tell me what you think of splitting 'a&e' into a separate forum

[Mark L]

i say yes

[ilya]

nah, i like the fact that oot brings together the aesthetes and the philistines, the sophisticates and the plebeians, the swine and the dogs.

[Clarkmeister]

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pj,

There are too many forums already. That is why I infrequently discuss Sports and Politics on 2+2 now. Once you get rid of a certain amount of quality content critical mass in OOT, people will stop coming here. And if they need to click to other subforums anyway, it's just as easy to go to a forum devoted to the topic rather than a poker forum offshoot. This split would not only hurt OOT, I think it might end up significantly decreasing traffic in forums like the Sports forum as well.

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Didn't the amount of traffic generated by sports-oriented discussions increase as a result of the splitting off of the Sports forum? At the least, it seemed to me that immediately following the split there were more new threads per day created in that forum than there were sports-oriented threads in the old OOT.

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I think far fewer people participate in the sporting forum than used to participate in OOT sports threads. It's now a pretty smallish group.

[tdarko]

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Pryor - it's true that, as you are a professional writer, ignoring your reviews = ignoring better written ones. But who comes to OOT for the writing? I certainly don't. I think writing quality may somewhat impact people's interest in a thread, but the subject matter is usually critical.

I think that when a "well-known" poster posts, yeah, he has buddies on this site who get the thread going. But I think it's usually the subject matter / funny quality posts in the thread or good hijack, that drives the post's life.

-Al

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Al,

You are correct in that it is the funny quality and the hi-jacks that drive the posts and give it staying power. For me personally though, I do come to OOT to find a little nugget of good writing here and there though, some of my favorite all-time OOT threads aren't ones that anyone remembers or were even close to being mentioned in that end of the year discussion thread of the best posts of the year.

[egocidal]

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i do that already. i knew it'd get buried, but i also knew a couple people would want to read it, so i posted it, which only takes about a minute to do, so whatever. i don't write for OOT, but i value some of the opinions OOT has of what i write, so i post it here.

i was simply refuting the point someone made that the better-written ones see the most traffic. it has everything to do w/ name recognition. how anyone doesn't realize that is beyond me.

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i knew it'd get buried, but i also knew a couple people would want to read it, so i posted it, which only takes about a minute to do, so whatever

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(Note: Pryor already said he didn't care, so I am just using his words, not "refuting" him or anything.)

This is exactly why a split is a waste of space, time, and will confuse people when it comes to what goes where. If a couple of people want to read a review on a subject, that is fine! They will read it, and then it will die out. And like pryor says, it only takes a minute or so to do. So assuming this refutes arguments that "my review will mean nothing/get lost", WHY IS THE SPLIT NEEDED? I have yet to see a good argument for it. Mason showed that the top topics today in OOT (at least viewed, not responded to) did not involve film. My line is.....So what? Why does that warrant a new forum? Mods and Admins of 2p2 for some reason lately feel like they need to drama bomb the forums. Why?

[Gildwulf]

El Diablo hit the nail on the head. OOT is a delicate ecosystem with a mix of substance and goofy [censored]. If you alter the amount of substance, the whole system may crash and 2+2 may suffer unintended consequences.

No split please,
Zach

[Aloysius]

Tdarko - I actually do enjoy the occasional quality writing (pryor's included, as I've begun to read his film reviews), and personally try to write coherent, decent posts.

I was more saying that Pryor's well-written posts alone won't drive the traffic to his thread, that it's much more about subject matter that attracts people to a thread.

El Diablo happens to pick good subjects, for example. Sure there's maybe like 30% of tards who are swinging off his nuts, but it's really less that he may be a good writer, or he's "well-respected", than the topic of the post.

Bluffthis - who cares about high quality A&E posts? Sharpening the focus of the posters, and getting higher quality posts on topics like "Arrested Development Got Cancelled" is totally not an issue. Doing it with strat forums makes sense - e.g. I didn't feel knowledgeable enough to post in HSNL, but MSNL is a game I play alot.

-Al

[BluffTHIS!]

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Bluffthis - who cares about high quality A&E posts? Sharpening the focus of the posters, and getting higher quality posts on topics like "Arrested Development Got Cancelled" is totally not an issue. Doing it with strat forums makes sense - e.g. I didn't feel knowledgeable enough to post in HSNL, but MSNL is a game I play alot.

-Al

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Those of us interested in A&E do. The same as us regulars in the politics forum. I am interested in talking politics, even with those at the opposite end of the spectrum from my views, who are willing to discuss and post facts and reasons and not just "I am in favor of" with nothing to back it up. And the same goes with A&E topics. The other topics you mention are what makes OOT what it is, and that won't change post-split.

[YourFoxyGrandma]

I'm cool with a split. OOT is big enough to be its own medium-sized forum apart from the rest of 2+2. Assuming that OOT was completely separate, it would be split up way more than it is now. More threads die prematurely as the forum grows. Splits are necessary, I think. Do it up.

[tdarko]

Al,

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I was more saying that Pryor's well-written posts alone won't drive the traffic to his thread, that it's much more about subject matter that attracts people to a thread.


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Yeah man, I agree with this completely. It's the reason he can write a great review, thoughtful and insightful on an obscure movie and it will get little attention, whereas a movie that is more mainstream will get responses no matter the content of the post. I still look for his posts and Blarg's comments etc.

I haven't really stated what I think about the issue yet, except that I thought Clark's idea was a good idea if there was a forum split...that there needed to be some ground rules. I do know that if A&E was taken out of OOT I don't know how much I would post here anymore since I really only come here for the Arts and Dining.

~td