User feedback and questions.

[Ahri]

Um... I'm a bit confused by the notice. Am I still allowed to create a new thread here?

EDIT: Ah, I realized that there's a different kind of system in here. Looks like I'm way past the date.

^ yeah, I was kinda upset about it myself as I recently got [Supporter]Supporter [/Supporter] for my birthday, from [Supporter]NecrumWarrior[/Supporter] and I was so excited to discover the new forum and all the threads in MIC xD I wanted to make a thread SO BAD! xD

 

[Squirrel]

Conversation regarding this forum;

[18:04:42] Ozzy: It was never going to work though was it? There's only a finite number of times you can ask a question about another member
[18:04:54] Ozzy: If it's opened up to the general member base the same thing will happen again lol, even if more people are allowed to make threads
[18:05:09] Ozzy: imo just open it up like one month a year or something
[18:06:07] Lame Person: You don't think just get rid of it?
[18:06:25] Ozzy: Not necessarily
[18:06:42] Ozzy: Although I never liked the idea or thought it would work, I think it has potential as an occasional thing
[18:07:00] Ozzy: It'd do well as like a once a year event running for around a month

Basically I've never liked the idea of this place as a whole forum (especially when the idea hardly ever even works in blogs) and it seems to have reached something of a slowdown recently with no posts in two days, however I can see there's obvious potential for it to work, so I propose we close the forum for now and re-open it again in a year or so's time. If this forum was turned into an event run once a year in the month of January or something, people would have a lot more to ask each other and the quality would stay frequent as opposed to, well, this. If these months work well and people want it back more frequently then it could change to twice a year or once a season or whatever, but for now I think it's a case of questions being exhausted and although this will be helped as more threads are made and more people gain access, I think it'll always be the fate of this forum.

Thoughts?

 

[moon]

@ Ozzy, I think that is a great idea. I agree with everything you say there, pretty much. Member Interaction Events.

 

[Nick]

I'm okay with that. The forum had a pretty good run while it lasted.

 

[Her]

Although Ozzy's points are sound, it sounds a bit...idk, defeatist to me. I'd personally like to try opening the forum up to the general memberbase for a month and if Ozzy's predictions really do come true, then just close and do whatever you want with the forum. But I personally don't want to see the forum be closed off just yet.

 

[Melody]

I agree with Harlequin on this one. I don't like the idea of calling it a failure without taking it to full scale and giving it time to run it's course. Especially not when it seems like the chances to make new threads was closed up half way through it's lifetime and we stopped getting new threads capable of generating traffic to other threads.

I'd like to propose something; require users establishing new threads to have posted 3 questions in other threads, and require existing users bumping their own thread to post at least one question in other threads.

 

[Kura]

On the bright side, the AMA Threads I've made in Chit Chat and Polls are now open for Member Specific Questions~ Right now you can ask a question to any one member. I'll see how that goes this week and then I'll branch of to one question PER member and I'll see how that goes. :3

 

[Mana1]

I'd like to propose something; require users establishing new threads to have posted 3 questions in other threads, and require existing users bumping their own thread to post at least one question in other threads.

This sounds like a lot of effort to moderate and keep people in line.

As to a 'trial run' - isn't that what this subforum is for? Nobody has asked a question in ~3 days. As far as I can see, only three threads have over two pages.

To me that shows quite clearly that activity has dried up, as when this was first introduced questions were posted pretty often.

Totally agree with Ozzy, make it open for a few weeks a year as a special event.

 

[Treecko]

Yeah seeing how there's threads that have been dead for 4 weeks on the first page, it's safe to say activity here has dried up. I agree with Harlequin , open it up to the public for a month and see how it goes. If it ends up being inactive again, then I'd say go with Ozzy's idea. I still really like the idea of this forum. It's been fun while it lasted.

 

[Her]

i really don't see the point in having as an event lol
'wow! asking questions to various different people! i hope i get an emblem for this!'

give it one last shot or kill it off entirely

 

[Squirrel]

i really don't see the point in having as an event lol
'wow! asking questions to various different people! i hope i get an emblem for this!'

give it one last shot or kill it off entirely

Whilst I agree that it should ordinarily be a case of "let it go public or kill it off", I think based on the amount of excitement generated in the first month or so for this forum and given the whole "let's have a month to get closer as a community each year" vibe that it would give off, I can see this kind of thing working well as something to come back occasionally. It's not an 'event' and there wouldn't even be necessarily emblems (though we do end up making them for just about everything...!), but more of a "this forum will be open every January so we can start the year by getting to know each other a bit better" - something like that.

I think the MIC was a great idea and I love the concept, but it's something that I've always seen as having a finite life and I think this is the best method to get around that, if we are keeping it on still.

As for Pachy's idea of "ask 3 questions to open a thread" I think that would be more likely to result in spammy questions for the sake of having a thread, no? It seems like a case of "let's get extra posts for the sake of it" to me, but I could be wrong haha. I think it's definitely something we could try whilst the forum's in beta if it does stick around for much longer, but we'll have to wait and see what's decided haha.

 

[Her]

hmmmmm
well
you've sold me

 

[bobandbill]

I think Ozzy sold me too and that was just after the first post. =p Makes sense as a start of year deal.

 

[Nick]

I think at this point, Kura's AMA threads in the Other Vo--- Chit Chat forum is a lot better suited. If we keep this forum around in that way (bringing it back once a year), I would prefer it being something that was slightly more than once a year, but I also don't really think it should be, so I'm kind of on the fence about that myself.

