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

[Blarg]

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el oh el at this thread and the "a&e"ers. No one cares what you think about Raging Bull or The Godfather. Get over yourself.

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Whatever that means, speak for yourself. I like reading those threads more than most. I'll take those over the Taco Bell or what color is my poop threads any day.

[Tron]

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OOT stays as is.

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You're being ridiculous if you think that this will actually be the case.

[Tron]

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how about, if it's an 'a&e' topic, put 'A&E: " in the title, like we do with 'OT' in non-ot forums

then those that don't like OOT can just scan for A&E: or even do a title search for threads with 'A&E:' in the title...

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best idea in the thread

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Did everyone read this? Just checking.

[Low Limit Loser]

Less artsy, more fartsy!

- Homer Simpson

[diebitter]

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db,

A&E would be a popular forum, I'm sure. However, for the reasons I've explained a few times, there's a very big chance it would result in a substantial decrease in total 2+2 non-poker traffic.

Note that every time there's a split (Politics, Sports, etc), a good chunk of people who used to be involved in those discussions are no longer involved in them. The same would happen for A&E.

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El D.

I do see your point, and I have to say your arguments have been thorough and well-presented, and seem to be based on solid experience, not some pulled-out-of-the-air crap.

I do see this as different from those though. I understand those fora split off cos they inundated OOT at various times - this split is more to give posts about A&E a bit of breathing space to encourage discussion etc, to my mind, and provide a location to poeple that just wouldn't come to OOT some place to talk on these things.

I remain unconvinced by your arguments as you remain unconvinced by mine. But I know you'll keep pressing yours, and I'll keep pressing mine, and that's cool.

[El Diablo]

Mat,

That's not correct. Allowing A&E content to also be posted in OOT doesn't really mitigate the impact of a split. It doesn't make sense to have two different places on 2+2 where one would logically post something like "Tonight's 24 episode" or "Recommend a great indie-rock album." Splitting the discussion between two forums would make it less compelling to post this stuff on 2+2 for a lot of people.

Read my posts elsewhere in the thread for explanations regarding why I am sure a split would result in less total traffic for 2+2.

The fundamental issue here is that the 2+2 forums have two big things going for them:

1) Expert poker content
2) Community

Those are the two reasons people make 2+2 a destination, not for specific discussion of any non-poker topic. If your goal is maximizing traffic to 2+2, those two things should be foremost considerations in your decision-making process.

AnandTech is one of many large forums that have spent a fair amount of energy considerering this issue and how best to segment Off Topic forums. Taking a look at how they and other large forums have addressed this issue would probably be helpful for 2+2.

[Blarg]

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The review traffic has a lot more to do with who cares about the movie. Kingpin, however awesome, is a little old to really get people going.

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Anything old is very unlikely to get a lot of responses, simply because nobody has ever heard of it. And, strangely enough, many many people refuse to watch black and white movies, bizarre as that sounds to me. Many refuse to watch movies with subtitles, which also sounds bizarre to me but at least I can understand it somewhat.

So even a great review of a great movie can easily get no responses. Quality can be the least important factor in provoking responses. Heck, I'm not sure a review of a porno film wouldn't get just as many responses as a review of many classic films.

And as someone noted, if a review is good, often there's nothing to add. It might even be the worst reviews that get the most responses!

[Gildwulf]

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Since you are the one making the argument, you should have some sense of how to back up your claims. A few significant things to consider:
1) quantify the number of people who are "turned off" by OOT
2) quantify the number of those people who would then turn to an A&E forum

After you do that, then look at potential negative consequences - such as:
3) quantify the potential detrimental affect of an A&E forum on OOT - i.e. will an A&E forum cannibalize OOT to such an extent that the total number of users (or total hours spent on twoplustwo, or whatever number twoplustwo looks at to determine that the numbers are good) decreases.
4) do the number of people who would be turned on by an A&E forum outweigh the number of people turned off by it (basically a rephrasing of number 2)
5) will yet another forum make the site, which has usability issues to begin with, create an even more difficult to navigate interface.


