- Location
- The Hague
- Pronouns
- He/Him
This is the first in a series of three announcements in which we explore where SV has come from and where we, the Directors, expect it to go in the future. Part I, talking about SV's grand direction and business launches today, May 27; Part II, about reforms to how SV is administered, launches June 3; and Part III, regarding specific changes to policies and processes, will launch June 10.
It's been three years since Sufficient Velocity launched in April of 2014, and let me tell you something - sometimes it feels like it's been ten times that long. Sometimes we look back and go "Only three years?!"
Because, frankly, a huge amount has happened in that time. Today, SV serves more than 35 gigabytes of data a day. We get more than five million daily hits from 31,000 unique users, who come from all across the world: The US, Britain, Canada and Australia, of course, but we also have visitors from Japan, South Korea, Russia, Malaysia, India, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Egypt, Israel, Turkey, Brazil, and Guatemala. It's a bit humbling to see just how many people visit our little corner of the internet every day.
Obviously, that's because of you: our users. You're the ones who come back every single day to update stories and quests, to read, to participate, to comment, and to discuss. While we keep the lights on and keep the code rolling, you're the real lifeblood of the site, and you're what's enabled it to grow from the offshoot of another site into its own unique and desirable place that we, personally, think is the premier place for questing on the internet and an amazing place for speculative fiction writing and discussion generally.
And we want to keep that going. We want to make sure the lights stay on, that the code stays rolling, and that SV can continue to grow and expand. It's why we're trying to build durable processes and policies that will serve the site well now, and into the future. It's also why SV is a business now. Incorporation, sales, and subscriptions are what allows us to not only keep the lights on, but make sure that you have better tools, more options, and a better place to post.
Also maybe we'll actually get some money out of it one day ...
So over the past two months, as we sat down to discuss how to make Sufficient Velocity a better place, one thing was at the forefront of our minds: What is Sufficient Velocity? What do we want it to be?
Vision
Let's face it. One of the real risks that any project - and SV is a large project - faces is that if you don't have a goal in mind, you'll end up wasting energy with a giant scattershot of exertion. You'll start projects that never finish and you'll waste time and money on things that don't go anywhere. And honestly we're as guilty as anyone of this. Three years ago, we started Sufficient Velocity without a specific destination in mind; with nothing but a song in our hearts, so to speak. We invested time and money into SV, and there wasn't always a return on that investment. We paid for the development of addons that were, probably, in hindsight a waste; we started projects that didn't go anywhere; we tinkered with forum structures just because we could.
That waste happened because we never had a real objective. We never pinned down why we were doing any of this.
Today, we want to change that. We want a vision for Sufficient Velocity that will lend direction to our efforts, give us a yardstick to measure them against, and allow us to build confidently toward a plan.
If this sounds corporate, there's a reason for that. Corporations work. As a way to get a big group of people to all get moving in the same direction, they're probably second only to armies. And SV is a very big group of people.
What we've come up with is simple, and we think it reflects what SVers do and what the forum is good at:
"Sufficient Velocity knits together everything the internet can do for readers and writers. Our mission is to create the premier online space for the development of speculative fiction by enabling constructive discussion and collaboration."
Part of accomplishing that vision is making sure that everyone's on the same page about not just where they're going, but how they're getting there. For a business, that means guiding principles: general statements of intent that guide your thinking when it comes to turning that vision into the nuts and bolts of the day-to-day. If you've ever worked in an office you'll probably have encountered something like this.
So we've done a bit of research into the ones that work, and we've come up with what we think are a good set of principles. These are the things we want to keep in mind when we're running SV in the future. By approaching management decisions with these principles guiding us, we believe we'll achieve better, more consistent outcomes and decisions.
Our Culture
An organization is only as good as the people in it, and a community must be enriched by its members. The following are our guidelines to building a better community on SV:
Nobody told us that running a forum would be as difficult as it is. It's difficult for everyone, in different ways. To mitigate this, we have the following guidelines:
Sufficient Velocity is part of a business. The decision to incorporate has had a positive result: the website pays its own bills and the proceeds of our various interests have been invested in expanding and improving the feature set, which we believe has fueled our consistent growth over the past three years. We haven't been personally enriched by the business at this stage, but as we've seen it grow there has been a commensurate improvement in SV the forum.
