I am feeling...Purple.
 

Heya everybody!

Trisphee has a few changes incoming that I wanted to tell everybody about!

As the title mentioned, my name is purple now...And, in fact, as of now, I am the owner and head honcho of our very lovely site here.

Fenris will still be around, pixelling when she can, but she has for a while now not been able to dedicate much time to Trisphee.

For the most part, Trisphee will remain the same. There won't be any major shakeups of staff, or how we run things, but it is my goal & mission to improve Trisphee in any way possible, and make it the best it can be.

That's all. Have fun! :D

look at that sexy purple name :o

Silly Gallbat. I think the mask is cutting off your oxygen. <3

im more worried about the pool of blood around tohos feet

Pay no attention to that!

...Actually. That's just where pikachu ended up after your signature.

Wow, Toho! Congrats! The purple looks very good on you! :'D

Congrats! I'm excited to see where the site goes from here. :)

Grats Toho! Can't wait to hear about your ideas!

*Wishes Toho luck* :3

Nice. Your purpling's looking really good on ya, Toho. :)

As he said, I'm still around, just not as owner. I needed to get Trisphee to someone who has more time than I do because I jsut couldn't dedicate the time to give you guys what you deserve or ive Trisphee what it deserves. Though I have found time to do some pixelings...

**splashes in Toho's blood puddle** >:3
Congratuations!

I'm interested to see what comes out of this.
Toho you are an enigma to me; I've never seen you post on the site when I was around, or participate in group streams while I was in Fen's pixel class. I'm not saying that as a bad thing, it's just that I simply don't know what your mindset is or who you are as a person. All I know about you is that you code for the site, so to break the ice let me ask you a few questions if that's okay?

1. How did (or do) you know being the webmaster for Trisphee would benefit the site as a whole?

2. Envision Trisphee in one year; under your leadership, what goals do you want to achieve, and how will you accomplish those goals?

3. Avatar sites are becoming a dying fad, in my opinion it's because of the lack of original ideas, an inactive/ignored community, a broken economy, and failure to make a profit. What actions will you do to ensure Trisphee will not only thrive, but to grow as a business and community

I do expect you to answer these questions, take as much time as needed I really want to hear well thought out response for you. Sorry if I'm being too frank, but these are some very important questions that you need to think about and to constantly refer back to in the future.

I'd be happy to answer your questions, Illusion. :) I have been around for a while, but I admit I don't post all that often, and I am not (really) an artist, so I have never participated in Fen's pixel classes and the like. I am primarily a programmer and organizer.

1. These things are never certain, of course. I believe me taking over is beneficial because I (typically) do have the time to keep up with what's going on, as well as enough financial security to be able to fund improvements for the site that I cannot do myself. (People who make cool things for cool sites like to be paid, you know!)
   
   
   
2. What I would like to see, in the broadest response possible, is to at least double the amount of activity, more, ideally. More specifically, I plan on having several updates to the site itself (discounting avatar items which will continue to go), for functionality and appearances. More details on that will be shared when there is more concretely something to tell, but I will say that my current first priority is to make sure the trades system works for everybody no matter what crazy number of items you have.
   
   
   
3. They do seem to be dying out, you're right. Avatar sites are neat, but let's be blunt: Cool avatars are not enough to get a site to continue to live and be lively. To that end, I will be working on improving things outside of just avatars. Off hand, making Trisphee's large story more accessable to new comers, as well as perhaps adding more game options are things I would like to see. The trouble with games, though, is that most simple things you'd find have already been done.
   
   I would be happy to hear suggestions and opinions from everybody about what you would like to see on Trisphee.
   
   Regarding economy, that can be a very difficult thing to manage. There is a need, in most digital economies like this, to have "gold sinks" (or aurum sinks in our case, of course), that is, things that users can spend their aurum on that takes it out of circulation entirely. Since posting generates aurum, and people are always posting, there's always more...that means over time people can spend more of it to get the same thing, leading to inflation, which can be bad for newcomers. The economy of Trisphee is still relatively small, in that sense, but it is something I think about.

Do feel free to ask me more questions! :D

Agree and disagree. They are a dying fad because they're prioritizing money before activity (trust me, Gaia isn't the only example). At the same time, unless you have something special to offer people just won't come.

