(repost of original by '
;;Ðanny_X' on '2006-10-02 05:50:19')
Ok, this is just a few thoughts and observations, that I wanted to get down somewhere, because it was to much information to juggle in my head, and it's just something I think needs thinking about.
When I first signed up at Lost Cherry there was just under 200,000 members, IIRC, because just after I signed up there was a lot of bulletins about hitting the 200,000 mark.
Today, looking at the top of the page here there are 279,660 members, which is a massive jump of nearly 80,000, and yet the total number of members online, during that period, has only inched forwards, and on some days is no more than when I first signed up.
If 80,000 new members have signed up, where are they?
Why are they not regularly online?
Why have so many decided, after signing up, to leave?
Lost Cherry, by and large, is a good site, with a lot of good members. Mike has worked hard to build it, it is very rarely unreachable, unlike MySpace, it doesn't tend to run as slow as MySpace, despite being significantly content richer, and many of it's features are significantly better than MySpaces, for example the fact that you can have up to 250 pictures, as opposed to whatever miniscule figure it is on MySpace these days, 12 or 16? I don't know, but the point is that Mike has worked hard, and the site is good (in it's infrastructure) so I don't think we can blame the site for the reason why so many of those who sign up don't stay, and if it isn't the site to blame then we have to consider that it's us, the members.
Now if Mike has put in all this hard work for us, we owe it to him to behave in such a way that helps the site grow.
This site is shared by thousands of us, and run at great cost, not built just for us as an individual, and for our own free amusement.
So do some of us turn off new members?
Well I have talked to quite a few new members recently, and a few old hands, and they seem to think that some people here are responsible for some people deciding not to stay, and some of the reasons they have give are below.
One of the things that turns new members off, and causes them to leave, is the beggar’s welcome.
I was talking to one person yesterday, and there view on it was this
"I reached level three within the hour, and felt this was a really warm and welcoming place, but I was soon to learn these people were not welcoming me, they just wanted points from me.
Time and time again I saw the message 'hey, welcome to Lost Cherry, here is a ten to help you get started, drop by my profile sometime to return the favor, and add me up as a fan or friend' so I would do just that, I'd go over to their profile, rate them, add them as a friend, and leave them a comment, but they never replied to it.
Once they had my ten, and my name on their friends list, I just became an anonymous figure to them, one of their thousands of points. They didn't want to know anymore. I felt used and cheated, I mean if they didn't want to be my friend then why ask?"
Some people on this site are so obsessed with points that they have forgotten about people. They visit up to hundreds of profiles a day, just basically begging for points, and ignoring the people after they have got them.
That's rude, and rude behavior turns people off.
The American Heritage dictionary defines the word Friend thus:
friend (fr?nd)
n.
A person whom one knows, likes, and trusts.
A person whom one knows; an acquaintance.
A person with whom one is allied in a struggle or cause; a comrade.
It does not define it thus:
friend (fr?nd)
n.
A person whom you hustle for a ten rating, and an extra notch on your rankings.
The best thing any new member can get on their arrival is a warm welcome, the worse thing they can get is the feeling of being exploited, and then ignored.
So what else turns a new member off?
The pervert’s welcome.
I'm lucky, I'm a guy, I never got this, but apparently a lot of women who have signed up here claim to have experienced the perverts welcome.
"I had just uploaded my picture, it brought me to my main home page, and I noticed a message in my shout box, it's the first thing I saw, and all it said was 'hey babe, I’m cumming on cam, I’m jacking hard, want to help me'"
Guys, guys, guys, when will you ever learn, most females do not want that as the first words they see on this site.
I understand the male urges, of course I do, I'm just a regular guy like anyone else, who thinks about sex every 1.4 seconds, or whatever it's meant to be (ok, maybe at 1.4 seconds I'm a little oversexed!) but I also know that you should at least try and talk to a girl first, you know simple things like, tell her your name, ask her a few questions, you know?
Think about it in an offline sense, if you walked up to a girl offline, pulled out your pecker, and started masturbating you would be arrested, charged with flashing, or gross indecency or whatever the law is, and sent to a jail where you would be soundly beaten every night of the week.
So what makes you think behaving in the same way online is any different?
I'm sure there are lots of lovely ladies out there who might well like to watch you stroke your wiener, I know quite a few have asked to see mine, but talk to them first, get to know them, show them some respect, ok?
So what's next on the turn off list?
Drama, drama, drama, and self-policing.
Let me give you an example.
We have just seen a rather sick incident, where some freak, or freaks, stole the pictures of some girls of Myspace, made a collection of friends, invented false identities for them, gave one of these fake characters leukemia, and a false death, playing with the emotions of the members on this site, before topping it all off by stealing the memorial pictures from another persons site and trying to pass them off as evidence to back up their hoax.
Sick incidents like that is enough to convince many people to leave; the fact that it's still going on only compounds the problem.
I know Lost Cherry do not like to delete people, but I do think in these circumstances the offending people should have been removed, as it is sickening to still see them coming online, and posting bulletins that still get reposted, trying to keep the hoax going. However, if Lost Cherry staff chose not to delete these people, it does not mean we can not self police, which is what Lost Cherry tells us to do.