We've also had to deal with taxation and accounts and so on. Besides its corporate affairs, it's an enterprise that needs to both make and spend money in order to carry on. As we see it, making further improvements to Sufficient Velocity means growing that business. Especially when it comes to writing and reading, the network effect is enormous: readers want to be where the stories are, and writers want to be where the readers are. It's as true for magazines as it is for questing or book publishing.
Growing that business, from where we sit, turns on a couple of key points.
First, user growth. As said, the network effect is enormous. Making SV successful means drawing in more users. That's more stories to read, more quests to participate in, more readers to comment, and more voters on your quest. While SV is well-known in certain communities (Worm is a great example), and it's clearly a leading environment for Questing, there are lots of areas we don't have any play at all - and questing, as a genre, is sadly poorly known in the greater speculative fiction community. Do you want a Hugo award winner to one day come from Sufficient Velocity? We do. We want a Nebula as well.
If we want that to happen then we need to have a larger and wider audience. That means marketing. Over the next couple of months, we'll be conducting a marketing review and placing some test advertisements on communities like Reddit to see if we can increase the chatter about Sufficient Velocity and draw new users to our community.
Second, feature development. We've heard from you that SV's features - like threadmarks and vote tallying - are things that bring users to Sufficient Velocity. We're going to continue that feature development, and over the past year, we've added what we think are a really nice set of features to Sufficient Velocity. For example:
One of the less shiny (but vitally important) parts of feature development is theming. Xenforo 2.0 uses a totally different set of themes compared to XF1. Given that SV has a proliferation of themes (often with a negative performance impact), one of the things we're going to be looking at over the next couple of months is creating a new theme and consolidating our total number of themes for the XF 2.0 launch.
Over the next couple of months - as we wrap up our currently planned featureset and begin looking forward at XF2, expect to see a survey from us asking you about your preference for theming (things like dark versus light) and about where you think our energy on feature development would be best spent.
Third, user engagement. This is a tricky one. User engagement covers everything from our policies and processes with respect to the content we want to see on Sufficient Velocity to how we promote content we like - like contests.
Over the past year or so, we've run a number of contests and occasionally called out works that we really liked. We'd like to do more of this, because we think it's pretty key to building up a durable community. What exactly that will look like, we're not precisely sure. Our contests so far have been reasonably successful, but not as wildly successful as we'd like, and running them is not inexpensive.
One of the things we will do in the vein of user engagement over the next couple of months is change how we handle adult content. Historically on SV, and before us on SB, forums and sexual content have been a bad mix. While we try to be generous in our rules, practically speaking we've had more than the occasional scandal where users toe the line or sometimes dive right over. It's created an impression of us as prudes - which isn't what we've intended - but we also think it's reflected poorly on our users, too.
Since we opened, the minimum age has been set to the default that comes with XF - 13. There are some good legal reasons for this, but practically speaking it's a little strange and we're not sure it's appropriate. We've also attempted with a couple of adult forums, but the results have been absolutely middling. We need to make this work better - at both the staff and user ends.
We're not precisely sure what this will look like yet, though we've been tossing a few ideas back and forth. We're going to have to put together a clean-slate, whole-forum reform to figure out exactly what will work for everyone. But we can tell you a couple of things that will definitely change.
First, the age to register will be raised to15 16, from 13. We think this better reflects the content we have on SV already.
Second, Sufficiently Sexy will eventually be closed. New applications are not going to be accepted, though the forum will remain open for posting for the time being. We would like to retain the personal discussion aspects, as that's been very valuable to people, but otherwise it may be shuttered.
Third, we're going to have to develop policies, processes, and technical features that will allow users to post, view, and screen out adult content all across the forum, not just concentrated in one forum.
We can also tell you what won't change: our policies on the sexualization of minors. While we understand that certain fandoms involving minors are popular, and while we'll look at making these rules more clear and more explicit, it will never be acceptable to post sexual content involving minors on Sufficient Velocity.
