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Nocturnal Forum Feedback Thread
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07-11-2010 9:54pm#1
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For any community there is bound to be a little flux, people stop posting for one reason or another. I'm like the poster above, I can't really stay up all night because I have a job. But I don't go out much at the weekend, so I could post then.
But why don't I? Because frankly, the forum is boring. The only thread that ever gets posted in is The Lair. And for the most part, the posts there are "Hi" followed by a "Oh hai!" some hours later. It's a little hard to start a conversation like that!
I'm guilty of my own "oh hai" two word posts, but I shall try harder in future to post something a bit more in that thread.
The Noc. Nerds thread also gets action, but it's not really a talky thread.
I think that we need new people! New people will post, the people that have lost interest / become unavailable due to Real Life might come back if they see more movement on this forum.
I tend to look at this forum about once a day, but I don't post because nothing is happening.
I've noticed that we get the odd new person, they post in the New Nocs thread and then run away again.
The reason for this might be connected to the point above. The Lair is chummy, and that's fine, that's community!
However, as a new person, it's hard to jump into a conversation between people that know each other and are discussing their day.
So, how do we get New People to come to Noc, stay and post while at the same time getting Current Nocs that are here to post and take part more?
I've thought of a few ways of doing this.
1) New threads. I'm certainly not saying that we should spam the face off the forum, but there have been very few new threads lately. Something to get folk talking.
2) Some kind of Event. Maybe we could have the All Night Challenge some weekend? That might be fun! Maybe some kind of Reward for the winner?
(I can't imagine what
)
3) I'll stick a link to the forum in my sig as soon as I work out how to do the words-that-are-actually-a-link thing. If a few people do this (I know that people already have this in their sigs, so
to you!) it might direct people to our dark sexy embrace.
I know that I am barely a whippersnapper in the World of Noc, but I really like what I have seen of the community, and I'd love to see it more vibrant. You people rock.
tldr; ramble ramble people should post more.0 -
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Wall o text alert!!! :P
Just gonna address some points:
deadly alliance style threads- great and all as they were, some users complained about em crossing over into general chat and other threads. now i know there were a number of people (vanillas i believe is the term <which i hate tbh>) who didn't like them full stop.
i told them then (and now) not to read em and to report anything spilling over and taking over the day to day stuff.
its fairly simple, compromise. don't like it, don't take part. if it starts pushing into your territory send us a pm and we'll sort it. I'm on here nearly every day, i just don't post.
new lair/old lair: i know what grames is referring to. one or two people were pissy about it. but i also know that the boys working in the office have to deal with huge data thingies.
so its just the way it had to be and if those folks really just left for that reason, thats their problem. boards hosts the thing, if its costing/damaging the site, unfortunately it has to go.
New threads: its come up again and again. the mods cant put all their time into creating the content, thats down to users. so maybe the remaining folk could check out the ancient threads or start new ones? that could help
Some kind of Event: has my full support. I'll pimp it in a sig, sticky it,edit it, judge it and if i'm feeling super nice advertise it on my site.
sigs- used to be a big part of the place and worked in the begginning. good call rose
new folk/chummy folk: gonna throw a very personal opinion out. all the forums with chat and such are like that. but thats the way life is. ya can't have a community then burn it down for the new folks, nor can you hold their hands when they come in. the intros thread was set up so the extra nice folk could welcome people in, get a lil chat going and then move over to the main chat thread. i know all the social forums have issues with this, but its the nature of the web and boards.
vanilla vs super alt folk: sick to the teeth of it tbh. not attacking you kharn, i know there are more than just you that see this way. im all for fair compromise. i dont think we should segregate the forum. us vs them is stupid. if people wanna be nerdy as hell about wow or whatever, one group can have a thread for it. if one group wanna talk xfactor and whatever else, thread for it. and if people wanna be all goth and emo, thread for it. general chat is general chat, were everyone should be able to chat. if one thing is clogging it up too much, move it to a thread. or, ya know, talk over them :P
other soc forums: the only reason tll and cnh get that distinction in fairness is because they have the numbers consistently. if we had the numbers and i got my way we'd be the very same. i (and others) often pushed about suicide awareness, bullying and alt social issues. again, super serious stuff got/gets its own thread. simples. its a numbers thing to be honest. i think bgrh was the only one that (numbers willing) wouldnt move to soc and more serious stuff, because the drama wasnt wanted. TD can correct me if im wrong, but afaik they just wanted it to nice, silly and chilled out.
forums dead- well yeah, but we (grudingly) kinda saw that coming. huge activity in the start lead to a burnout soon after. but moving stuff to lord sarkys territory is a bit insulting tbh. not because theres anything wrong with the nest (it has a few lovely people) but because this forum is a seperate thing.
i could easily go along to a load more very quiet semi dead forums and say the same thing.
just leave it, whether it picks up or not, there are still a few who post and use it.0 -
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no probs.Apologies for the misunderstanding so..... Points redacted.
like of course i'd love for everyone to use it again and more new people to come in and such.
but-
i'm not above saying when the thing looks dead. i'm all for change, as long as it doesnt put off the folk that already use the place. the handful of them >_> :pac:
but-
i also think moving content to other forums (who possibly wouldnt want it/appreciate our old stuff being thrown at em) is a bad call.
i'm also not in the handholding business, so as reallyrose pointed out, users need to do some work and make new threads. new content is king... or something. of course i'll sticky and edit or whatever ye need, i'm on here most of the day on mobile and while working on my own stuff during the evening.
also, if things on this thread look like i'm being rude, its because i forgot smileys. ill usually say when im being a bastard
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My attention has been drawn to this thread And although I was a regular here for nigh on 8-9 months at least, and a casual for the rest...I'd not like to see this forum go down. I can fully understand the hard work, and dedication put into the place by both mods and posters alike you all!, but as has been mentioned, new ideas are needed...sorely needed.
