Young Writers Society

I know some of you people have been here since this site began...I'd like you to share what Y.W.S was like way back then...and how it has changed over the years.

I never had a chance to reply to this back when it was first posted, but I think the biggest change has been the people active on the site.

(As a disclaimer, I haven't been here for that long, but it's definitely changed in the time I've been active!)

There were some people who I frequently roleplayed and wrote storybooks with, but those people have moved on from the site since then. There was also a time where multiple people had storybook "universes". The stories weren't really connected like in Marvel except with mine but we all started coming up with fun names for our storybooks. It happened back when I was saentiel, so I dubbed mine "Saeverse Productions".

Granted I haven't been around for a super long time, but not too much has changed. The userbase has indeed changed a lot. Whereas most older websites keep a steady userbase of members who have been around for a long time, YWS is a little different in that veteran members tend to disappear a lot and it's kept alive by newer members.

Review day used to be every month. That seems like it's changed to every few months, but I haven't been active enough to know for sure.

I think Nate was more active before.

There was a live chat bar at the bottom of the page like the one on Facebook, but that was removed.

I've been on YWS for about ten years now and it's seen a few renovations.

Chat and chat bar used to be a thing. I never used the chat bar because I didn't really have any private conversations that wouldn't have been more interesting in the main chat, but the main chat used to be busier and we'd have wordwars in there.

The people tab wasn't a thing. You had to go to someone's wall to check out the stuff. Also Likes weren't a thing. As other forms of social media became more popular I guess it kind of made sense to add that aspect to YWS as well.

Storybooks was a single forum, so if you wanted to discuss stuff about the plot you had to do it in Chat or in spoilers. It got so messy!

The green room didn't exist. It meant that some works got a lot of attention and some faded without getting any responses. Novel chapters were less common and it was near impossible to get reviews on the later chapters unless you specifically requested them.

Clubs didn't exist. Before that if there was something you were particularly interested in you'd have to post straight into the main forum.

Tabs. There were far less tabs. Less literary genres. Less forums overall. I think I preferred it that way if I'm honest, but I guess having more makes it easier to look for something specifically.

It's changed a lot over the years, with a bunch of differing interface designs. The active member base has definitely shrunk considerably the last 3-4 years. This place used to be much busier.

The biggest improvement, IMO, was the addition of the chatbar, which made it more social than it had been in years; unfortunately it had to be removed, for understandable reasons.

Also, I think Nate's missing and we may have to send out a search party.

By the way, if you're curious what the place looked liked back when I joined -- 14 years ago -- here's a little time capsule:

https://web.archive.org/web/20061214104 ... ciety.com/

(Yes, that's a chatroom that people actually used. We didn't have Discord either, and frankly that was a good thing.)

Prokaryote wrote:By the way, if you're curious what the place looked liked back when I joined -- 14 years ago -- here's a little time capsule:

https://web.archive.org/web/20061214104 ... ciety.com/

(Yes, that's a chatroom that people actually used. We didn't have Discord either, and frankly that was a good thing.)

OMG. Thanks for sharing it Prokaryote. IT'S SO BEAUTIFUL! Blessed my eyes. I may have cried a little. And there's this poem "Dramatic Ends" by misspriss. From December 14, 2006. It amplified the feeling. It's like missing something I never experienced. I do wish I was here then.

I joined YWS in 2015. One difference I feel now may be that the chatroom/lounge never used to be this empty. Could be that I just check in the wrong moments. Or is it a human impulse to always prefer the past to the present? I don't know.

Prokaryote wrote:By the way, if you're curious what the place looked liked back when I joined -- 14 years ago -- here's a little time capsule:

https://web.archive.org/web/20061214104 ... ciety.com/

(Yes, that's a chatroom that people actually used. We didn't have Discord either, and frankly that was a good thing.)

Oh dear lord! Fun fact: I was 3 years old at this point in time!

Prokaryote wrote:By the way, if you're curious what the place looked liked back when I joined -- 14 years ago -- here's a little time capsule:

https://web.archive.org/web/20061214104 ... ciety.com/

Aw I remember that layout. That was like the 2nd or 3rd major revamp of YWS. Back then the colors were somewhat customizable, so I had the dark grey background with purple headers.

I was one of the first members to join when the site was a whopping two weeks old. It was a simple phpBB forum, with the default being this noteboard format (again, there were a couple different layouts and I used on with a dark background and a sun). Literary works were in forums like the discussion boards, and most of what is now Randomosity was originally in "Writing Activities" (I spent a lot of time there as a youngin'). Chat and blogs were added in early 2005 (both of these sections used to get a lot more traffic). "Guestbooks" (the predecessor to walls) were added too, but we didn't use them nearly as much as the People tab now. We also had "usergroups", the predecessor to clubs that had their own forums. Storybooks were also one forum.

Back then, the community was small but very active, and it grew a lot over the first couple years. Then YWS was shut down for part of 2006, but someone started a new forum we hung out on. There were more changes after 2007, but I'm a bit fuzzy on the details because I wasn't around as much.

The current layout was put in place around 2012, with some additions in 2013. I find the literary tabs so much easier to navigate than the forums, and the Green Room was a great addition. At some point Storybooks became its own section and clubs were added back in. I think around 2014, the ability to add character profiles in the side bar was added to SBs (before that profiles were added in posts on the SB itself).

The chat did used to be a lot more active, and though I wasn't a big user of the chatbar, it did have its pros, but it was ultimately difficult to moderate so it was shut down. I feel like now the main social aspects of the site now are in the People tab and pads.

Basically, what the others said! Personally, I did use the private chat quite a bit with Fellow SBers That Became Fwends, but now I can't do that anymore, so, we basically just switched to Discord. There were also much more SB concepts, and not all of them were as saturated with fantasy as they are now. Not that Fantasy's a bad thing in itself, luckily.

Oh, yeah, also Lumi was here, there were more SB concepts based around some of his ideas (which themselves were based on stuff he had picked up from people before him, from what I remember him saying), but that time has come to an end too.

Oh, oh, and Squills was busier, too! At least, it seemed to be from my limited perspective, compared to now.

Prokaryote wrote:By the way, if you're curious what the place looked liked back when I joined -- 14 years ago -- here's a little time capsule:

https://web.archive.org/web/20061214104 ... ciety.com/

(Yes, that's a chatroom that people actually used. We didn't have Discord either, and frankly that was a good thing.)

The latest work on there, 12/14/2006, was posted when I was two days old.!