Most of these things require money. Currently, SV's subscriptions fuel our development and growth. We'd like to take this opportunity to thank all of you who've purchased a subscription - your purchase has gone a long way toward making SV into the community it is today. But development and maintenance is expensive. It takes tens of subscribers just to support SV's back-end hosting; it would take (because we don't have them) hundreds to support a full time, or even part time, developer for Sufficient Velocity.
We've heard that our subscriptions are sometimes confusing, and often quite frankly a hard sell. We want to change that. We're going to try to make them more prominent, the feature set more clear, and the value proposition more meaningful to you. We haven't had a real look at the features we've made available to subscribers and the features we just haven't turned on and the features we've just accidentally turned on and forgotten about, and we're going to do that soon.
Again we don't know exactly what that will look like, but we can tell you two things. First, that it will involve a reform of subscription levels and their feature sets; and second, that subscribers in Canada will now be obligated to pay HST on subscriptions (Sorry, it's a requirement.
)
Conclusion
Obviously, there's a lot to unpack here about SV as a business enterprise, but we did want to make you aware of just where we're going over the coming months (and year). You'll see more of this as we work out the details and roll them out.
Stay tuned: Next week will cover administrative reforms on SV!
It's been three years since Sufficient Velocity launched in April of 2014, and let me tell you something - sometimes it feels like it's been ten times that long. Sometimes we look back and go "Only three years?!"
Because, frankly, a huge amount has happened in that time. Today, SV serves more than 35 gigabytes of data a day. We get more than five million daily hits from 31,000 unique users, who come from all across the world: The US, Britain, Canada and Australia, of course, but we also have visitors from Japan, South Korea, Russia, Malaysia, India, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Egypt, Israel, Turkey, Brazil, and Guatemala. It's a bit humbling to see just how many people visit our little corner of the internet every day.
Obviously, that's because of you: our users. You're the ones who come back every single day to update stories and quests, to read, to participate, to comment, and to discuss. While we keep the lights on and keep the code rolling, you're the real lifeblood of the site, and you're what's enabled it to grow from the offshoot of another site into its own unique and desirable place that we, personally, think is the premier place for questing on the internet and an amazing place for speculative fiction writing and discussion generally.
And we want to keep that going. We want to make sure the lights stay on, that the code stays rolling, and that SV can continue to grow and expand. It's why we're trying to build durable processes and policies that will serve the site well now, and into the future. It's also why SV is a business now. Incorporation, sales, and subscriptions are what allows us to not only keep the lights on, but make sure that you have better tools, more options, and a better place to post.
Also maybe we'll actually get some money out of it one day ...
So over the past two months, as we sat down to discuss how to make Sufficient Velocity a better place, one thing was at the forefront of our minds: What is Sufficient Velocity? What do we want it to be?
Vision
Let's face it. One of the real risks that any project - and SV is a large project - faces is that if you don't have a goal in mind, you'll end up wasting energy with a giant scattershot of exertion. You'll start projects that never finish and you'll waste time and money on things that don't go anywhere. And honestly we're as guilty as anyone of this. Three years ago, we started Sufficient Velocity without a specific destination in mind; with nothing but a song in our hearts, so to speak. We invested time and money into SV, and there wasn't always a return on that investment. We paid for the development of addons that were, probably, in hindsight a waste; we started projects that didn't go anywhere; we tinkered with forum structures just because we could.
That waste happened because we never had a real objective. We never pinned down why we were doing any of this.
Today, we want to change that. We want a vision for Sufficient Velocity that will lend direction to our efforts, give us a yardstick to measure them against, and allow us to build confidently toward a plan.
If this sounds corporate, there's a reason for that. Corporations work. As a way to get a big group of people to all get moving in the same direction, they're probably second only to armies. And SV is a very big group of people.
What we've come up with is simple, and we think it reflects what SVers do and what the forum is good at:
"Sufficient Velocity knits together everything the internet can do for readers and writers. Our mission is to create the premier online space for the development of speculative fiction by enabling constructive discussion and collaboration."
