Alright, guys. I know that many members of Horse Mountain have become inactive, and I'm not saying that this is acceptable, but I sure as hell don't blame you. School has started for me and I'm sure several current members are also starting a new year. We have also recently lost a very important member of the site for quite a long time. But I see no reason why, when she gets back, the site should not have grown and improved! This is why I will, in the near future, be making a few minor changes to how things are run on Horse Mountain, as well as launching a massive advertising campaign in order to get more traffic to the site.
The minor changes will be mostly activity-oriented, meaning trying to get members to post and contribute to the site as often as possible. Activity checks will begin, probably bi-annually until we get more members. Activity checks for the players of lead stallions will be more often.
The first thing that will occur under this new regime is an activity check of all the players of lead stallions. This activity check will most likely begin on Monday, October 4
th, and will last one week. The reason for this is that I am considering changing some of the territory boards because a few are very similar or a bit uninteresting, and I need to know which players of lead stallions will be active enough that that they will be affected by these changes.
When this activity check ends, the claiming posts of all the stallions whose owners did not will be deleted and the territories will be changed/made available for other stallions to claim.At the same time a two-week-long activity check will begin for
all members. Anyone who does not post in this thread will have their account deleted and their posts and characters moved to the archives.
An email will be sent to all members to notify them of these activity checks."Minor changes" also includes lengthening of seasons. I posted a poll more than two weeks ago about this, and so far I am the only one who has voted or posted. I take this to mean that no one but me cares, so I'll be locking that topic and going ahead and lengthening seasons to four weeks. This will likely occur within the next week.
For the ad campaign, I will be creating an advertisement for the site and posting it all over the internet. After that brings the site a few active members I might consider launching an affiliation campaign.
I would greatly appreciate any effort than any members with extra time on their hands would put into helping out with advertising. Said members might even be awarded some goodies for their characters. ^^
This is just a heads-up; neither the "minor changes" to the running of the site nor the ad campaign have begun yet. They will both (except for the lead stallion activity check) occur after I add sub-boards to territories, which is discussed in
this thread. I would like to remind the players of lead stallions that the deadline to get the descriptions of their requested sub-boards in is
Friday, October 1st, although I might extend this deadline if activity picks up at all by then.
One more thing: I know that Hfgsyrox appointed many members as staff because they are her friends in person. I'm afraid that these admin powers will be revoked immediately, since Horse Mountain is not yet so large that it is in need of more than one active staff member.
Keep your eyes on the horizon for announcements pertaining to the topics discussed above!
Thank you for taking the time to read this announcement, and I hope that every member will do their utmost to improve, activate, and grow Horse Mountain.
Your admin,
forte
