... publicly....

Quite rightly, too. I am no worse than ever though (if anything, just the opposite,) and would welcome a few (or lot) more contributions from others, not solely or even primarily to make my own less prominent. In that respect I did not mind my recent temp job cutting into online time, because I was concerned I might have been drowning out people who would be more active in my absence. I am unsure whether to be disappointed at learning that was not the case.

Yeah, I stopped using 3 days because it turned up so few active threads, and that is grim given I never had that problem at wotmania even though I felt almost obliged to keep it at 1 day. It is hard for me to get a read on relative activity without really digging into it, because the BMB has been closing the gap with the WoTMB. Yet the CMB and WoTMB dominate site history, between them constituting ~67% of posts and 60% of views (at least last June, but the figures have changed little since: That is the PROBLEM.) Again, the BMB and TV&MMBs have closed the gap somewhat but it is hard to tell if they are more active or the CMB and WoTMB simply less so.

A Memory of Light has been out nearly two months, so the answer will come soon, but my big question remains "where are the newbs?" Their presence or absence ultimately determines whether the site survives.

I have been thinking about median member age a while, because it illustrates my point about newbs: In its prime, wotmania had many members in their late or even early teens; I doubt RAFO has even half a dozen <20. To the extent the site remains soley wotmaniac its days are numbered, but what is there to draw new members? I admit bias, but still contend most new members are on the WoTMB, because the series remains topical, but if its conclusion makes that more so now it also means that time must end soon, and permanently. Fom that limited admitted bias, I see little effort to use whatever time there is to attract WoT fans with diverse interests and attributes to make RAFO a vibrant eclectic community as others before them did wotmania.

It should be a lesson that nearly wotmaniac came for the books but stayed for the broader community, even after many came to actively loathe the series.

Indeed; relationships are two way streets, and it is always foolish to get more invested in one than the other person is (a lesson wotmania sometimes taught too well.) Sometimes it is better for all concerned if casual relationships remain so. Strong enduring ones can form anywhere, but strength makes their persistence independent of whether people remain where they first met.

I guess that makes sense once a site begins to involve true official duties, but there were certainly plenty of people who made wotmania a huge part of (or even substitute for) their social lives, far too much so in some cases. I have no idea when that first became a big part of the site, since it was before my time, so I defer to those of you who were there on that.

Culture probably counts for a lot both in perception and reality: There was far less internet back then; fewer users to attract, but fewer places for them to go. Normalizing that may be no better than a guesstimate, but RAFO is a much smaller fish in a much bigger pond than wotmania was even on a slow day, which must be worrisome for anyone who wants RAFO to last.

Sure, but there is plenty to debate about whether he or Jordan deserves the blame for various examples of each kind of choice. I honestly think most people are too hard on AMoL (the ones who do not automatically gush over it just because it bears Jordans name.) I do not deny it was underwhelming even by comparison to TGS, let alone the first half dozen books. However, that was inevitable in a finale many had awaited since 1990, written by a young author interpolating the deceased authors notes with a widow/editor and friend/publisher looking over his shoulder. It was not great, and certainly could have been better, but was not awful either.

In terms of discussion, most plotlines, some two decades old, were brought to conclusion. That offers much to discuss; whether one likes that conclusion, finds it plausible, artful, moving, satisfying or would simply have preferred another one. There are also enough loose ends for speculation (and not just the arguments about whether Rand really abandoned his girlfriends and children for good.) I am still tempted to dispute whether Jordans opus had nothing to say that had not already been said better; his argument free will is impossible without evils existence evidently has never been stated often or well enough to end the ancient theodicy debate, and that is but one example.

The sole thing that really irked me was Bela, whose entire purpose from the series' first pages to its last was evidently to be constantly maligned by people whose lives she promptly saved through super-equine effort, with mild good humor throughout, then wrench some pathos from readers at the end. It would qualify as "Death by Newbery" if I thought for a second Olver had the potential to ever do anything more significant than burn an Aiel barn.

Returning to point, WoT has a huge fanbase whether it merits one or not, and that is a resource any successor to wotmania was almost obligated to embrace. RAFO may pay the ultimate price for contemptuously dismissing it as beneath the sites refined regard for high art such as Discworld.

