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

[elwoodblues]

[ QUOTE ]
Customization is the driving force in marketing anything in the past decade, especially on the internet.

[/ QUOTE ]

And the "customization" that twoplustwo should be known for relates to poker. I went to a shoe store today. They also sold socks, shoelaces, boots, shoes (men's, women's, and children's). At the front of the store they had a display of backpacks. That was fine. It was just in one little corner of the store. It didn't change the fact that it was still a shoe store. In a few weeks, the backpacks start selling really well, and they decide to add books to their collection. Soon they have CDs, and clothing. Religious knicknacks turn up a few weeks later...now the most heavily trafficked are of the store the (now smaller) shoe section. It's the area that sells the backbacks and other stuff.

Would you still say that it's a shoe store?

How many OOTers can name (without looking it up) any of the new books coming out soon from TwoPlusTwo publishing. I can't, in fact I don't even know if there are any.

[BluffTHIS!]

HOH3
The Theory of NL Poker
+ 2 others Mason won't name yet
(all from memory)


Your analogy is somewhat bad because a department store, thus a more general one that doesn't specialize, still has separate departments so customers can find items easily. Instead of just some large bins where shoes, shoelaces, backpacks, etc. are just all dumped in together. They only mix stuff like that when an individual class of items doesn't merit through sales a separate area. But many of us are maintaining A&E does. And we and the site administrators will soon have proof one way or another if they split it, and can then take remedial action if it doesn't work out.

[egocidal]

[ QUOTE ]
The original split of OOT was dumb to begin with. The people who run this site have diluted it greatly by providing too many non-poker related forums (or is it fora) as is. The fact that OOT accounts for the vast majority of the traffic should not be something that Mason et al are happy about. As much as I like OOT and the politics forum I now rarely go to the poker related content.

It isn't a good thing when people start thinking of the twoplustwo as that politics site that I go to or whatever. Further splitting of other topics does much to dilute the twoplustwo brand.

[/ QUOTE ]

2p2 isn't thought of as a politics site that you go to. It is a poker site. The reason OOT has the most traffic is simple:
(just examples, don't really know what other forums they love [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] )

MSNL players post in their forum, maybe theory, then.......OOT
Micro limit players post in their forum, and.......................OOT
Zoo people post in the ZOO, whatever limit, and...............OOT
NVG, WPT, FI, Politics, and SMP posters all also post in......OOT

See why OOT has so much traffic? It isn't the most popular forum, however, it has the most posters from all the different forums that drop by at the end of their browse.

[elwoodblues]

[ QUOTE ]
See why OOT has so much traffic? It isn't the most popular forum, however, it has the most posters from all the different forums that drop by at the end of their browse.

[/ QUOTE ]

It would be interesting to see if you're right. My gut says that it isn't that people go to OOT at the end of their browse, rather the go to OOT and soon stop going to other forums (or at least significantly cut back.)

[RacersEdge]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
sports

[/ QUOTE ]

i think sports and politics were absolutely necessary splits.

i don't think this one is absolutely necessary, but i can see that there are more people than i realized that are simply unwilling to set foot in oot.

[/ QUOTE ]

What's their fear exactly? They will make an artsy statement about a film and be called gay?

[elwoodblues]

[ QUOTE ]
Your analogy is somewhat bad because a department store, thus a more general one that doesn't specialize

[/ QUOTE ]

This isn't a department store. It's a specialty store. Apparently the owners of the store are forgetting that.

[Blarg]

I dunno about that. Seems to me that would depend on how much they valued the other forums. Someone really serious about poker who finds the poker section for his particular game really good isn't going to frequent that section much less than he feels he should. Those not as interested in poker can be lured in by something other than poker.

[CharlieDontSurf]

A&E..or better yet Movies,Music,TV is for just that. Film,TV ,Music buffs
The real OOT seems to mainly be--Trip Reports, Random websites people want to share, NSFW,drugs/booze/sex questions, relationship questions, wierd totally random posts.

The Film,TV,Music,Art posts seem to generally be hidden within the larger OOT forum.

OOT will be fine if you create add a sepereate forum for movies,tv,music etc.


Also..the Science,Math,Religion forum...they should really take religion and put it on its own...cuz it seems like every other post's focus is "does god exist" "for all you athiests" etc etc

[BluffTHIS!]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Your analogy is somewhat bad because a department store, thus a more general one that doesn't specialize

[/ QUOTE ]

This isn't a department store. It's a specialty store. Apparently the owners of the store are forgetting that.

[/ QUOTE ]


But it is no different than that shoe store which decided to add other non-shoe related merchandise to pick up extra sales. But when one of those items becomes big in its own right, they would give it more room by itself, the same as this site has consistently done with forum additions in the past. A&E is big enough that it can generate enough traffic for its own forum, and in fact more than now when it doesn't get buried in the OOT noise.

This is a different issue that whether a split would hurt OOT, which I don't see how is possible. And again, it's easy enough to experiment and then reverse if it doesn't work.

[DCopper04]

All I know is there's zippy chance of this split happening as long as El D is opposed to it. The mods tremble in his presence.