There are openings here - unpaid openings, of course - for anyone with experience creating a blog, following a blog, subscribing to a blog, or even just regularly reading a blog. As a tyro in the process of setting up a blog, there may be substantial need for guidance - did I pick the best site on which to blog? (Blogspot)
What is the better choice for our team members - subscribe or follow?
What are the comparisons of subscribe and follow that the readers need to know, to choose?
What is the best subscription service? (There are about half-a-dozen offered.)
What are the limitations of blogspot that are going to prevent us from accomplishing the stated (or unstated) goals of the blog?
Are there free sites with fewer or less intrusive limits?
I think you get the gist of what we need to know - and if you know, please comment!
Or, better yet, ask to become an author on the blog - even if we move it to a different site - and tell us the things we need to know, in a single, gigunde article, or a series of articles.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Obsession Or Fun?
With all the talk about scoring lots of coins, chasing MVP awards, and beating our competitors, I think maybe we lose sight of one of the major goals of playing online games: have fun! For those who are addicted, the competition itself becomes the fun, if there is fun in that world. For most players, though, I suspect that often we look at the coins, see that we are still short of max, but decide "I'd rather be somewhere else!"
Maybe ANYWHERE else, when Word Pop has just "cheated" you (or me) by dropping five tiles on the only column that has more than one tile in place, and claims the life was lost even though you (or I) can see that there was room for six tiles, and one spot is STILL empty.
Fortunately for me, my schedule is flexible enough to "walk away" for a while, perhaps to work on editing the HTML here or to recruit, and return later, when my anger has dissipated. Not everyone has that luxury, and maybe that is the time to say, "To heck (or whatever) with the max - I'm done for today!"
What do you think?
Maybe ANYWHERE else, when Word Pop has just "cheated" you (or me) by dropping five tiles on the only column that has more than one tile in place, and claims the life was lost even though you (or I) can see that there was room for six tiles, and one spot is STILL empty.
Fortunately for me, my schedule is flexible enough to "walk away" for a while, perhaps to work on editing the HTML here or to recruit, and return later, when my anger has dissipated. Not everyone has that luxury, and maybe that is the time to say, "To heck (or whatever) with the max - I'm done for today!"
What do you think?
The Race Is ON!
It certainly will be interesting to watch the shakeout as all the power players go for the MVP lead beginning at 3:00 AM this very night! In addition to the past leading competitors (most of them, anyway), there are now about 19 more super-collectors in the running. The final outcome will likely depend on two factors:
1) Who takes the most coins from Spin2Win and PrizeMachine. Those games appear to reside outside the casino limits, at least on most days.
2. Who has the most friends to sell-a-friend for coins. OOOPS - that is TELL-a-friend, isn't it?
I expect that maxing casino, non-casino, and search will all be basic to even approaching the team top 16. I won't be there, despite my recent string of doing all but the search to the max every day for the past 15 or 16. I just WON'T sell my one friend - and couldn't get any coins for my son's dog, anyway. (I think he still views me as a friend - at least when I feed him in my son's absence.) Plus, I mostly USE search, as opposed to seeking to max out the coins there.
I will watch (with envy, of course) from the sidelines, and content myself with recruiting, and recruiting others to recruit.
1) Who takes the most coins from Spin2Win and PrizeMachine. Those games appear to reside outside the casino limits, at least on most days.
2. Who has the most friends to sell-a-friend for coins. OOOPS - that is TELL-a-friend, isn't it?
I expect that maxing casino, non-casino, and search will all be basic to even approaching the team top 16. I won't be there, despite my recent string of doing all but the search to the max every day for the past 15 or 16. I just WON'T sell my one friend - and couldn't get any coins for my son's dog, anyway. (I think he still views me as a friend - at least when I feed him in my son's absence.) Plus, I mostly USE search, as opposed to seeking to max out the coins there.
I will watch (with envy, of course) from the sidelines, and content myself with recruiting, and recruiting others to recruit.
Why A Blog?
Tigers Against Diabetes is in a crisis. This blog is designed to offer an opportunity for the team to meet that crisis, and emerge better - and victorious - for having confronted the crisis.
For November, 2008, we are being throughly thrashed, although we have begun to rebuild ourselves to become more successful in the future. Now we need to afford the opportunity for a larger number of players to contribute beyond just those coins, but to extend to all the varied talents and capacities that must be represented in our more-than-900 membership.
It will look dire when at the first of December, we discover that four or more of our mainstays have left for other teams. That is, players currently in our team top 16 will leave us. That will eventually appear even more bleak when we see the margin by which we lost November's check, and count the members of our primary opponent versus our membership.
We certainly will miss both the coins and the leadership / competitive spirit, of those leaving - and I personally want to thank them for the great job they have done with and for us.
