This is addressed to Janra, with the awareness that it may in the future be read by anyone.

First, I like this site.

I like the layout (mostly, there are likely to be suggestions later, but they will be to make a good thing better). I like your personality, as it shows through your writing. I like what little I have seen of the other visitors to the site, All of you strike me as the kind of people that I would like to know personally.

So, where's the traffic?

What I don't like is the lack of traffic. Since this site opened, about six months ago, there have been sixteen registrants. One of those is me, and janra and Anonymous are the first. Of those other 13, one made several comments and submitted an offer to in some way share the content of his extensive library. One or two posted comments. One person submitted a "story" (anonymously) that was so badly formatted that I voted it down, thus killing it. And that's it! As I recall, the last visible activity, before I created my account, that had a name other than "Janra" attached to it, was at least two weeks old. The two submissions on the queue had been there for months.

Of the current accounts,

Afflatus

posted a diary entry on 2001-07-06 (shortly before I found this site), some hope here. Other than that, he posted no comments, rated no comments.

Bluelavalamplite

posted three comments (last on 2001-04-22). made the generous offer I mentioned above, also on 2001-04-22.

Caprice

posted one comment (in Feb) and other than that has shown no activity.

CaveMan

posted one comment (in Jan) saying the site looked pretty good, has shown no other activity.

Eden, JohnDstrain, LoriD, Mollie, noahsmum, patsy, rondab, Sky, Tonei posted no comments, rated no comments, made no diary entries. Lurkers.

I have no idea how many visitors there have been that have not participated. You have the server logs, which should give you that info. [It would seem that this is on your own Linux box that you mentioned elsewhere.] Am assuming for the moment that you are getting at least occasional visitors (whether they have accounts or not) that come, look around, and leave. This would make the problem entirely one of encouraging participation and repeat visitors.

So, what to do?

I leave that to be discussed in the comments. (An exercise for the reader :)