I used to love personally, discussions about the smaller things...like what it's like outside in the night where you are living/posting from, there were always some things dedicated to drawing and it's ilk, and ofc the obligatory supers and food discussion which, apart from the posters themselves, kept me coming back. I was, in the early days of the forum, a true Noc that could stay up all night and post about whatever was on topic (The Lair moved scarily fast back then) and it may have been daunting for new forum-ites to join in I guess, but we got along.
These days though, alot of us have moved on to jobs and college, and realistically cannot be Nocturnal in the sense, but be casual posters and try add in some form of new topic/idea, especially if new posters are attracted to the place.
As for new ideas, the Humanitas threads were a great addition and should be held for special times tbh, like an uncommon event that draws people back and hopefully keeps them posting more, or draws in new posters. Newer styles of thread could possibly be welcome, like stuff normally confined to other fora (astronomy/Nocturnal animals & habits/imagery&drawing etc) that may stem the flow of the death of the forum and may breathe new life into it.
I would love to see this place pick up once again, if I get time I will try get back to posting a bit, but a very heavy college schedule means that currently I cannot. This little gem of a forum is Kharn's baby iirc...lets hope she stays here!0 -
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I'm not going to go into this too much right now, but I will leave my current thinkings here.
This forum did always rely on the mods. Too much. Cards on the table, it was the Nerin and Doom show for far too long. This was always going to slowly break down. Things changed a bit when Randy showed up etc.
I'm not belittling other peoples contribution at all, and there are many people who did alot over the years, more so than I in retrospect, but the fact remains that there were plenty of times that was the way it felt to me.
That's wrong- I was running my first forum, was very new, and I made alot of mistakes. When my job changed I couldn't be what I was to here anymore. It's sad but it happened.
So there's my part of the problem. What about fixing it.
I can see a running theme of a desire of "serious side" threads developing here.
I've always thought we needed them. If I recall, LZ had a penchant for starting them.
Whereas Kharn would say alt, I would say cult- I think there's a place in Boards for a "Cult Times" kind of social forum, where we could organise to go see things like the time the original Dracula was played with the Kronos quartet providing the score, or discussion of pop culture issues such as the frankly disgusting scenes at San Diego Comicon where middle aged male fanboys thought it'd be a good idea to scream at and terrify teenage girls for the audacity of liking twilight. (Although myself and Kharn have our own fun twilight memories )
My idea would be a forum where the issues that face cultdom have a nexus, where we could talk about going to all the different cons etc (I had a run of 3 different cons in 3 weeks with different focuses). These cons are living examples of the cross over I am talking about- I was playing Street Fighter at an anime con, then a roleplaying one- the cross over is real and recognised in many places.
Look at me for example. My "pop culture" influences include:
1) Video games
2) Comics
3) Movies
4) TV
5) Music
For each one of these there's cult and mainstream versions (although it could be argued all comics are cult) and for each one there's hidden gems that I'm missing (I discovered Scott Pilgrim through this forum).
This is genuinely the direction I could see the forum going down and I think it'd be ALOT of fun and interesting, but as Nerin said, we could never do it alone.
Content IS king. Part of why the original Lair snowballed was because it was always on the front page. I mean, always, I used to log into Boards and just click on it there.
With reference to the Lair itself- Kharn there is just having a clash of the two perspectives of people who come here.
He sees the inside of Boards and the Lair is just another thread to him, who has seen thousands. To other people, building up a thread like that is important. They don't see the web the way some of the old skewllers do.
I'd like to do something special with it, but I don't have ideas for what. I'd like to hear some.0 -
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Personally i think some of us (myself included) got carried away with the deadly alliance style threads. So something maybe to watch out for; dont do them again for a long while.
One thread every couple of months doesn't kill a forum. If anything, those threads were the one thing that kept traffic in any way decent in this forum over the last year or so. Not having a go at you or anyone else or anything, but seriously, I think you're all way off the mark in regards to this. Just my opinion though. I accept though that sometimes discussion bled into The Lair. That shouldn't have happened because there's always a discussion thread to go hand in hand with those tourneys. All the same though, there's a reason why there's a report button attached to every post.
Anyway, I'm not sure if I can give my 2 cents without starting a shit storm. I'm pretty sure I'm aware of what is the real cause of the problems are in this forum with people no longer posting. However it's something that cannot be helped at this stage, and to mention it now can have no positive effect.
What I'd suggest anyway is try to rebuild it from the ground up. Maybe we can all put our heads together and come up with a solid M.O. for this forum. If we all know where we're at in regards to the nature of the forum it will be easier to create new threads.0 -
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