Pegvlog and The Paper Train Express

Pegvlog was a project I was once involved in. I was not really intended to be, and the fact I was was an accident in my opinion. It was a good accident though, because though the project has ended, I learned very many things from it.

What was Pegvlog?

A massive vlogging project involving a group of friends. Each person was assigned a day (Certain days had multiple people), and that person was responsible to upload a vlog for that day of the week every week.
Each person's vlog would have a name involving the weekday and a describing word, working together to create an alliteration. (.i.e Marvelous Mondays, Tremendous Tuesdays, etc.)


What went wrong?

Every project has it's hiccups. Pegvlog was a project more good in a theoretical sense than in practice. The reason I say that is the idea is easily agreed upon and sound good, but once implemented, ideas and details that had not been bumped out before execution could now lead to disagreements. There was an assumption that the group would moderate each other for uploads, which soon ended up as one person. That one person then in turn got antagonized for trying to keep order, as it was percieved as more of a power struggle.
That would end up being one of many reasons (in my opinion, feel free to disagree and state your own) that Pegvlog fell apart.

Wait, one of many reasons?

One problem usually cannot destroy a project, unless it defeats the entire continuity of a project. Even with a power struggle, Pegvlog was able to continue on. However, with that issue another one soon arose: The leaving of a project member.
This was yet another detail that never got sorted out. What happens when someone leaves? can anyone just leave? How would that affect the weekly schedule?
Reality answered that: Nothing. Which was not a terrible thing, though that would mean if everyone chose to quit one day, that day would now be empty. Which leads to more questions about switching days and the solidarity about which day each person is assigned.

Even stating all that, Pegvlog was able to march on. It is the next reasons that ended up being the project destroyer.

The big reasons Pegvlog failed
and why it matters to PTE

First: Everyday, a vlog. Some vlogs were great, some vlogs were the best someone could muster. The project was extremely limiting in the fact that it was always expecting vlogs from 7+ people everyday. Trends occured which helped with variety, but constant ideas were difficult. The very vlog itself was limiting, and veering from vlogging was (at first) frowned upon.
Second: Wasted Efforts. Every person put time and effort into their vlogs (Except maybe FWNER). However because of first point, peoples videos weren't always getting watched. All the time and effort became worthless, and the entirety of making videos would become moot because of that.
Third: 'We're all going to watch each others videos and like it.' The fanbase of Pegvlog was assumed pegvlog itself and friends of the pegvloggers, and in that there was an expectation that pegvloggers would want to watch each others videos from day to day. However once reality set in, people tended to get too busy with school and work and life to have time to watch vlogs, or if they did have the time they would find the vlogs were not actually in their taste. Another massive issue was commenting, and that's where this massive block of text ties in PTE. Comments on Pegvlog vlogs in the beginning were roughly ~4 unique comments a vlog. As time went on, the comment counter approached 0 per video, and many people who didnt get any comments would quit. PTE runs on a similar method, in that comments are viewed as the quality of a post, however 0 comments have never lead to PTE's end. The reason this is worth noting is that under this system, posts change style to try to appeal to commentators.

That's a lot of text alright, but what is the point of mentioning all this?

It's a stretch to say PTE is any much better planned than Pegvlog, since it's a continuous experimental blog, but PTE has existed before the inception of Pegvlog and well after its fall. The point of all this was to compare how that could even occur, how PTE has managed to take from the Pegvlog experience to help it continue on.As well, to analyze the Pegvlog project and why things played out the way they did. No matter the project, it's always good to look back on it and see what you can and have learned from it.