Jeffan Caliarthan
Aes Sedai
Hello everyone!
This post is a little long-winded, but I want to give everyone some perspective into the decision that was made regarding the future of the Tar Valon Times. I appreciate your patience! There is a tl;dr at the bottom if you want to skip straight to that.
Background Into the Department of Marketing
One of the things that the Department of Marketing has been working on for the past several years has been transitioning the Tar Valon Times into a blog. This was always our intention when moving the forums to XenForo, but their built-in blog isn't quite what we were looking for, so it was put on hold.
During that time, the Tar Valon Times has existed on a month-to-month basis. @Maibella ni Rhoiden t'al'Varrak and her team come up with some great articles for the Tar Valon Times, but they've only existed for a month, because we were forced to move them back to an archival forum, due to the nature of the site.
When I took on the role of Social Marketing Manager with Ninya Evoneigh as the Director of Marketing, we established a plan to market TarValon.Net to non-members by creating some great content centered around The Wheel of Time. This has been a huge hit on social media, with us gaining thousands of followers and tens of thousands of viewers over the past 18 months. We've already seen more new members in this time period than we had in the past, simply because we're building that brand recognition.
We also wanted to utilize the Tar Valon Times as a way of creating some amazing articles about The Wheel of Time, because people still want to hear about it and discuss it, even though the series is over. With the television series coming into production and filming starting later this year, it's more important than ever that we have a platform to be able to have these discussions in a format that will be around forever and that we can share with everyone - members and non-members.
The main purpose of the Department of Marketing is to attract non-members to our site, and even if they're not interested in becoming a member of the community, for whatever reason, that they're aware that we are a place where The Wheel of Time fandom lives and thrives; that we are a place that generates some great content surrounding the series that they want to read and want to engage with.
Essentially, we want to become a Big Deal in The Wheel of Time fandom.
Introducing The Tar Valon Times Blog
Now, as for how this all relates back to the future of the Tar Valon Times? Going forward, all WoT articles and a few TV.Net related articles produced by the Tar Valon Times will be going into the blog, which you can access in the top menu bar. If you access it through there, it's hosted in a windowed screen, similar to how the library is hosted now. However, you can also access the blog directly by visiting https://blog.tarvalon.net/
There are already articles from the past year there that center around The Wheel of Time, as well as one article highlighting what our community is interested in reading. These are the types of articles that we will be focusing on, as well as monthly wrap-up articles that show what official-things have been happening at the Tower, including some prominent discussions that we're having at the time. We want to show people that we are interested in The Wheel of Time and that we've built a community around the series. We will also be including articles that focus on our charitable efforts, as well as articles on our real-life gatherings.
We already have several exciting things lined up for the blog, including articles written by some big hitters in The Wheel of Time fandom. There are a few opinion articles written by some non-members as well, to whom we'll be giving a platform to discuss things.
Other Articles
Regarding where the other articles are going to go, which I've often referred to as "Slice of Life" articles, they're going to go into the forums. If someone is interested in writing about an experience they had in real life, or a way to contribute more in a certain field, or an introduction to a hobby, those things will go in their respective forums. They will still go through the formal editing process by the Editor of the Tar Valon Times, and they'll have a special tag denoting that they are Tar Valon Times articles. They will also count towards the Writing Merit.
To give an example: If someone wanted to write an article about some super-rare Funko Pops that they have or want to show off their collection, that would most likely go in the Entertainment forum. If someone wants to write about their experience with the American Red Cross, that would go in the Servant of All forum. If someone wants to write about their experience learning about birdwatching, that may go into General or Home & Garden.
In Closing
In the Executive Team, we believe that this is the best way that we can showcase our community and do the most good in the fandom as a whole. I've spoken at length with Maibella about this change, and we understand that it is going to be difficult to wade through in the beginning, but we are all committed to this effort.
