Category: Gnome Gnews
| January 28, 2013 | Posted by Martin Ralya |
Today is the last day to enter our 2013 New Year, New Game challenge and submit your post for the 2013 NYNG blog carnival. Sometime tonight I’ll shut the contest down and start pulling everything together for the big wrap-up post for the blog carnival. Don’t wait too long! (Comments on this post have been turned off so that no one accidentally tries to enter the contest here, which wouldn’t count.)
| January 17, 2013 | Posted by Patrick Benson |
I have decided to stop writing for Gnome Stew, and this time the decision is permanent. This time though I want to end things differently, by asking for your input as to what my final articles should be. Why Stop Writing for the Site? I set some goals for myself in regards to my contributions to Gnome Stew, and I have managed to accomplish them all. Combine these personal goals with the amazing accomplishments of the Gnome Stew team and I am very proud of…
| December 31, 2012 | Posted by Martin Ralya |
Seven years ago, I started a system-neutral GMing advice blog, Treasure Tables, and went on to post more-or-less daily for the next two years (2005-2007). There weren’t that many gaming blogs in 2005, and I didn’t really know what I was doing, but writing TT was a blast. Until, after two years, I burned out hard. Daily posting is tough (I even did weekends, most of the time) and it took its toll. I closed the site, but the itch to write GMing material didn’t…
| December 31, 2012 | Posted by Martin Ralya |
To close out 2012, I wanted to share my annual rundown of Gnome Stew’s site statistics and our milestones from the year. Let’s start with the numbers, with notes/comparisons to this time last year in parentheses: 158,274 unique visitors (up about 1%) 322,479 visits (up about 3%; approximately 52% of visitors are repeat visitors) 628,534 pageviews (up about 8%) Around 4,200 RSS/email subscribers (up about 7%) Around 2,700 subscribers (We purged thousands of spam accounts in 2012) 270 articles About 3,160 comments (about 23,600 total,…
| December 9, 2012 | Posted by Martin Ralya |
Way back in like October of 1873 we had a contest to coincide with purging spam user accounts from the site. Since spam was the impetus, we asked readers to say something funny to prove that they were human. There were 159 comments, so we got to see the elusive fat-gnome-on-fire gnome comment icon (sweet!), and many of those comments were quite funny. Behind the scenes, the gnomes each voted for our favorites. In true gnomish fashion we disagreed entirely, necessitating a second round of…
| November 5, 2012 | Posted by Martin Ralya |
We’re purging user accounts with no comments on November 6 — the full details, and a contest, are here: Accounts with Zero Comments will be Purged on November 6, 2012 (Plus, a Contest!). The short version is that because the only thing here that requires an account is commenting on articles (everything on the site is free; nothing is locked away or user-only), accounts with zero comments tend to be spam accounts. But not all of them! Which is why we announced the purge, spread…
| October 22, 2012 | Posted by Martin Ralya |
That title is like word salad, right? Two things are happening, one important and one fun, and I was trying to fit them both in. The fun one involves a chance to win a $25 gift ceriticiate to DriveThruRPG, but let’s start with the important one. The Important Thing: Spam Account Purge We have spam comments locked down, but spammers are ingenious at registering spam accounts. Usually those accounts don’t have any comments associated with them, so accounts with zero comments are quite likely to…