Part of accomplishing that vision is making sure that everyone's on the same page about not just where they're going, but how they're getting there. For a business, that means guiding principles: general statements of intent that guide your thinking when it comes to turning that vision into the nuts and bolts of the day-to-day. If you've ever worked in an office you'll probably have encountered something like this.
So we've done a bit of research into the ones that work, and we've come up with what we think are a good set of principles. These are the things we want to keep in mind when we're running SV in the future. By approaching management decisions with these principles guiding us, we believe we'll achieve better, more consistent outcomes and decisions.
Our Culture
An organization is only as good as the people in it, and a community must be enriched by its members. The following are our guidelines to building a better community on SV:
- Think outside the box. Rules and procedures are not a suicide pact. In the fast-moving world of the Internet, it's most important to be responsive to change, and to be prepared to do something new and unique if that's what's needed in the circumstances.
- Empower people. Provide tools and information to people at all levels such that they can resolve issues, from housekeeping up to conflict resolution, without needing intervention from management.
- Reduce barriers to entry. Users need to feel like the forum is approachable, both in terms of its staff and its content. The more insular things are, the harder it is for the community to grow.
- Encourage civility. Civility builds a durable community. Mutual respect and politeness goes a long way in allowing constructive argument, debate and critique, while preventing flame wars. It's welcoming to new users, too.
Nobody told us that running a forum would be as difficult as it is. It's difficult for everyone, in different ways. To mitigate this, we have the following guidelines:
- You can't manage what you can't measure. Base decisions on the most complete and accurate information available. If you don't have complete and accurate information, make use of your resources to obtain it.
- Always have an objective. When developing a new project, make sure you know what you're trying to achieve. This includes knowing what your failure state is.
- Communication is key. If people don't understand what you're doing they won't accept it. Make sure to communicate clearly.
- Decide slowly but execute swiftly. Take the time to examine a project in detail, examine root causes and get the perspectives of various stakeholders. When it comes time to implement a decision, do so decisively and with minimal delay.
- Standardisation leads to stability. Lay out your processes and stick to them. Execute your rules and principles consistently and people will be able to rely on them.
- Don't get complacent. After implementing a decision, periodically review to see whether it is having the intended effect. If you aren't meeting your objective, don't be afraid to correct or reverse course.
Sufficient Velocity is part of a business. The decision to incorporate has had a positive result: the website pays its own bills and the proceeds of our various interests have been invested in expanding and improving the feature set, which we believe has fueled our consistent growth over the past three years. We haven't been personally enriched by the business at this stage, but as we've seen it grow there has been a commensurate improvement in SV the forum.
We've also had to deal with taxation and accounts and so on. Besides its corporate affairs, it's an enterprise that needs to both make and spend money in order to carry on. As we see it, making further improvements to Sufficient Velocity means growing that business. Especially when it comes to writing and reading, the network effect is enormous: readers want to be where the stories are, and writers want to be where the readers are. It's as true for magazines as it is for questing or book publishing.
Growing that business, from where we sit, turns on a couple of key points.
First, user growth. As said, the network effect is enormous. Making SV successful means drawing in more users. That's more stories to read, more quests to participate in, more readers to comment, and more voters on your quest. While SV is well-known in certain communities (Worm is a great example), and it's clearly a leading environment for Questing, there are lots of areas we don't have any play at all - and questing, as a genre, is sadly poorly known in the greater speculative fiction community. Do you want a Hugo award winner to one day come from Sufficient Velocity? We do. We want a Nebula as well.
If we want that to happen then we need to have a larger and wider audience. That means marketing. Over the next couple of months, we'll be conducting a marketing review and placing some test advertisements on communities like Reddit to see if we can increase the chatter about Sufficient Velocity and draw new users to our community.
Second, feature development. We've heard from you that SV's features - like threadmarks and vote tallying - are things that bring users to Sufficient Velocity. We're going to continue that feature development, and over the past year, we've added what we think are a really nice set of features to Sufficient Velocity. For example:
- Thread advertisements to assist users in making their work more widely known;
- Tags in the forum list so users can better find content;
- Collaborative threads, so authors can work together on stories and quests;
- Improved alert behavior, so readers can better follow the things they're interested in;
- Threadmarks, so that authors can better improve readability of their works;
- Bookmarks, so users can keep track of the things they want to come back to across the forum;
- Prefixed threads in user profiles, to improve discoverability of an author's other works;
- Vote Tallying, to assist questers in running their quests;
- Post stickying, to improve thread readability;
- Forum aggregation, to improve filtering and visibility of threads across the forum.
