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

[skiier04]

I havent read this thread but I am just gonna say that I dont like this idea.

[snagglepuss]

flash poll

[El Diablo]

Mat: If OOT was just posts like that, I would not frequent it. Nor, I believe, would many other quality posters. And there's a huge potential snowball effect. I think you would be stunned at what would happen if 20 or so key posters stopped participating in OOT. The fact that random stuff from time to time gets a lot of interest does not mean that people will come to a place just to search through that random stuff. However, if they are coming to read about movies and restaurants and happen to see a random topic getting a lot of interest, that's a different story.

BT: My positions are not inconsistent at all. This is a poker forum. Once there is critical mass for a split in a poker area, there are many reasons a split can be beneficial and successful that do not translate to non-poker areas on this site.

jason: I do not know about the total traffic, but I am quite sure that fewer people participate in sports-related discussions on 2+2 now.

All: I do not disagree that an A&E forum may well generate "better quality" discussions. However, I am positive that the total traffic to 2+2 would be less, and potentially significantly less. It is simply a critical mass issue. Anyone who has been involved in running high-volume Internet sites or businesses should be familiar with this issue. Once you have critical mass in a certain core area, your business can support spinning off new areas. However, if you compromise the core area, you can end up killing off not only the core area, but also all the spinoff areas as well. Politics, Sports, Religion, Math/Science, Philosophy have all already been removed from OOT. OOT was still fine, though, because A&E alone is enough to support a forum. BTW, had A&E been spun out first, I'd probably now be making this argument about Sports (though for a number of reasons I think Sports is better to be split out than A&E) However, I do not believe that what would remain if you removed A&E now is enough to maintain critical mass in OOT. And if you lose OOT as a forum, that can easily cascade down and kill other subforums, because I am sure there are a lot of people who check out OOT, then occassionally click over to one of the other subforums, but would never do that if they weren't here already. FWIW, I've seen this phenomenon occur at Internet sites/businesses with FAR more traction than 2+2.

[wonderwes]

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So what's left...trainwrecks and porn?

[/ QUOTE ]

That should get its own forum [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

Is it possible to post statistics on the average amount of new threads and posts that occur in OOT on a daily basis? It would be cool if we could take 1 month's worth of data and see on a pie chart which major topics dominate OOT.

[DCopper04]

OK, I'll buy that. All valid points, although it's pretty much all based on speculation (now that I htink about it, basically this whole thing is based on what we think might happen.)

I guess one variable I don't know about is this group of people who are "turned off" by OOT. How many we talking here? Five people? Fifty? Knowing this is important to estimating how much traffic the new forum would generate.

If I had to decide, I would still leave things the way they are based on the "ain't broke don't fix it" premise, but I understand why others would like to see the change happen.

[DCopper04]

This is a poorly designed poll.

[Aloysius]

DB - to your quote:

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Put these premises together, and you get, at worse, the same (but more likely better) 2+2 experience for you, a better experience for other 2+2ers not currently using OOT, and more volume on the given subjects (so better bottom-line for 2+2).

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First, I think, for me, my experience goes down. I love that OOT is random and has lots of different topics. I think the same can be said for other posters. So while it's true posters like Bluff will have a better experience, others suffer.

Also, while it's true that view volume on individual A&E topics will go up (relative to the current OOT), does it go up by enough to offset the loss of traffic the current OOT generates, both in maintaining a high number of views, and driving new views?

-Al

[diebitter]

[ QUOTE ]
I've told DB that the reason I don't post my own film reviews is it seems like too much work to do something and then see it insta-buried, especially since the people who do them are often jumped all over in a negative way.

So I see his point.

[/ QUOTE ]

Wheeeeeeee! I think I just found the knock-out punch.

who here wants to read film reviews by Blarg? [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[Tron]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I've told DB that the reason I don't post my own film reviews is it seems like too much work to do something and then see it insta-buried, especially since the people who do them are often jumped all over in a negative way.

So I see his point.

[/ QUOTE ]

Wheeeeeeee! I think I just found the knock-out punch.

who here wants to read film reviews by Blarg? [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

It would take longer to read than it would to just watch the movie [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

[Blarg]

If A&E split off, it would make for an interesting forum. But A&E is one of the things that keeps OOT readable. It's not the number of posts you would lose so much as the tone. I like a fart joke as well as most, but still I have my limits and OOT sometimes crosses them.

But that's fine because I can just ignore them and still find interesting stuff to click on -- which is highly A&E, for me. But if A&E were taken out, the sophmoric tone of OOT would probably get to be a real drag in short order. OOT would lose a lot of its balance, and have too little breaks in the idiocy. I doubt I would spend as much time in it, and would probably spend less time at 2+2 in general.