, the mods who remained had to do more and more work, making their time on PPT more task-related and giving them less reason to enjoy spending their time on PPT, furthering their own drift from PPT and worsening the problem. People who have to spend half an hour on moderating duties every time they visit aren't necessarily in the best frame of mind to encourage discussion. And if you're bringing in ten or twelve new people a year, there's more chance that 1) people will stick around in hopes of being made mods and 2) someone on staff will prove to be dedicated and competent enough to be promoted to GM or forum admin.
There's a lot that went on "politically" around the time of the last round of mod hirings, most of which I'm not supposed to talk about. But a lot of people quit PPT completely who were doing more for the forum's member retention than the admins were at that point. I'm not one of them, but I did leave with them. And now there's not anything to bring people here or keep them here.
It's time to move on, guys. This forum is a lost cause.
EDIT: And having to try to post several times before the post successfully goes through doesn't help.

[Bob]

I've sent Shoyru an email. I didnt realise it had to got to this as I haven't been here for ages. If he lets me, I will make this place what it was when I was Admin.

[Carson]

I've sent Shoyru an email. I didnt realise it had to got to this as I haven't been here for ages. If he lets me, I will make this place what it was when I was Admin.

I hope he doesn't let you. You are an idiot.

[Bob]

And what are you basing this sweeping generalisation on Carson?

[DM was on fire!]

I hope he doesn't let you. You are an idiot.

Broseidon, you don't know who Bob is, so I'd be quiet if I were you.

[Helena]

I still stay adamant on the view that PPT cannot go back to how it was - Neopets just doesn't seem to be a great topic anymore. If we want the site to stay alive, stuff has to change. It's no use if the same people are posting in the same threads, there's no new activity. Even if someone were to stumble onto the forums because they found an interesting thread through Google or whatever, they'd probably be at least a little put off by the amount of dead Neopets boards. It seems to me - or at least, this is how it is in my case - that most of the once-active members have left or drifted away for one reason or another, and a lot of the people still here are mostly just here out of want to get the site back in it's feet. To be absolutely honest, when I click on "Unread Posts", I see a wall of purple (the mods trying their hardest to inject some life back into this place), some Neopets-related topics with one or two posts, and then a couple of the classic threads (What Are You Listening To, Linked Song Title Game etc.), which have lots of posts, but aren't exactly great material for getting new members

Also, I agree with Moonie Mongrel about the mod issue. Now, I'm not saying our current mods aren't awesome, but keeping the staff fresh will probably raise chances of them all being active.

tl;dr FRESH MEAT, we need it.

[DM was on fire!]

I could consider coming back if someone added me to staff.

lololol

[Plastic Ninja]

I've sent Shoyru an email. I didnt realise it had to got to this as I haven't been here for ages. If he lets me, I will make this place what it was when I was Admin.

I hope he doesn't let you. You are an idiot.

My, my. Flaming on PPT. If nothing else, I think this shows how bads it's getting. Back in the day, the mods would have had your tail -_-

Not that I haven't had my share of screw-ups, but still.

[Blake]

And then I come back here to see that this place hasn't changed at all. What a disappointment.

[ZH!]

Assuming you mean the Neopets Boards on PPT, I rather resent that remark. I am none of those.

I meant the Neoboards on Neopets. Sorry, that came out wrong.

[DM was on fire!]

I'd rather PPT be dead than the NeoBoards be on PPT.

Look, I'm going to come right out and say this. You know that saying "it takes a village to raise a child?" The child is PPT. The village is it's members; but right now, we're a little more like a town council.
Even before that...er, whatever it was, was nearly the entire site left (I like to refer to it as the rage of glory), PPT was a shadow of itself -- but we were all here. We got along with each other. We were active.
Now look. Who's active? The girl who said she was going to leave yet can't seem to, a few mods, Helena. That's it. Not even the head administrator is active. As far as he's concerned, if it doesn't have anything to do with BitWire, he could give a damn.

We either need to get in touch with everyone who used to come to PPT, whether they were on the one side or the other. We either need to have a revival, or we need to let the site go out with a bang.
And if we go with the latter; just so we're clear, this isn't a bang. This is more like that little fizzling sound fireworks make after the bang.

[Helena]

The girl who said she was going to leave yet can't seem to
[...]
We either need to get in touch with everyone who used to come to PPT, whether they were on the one side or the other. We either need to have a revival, or we need to let the site go out with a bang.
And if we go with the latter; just so we're clear, this isn't a bang. This is more like that little fizzling sound fireworks make after the bang.

You love us too much. That six years of lulziness will haunt you forever. ;|
And I agree wholeheartedly with the rest. We need to tell people that we're trying to do something about it. If I didn't visit as much as I do now, my glancing around at the site, I'd think it was completely dead.

[May]

It's nice to see that there are still people here who care. For those of you wondering why this place is so dead, I urge you to take a few minutes to look through the forum staff listing and see when the last post is from staff, especially administrators. There are a few staff members who are doing a great job trying to keep this place alive, and I tip my hat to you. The higher management needs to show some spirit and that they still care about this place, which is the reason a lot of us left over a year ago. Some people have apparently still not gotten the message that you need people at the top who give a darn.