Announcing the Future of the Tar Valon Times

Jeffan Caliarthan

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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/

0cttJI6.png

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.
 

Jeffan Caliarthan

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Also, if anyone is interested in writing articles for either the Tar Valon Times Blog, or for the Tar Valon Times through Forum Posts, the Tar Valon Times officially hires every six months, but if you'd like to hop on board, please send an email to editor@tarvalon.net, marketing@tarvalon.net, and keeper@tarvalon.net expressing your interest in joining the team.

Thank you!
 

Mystica Ari'Yena

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I understand the reasoning behind this and looking at the blog I have one question that immediately comes to mind.

Isn't there a way to put in a sort of content list of articles (including a warning which articles hold spoilers)?
Because right now, if you go to the blog you are immediately confronted with spoilers even before you have a chance to notice the spoiler alert text. It might put people off, especially those that haven't read the series yet (thinking of potential new readers with the tv show coming).

A content list would also make it easier for people to jump to articles they're interested in instead of having to scroll through. People tend to lose interest quickly if they have to scroll too much.

Also for finding older article back later on if you want to re-read them or redirect others to them.

Don't know if it's at all possible in the setup but maybe something to think about?
 

Jeffan Caliarthan

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We're using Wordpress for the blog, and from what I've gathered, you either have the option to show an excerpt of a certain number of characters or the entire post. We've opted for the entire post.

Regarding spoiler warnings - this is a great thought. I know it was brought up previously, and this is something that I forgot to change before it went live. Try checking out this post now. How do you feel that works? I agree that having that major spoiler regarding Mat isn't an ideal first heading to have, because it does draw your eye quite a bit.

For a menu, this is something we've gone back and forth on. I do agree that it would be nice to have, but it does create an issue with formatting. I think this is something that we can explore a bit further, though.
 

Elania al'Manir

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Regarding spoiler warnings - this is a great thought. I know it was brought up previously, and this is something that I forgot to change before it went live. Try checking out this post now. How do you feel that works? I agree that having that major spoiler regarding Mat isn't an ideal first heading to have, because it does draw your eye quite a bit.
The spoiler is still about the same size as the warning, and is in a different color. I think this is a good start, but question how effective it is. Potential ways to fix it would be more whitespace to move the spoiler "below the fold", re-arrange the article so that the spoiler is further down and then keep that in mind for future articles, or find some sort of code that allows the text to be physically hidden.

Do/can articles have tags? It matters less for the text-based ones where the search feature can look at the text, but would be good for the comics and fan art.
 

Jeffan Caliarthan

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I think in the future (and this is something I can look into doing for previous articles), we'll put spoiler headings a little further down. So, in the linked article, we would maybe put "Padan Fain's Influence Is Everywhere" as the first header, and move the "X Character Died" to a bit further below.

Tags are enabled, and we're going to be implementing shortly. Right now, we would probably only use #comics #wot and #tvnet.
 

Jeffan Caliarthan

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I went into the editor, and this is what it would look like if we had a sidebar menu with a list of articles:

SpnGWxd.png


I'm not a fan, simply because it takes up a good 1/3 of the width of the page, and then as you scroll down, it's just blank when the articles are done being listed. I'm sure there's a better way to do it, but I'm not super-skilled at Wordpress (although this has definitely been an experience for me), and I may see if I can make it look a bit more sleek.
 

Elania al'Manir

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I'm not a fan, simply because it takes up a good 1/3 of the width of the page, and then as you scroll down, it's just blank when the articles are done being listed. I'm sure there's a better way to do it, but I'm not super-skilled at Wordpress (although this has definitely been an experience for me), and I may see if I can make it look a bit more sleek.
There's probably a way to make it narrower, kind of like at the Thirteenth Depository.
 

Jeffan Caliarthan

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Yeah, I know there is, but I need to figure out how to do it. I'll reach out to the developer of the theme.
 

Jeffan Caliarthan

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A menu has been inserted and will continue to be updated.
 

