Thrive as the social community it has become outside of fanfiction.

DLP Hall Of Fame for DLP reccommended fics?

Story of the week/month?

Blogs/articles on various things?

Article style reviews?

DLP history timeline page (I'd love to see this happen, going from that thread we had ages ago, a nice collection of the many significant moments in DLP history.)

Or even amalgamate PC over to DLP? Then DLP could really have it's own library. I think DLP is more known than PC.

 

I'd expand PatronusCharm to include Dresden, but I don't know how much more traffic that will attract to the site. There's a dearth of decent Dresden fics outside of the DLP com.

 

^This, too.

Only I wouldn't limit it to just literature. There are several television shows, graphic novels, manga, and so on that the members here tend to enjoy.

 

I think we need to give serious thought to ditching our name, as heretical a concept as that is. Right now, we're a Harry Potter fanfiction forum, which is a rather hefty barrier to telling people about it. If we became a forum dedicated to fantasy fiction with a hefty fanfiction lean? That'd be different.

 

This. If we want to broaden our perspective, the name needs to change. It's hard to even contemplate this idea, but Tehan's right.

I like the idea of expanding to more general fantasy, especially since this might allow us to shine a little more light on original fiction. Beyond fantasy, I would accept scifi (they're often grouped together), but it is probably best to not go much farther than that. If we try to accommodate every interest, we'll turn into a site that caters to a random, specific selection of entertainment. Not a good idea.

Edit: I'd also like a better WbA system. I know that the whole point is to give feedback as the author posts, but there are several threads that are really unwieldy. Perhaps some sort of widget at the top that acts as a Table of Contents? The OP could then add links to chapters as they update with new chapters. Or maybe there could be some sort of "posting new chapter" button in the WbA section that would automagically add that specific post+title to the TOC. Along with this, a better notification system (as I mentioned to you before in IRC, Raven) would be stellar. I think this would really improve WbA.

Then again, in that case, what would be the point of using PC? So I'm not entirely sure what the appropriate course of action is.

 

A (bi)monthly publication that includes reviews of fanfiction, fiction, movies, video games, movies, etc., as well as bringing up important site related topics that some members may have missed for one reason or another, and maybe some original work by some of the members.

But...

The first step would have to be this.

 

(For what it's worth, not a very active member here)

I actually think that word of mouth (both positive and negative) helps this site. If the name is changed, it will turn into just another loose forum. As it is now, we're one of the most (in)famous HP fanfiction sites in existence.

I'd personally love it if more fanfiction is posted daily, but that's obviously the fault of the authors, and aside from writing more there's nothing DLP as a community can do.

 

I think it's pretty difficult to argue against the clear trend of HP fanfiction dying down. Sure, maybe there will be a few jumps of interest when the final movies come out, but fanfiction is still on a general downtrend.

Edit: Maybe DLP could remain intact as a subsite for something else? Just a thought.

 

At first I wondered why I was expected to donate $0.02. -_-

Name changing seems to be getting a better reception than I expected. We should probably have a poll if we're serious about it, and it will be necessary if we want to broaden our perspective. Changing the name would be a way to accommodate the natural direction the site has been going in.

It's really a compromise between trying to attract a larger audience, and not alienating members or loosing our identity, which I'm personally very fond of. I agree that making it about the darker aspects of fantasy fiction is a good idea - with an emphasis on Dresden, and without leaving HP behind, naturally. I don't see it as abandoning HP fanfiction like a dried-up well.

I'm not in favour of sci-fi though. Even if they are often grouped together and have similarities, I think there's a big difference in mentality. Although I wouldn't be opposed to reading a Dune fic or something (but then I don't really consider Dune to be sci-fi).

I just spent 5 minutes looking at Tenhauser's sig. >_>

Edit:

Maybe, but I'm not feeling it. I was thinking more along the lines of keeping the DLP acronym to conserve name recognition in the HP fandom, but changing what it stands for.

 

I agree with the idea of expanding the Other Fandoms section as a logical first step (on that note, I've been wanting to start an Other Fandoms: Unrecommended thread, but can't really think of a decent-enough story currently updating to put there to start it with).

On another note, I think generally cleaning the old crappy stories out of the library is a good cause. It seems like every once and so often someone is moving an old library/bin story back into For Review so it can get a good look at it to see where it belongs now. This is probably the best way to filter through all the old stuff fairly and livens things up a bit when nothing new has been posted in a while, so I'd like to see that continue or step up.

