What can we do to keep Sluggy Freelance and this forum from fading further into obscurity?

Because let's face it: over the last few years this forum has gone from a vibrant community with dozens of posts per day, bristling with theories and energy, to a stagnant backwater lucky to see than ten posts per week (not counting comic reactions -- and now-a-days even those don't run more than seven or eight per comic). And the comic itself has gone from being "Oldest and best comic on the internet" to "Sluggy what?"

So I'm making this topic to solicit ideas and strategies on how to draw in more readers/posters, before the forums fall so far below critical mass that a post like this fails to get any replies.



Ideas:
(1) Wiki manipulation: editing wiki's to reference Sluggy Freelance where appropriate (or inappropriate but unlikely to be deleted), such as pop culture references section, etc.

This used to be my preferred idea, however efficacy has turned out to be questionable. A lot of wiki's do mention Sluggy in many places, most prominently TvTropes, however we don't seem to have experienced an influx of new readers. Still, the idea may have merit. A good place to start would be to determine every movie Sluggy Freelance has parodied over the years (Army of Darkness in the Storm Breaker Saga, Alien in the Sci-Fi Adventure, 28 Days Later in 28 Geeks Later, 13 Ghosts in Ghosts in the Gas Tank, Harry Potter one through four or five in the Torg Potter's, etc) and check the appropriate Wiki's to ensure they reference Sluggy Freelance. Kitten I and II is a bonus here since being genre parody it allows us to put a mention of Sluggy in every slasher movie ever made.

An important part of this may be the quality of the writeup. Perhaps in order to attract new readers it needs to be more than some variant of "Parodied in Sluggy Freelance: X," but rather a clever sentence with a hook tooting Sluggy's unique and amazing qualities. Something like this for Alien; "Parodied in the supernatural buddy comic Sluggy Freelance story 'The Sci-Fi Adventure.' The Alien, nicknamed Aylee, survived the storyline and became main character Torg's friend and secretary after being unable to stomach his anti-dandruff shampoo."
Or something better written than that...


(2) We could crowd-source the funding for some Google text ads. We'd need to come up with good short descriptions for that to work, aimed at a variety of interest angles. Spending some time on this might be a good idea even in the absence of some kind of ad due to the notorious difficulty of describing what Sluggy Freelance IS. Perhaps a list of one sentence descriptions emphasizing certain elements?

Something about Sam with some kind of Twilight quip in it?

Something about Aylee, the man eating alien from another dimension who became the main character's secretary. Perhaps a quote from the comic where Aylee is negotiating Torg's insurance claim and Torg tells the guy to quite kicking because he's tickling Aylee's tonsils?
In face, quotes from the comic might be a really good starting point for these.

An abbreviated text version of the "Election Issues explained using balls" comic?

For those who like Magical Girls, something to do with Gwynn?

For those who like resurrecting gymnastic assassins and that strange-Japanese-word-I-can't-remember-right-now-meaning-psycho-girlfriend, something on Oasis? Heck, just a brief description of Oasis's career would make me click a link to the comic!

Well, that's what I got off the top of my head. Anybody else want to chime in?

I believe you're thinking of Yandere.

I like the ads idea, and I'd be willing to chip in a few bucks to make it happen. The most important thing to an ad is making the person reading it go "Wait, what?!". If you can inspire that kind of reaction in someone, simple curiosity will handle the rest. Heck any ad is better then no ad at this point.

Some more ideas:

Sell comic ebooks. I read the other day that Schlock Mercenary got a deal with Baen books to sell ebook pdf/cbr versions of the print comic. This for a comic freely available online, mind you. I believe the Schlock e-comics include the print limited edition stories.
There are many ebook and e-comic distributors other than Baen. Selling Sluggy Freelance via them at say 99 cents a pop would not only bring in money for Pete, it would also act as promotion and bring the comic to a whole new readership used to reading long form comics and not bothered by the "The Archive is Huge!" idiocy.
This however would make more work for Pete.