If you can't, at the very least, come up with decent numbers for 1 and 2 then it isn't a good plan.

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You construct a ridiculous argument by asking for information I can't possibly have, and claiming you win when I can't provide it...

Or let's put it this way...

I'll ask my magic mirror for the figures when it's not busy.

Aww, sorry, it's gonna be tied up today, can you ask yours instead?

I say it's a good plan till your magic mirror says otherwise. If you can't produce them, I believe I win!

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You don't need a magic mirror to quantify this;it takes a 20 minute lesson in surveying/empirical methods and I've done half the work already.

[El Diablo]

db,

"I remain unconvinced by your arguments"

What elements of my arguments do you disagree with? Blarg, Matt, me, tdarko, PDPG are just a few of the posters who have explained why OOT will lose much of its interest to us if it is no longer the center of A&E discussions. Do you not believe that? Do you not think others share that sentiment? Do you not think that would have impact on OOT traffic?

"as you remain unconvinced by mine"

Huh? I believe I have agreed with most of your arguments. Separating the A&E forum would create a popular forum that would on average have a higher level of intelligent discourse than OOT. Isn't that your general point?

Again, I'm curious which of my specific points explaining why a split would likely reduce total traffic to 2+2 you disagree with.

As for elwood's post, he pretty much hit the nail right on the head in terms of the analysis that an online company does in making a decision like this. First step in the analysis is something I did very early on in this thread. Take the existing asset (OOT). Write up a description of what that asset becomes after the change. Is that asset still as compelling as it was prior? If not, how much less compelling is it and is the change significant? This is a basic analysis that is done all the time by content/discussion-based sites.

[Blarg]

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Okay, let's get it clear what's being proposed, to my mind.

OOT stays as is.

A separate entertainment forum springs up.

You can post what you like about entertainment in either. I suggest OOT stay on its own turf and don't go in Entertainment, simple as that.

I for one got tired long ago of posting reviews in OOT to see em sink (yada yada Kingpin etc etc) and said nothing, just cut back the reviewing severely. I posit that a ton of people cut back or don't bother because of the flushing effect

But once someone started the discussion, I made a case for it. I think my points have been fair, and they've been argued back fairly, so I feel this has been a worthwhile discussion personally.

But still...I would welcome a new forum for music, TV, films, books. And if it doesn't happen, fine, no problem. I'll do the odd review, roll my eyes when some asshat whines about how lame OOT has got with its film reviews, but I'll be cool.


But do some of you guys think I'm alone among posters in wanting and welcoming such a forum?

If you think so, then what are you guys worrying about?

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I would probably visit OOT less if there was a split, but that attention would just be directed to an A&E forum. A separate forum is about the only thing that could ever motivate me to review movies very often at all. A movie review takes a lot more effort than a regular post, and there seems no point to doing them in OOT, to me.

I predict that eventually the people who do them occasionally now, like pryor and DB, will feel the same way and get tired of it too, and movie reviews will drop off sharply, especially ones that anyone put any effort into. That would be a shame, and I don't look forward to it. I'm sure we could keep a more active interest in the subject if it were in a forum that wasn't overwhelmed by fart jokes.

So I think both diebitter and El D are right in their own ways. Some people will visit OOT less, and the quality of OOT will go down a lot for some people -- but little for others, many of whom are very negative toward movie reviews and toward reviewers. So I guess some people would like to see less reviews! The tone of OOT might change somewhat, but I'm not all that sure that I care or that that's important -- it might simply be a matter of following two non-poker forums instead of one, which isn't exactly a hard thing to do.

So OOT will be worse, but the contributions people make along the lines of A&E will probably go way up, but elsewhere. I'm pretty sure most people who like A&E have little motivation to start threads on it in a forum in which those threads are essentially wasted and blasted off the page by poop jokes, but they may come out of the woodwork to create a healthy and interesting A&E forum.