March 2008 Update

Last month we missed our update due to a few other issues arising, so I figured it was time to do a new one.

First off, all of those who are still waiting for competition prizes – my apologies for the delay! Virgin Money (the company I use for the Listverse Credit card) has been a constant problem since I moved to them. The good news is that the problems are all sorted now so the rest of the prizes should start shipping in the next one or two days (depending on Amazon and other stores).

Those of you who read the site forums will already know this, but in roughly 2 months I will be leaving the United Kingdom to move back to New Zealand. For that reason I have started my big burst of tourism (hence my trip to Rome this past weekend). The site will continue as before and this trip gave me a chance to try out automatic posting (which means the site will automatically post lists I have made in advance without me being here to do it). It worked very well so the trip home should produce no noticeable downtime.

I like to occasionally let you know the latest stats, so here they are:

Comments: 48,000
Posts: 575
Registered Users: 2,030
RSS Members: 4,100

All in eight months! Pretty impressive I think.

It is hard to believe that in four months we will be celebrating our first birthday! I think we should do something special for the occasion so if everyone can have a brainstorm and give me some ideas I would appreciate it. It would be nice if I could get the eBook done for then, but it is a time consuming process so I don’t think that will happen.

You may have noticed that we have had a number of submitted lists from new users lately – since adding the easy submission form, the number of entries has been dramatically increased. I appreciate it and hope it continues. If you want to send in a list – do so – even if you don’t have all the items or even the text – sometimes just a list of ideas is very helpful.

There is no doubting that the user contributions here are what really makes the site what it is. For that reason, I would love it if you can all give me your wishlist on what you would like to see here – either as suggestions for most lists of a particular type, or things you will like to see added, changed, or removed. We have stabilized now for the most part but it is always good to know what people want when we are planning for the future.

We seem to have put an end to the “first post” craze that started growing. It annoyed a lot of people so we put up some basic rules of etiquette for posting. These are not hard and fast rules designed to prevent your freedom of speech – they are a guideline that can, if necessary, be broken. Thanks to all for adhering to them. I will probably move them to their own page on the site eventually and get rid of the text under the comment box for your convenience.

A number of regulars (including myself from time to time) have taken to gathering on an IRC channel for chat. To get to the channel you need to go to EFnet and join #Listverse – there is normally at least one or two people there – and oftentimes more. If none of this makes any sense to you, check out this article on the forums for help.

I would like to also take this opportunity to briefly mention the Listverse online shop! If you love the site and want to wear our logo or buy other cool merchandise, check out the store.