We could use the pirate BitTorrent network to our advantage. Since the comic is already freely available, what's the harm in bringing it to a wider audience?
Huge numbers of CBR format comic books are illicitly distributed via torrents. We could assemble the free portion of Sluggy books into CBR format, and then those of us with high upload bandwidth connections and a tolerance for illegal activities could package them in torrents with popular or respected and well known print comics such as Watchmen and Neal Gaiman's Sandman series and the Buffy and Angel comics and upload them to places like The Pirate Bay and Demonoid. This would expose a whole new audience to Sluggy Freelance.

And more:

Schlock Mercenary uses an extremely clever and interesting way of manipulating Google's search results. Below every comic there is a plain text transcript. This meant that searches for random words might bring up the comic, which is useful considering the amount of text in a webcomic, all locked up in unsearchable image form. We have the Sluggy dialog search database, which means we could probably do this easily. It would, however, require the cooperation of whoever runs the website, which might be impossible to obtain.

See here.

And what it makes Google do.

That means that hypothetically a search for 'vampire sparkle' might end up here.

How about a petition to Rit or whoever handles this stuff?

We had a similar discussion over in SRC not long ago, and one consensus was that Sluggy is not welcoming to new readers.

I know some Sluggites were working on a revised new reader's guide to be posted on the Wiki. But it's unlikely to be seen there.

Maybe we could use the wiki to curate several different pathways into Sluggy Fandom --best one-offs, the "early, funny" ones, vampire plotlines, etc., and then see if Pete or rit would be willing to move those over onto the main site.

To be real honest, it doesn't look like Sluggy is one of rit's top priorities right now, but if all the work was done, it might make it more likely to happen.

Yes, I remember. I started it. Even got a reply from Pete laying out his thoughts on promoting the comic, which is an interesting read.

That was back in 2010. I'd say forum activity has decreased by half to a third since then.

I think now is the time for more extreme measures than tinkering with the wiki. Especially with the current storyline making it the perfect opportunity to recruit new readers.

The comic ebook idea would circumvent the "not newbie friendly by reason of archive."

I wonder if Pete might be amenable to someone new getting involved with the website. I've been detecting an overtone of annoyance in his recent posts about Rit. Of course, we'd have to find someone...

It's a shame that most people, when they lose interest with the comic, stop visiting these boards. They are the best forums I've found on the Internet for simple acceptance.

It's been years since I read a Sluggy strip.

That's why I said 'most'

I would hope that were I too stop reading that I'd stick around though truth be told, personality that I have, I'd still read the strip as a byproduct of sticking around.

The problem though is that promoting the comic is selling the forums short but the only way to promote the forums independently is by word of (virtual)mouth.

I never had the strip proper in my bookmarks. I've always had a bookmark for the forums.

I've also tried to bring people over just for the forums. Hi Grillick. Hi Etters.

Haven't seen Etters in a while.

I might be the only one, but for me, having a huge archive is the biggest plus a webcomic can have! Finding Sluggy, with 14 years of content, was pretty awesome!

I don't know how Pete's relationships with other comic creators are, but I have read a lot of comics that has been referenced from other webcomics. Many of the slice-of-life comics, like Something Positive, Questionable Content, Girls with Slingshots and Least I Could Do frequently mention each other, add links and make cameos. I think this works very well. The majority of comics I have read, I have found that way!

You know, I don't know why Pete hasn't done a guest artist week in years. Those were always fun, and it would be a good way to give him an extended break while getting some crossover with some other comics.

Of course, there's a lot of things that might promote the comic that aren't really in our hands. I do feel Pete, rit & co. could be definitely packaging the comic better.

I always thought that if Sluggy could break into other types of media, then it would be able to draw in those curious about the origin of the new media. Maybe a facebook game with links to the comic or something of that nature. Some of it may be up to Pete though, and not with amazing story lines because he already has that. Instead, if he could tie up all his loose ends he could have a second starting point for new casual readers. It probably would get complicated just like the original sluggy we are used to, but it would also give new readers a place to start that feels more current. A simple flow chart should explain the basic relationships that exist i.e.: Torg loves Zoe, Sam is a vampire, Riff love explosions and doesn't like Sam, the ferret and the bunny talk-live with it, and Gwen has curly hair.....or something like that, whatever still has relevance in a all-old-plot-lines-completed sluggy. Anyway, as for new media, I always wanted to see a Tell-tale point and click style Sluggy game.