But - several things make the picture brighter in the future than it would now appear. First, we have already picked up a dozen players or more, just as prolific as those known to be leaving. So - we are not really losing, or even merely changing - but getting better despite those losses. That has shown in the fact that over the past week, we have moved from 34,500 coins per player per day, to now beyond 37,500 - and fully recovered all that we had lost at Thanksgiving as well. Additionally, the gains in overall membership have been substantial, so that we have a better base for internal improvement. Moreover, we have the opportunity to continue that same growth for the foreseeable future, and if enough of us pitch in to recruit, to expand that rate of growth prodigiously. As we must, for the opponent has a larger current membership, and a per-player-per-day rate of about 39,500 coins.
Next, the character of the recruits is changing somewhat: not only am I, at least, focused more on better IWON coin rankings, but I think that we have already absorbed the majority of our "lost" members, for I believe that most of them were early recruits to the team. As the Team Challenge has matured, there are fewer outright newcomers to suck into the team, before discovering that they are not a bonus for us. Now, I think, we can see weekly, maybe even daily, growth in our rates of coin collection, due to the new members.
Throughout this blog, feel free to comment as you please - except keep it clean - and find the issues or ideas that YOU want to discuss - or let me know, and we will either make you an author of the blog, or at least get that idea/issue published. Read articles, read comments, take surveys - then stick some feedback into a comment and leave that.
Something else: If you are an experienced blogger, I need some recommendations about pushing subscriptions or follows to the membership - should I, which reader / service, pros and cons of each, and so on.
Gooooooo Tigers!!!!
Update: perhaps time-of-day, or maybe everyone is resting for a fresh start on the new month - but only 36,000 coins per member, per day, as of 11:30 EST, November 30.
Update to the update: at 1:46 EST December 1, we are still at 36.000 coins per member, per day, for 931 members. I think that may jump up, though, when the several new members since yesterday, have a chance to contribute coins - which were likely limited yesterday, even though the members are in the divisors. I did not update the comparator for our opponent - too tired to care, since it is a foregone conclusion that they continue to thrash us.
For November, 2008, we are being throughly thrashed, although we have begun to rebuild ourselves to become more successful in the future. Now we need to afford the opportunity for a larger number of players to contribute beyond just those coins, but to extend to all the varied talents and capacities that must be represented in our more-than-900 membership.
It will look dire when at the first of December, we discover that four or more of our mainstays have left for other teams. That is, players currently in our team top 16 will leave us. That will eventually appear even more bleak when we see the margin by which we lost November's check, and count the members of our primary opponent versus our membership.
We certainly will miss both the coins and the leadership / competitive spirit, of those leaving - and I personally want to thank them for the great job they have done with and for us.
But - several things make the picture brighter in the future than it would now appear. First, we have already picked up a dozen players or more, just as prolific as those known to be leaving. So - we are not really losing, or even merely changing - but getting better despite those losses. That has shown in the fact that over the past week, we have moved from 34,500 coins per player per day, to now beyond 37,500 - and fully recovered all that we had lost at Thanksgiving as well. Additionally, the gains in overall membership have been substantial, so that we have a better base for internal improvement. Moreover, we have the opportunity to continue that same growth for the foreseeable future, and if enough of us pitch in to recruit, to expand that rate of growth prodigiously. As we must, for the opponent has a larger current membership, and a per-player-per-day rate of about 39,500 coins.
Next, the character of the recruits is changing somewhat: not only am I, at least, focused more on better IWON coin rankings, but I think that we have already absorbed the majority of our "lost" members, for I believe that most of them were early recruits to the team. As the Team Challenge has matured, there are fewer outright newcomers to suck into the team, before discovering that they are not a bonus for us. Now, I think, we can see weekly, maybe even daily, growth in our rates of coin collection, due to the new members.
Throughout this blog, feel free to comment as you please - except keep it clean - and find the issues or ideas that YOU want to discuss - or let me know, and we will either make you an author of the blog, or at least get that idea/issue published. Read articles, read comments, take surveys - then stick some feedback into a comment and leave that.
Something else: If you are an experienced blogger, I need some recommendations about pushing subscriptions or follows to the membership - should I, which reader / service, pros and cons of each, and so on.
Gooooooo Tigers!!!!
Update: perhaps time-of-day, or maybe everyone is resting for a fresh start on the new month - but only 36,000 coins per member, per day, as of 11:30 EST, November 30.
Update to the update: at 1:46 EST December 1, we are still at 36.000 coins per member, per day, for 931 members. I think that may jump up, though, when the several new members since yesterday, have a chance to contribute coins - which were likely limited yesterday, even though the members are in the divisors. I did not update the comparator for our opponent - too tired to care, since it is a foregone conclusion that they continue to thrash us.