In the grand scale of things, Trisphee is a pretty small place with a small community. Out of the 12,000 members, how many are active? I've been here just a day, and I already only see the same faces (so to speak) post. All said and done, is that such a bad thing?

Unfortunately, we ran into a horrible bot problem a year back and they registered quite a few accounts that are now no longer active. I don't know how many active accounts we have currently - that would be a question for the coders, but the fact that the 'most users ever online was 798, 11-10-2013 at 05:28 PM', means that it should be around that number.

That's a good number. I like small numbers like that. Creates a friendlier, more homey atmosphere and makes it much easier to deal with trolls and other undesirable types.

Don't jinx it! The moment you start getting all...wishful and ambitions, the parasites will invade!

Like with Rapture. Only....less spliced up and insane. Bad example. Okay, better example: Charming! From Sons of Anarchy (my latest obsession!).

Small towns are always the best, right?

Huge communities can be troublesome, but even with small communities, at least a small net growth in population is ideal.

Trisphee could, in my opinion, do with having more people. Too few people makes it hard to do much of anything interesting, you see.

I don't think I'd enjoy becoming the new Gaia (in terms of size)... That's just a crazy amount is people. I think the ideal number is more like 4000 active users (users who visit every day or three), instead of 40,000.

We'll see what the future brings us.

The issue with growth is, it's entirely based on momentum. And momentum can be deferred.

When you start moving the site towards growth, if it starts going up consistently, it will exceed your expectations. At which point, you just get to one of those immovable object situations, and activity will plummet. I'm not suggesting we lock down the gates and live a life of hermit-hood.

What you guys need is focus. Something unique to Trisphee. Obviously, avatars ain't it - hundreds, if not thousands, of other sites have the same thing. You need a focus that will reel in a specific type of crowd, and not much else. That's how you stay in that safe middle ground.

Indeed. That is the trick. Everybody needs a niche, and "avatar site" is not really a good definition.


Truth be told, i'm not sure what Trisphee's thing should be beyond that. We have the story and events, which are cool... But I'm not sure it's enough.

Only 122 users have posted since the Start of 2014 as opposed to the 459 since 2013. This does not account for the people who have left Trisphee since that time but it does not include bots.... so 1/4th of the user base from last year has posted this year in the first 3 months, though avatar sites have a larger up swing in the summer months when people have more time off from school since they focus on the 13 to 22 range which deals mostly with people in school.

And with 897 that have posted since 2012 we are declining, losing around half of our active users a year. This does not figure into the fact that some of these posts are made the mules of different users which on average a user has one that they make some post on but others don't use their mule or have one while others have 2. Meaning that an ip address has probably 1.9 users per address meaning that really there were 472 people on Trisphee posting. Assuming that this number hasn't dropped off, which it probably has to around 1.3 given my own experience of who is posting, Trisphee now has 64 active people posting. The corrected ratio (1.3) makes it 93 people.

No Bots or NPCs were included in these statistics only the people that can be found on a regular users members list via search.

I believe our uniqueness is in our Avatars, the layering system makes us much different than many other sites which only give you a set pose and layer, such as Gaia.

I may have an idea, but it's a bit of a long shot.

A webcomic, but the unique focus of it being that it's userbase driven. Most other avvy sites that have story comics just...sort of use them as a means to an end to get items out. They got the NPCs, and stuff, and then us who just...sort of follow along as outsiders. Means to an end. With this, think...an end to the means.


The point I'm making is, the users (staff and every other folk) actively participate and shape the story and comic. In that regard, rather than advertising the site as just another avatar site, you showcase it as an interactive webcomic. Register, make an avvy, and you got the potential to be a character. No matter how big or small. Puts a good deal of potential towards some fourth wall breakage as well.

From what I can see, this idea is far from impossible. Just by looking at the banner, I know we have a talented artist or two on board. And from peeking at the story section, we got decent writers to boot. The only question at hand is commitment.

The artist that did banner isn't on staff anymore and I'm not sure if we can get a hold of him. However, I do agree that he did an amazing job. He's actually doing his own webcomic now if I remember right....would have to check though.

The idea is certainly a unique one. Perhaps to be included in the comic you could have been selected as the "Avi of the Week" or "Avi of the Month"...I know that sort of recognition has been done elsewhere, but just throwing it as an idea. Could have it either be selected by staff, or nominated by users and then voted on (at least in terms of for the month). Would likely require a slightly larger user base to start at the very least though.

