the state of the forum

[pryor15]

lol

[ChipWrecked]

I'm just a Midwestern/Southern hybrid redneck with a collitch digree.


Edit: oh, wait. That's the same thing you said. OK, yeah [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

[katyseagull]

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If there's a thread about say the new movie...excuse me. forgot this was tldr...the new "film" that's out,

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lol.

I like tldr, but I too get the feeling sometimes that I'm in a room with black turtleneck wearing latte drinkers, and I'm in a work shirt with black coffee.

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Black turtleneck sweaters? You guys are pulling my leg. Are you really serious? I don't think the place has that kind of snobbery (what a cool word). I really hope that it doesn't have an unfriendly vibe [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

ChipWrecked and Duke, did you post in diebitter's Day in the Life thread yet? I want to hear about your lives! (And any of you other loungers, I want to hear about your lives too [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] )

[pryor15]

Chip,

the beauty of black coffee is you can always turn up your nose and say, "well, of course it's fair trade coffee"

[katyseagull]

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I avoid starting threads because everything that I want to start feels like a bad OOT thread, instead of something for the lounge. When I do, I think I go off the deep end as far as "esoteric" and "deep" and it ends up sucking as a TLDR thread too.

I think this form adds a lot of pressure to have long first posts, despite it being quite possible to generate some interesting and TLDR-deep commentary with merely a few words.

Also, I feel like I use words like "merely" too often when I'm trying to fit in with the TLDR crowd.

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lol. Your "merely" remark is very funny.

Ok Duke, give us an example of what you would consider a bad OOT thread. We will not laugh.


You make a good point about the pressure we put on ourselves to have long first posts. Diebitter's Female for President thread is a great example of how you don't always have to follow that rule. The main thing you have to ask yourself is will the people want to jump in and join this type of discussion or give their $.02? And often at least 5 of us will. Five replies is my goal whenever I start a new thread [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[diebitter]

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I avoid starting threads because everything that I want to start feels like a bad OOT thread, instead of something for the lounge.

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This is probably the heart of the matter. Just go for it, I say, and rely on the community. Us mods will reign it back if needs be, and there'll be no snide comments, bans, punishments. Wr are here to guide and direct, not to punish or vilify.

[ChipWrecked]

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If there's a thread about say the new movie...excuse me. forgot this was tldr...the new "film" that's out,

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lol.

I like tldr, but I too get the feeling sometimes that I'm in a room with black turtleneck wearing latte drinkers, and I'm in a work shirt with black coffee.

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Black turtleneck sweaters? You guys are pulling my leg. Are you really serious? I don't think the place has that kind of snobbery (what a cool word). I really hope that it doesn't have an unfriendly vibe [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]


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Touch my monkey!!

[Sniper]

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I feel that too much micromanagement into the content of a forum is never going to produce the best results. It is ok to establish general guidelines for a forum, broad lines in which you can paint under, but too much regulation causes stagnation.

Let the forum mature on it's own. Allow the posters to decide which topics should rise to the top and which drift to the bottom due to lack of interest. Just because the forum doesn't match your expectations doesn't mean it isn't great in it's own right.

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[Sniper]

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The idea, as I understood it, was to create a place where long-form discussion, the type that was easily buried in OOT, had a place to flourish, where nuances could be explored and the obscure could have a place to find an audience. I saw a place where a discussion of the French New Wave would be next to an exhaustive study of different types of whiskey and small details from TV serials and alt.country albums and the like. There may only be 5 or 6 active posts, but they would be 5 or 6 really good active posts, and all other rubbish would be shipped to OOT.

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The problem I see with this is that with only five or six threads going, you don't have something for everybody, even people that really like the forum. If you try to maintain something like that, you're just asking to kill the forum.

If there's a thread about say the new movie...excuse me. forgot this was tldr...the new "film" that's out, many people will give their opinions and be done. Everyone won't be interested in that long discussion. So you quickly end up with like three people discussing it. If you've only got 5-6 active threads going, you've got like 15 people discussing. That's not even worth having a forum for.

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Its worth noting that unlike a year ago, there are now several ongoing "Broad topic" threads: What TV are you watching?, What books are you reading?, What movies have you watched?, Beer Club, Pregnant, B&S, Weekend games, Ask the Ladies & Men threads.

These cover broad topics and allow everyone to share their thoughts and help to build a sense of community. I expect we will see a few more of these types of threads.

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A forum is like a neighborhood bar. People like to come to the place where everybody knows their name. They like to come often and stay long. If there are only a few deep discussions going on, the chances are not that good there's something they'll be interested in at a given time. If there's not, they won't come back. So you've got to have variety.

If you're going to have variety, you've got to tolerate some diversity. You're going to get some bad with the good. As I see it the best thing you can do is start threads about things you're interested in and hope someone else will discuss it with you while you ignore the rubbish piling up in the corner.

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I agree with much of this, but will add that one man's rubbish may be another man's treasure. If we all liked the same exact things, this place would get boring real fast. Diversity of opinions is the spice of life, or something like that [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[Sniper]

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db,

perhaps. but i think it's probably worth discussing either way. we've probably got a smaller margin of error than some other forums

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Pryor,

Agree that an annual (or more frequent) review of the state of the forum is a good thing.

Disagree on your margin of error statement.