If you have any comments, concerns, or questions, please feel free to ask them in this thread (respectfully), or reach out to myself (marketing@tarvalon.net), Maibella (editor@tarvalon.net), or Lireina (keeper@tarvalon.net). We are happy to discuss things with you.
tl;dr: We're retiring the old Tar Valon Times and launching a new blog that will only have WoT & certain TV.Net-related articles. Everything else is going to be put in the forums.
This post is a little long-winded, but I want to give everyone some perspective into the decision that was made regarding the future of the Tar Valon Times. I appreciate your patience! There is a tl;dr at the bottom if you want to skip straight to that.
Background Into the Department of Marketing
One of the things that the Department of Marketing has been working on for the past several years has been transitioning the Tar Valon Times into a blog. This was always our intention when moving the forums to XenForo, but their built-in blog isn't quite what we were looking for, so it was put on hold.
During that time, the Tar Valon Times has existed on a month-to-month basis. @Maibella ni Rhoiden t'al'Varrak and her team come up with some great articles for the Tar Valon Times, but they've only existed for a month, because we were forced to move them back to an archival forum, due to the nature of the site.
When I took on the role of Social Marketing Manager with Ninya Evoneigh as the Director of Marketing, we established a plan to market TarValon.Net to non-members by creating some great content centered around The Wheel of Time. This has been a huge hit on social media, with us gaining thousands of followers and tens of thousands of viewers over the past 18 months. We've already seen more new members in this time period than we had in the past, simply because we're building that brand recognition.
We also wanted to utilize the Tar Valon Times as a way of creating some amazing articles about The Wheel of Time, because people still want to hear about it and discuss it, even though the series is over. With the television series coming into production and filming starting later this year, it's more important than ever that we have a platform to be able to have these discussions in a format that will be around forever and that we can share with everyone - members and non-members.
The main purpose of the Department of Marketing is to attract non-members to our site, and even if they're not interested in becoming a member of the community, for whatever reason, that they're aware that we are a place where The Wheel of Time fandom lives and thrives; that we are a place that generates some great content surrounding the series that they want to read and want to engage with.
Essentially, we want to become a Big Deal in The Wheel of Time fandom.
Introducing The Tar Valon Times Blog
Now, as for how this all relates back to the future of the Tar Valon Times? Going forward, all WoT articles and a few TV.Net related articles produced by the Tar Valon Times will be going into the blog, which you can access in the top menu bar. If you access it through there, it's hosted in a windowed screen, similar to how the library is hosted now. However, you can also access the blog directly by visiting https://blog.tarvalon.net/
We already have several exciting things lined up for the blog, including articles written by some big hitters in The Wheel of Time fandom. There are a few opinion articles written by some non-members as well, to whom we'll be giving a platform to discuss things.
Other Articles
Regarding where the other articles are going to go, which I've often referred to as "Slice of Life" articles, they're going to go into the forums. If someone is interested in writing about an experience they had in real life, or a way to contribute more in a certain field, or an introduction to a hobby, those things will go in their respective forums. They will still go through the formal editing process by the Editor of the Tar Valon Times, and they'll have a special tag denoting that they are Tar Valon Times articles. They will also count towards the Writing Merit.
To give an example: If someone wanted to write an article about some super-rare Funko Pops that they have or want to show off their collection, that would most likely go in the Entertainment forum. If someone wants to write about their experience with the American Red Cross, that would go in the Servant of All forum. If someone wants to write about their experience learning about birdwatching, that may go into General or Home & Garden.
In Closing
In the Executive Team, we believe that this is the best way that we can showcase our community and do the most good in the fandom as a whole. I've spoken at length with Maibella about this change, and we understand that it is going to be difficult to wade through in the beginning, but we are all committed to this effort.
If you have any comments, concerns, or questions, please feel free to ask them in this thread (respectfully), or reach out to myself (marketing@tarvalon.net), Maibella (editor@tarvalon.net), or Lireina (keeper@tarvalon.net). We are happy to discuss things with you.
tl;dr: We're retiring the old Tar Valon Times and launching a new blog that will only have WoT & certain TV.Net-related articles. Everything else is going to be put in the forums.