Mystica Ari'Yena

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Regarding spoiler warnings - this is a great thought. I know it was brought up previously, and this is something that I forgot to change before it went live. Try checking out this post now. How do you feel that works? I agree that having that major spoiler regarding Mat isn't an ideal first heading to have, because it does draw your eye quite a bit..

the link doesn't seem to work for me. Sorry I couldn't respond sooner.

I went through the blog link on top. Looks good Jeffan!
 

Jeffan Caliarthan

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Huh. That's weird - seems like we're having some tech issues in regards to how permalinks work! Will look into this.
 

Kitan Tataru

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I love the blog. The format is great. My question, though, is this: How do we "convert" people who visit us for WoT content into becoming actual members of the site?
 

Alora Sionn

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Is there a way to fix all the links in the library for the old entries of the tvt? Ex: on my library page the links to the comics for the tvt I made in 2013 have an error message
 

Jeffan Caliarthan

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I love the blog. The format is great. My question, though, is this: How do we "convert" people who visit us for WoT content into becoming actual members of the site?

This is a fantastic question - thank you for asking it! The answer is a little difficult, but hear me out.

10-15+ years ago, if you wanted to talk about The Wheel of Time with people, you had to find a message board to do it on. That's how these forum communities started, including us. However, these days, there are groups on Facebook, hashtags on Twitter to find groups of like-minded people, and JordanCon to meet up with people. Forums are a very antiquated way of communicating with people, and people have to go out of their way to join them when, instead, they could just go to Facebook and find a group to talk about stuff in, and that's it.

As it stands, TarValon.Net is not easily marketed. We are a group of people that all like The Wheel of Time, but never actually talk about it. The only things that we have to associate ourselves with the series is our name and our organization's structure. Other than that, we're pretty much just another forum community based around a book series, which are a dime a dozen. Yes, we do have things that make us special, such as the relationships that we form, the charity work that we do, and the time we put into updating our library. However, so little of what we do is actually centered around The Wheel of Time. From what I've seen on social media, people want to talk about the series, and they have things to say. This is especially prevalent with the television series coming up.

So, with the blog, I hope to fill that (rather large) gap in our identity. I'm not saying that every person that comes to our blog to read WoT-centric articles is going to want to join and learn more about us, but maybe 10% of them will. We get tens of thousands of people that see our posts on social media, and that's just from building a brand and getting that name recognition out there. We want people to think of TarValon.Net when they think about The Wheel of Time fandom, and this is our way of doing that. A secondary point is that we can give a platform to non-members who want to talk about The Wheel of Time and produce quality articles, thereby increasing our brand's visibility and showing that we're a source of original content.

I can't make our existing members talk about the series, although I am doing my best to try and populate some discussion in the book forums, which is seeing moderate success. However, I can bring in people who are interested in The Wheel of Time and make them check out our community a little bit. If we discuss The Wheel of Time a little bit, then we have a chance of hooking them in with how awesome we are, even if we don't talk about the series as much as they would like.

Hopefully that makes sense? Let me know if I can help clear anything up. This is something that I've been working very closely with the other Executives, Officers, and the Board of Directors on, because if we don't start making changes to get our name out there in order to sustain ourselves, our organization probably won't last another five years.

Is there a way to fix all the links in the library for the old entries of the tvt? Ex: on my library page the links to the comics for the tvt I made in 2013 have an error message

This is a question for @Tallan Daar, but from my understanding, all of those articles were lost when the board transitioned.
 

Qamra Daielin

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As long as our identity and what makes this community more of a “family” isn’t lost in the attempt to get new members, etc, then I am okay with this. Just worried that with the focus turned outward, we will lose what we have now. I’ve sadly seen it where so much focus is on getting new members, that the old ones are left in the dust and forgotten. However, I have to have faith that this won’t happen here.
 

Jeffan Caliarthan

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That part of TarValon.Net will never change, nor should it (and none of us want that, either). We are simply trying to expose people to who we are and what we're about.
 

Qamra Daielin

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Then I, for one, welcome the new TVT Blog as overlord... hmm.. that sounded better in my head. :laugh:
 
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