 

[Ahri]

I do think that it should be open up to the public for a while to see how it goes. Because it only being available to Supporters for testing right now, doesn't prove anything. Of course it was bound to die out since it was only available to such a limited part of the community. And as far as I'm concerned, Supporters around here tend to know one another fairly well yet there's always more stuff to find out about one another.

Maybe I'm saying this because I'm fairly new to it and it seems interesting to me right now, but what if it doesn't die out? I mean, PC has a LOT of members and I'm sure they might love the idea as well.

Heck, I look at it as a chance to get to know people I've never had a chance to talk to due to us usually dwelling around different parts of the forum.
The MIC can be a get-together place where the community can learn about those around them and it can help establish connections between people and even help people finally talk to others they were too shy to approach for various reasons (like I did with Gavin >.> even tho he hasn't yet answered my questions :X)

So I'd say... give it a try with a greater audience before killing it off.

 

[Squirrel]

I do think that it should be open up to the public for a while to see how it goes. Because it only being available to Supporters for testing right now, doesn't prove anything. Of course it was bound to die out since it was only available to such a limited part of the community. And as far as I'm concerned, Supporters around here tend to know one another fairly well yet there's always more stuff to find out about one another.

Maybe I'm saying this because I'm fairly new to it and it seems interesting to me right now, but what if it doesn't die out? I mean, PC has a LOT of members and I'm sure they might love the idea as well.

Heck, I look at it as a chance to get to know people I've never had a chance to talk to due to us usually dwelling around different parts of the forum.
The MIC can be a get-together place where the community can learn about those around them and it can help establish connections between people and even help people finally talk to others they were too shy to approach for various reasons (like I did with Gavin >.> even tho he hasn't yet answered my questions :X)

So I'd say... give it a try with a greater audience before killing it off.

Whilst I do agree that there'll be a lot more activity at first if this place is opened up to the public, don't you agree that it will eventually reach the same point in which everyone has already asked all their questions and there's nothing left to be said? Sure we'll get new members coming in occasionally with new threads and new questions, but that's only going to delay the inevitable.

I agree that your point about getting to know new people throughout the forum is definitely a good reason for keeping this place open, but in reality is it really much different to posting in a DCC or any other thread to get talking to new people? Where you happen to post to meet these new people is somewhat irrelevant as long as you're in contact with them - you're just more likely to find out about their real interests if you're talking to them in a place they're active in.

Honestly I've never really had a problem with talking to people here so I may well just be missing something obvious, and if you're still not convinced then please don't hesitate to say why again as we try not to displease anyone with these decisions, but hopefully this clears things up a little. :)

 

[droomph]

Well imo there are a lot more people joining than those giving money to us, so maybe there will be more people to keep the place alive…

 

[Melody]

Yes, it's true that theoretically a larger scale could eventually die out; however I don't believe it will within any reasonable amount of time when you consider that we have newbies coming in every day. Not to mention the fact that we tend to kill off our threads after a month of inactivity, and maybe that's not the right approach for this forum specifically. Maybe we need to let threads live as long as the member does.

So what if there's nothing to ask that member? That just means that all the pertinent questions have been answered, and the thread has reached it's goal in becoming an effective bio for the member answering the questions. So I'm remaining unconvinced that the project is ultimately dead or failed. We haven't really performed it in a large enough scale, figuring there would be more logistical nightmares than there would be successful threads. To me it seems the opposite has come true, and most every thread has pretty much run it's course successfully, but restricted by a chain that would ultimately kill them given enough time to do so, despite the threads being effective. Besides, who really cares if the section is quiet, if it is, it's a lot less hassle for the moderation team to do their job on it; and I don't foresee this section being any quieter than some of our less active sections elsewhere when we run this full scale.

The supporter test was supposed to be the period in which we ironed out all the kinks and prepared it for better release, or if it had truly failed, scrapped it. But I'm not convinced it's failed. I'm convinced that it's succeeded far more than we expected it to.

 

[droomph]

srsly guys how many active people are there? around 3,000.

then there's the supporters. Any way you look at it, it's only around several hundred.

And then only about 50 were allowed to be asked questions…

multiply the success of this forum about 100 times, and you have how successful it will be in the long run. And there are constantly non-supporters and supporters w/o threads who are willing to answer questions (just ask Kagami) and many more willing to ask questions.

And it might even help integrate new members into the community! I certainly would have started posting more if I were to be given a cool little Q&A, I believe. And I think it would help a lot of people get rid of the "what if they don't like me?" concept by showing that we're all here to have fun or something to that extent.

 

[droomph]

kk I'm fine with whatever you say but one flaw

Initially, my arguments were against revealing this to the public because it might create overpopulation for the forum. But given that we have an assload of supporters (isn't approximately half of PC, or at least a very good chunk of PC, supporters?), and only a fraction of them have made threads (including PC staff, that is), what does that really say about how the public would react, in turn? You're probably only going to have the same result occur within the public as it did with the supporters: you're only going to have a fraction participate, and the forum is just going to die off given a few months afterwards. Yeah, you're going to have that new thread every once in a while (as is the case currently), but is that enough to really generate interest in asking questions, which is basically the entire concept of keeping this forum alive?

https://www.pokecommunity.com/showthread.php?t=301433