I will take your word on their performance relative to themselves, but the CMB is a ghost town today compared to the BMB and TV&MMB, and it has nearly half the sites posts (until recently it was more than half.) If they are trending down relative to themselves though that answers my question: They are not attracting more attention, the CMB is just attracting less. I do not like to think what that means for RAFO in six months to a year when the flow of WoT fans looking for things like the WoTMB slows to a crawl for good.

As does linda hosting much of her work (and M2Ks, I believe) at The Thirteenth Depository. That did force sid to run a one man show though, but I cannot help feeling other factors DID. Meh, it is what it is; complaining about the past is pointless, and feels seditious, so I have probably said far too much already.

No worries, you of course have no obligation to do so, even it amuses me to tease you a bit about it (turn about is fair play, after all. )

Sounds right. There just is not much unique and appealing to distinguish RAFO from thousands of similar sites. The one thing most people cite is format, but what most wotmaniacs consider a benefit nearly everyone else considers a major detriment. At the risk of again doing the very thing I just said I have done too much, I still think, if we had to abandon TWoT, focusing at least on "speculative fiction" (still hate that term, still consider it redundant) rather than ALL books would have been better. That is just too wide a net to cast, with too much competition. The same would have largely been true with fantasy, high fantasy, SF or a combination (as you surely know,) but as it stands even Amazons reviews technically qualify it as a "competitor" whose recognition and resources RAFO not only will but CAN never match.

So the other MBs are declining, too, the CMB and WoTMBs (wotmanias mainstays, and initially RAFOs) are simply declining much faster. Not good news at all.

The problem with separating all MBs even though RAFO has nothing like wotmanias traffic is it makes the site look even deader than it is, so new people do the same thing most old ones usually do: Load a MB, see a message stating, "there have been 3 new posts since FDR was president," and move on to someplace they can interact with people. Splitting MBs only made sense when at least two had enough new posts to interfere with each other, hardly a danger RAFO faces. Instead, RAFO divides its few posters between SIX separate MBs; you just estimated (pretty accurately, I suspect) there are only 30-40 regular posters, so what does that make the average per MB? Let us cut to the chase:

In the last 24 hours there were:

3 BMB posts, 1 WoTMB post, 3 TV&MMB posts, 0 GMB posts, 9 RPGMB posts and 3 CMB posts. That is <1/hour, for the whole site.

In the last week:

31 BMB posts, 17 WoTMB posts, 11 TV&MMB posts, 0 GMB posts, 67 RPGMB posts and 27 CMB posts. Again <1/hour, for the whole site.

"Quality over quantity" is one thing, but Stalin supposedly said, "quantity has a quality all its own." Where quantity is absent quality necessarily is, too.

The format definitely does not help that either, but you know better than I that is beating a dead horse. The very thing making it suicidal makes it immutable: The vast majority of wotmaniacs cherish it as familiar even while the vast majority of internet users abhor it as unfamiliar, awkward and cumbersome. I have NEVER liked that responding to one or two lines in a half dozen posts from one thread requires a separate reply to each. When three people make the same obviously and/or factually flawed argument in separate posts, a single group response is impossible: One must respond to each individually or hope each checks every new post in the thread (whether or not notified of a response,) else only one will ever see the response.

The same is of course true when stating agreement, elaboration or documented support. It is not "intimate," it is "schizoid." The irony is if the format did not do well discourage new members there would probably be tremendous hue and cry to change it by now. That is without addressing things like quote tags that lack names and quickly get confusing when more than three deep, or html brackets different from the standard for nearly every site online. Nested threads are a huge headache for everyone except those who inexplicably insist online communication is possible by no other means.

And so it goes....

Sooner or later that will happen to all of us, as it has been doing for some time, and it no bad thing; there is far more to life than websites. With regard to the site though, unless someone is there to fill the gap RAFO will become even more of a ghost town that it already is. May your endeavors, professional and otherwise, go well; if we do not speak again soon, rest assured it has been a pleasure and honor, even (sometimes especially) when we disagreed.