Discussion 3: Into the future.

[BossTamsin (imported)]

Before we get to the question and discussion, there are some ground rules for this thread.

NUMBER 1: There are going to be NO bans resulting from any discussion on this thread.

NUMBER 2: Replies will NOT be edited or deleted by any of the moderators.

NUMBER 3: I want everyone to share their views on this question.

These are hard rules, being handed down from on high. I want honesty, not "yes-men". This is your archive too, but it may not be for long if you don't speak out. There is one other request though. Just because you will not be tossed does not mean you should start attacking others. This isn't a rule, but I'm asking all of you to try and remain polite and friendly. Surely you can get your message across without personal attacks or insults.

There will be no poll. If you have an opinion, even a one line reply can help considerably, and takes next to no time.

DISCUSSION 3:

This is the good one. This is the fun one. And for now, this will be the last one in the series. So please, have fun with it.

What I want to know is, where should we go from here? What changes would you like to see around the EA? What new features do you think we should add? What do we lack that you'd just love to see?

We are trying to work on a more searchable story section, and hopefully that will be up fairly soon. We also have someone attempting to rebuild the personals, but there is no ETA for their return at the moment*.

Those two projects aside, I've been trying to work out ways to help keep the site growing. About the only idea I have to toss around is based upon the seeming popularity of diary threads here. That would be to possibly add a blog community to the EA. That has it's advantages and disadvantages as well though, but maybe I'll go into that later.

So let me know your ideas on how to move the site forward. I want to hear your ideas on this. Just please, try and keep the calls for searches or personals to a minimum. Those are already priorities.

*I know you all would like for the personals to return as of yesterday, however since the EA doesn't have a budget for hiring a crack team of programmers, we're doing what we can. Anyone willing to donate the several grand or more that a programming team would charge for the project is more than welcome to contact me. Heheheh.

[sapient (imported)]

Uhm, yes... I think personalization features would be grand. Bloggs or diaries would be nice, or just about any way to make the personal page a bit more, eh, personal.

I also think it would be great if there was someway to make a sort of fact-section. It doesn't have to be all that pretentious. I guess we could use wiki-technology for example. As it is now, all "facts" are either collected in stickies in different forums or spread out in the threads and postings.

Wouldn't it be great to find everything you would want to know about e.g. T-levels in one place? Cross-referenced to the different drugs and so on and so forth...

I'd love that, and may help by devoting some time to be the wierd librarian or something. (I come with glasses included.)

Seeing that the archive is made up of different bits and pieces strung together with the coding equivalent of duct tape and prayers, I totaly understand all the difficulties in making it work. I'm full of appreciation and thankfullness.

[Kangan (imported)]

The stories appear to be sorted into categories like [minor] and [penis], but you cannot use these as search definitions. Doh!

I find the current search process to be very user unfriendly. An alphabetical search produces a great long list and how can you know the author's genre if you haven't read one of his stories? As for the sorting by date, that is of no value unless you want read all current stories.

There needs to be an expanded FAQ section. Much useful information is buried in our forums among tons of "spam".

Otherwise, I think the EA is doing fine.

[I Worship Women (imported)]

Whatever changes are made, I would suggest starting with the message board first. The message board is kind of like the foundation of the site. When you upgrade and improve a house you first inspect and make any upgrades and improvements needed to the foundation to make sure it is stable and secure enough to support the upgrades and improvements you are making to the rest of the house. Same thing here.

As many here have said, the site should be separated into two sections, one for castration fantasy and the other for castration reality. There are places where the two do overlap and that needs to be taken care of too.

Improve the story index. The stories need to be separated into two sections, one for straight and/or femdom (S), and the other for gay (G). Within each of these sections it needs to be further separated into testicles, penectomy, nullification, etc. This would make it easier for people to find the stories they most like to read. The way it is now you have to hunt and search for the kind of stories you like.

Graphics would be nice. Pictures, photo manips, artwork. Some sites allow members to post pics, photo manips, artwork, etc which show up very small in the post, but members can click on the small pic to see it full size.

Illustrated stories would be nice. As Hereunuch I wrote a good many stories that are in the Story Archive. I wish many of them could be illustrated but I just don't have the artistic skill to do that. It would be nice in the stories section if some of the stories could be illustrated.

The fantasy section is what would interest me most, though I'm not sure what else to suggest for that section, there are many things I guess all of us would like to see there.

Bringing back the personals would be nice. Even though I never answered any of them, I did enjoy reading some of them.

But whatever is done I think the message board is the place to begin. Like I said the message board is probably the most used and visited part of the site, it's where new visitors really learn what Eunuch Archive is all about, and it kind of supports the site as a whole, so I would start here with the message board.

[genderless (imported)]

Personals section sounds a bit interesting. Real life and fantasy stories relating to body modifications are pretty cool too.

[Paolo]

There are a lot of great ideas posted here, but given the server and the bandwidth issues, I don't know how IE could get any of them done.

As far as the future, I have really nothing to offer at this time.

Anything I would have mentioned has already been said.

[I Worship Women (imported)]

Paolo has brought up server and bandwidth issues and the fact that those issues will limit what can be done.

If IEunuch could do just one thing or deal with just one part of the site, I again suggest that it be the message board. Not that there's a big problem with the message board, but it could be better and easier to use.

Have two major sections, one for castration reality, the other for castration fantasy. And put the reality section at the top. When people come here for facts and information they shouldn't have to wade down through the fantasy stuff to get to it. Then have a neutral part for things having to do with Eunuch Archive as a whole. There needs to be a clear difference between castration reality and castration fantasy. They are too intermingled the way the message board is set up now, visitors have too much chance of getting fantasy along with the facts.

Maybe some of the forums could also be reworked to make them easier to use, more to the point, etc.

There are probably a number of small changes and improvements that can be made that would result in a lot of improvement and all together would be small enough that you wouldn't run into problems with server and bandwidth issues.

Like I said before, the message board is sort of the foundation of the site and is kind of the part that holds the site together. That's why I feel that if one area and only one area of the site can have anything done with it at all it should be the message board.

Sorry if I seem to be hogging things making so many suggestions, but thoughts just come to mind and I thought I would offer them.