Lost Boys Reconsidered
I have been running through a large number of team member profiles the past few days, and have found evidence that I was wrong about many of them. While I had thought them to be merely less frequent players, it appears after that scan of profiles, that many - maybe most - of those in question are total non-players. The ones I have looked at have been unchanged during a span of perhaps a week - and look to be very minimalist at best. If no coins accrue during a week, and there never were any significant coins, then even if the week is a vacation, or an illness, the player with no visible history is not likely suddenly to become a powerful contributor to the team.
I have come to believe that some of those "lost" players have indeed lost - their password, or their internet access. They remain on the rolls until IWON decides to purge them, but are essentially already gone. Others may represent either players who discovered that they didn't really enjoy online games, and may at best become very infrequent players, or players who have attempted a second identity, and found that to be too much trouble. (I gave some thought to a second identity, before the maxes were raised. I never started one, but came close.) Both of those categories are devoid of profit for us, but may sometimes kick in a very few coins.
Perhaps the best treatment for those unreachables is for us to stop trying to reach them, and ignore them until they do something to once again attract attention, or vanish completely from IWON.
Meantime, we apply that effort instead to go after new players more intensely. In line with that conclusion, we should soon begin a more comprehensive recruitment effort than the few of us currently engaged, can provide. EVERY member should begin by recruiting IWON friends. There is already a relationship, so recruitment starts off a lot more smoothly than would a "cold call" from some wordy blowhard such as I. I suggest viewing the profile of the friend - just hover over the avatar on your profile page, and a mini-screen pops up, with links to "view profile" and "recruit". HOLD THE SHIFT KEY, and click "view profile". If there is no charity team listed there, this is a prospect. (I do this to people whose profile is near mine in the IWON coin rankings, so I have little chance of catching another "lost" player - and you can do that, too!) When viewing your friend's profile, do look at coin rank - as a means to find those who, first day on IWON, six weeks ago, and the only day ever on the site - invited or accepted a "friend". If the friend is active, with a coin rank that does not use six digits, go for it! Whatever your message of recruitment, it is effective to follow up a week later, just as a reminder. More on copy-and-paste for those messages, in another article. Marie is checking on the other link I mentioned, "recruit", to see if that works, or ever did work, and what it should do when it works.
I have come to believe that some of those "lost" players have indeed lost - their password, or their internet access. They remain on the rolls until IWON decides to purge them, but are essentially already gone. Others may represent either players who discovered that they didn't really enjoy online games, and may at best become very infrequent players, or players who have attempted a second identity, and found that to be too much trouble. (I gave some thought to a second identity, before the maxes were raised. I never started one, but came close.) Both of those categories are devoid of profit for us, but may sometimes kick in a very few coins.
Perhaps the best treatment for those unreachables is for us to stop trying to reach them, and ignore them until they do something to once again attract attention, or vanish completely from IWON.
Meantime, we apply that effort instead to go after new players more intensely. In line with that conclusion, we should soon begin a more comprehensive recruitment effort than the few of us currently engaged, can provide. EVERY member should begin by recruiting IWON friends. There is already a relationship, so recruitment starts off a lot more smoothly than would a "cold call" from some wordy blowhard such as I. I suggest viewing the profile of the friend - just hover over the avatar on your profile page, and a mini-screen pops up, with links to "view profile" and "recruit". HOLD THE SHIFT KEY, and click "view profile". If there is no charity team listed there, this is a prospect. (I do this to people whose profile is near mine in the IWON coin rankings, so I have little chance of catching another "lost" player - and you can do that, too!) When viewing your friend's profile, do look at coin rank - as a means to find those who, first day on IWON, six weeks ago, and the only day ever on the site - invited or accepted a "friend". If the friend is active, with a coin rank that does not use six digits, go for it! Whatever your message of recruitment, it is effective to follow up a week later, just as a reminder. More on copy-and-paste for those messages, in another article. Marie is checking on the other link I mentioned, "recruit", to see if that works, or ever did work, and what it should do when it works.
Copy-And-Paste For Recruiting
Copy-and-paste is a powerful tool for messages. Whether in chat, on the team page message forum, or on another profile in the process of recruiting, this can be the only way one consistently provides the message one intends to provide. There are a couple of things to know, before you start, however:
1) The different areas in which one might post vary as to treatment of Word format, rich text, and text, but ALL of them do strange things to special characters that Word and rtf embed. Only text is apparently universal among them.
2) That means, that even if you use Word, or WordPad, to compose your message, it is not a good idea to simply save that, and begin to copy it onto IWON. The necessary extra step is to first "save as" .txt - then THAT file can be the source of the copy before the paste.
1) The different areas in which one might post vary as to treatment of Word format, rich text, and text, but ALL of them do strange things to special characters that Word and rtf embed. Only text is apparently universal among them.
2) That means, that even if you use Word, or WordPad, to compose your message, it is not a good idea to simply save that, and begin to copy it onto IWON. The necessary extra step is to first "save as" .txt - then THAT file can be the source of the copy before the paste.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