Avvy of the week would only suffice for something like character design. What I meant was...incorporate the user's activity and presence on the site as a fully realized character with personality.

You know, it's....not just how good you look, but it's what you do that defines you. \(~V~)/

... But Ulti would win every time. Their Avi's are beautiful!

Also, while webcomics are fun it does require a different writing and style than the normal writing.... But giving the writers more work is always a plus in my book.

I would love if the NPCS became more active again during the events, staying in character of course and in an rp thread.

Oh...ohh!! Idea Brainstorming! I love this sort of stuff!!!

(Just want to say I'd love to chat about this when I don't have my classes in my throat)

And I've seen one person be able to support their family by doing that sort of thing - essentially coding a simple Flash text-based game...and letting the forum write his content beyond the initial universe/setting.

I guess one thing is that Trisphee has multiple universes/RP's (and, I think, 3 worlds in the Trisphee Roleplay)

Minus the drawing, and addressing the problem of multiple nonsynchronous worlds, was sort of the intent of my "Bards of Taliesin" idea.

Ah, okay. I get what you're saying now. Definitely something to consider...though a larger project which might warrant it's own position. *shrugs* Up to the powers that be to consider it then.

Yes...NPC's being active. Let it happen! Muhahahaha! All the posts are belonging to them! *has had sugar and deviated from serious conversation momentarily*

Edit: Law, you are correct in that there are three worlds within the Trisphee universe. Beyond that, all the characters exist in it, albeit possibly on different planes/levels of existence/phases of being.

I wrote a comic once. ;) And I almost had a short story published in an anthology volume...til the lead writer got bored of the project and scrapped the whole thing. :< An awful centipede of a man who gives barefooters and fantasy writers a bad name!

But I digress.

I wasn't really talking about that, but it's not a bad consideration either.

Lol, don't we have a couple of admins lurking about this very moment? Comon, someone cut the wire!

Sounds like MS Paint adventures, but more confusing.

While I do like the idea of a web comic (I read many of them, and actually mentioned it as a possibility for a thing Trisphee could do to increase the story's accessibility), but incorporating random users as characters in the story is troublesome.

There is the matter of (ideally) a gradually increasing user base, and the likelihood that someone (many someones) is likely to feel excluded when they don't get worked in...

I think it is more "admins have to majority agree/compromise"

I've always wanted to do a webcomic...but I don't draw/write well enough, yet ;_;

Hmm...
Ideas:
1) Trisphee Webcomic
2) Are You Afraid of the Dark free-styled storytelling
3) Restart/recreate the old RPG/Group-themed Clubhouses
4) Small RPG or Puzzle games
5) (Secret due to way too many unknowns)

One time while I was on a job interview at a middle school for guidance counselor position, I was given kind of a brief tour of the place and took a notice to something: There was a soccer tournament against a neighboring middle school, and the school I was positioning for lost the game. What happens next? Absolutely every kid on the losing team got a medal.

That...kind of made me feel queasy on the inside. I'm a firm believer in that rewards of any kind have to be earned. If everyone gets a medal, then what's the point of keeping score? What's the point of even playing the game competitively?

If someone feels excluded, then they can either present their case (without making a ruckus), or simply try harder next time.

I dunno! Lol. This is an idea in its infancy - I've hardly thought up of any logistics of it all. But avvy sites have both purties avatar and user of the week/month contests. This idea can give more substance to those "positions of power", and make the story more presentable, and make the site offer something far more unique.

Eeeks...there is a major debate under that. (Philosophical, not Tris-related)

Perhaps start at one point, and move on from there?
Get stories. Get coding. Get interaction. Up from there?

Well...technically lol, get artist first.

Can we do Ask the NPC? Like the Ask the Staff thread?

Literally just giving ideas to give the writers more work.

Lol, that all you're interested? Working those poor writers to death? :P

*poofs in* Well, she is my roommate and likes making me work. In all seriousness, outside of events and organizing the storybook, writers don't have much of a job unless they dabble in other projects. Something like that wouldn't be bad to take on if we had one or two people besides Suze or Nexy who could handle it and respond in the NPC's speech and knew the "trivia" and story.