One of the less shiny (but vitally important) parts of feature development is theming. Xenforo 2.0 uses a totally different set of themes compared to XF1. Given that SV has a proliferation of themes (often with a negative performance impact), one of the things we're going to be looking at over the next couple of months is creating a new theme and consolidating our total number of themes for the XF 2.0 launch.
Over the next couple of months - as we wrap up our currently planned featureset and begin looking forward at XF2, expect to see a survey from us asking you about your preference for theming (things like dark versus light) and about where you think our energy on feature development would be best spent.
Third, user engagement. This is a tricky one. User engagement covers everything from our policies and processes with respect to the content we want to see on Sufficient Velocity to how we promote content we like - like contests.
Over the past year or so, we've run a number of contests and occasionally called out works that we really liked. We'd like to do more of this, because we think it's pretty key to building up a durable community. What exactly that will look like, we're not precisely sure. Our contests so far have been reasonably successful, but not as wildly successful as we'd like, and running them is not inexpensive.
One of the things we will do in the vein of user engagement over the next couple of months is change how we handle adult content. Historically on SV, and before us on SB, forums and sexual content have been a bad mix. While we try to be generous in our rules, practically speaking we've had more than the occasional scandal where users toe the line or sometimes dive right over. It's created an impression of us as prudes - which isn't what we've intended - but we also think it's reflected poorly on our users, too.
Since we opened, the minimum age has been set to the default that comes with XF - 13. There are some good legal reasons for this, but practically speaking it's a little strange and we're not sure it's appropriate. We've also attempted with a couple of adult forums, but the results have been absolutely middling. We need to make this work better - at both the staff and user ends.
We're not precisely sure what this will look like yet, though we've been tossing a few ideas back and forth. We're going to have to put together a clean-slate, whole-forum reform to figure out exactly what will work for everyone. But we can tell you a couple of things that will definitely change.
First, the age to register will be raised to
Second, Sufficiently Sexy will eventually be closed. New applications are not going to be accepted, though the forum will remain open for posting for the time being. We would like to retain the personal discussion aspects, as that's been very valuable to people, but otherwise it may be shuttered.
Third, we're going to have to develop policies, processes, and technical features that will allow users to post, view, and screen out adult content all across the forum, not just concentrated in one forum.
We can also tell you what won't change: our policies on the sexualization of minors. While we understand that certain fandoms involving minors are popular, and while we'll look at making these rules more clear and more explicit, it will never be acceptable to post sexual content involving minors on Sufficient Velocity.
Most of these things require money. Currently, SV's subscriptions fuel our development and growth. We'd like to take this opportunity to thank all of you who've purchased a subscription - your purchase has gone a long way toward making SV into the community it is today. But development and maintenance is expensive. It takes tens of subscribers just to support SV's back-end hosting; it would take (because we don't have them) hundreds to support a full time, or even part time, developer for Sufficient Velocity.
We've heard that our subscriptions are sometimes confusing, and often quite frankly a hard sell. We want to change that. We're going to try to make them more prominent, the feature set more clear, and the value proposition more meaningful to you. We haven't had a real look at the features we've made available to subscribers and the features we just haven't turned on and the features we've just accidentally turned on and forgotten about, and we're going to do that soon.
Again we don't know exactly what that will look like, but we can tell you two things. First, that it will involve a reform of subscription levels and their feature sets; and second, that subscribers in Canada will now be obligated to pay HST on subscriptions (Sorry, it's a requirement.
)Conclusion
Obviously, there's a lot to unpack here about SV as a business enterprise, but we did want to make you aware of just where we're going over the coming months (and year). You'll see more of this as we work out the details and roll them out.
Stay tuned: Next week will cover administrative reforms on SV!
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