On the fear that losing the name will lose the site notoriety, I think as long as the old google search still points to it word will get around pretty quick among anyone who cares. If we did change the name though, I think it should be a recognizable evolution, perhaps with "Dark" still in it somewhere. The readership we have now does tend to appreciate a certain style of Fantasy/Sci Fi, and I think as long as we stay true to that DLP won't lose its uniqueness if it expands a bit.

 

Firstly, I think we need to remember that the core of DLP is the community of people, and we shouldn't do anything to compromise that. So long as there are people who want to come here and talk about whatever, then DLP will thrive.

That said, doing new things won't necessarily hurt.

One idea I had was something I call "DLP Peer Review". It stems from the fact that there's a fair number of academically gifted people from a number of disciplines here, and that number is only going to go up as more of us go through university. So my idea was a kind of cross-discipline essay/article reading/reviewing group, to help each others essays. We could even, if it goes well, begin to publish an online multidisciplinary academic journal.

Having a section for blogs might be interesting too.

 

I definitely agree that we should go on a Library-cleaning campaign. This is something immediate that we can do. Maybe declare June as "Library Clean-up Month"?

In the short-term, expanding the other subforums sounds good. After that, including more stuff on a "main site" like blogs/articles/reviews + things like Taure's idea of a Peer Review would be a logical next step.

 

Anyone that was into Ranma fanfiction back in the day knows what happens to the following of a work after it's source material has it's finale - try to read fanfiction of it these days and you'll be met with quite a bit of frustration as you are met with dead links and deleted Yahoo groups. Now, it's hardly completely dead - I've still got a few Ranma fics on my update list - but it doesn't have anything like the following it did, and I don't know of any still-active forums dedicated to it.

As for any fame or notoriety DLP has, it's only among the Harry Potter fandom. Except for newcomers to the fandom (which, as I just said, is going to taper off more and more in coming years). We should think about trying to build up a reputation that'll be worth a damn in five years rather than desperately holding on to the one that's devaluing by the day.

Oh, and Taure? Look at what happened to the last place that tried to cater to your essay fetish. How is RC these days?

 

1. I was referring to real essays, not mini-articles on HP (though I suppose you could have ones on HP as literature).

2. RCs failure as a site had little to do with the fact that it hosted essays on HP.

Nice try bringing that up though. I'm sure derailing an important thread was worth the laughs it got you.

Anyway, this is the kind of idea I was thinking of:

Expand the main page, and have the forums be just one part of the site. Blogs, articles, reviews, etc. Think Gizmodo, but for books/politics/current affairs/fanfiction/anything.

 

I know I'm a newb, but the notice did tell me to come here hehe.

I think that the blog and articles ideas are really fantastic. Kinda like how hplexicon has those old articles! I think some DLP-ers could write some interesting articles on HP, Dresden, the fandoms, hell there's a plethora of untapped options.

If there was to be a name change, either the initials should remain the same, or DLP could be the name of a subforum of the newly named expansion.

So basically I second what Taure, oephyx, silverlasso, and Murton said. No need to repeat what someone else said better, eh?

 

Perhaps DLP could launch a blog that's entirely separate from fan fiction.

Articles are written by Tinn, mods, or whoever they deem are knowledgeable enough on the subject matter.

Contents includes what DLP recommends:

- movies, films
- gadgets, software
- world politics
- books
-places to visit

I also see the potential of using the DLP brand in merchandise (I really want to buy an official DLP shirt designed by the community's most talented artists.)

 

While we have some excellent discussion in other areas, the library and WBA are still an integral and fundamental part of what we are. I honestly don't think that us shifting from HP to something else would benefit us, we'd be far more likely to loose than gain in that regard. I'm all for adding other subforums and so on, but none of us here care about other universes enough to make an actual shift. They just aren't popular enough. (Apart from Jim Butcher, but we've assimilated him perfectly)

Could we see some usage statistics? Like, what forums are the most used and so on?

However, my other idea though, is instead of having PC as a alternative to FFNet, how about we try to make PC only host fics in DLPs library? Simply use it as a storage facility for fics we deem worth reading. Not in danger of having them screwed up by FFN or anything.

I'm just throwing thoughts out as they come to me. (ie, disclaimer)

Edit: God dammit, the thing I was meaning to post in here first, is two things. Firstly, I think we need to bring back the yearly awards, where we vote for the best fic etc etc.

I also think that we need to get a big write up of what we consider to be the seminal Fanfiction that us here at DLP advocate. Denarian series, wastelands, all those fics that come first to mind when you think quality. Ideally, this would also include sections of other fandoms. Like LC's Broken series. Stargate fics, that kinda stuff.