What is particularly disturbing about his hoax is the fact that over 1000 people are still friends, fans, or family members of these hoaxers, and help to perpetuate the drama by being so.
Is your friend count really that important?
If these sick individuals were removed from the friend’s list of everyone, and blocked, they would have left the site by now, as there would be no one to give them attention, and with a sick stunt like that it is clearly attention that they crave.
How do you think that looks to the new members of the site?
"Hey, here are some sick, twisted freaks who made up bullshit about a girl dying of leukemia, and stole pictures from a guys memorial site, and guess what, I'm keeping them on my friends list!"
Can you not see why some people, after viewing that attitude, might decide this isn't the place for them?
On to the battle of the sexes... I feel awkward discussing this one, as I have a sex, but it's one that others have mentioned, so here goes.
Apart from the opening unwelcome welcome, from Mr. Pervert, many girls are signing up (more so than men apparently) then claiming they are struggling to find the men.
I don't know why this should be, I don't know if the girls put themselves out there more, or what, but many women are signing up and saying the same thing.
No men in the top cherries, no men in the top photos, no men turning up on their profile, no men anywhere.
I was the opposite of this, when I signed up, I was pleased to see no men anywhere, lol, to find only women in the top ten cherries, and top photos and the like, but as I said at the beginning this site is shared by thousands of us, and run at great cost, not built just for us as an individual, and for our own free amusement, so my personal pleasure at seeing nothing but women has to be weighted against the fact that many women see nothing but women too, and that puts them off staying.
I guess that is also bad for us guys, because we lose the women that might have over wise stayed, and it's also bad for the established women, as they lose the men who might have been persuaded to stay or sign up, had the other women stayed because they were able to find the men (confusing? possibly, but there is sense to it if you get past my bad writing skills).
I don't know how to handle this particular issue, as I don't know why women are seeing less men here. I have read bulletins suggesting that the Top Cherries be split into male and female, which would give us two top tens, and ten red guys, and ten red women, and that that might help spread the guys around a little more noticeably, and maybe that's a good idea, but that's in Mikes hands, I don't know how feasible that is.
I've also read suggestions about revamping the points system, again, I don't know how feasible this is, but it might be worth considering, as both a way of evening up the position of the men and women, and perhaps stopping the beggars welcome. However, these things are in Mikes hands, and we as members should take time to try and find out own solutions as well, perhaps we need to work a little harder at promoting the men on this site more, or if you are a guy like me, promoting yourself more?
I don't want to knock this site, as I've put on record, I think Mike has done a fantastic job with it, and there are many good people here, but it does concern me that there are so many people signing up, but not wanting to stay, and whilst that might not bother some people I think it should really bother us all, because Mike built this site to grow, and not just for us.
With the work he puts it this place deserves to be successful for him, rather than as a site that we take advantage of, while we ignore Mikes dreams.
There are some people here who seem to think that the blame lies with the new members, that they should learn to grow thick skins (that is a genuine quote from a top ten member here, used to me upon me being upset when my niece faced possible death), but I think that's the wrong way around, we shouldn't be expecting other people to grow thick skins, it should be the other way around, we should be making the effort to make people feel comfortable, welcome, and to want to stay here.
Picture it like this, if this was Mikes house, and you were a guest here, and another guest turned up at the door, and you answered it, how do you think you would be expected to behave?
Do you think you would be expected to provide a warm welcome, or to be rude to the person, and tell them they needed to grow a thick skin if they didn't like it, or as in some cases around here just bluntly tell them to "fuck off"?
Some people here have become so obsessed with points and rankings here that they have forgotten about people, and they have become so obsessed with themselves that they have forgotten this site doesn't belong to them, and they are guests here.
Each and every member on this site has certain duties.
If we go to welcome someone then that is what we should be doing, welcoming them, becoming their friends, and being there for them, not just copy and pasting a message, and then ignoring them after you've got ten points out of them, and had them added to your friends list.
We have a duty not to be rude, or perverted to new members, but to give them a chance to settle in, and to talk to them.
Guys, you will find you will get a lot further by sending a new member a rose, than turning up on her profile with your dick as your default picture.
We have a duty to avoid drama, and when we find drama to isolate it, to remove the freaks and the weirdoes from our friends list, so that they become isolated, and starved of attention, and leave the site.
We have a lot of duties here, including the duty to have a good time.
Maybe this is a bit of a whine, but if we can deal with a whine like this, once every now and then, then we will be stopping to think for long enough to see past ourselves, and to the other 270,000 members here, and if we do that then we should ALL have fun, and that in itself should cut down on the drama, and make your experience more enjoyable.
See? It's clever really, the more you consider others, the happier they are, the happier they are the less drama there is, the less drama and tension, the happier you are!
Thinking of others helps you!
Let's keep the new members signing up, but let's also keep them here from now on.
Right now it says Members: 279,742 (26,005 online)
Let's try and make it so that by the time it says 379,000 members that we can have 50,000 online.
Anyone else up for this?
Mike built this site for us; let's repay him by trying to build the membership for him.
(repost of original by '
;;Ðanny_X' on '2006-10-02 05:50:19')
