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

[Aloysius]

[ QUOTE ]
astro, Mat:

Splitting that out would be a horrible move. From a business perspective, I think you significantly underestimate the possibility that this split would result in a large reduction in traffic.

The A&E stuff is a core part of why many of us come to OOT. This is where, on 2+2, we disucss movies/TV/music/books/etc. Entertainment and food/drink are the two primary reasons why I frequent OOT. However, if I want to have an in-depth discussion or research some specific entertainment topic, I visit one of the countless entertainment-specific forums available.

I don't think people pushing for the A&E split understand the dynamics of what keeps OOT going well enough. A healthy mix of content that people are actually interested in discussing (A&E, food, etc.) plus some personal stuff (gf probs, personal anecdotes, trip reports) plus some silly stuff (tennis ball color, nature of perfect dump, etc) is what keeps OOT working and vibrant. Get rid of enough of the first category and OOT becomes not worth the time, and the place people will go is not the 2+2 A&E forum, it's some other forum. The fact that you can take back the split doesn't matter. Once you lose a forum member, they're likely to stay gone. The fact that A&E content would still be ALLOWED here is irrelevant if there's another 2+2 forum devoted to that discussion.

db, most of your points make little sense imo. There have been vibrant discussions about countless bands, TV shows, etc. here. If people are interested in discussing a movie and a well-written post is made about it, it can easily stay active for a long time.

[/ QUOTE ]

El Diablo - wow. That was exactly what I was about to post (you stated it very well). He is 100% correct. People should really read that post.

Pryor - the beauty of OOT is that there is a wide, diverse audience. Your review of obscure films might garner more attention in a subforum, simply because there would be less posted topics. But really, your audience composition has not changed at all, assuming a 100% A&E - OOT migration should spin-off occur. You're a professional writer - what happened to writing for the audience [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Astro - I didn't really read through the thread, but if people are giving you [censored] about soliciting opinions from users to see the merits of a change on this site... uh wtf.

-Al

[eggzz]

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Seriously, you guys (mods) are like managers in a stuffy corporation. You feel the need to make change, just for the sake of change, irregardless of whether or not things are running well at the present time.

[El Diablo]

All,

If A&E were split, which of the others do you split?

Food/Drink/Restaurants/Bars
Relationships/Love Advice
Style/Clothing/Fashion
Hot Girls/nsfw/etc
Jokes/Funny stuff
Other

The first two I think merit splitting just as much as A&E does.

And, what is the critical mass required to keep OOT itself interesting? My contention is that by removing Books/Movies/Music/TV from OOT, you've quite likely already dipped below the critical mass of content necessary to keep people coming to OOT.

[pryor15]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
all,

as to the comment that the better reviews will manage to stay on the top of the heap, consider this: when I reviewed Pyassa, an uber-obscure Bollywood musical from the 50's, it didn't really matter how good the review was. it had zero name recognition and was quickly buried, pretty much as i expected. but a couple people read it, and that's the primary reason i post them anyway.

as for the split, i imagine a lot of people are just scared of change. i was against the sports split at first, but got used to it. i don't see an overwhelming reason for this one, but i suspect i'd get used to it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Pryor,

I know you are a filmie. I know you write pretentious reviews. When you wrote this review for a film called Pyassa, and no one wrote about it, it was because most people want to read reviews on this site about more common movies, opening features, etc. I enjoy good film, and am not trying to say no one else does, but the fact of the matter is that this is a poker forum, with one side bar for politics, sports, science, and other topics. Entertainment is in that other topics. If you want to write reviews on obscure films, you're best audience for discussion will be found on IMDB, rottentommatoes, or other FILM REVIEW sites. I don't know why you would look to a poker forum for discussion on movies that possibly....three other people have seen?

[/ QUOTE ]

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.

[Mat Sklansky]

[ QUOTE ]
Once you get rid of a certain amount of quality content critical mass in OOT, people will stop coming here. And if they

[/ QUOTE ]

From the front page:

theory on fat people and facial hair: 1730 views
Please translate this womanspeak : 3949 views
How Would You Kill Yourself: 2304 views
Stupid things I thought when I was a kid: 5558 views

It seems to me that these are the kinds of topics that makes oot a special and popular place. To a large extent I believe they also "frighten" people. When Diablo speaks, I am very hesitant to disagree, but in this case, I do.

[pryor15]

[ QUOTE ]
Pryor - the beauty of OOT is that there is a wide, diverse audience. Your review of obscure films might garner more attention in a subforum, simply because there would be less posted topics. But really, your audience composition has not changed at all, assuming a 100% A&E - OOT migration should spin-off occur. You're a professional writer - what happened to writing for the audience [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]


[/ QUOTE ]

actually, i don't really have an opinion on the split either way. it makes little difference to me.

[Aloysius]

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

[Clarkmeister]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Once you get rid of a certain amount of quality content critical mass in OOT, people will stop coming here. And if they

[/ QUOTE ]

From the front page:

theory on fat people and facial hair: 1730 views
Please translate this womanspeak : 3949 views
How Would You Kill Yourself: 2304 views
Stupid things I thought when I was a kid: 5558 views

It seems to me that these are the kinds of topics that makes oot a special and popular place. To a large extent I believe they also "frighten" people. When Diablo speaks, I am very hesitant to disagree, but in this case, I do.

[/ QUOTE ]

To play Devil's advocate, I think his point is that all of the threads you cited are chocolate, but that OOT survives because of a well-rounded diet. If everyone has to eat nothing but chocolate and no one ever gets to eat a steak or salad, then eventually they'll stop showing up to dine here.

[BluffTHIS!]

Customization is the driving force in marketing anything in the past decade, especially on the internet. More forums, assuming that they get enough traffic so that the site owners are happy with it, would actually increase total traffic on 2+2 IMO. To see this, just look why the strategy forums of 2+2 are the best around. Part of this of course has to do with the reputation of 2+2's authors and the fact that they attract like minded and quality posters. But go to CP, UPF or other forums, and there is little or no separation of strategy forums by game types and stakes and you see the other reason. So anyone wishing to discuss a certain form at a certain stakes, is going to be put off by the noise of all the stuff he's not interested in.

So I think that splitting off such a forum is a good idea and I would welcome it and read it more often for such content that doesn't get lost quick as DB has pointed out. Also, as Matt pointed out, it can be changed back if it doesn't work.


El D,

Your objections to this proposed split and comments about too many forums are somewhat inconsistent. You were one of the ones who wanted to split HSNL out of M&HSNL. Also regarding the politics forum, I agree it is smaller, but the threads there don't get lost quickly and there are more knowledgeable posters from various political points of view who discuss political matters in detail and most often with facts and reasons for their positions, instead of just generic "well I think" comments with no facts or reasoning to support their opinion. Thus it is a higher quality forum, the same as are the various strategy forums for being split over time.

And I think a good reason that such splits as long as they do have a minimal critical mass traffic results in higher quality posting, is something Ray Zee noted not too long ago. He said he missed the old days where there were far fewer threads, but where any individual strategy post got a lot more discussion and the issue ironed out fully as to what the correct play was most likely to be, precisely because an individual thread didn't quickly get lost. I can attest to this in the PLO forum, perhaps the strategy forum with the least traffic and most testy posters, but where the fewer threads insures a more vigorous discussion of each issue. And I believe the non-strategy forums benefit, as would the proposed A&E one, from such a greater and sharpened focus.

[jason_t]

[ QUOTE ]
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.

[/ QUOTE ]

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.