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The New-Thread-A-Day Challenge

Archaic

Archaic

黒い王様
Archaic - Webmaster Scorbunny Fan Sprigatito Fan
Joined
Dec 29, 2002
Messages
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Pronouns
  1. He/Him
Forums are something near and dear to my heart. It was on forums that I made my name in the Pokémon fandom, more than two and a half decades ago. The original Bulbagarden Forums (back in the .com era) were where I first became a mod, which started me on the road to becoming the Bulbagarden Webmaster. And it was on forums that I met my wife, @Kasumi. We celebrated out 15th anniversary just this year. So as you can imagine, it's been hard for me to see forums diminish in importance to the internet, as social media has continued to rise. And it's been my hope for a very long time that the continued enshitiffication of social media would lead to a revival of forums one day.

Of course, I've often felt there like I've been part of the problem. With the pressures of (often more than) full time work, it's been years since I really felt like I was able to properly engage with forums. So, now that I've actually found myself with a bit of time again, I figured it was long since past time that I started to make myself part of the solution.

With that in mind, a little over a month ago, on May 12th, I set myself a challenge. Post at least one discussion thread per day. Here's how I went:
... I don't really have a clear direction for a discussion with this one though (due in part to having had some alcohol after dinner while watching these World Cup matches). ^^;; But I guess I'd like to extend this challenge to you all also. If this is something people are interested in, maybe we can set up some special badges or addons or something for it.

I don't think I could've completed this challenge if I was afraid of my threads not taking off. Just going by those numbers, I've certainly had more misses than hits. But that's just how things are sometimes. Long experience has shown that new threads on forums tend to follow the 80-20 rule, with the vast majority of threads being created by a relative minority of users. Ultimately though, no one will have a discussion if someone doesn't start the thread, and if it's something you want to talk about or let others know about, that person posting the thread may as well be you.

So I guess that's maybe the point for discussion then... If you don't tend to post threads, why not? And if you are someone who finds it easier to post threads, even if you're only doing that occasionally, what sort of things would prompt you to post a thread, and what sort of advice would you give to people who are finding it difficult to do so?
 
I love forums! They were the format I mostly used for fandom engagement back when I did that, and I used very little of other popular socmed formats (for example, never touched Facebook or Reddit, hardly ever used Twitter, and currently I only have art blogs and there, I don't do much besides just dumping art; also I really wanna leave Discord but I have a handful of people there that refuse to look for alternatives :sadsola:). I'm a very chatty person though, and I often get the impression that I'm just, too much, especially online. I don't want to be overwhelming :X3:
 
i don't really tend to post threads much, because (silly as it may sound), i see threads as like, nurturing a plant. it's a discussion. i want to see that discussion grow before moving onto the next topic. i want that thread to have its time to shine, maybe get a few replies here and there, and let it sit for a while and gauge whether people feel like it's something they feel it's worth responding to before moving onto something different.

that and much like nosa, i'm much more of someone who replies to topics than i am someone to start them.
 
colours said:
i don't really tend to post threads much, because (silly as it may sound), i see threads as like, nurturing a plant. it's a discussion. i want to see that discussion grow before moving onto the next topic. i want that thread to have its time to shine, maybe get a few replies here and there, and let it sit for a while and gauge whether people feel like it's something they feel it's worth responding to before moving onto something different.

that and much like nosa, i'm much more of someone who replies to topics than i am someone to start them.
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This certainly explains some of our philosophical differences here.

To keep to that garden analogy.... I believe it's possible to plant many trees at once. While you do need to plant them far enough apart that their roots have space to spread (thread topics should be sufficiently distinct from each other), there's plenty of room in the garden to do that (20 threads per forum page + sticky threads). Of course, unlike a real garden, you can't care for trees you planted yourself on your own (you need someone else to reply before you can reply, and you can't just keep replying to yourself), and not every gardener (posted) will care about every tree (post in each thread). By planting more trees then, you encourage more gardeners to visit and care for the trees, since it's more likely they'll find a tree in your garden that they'd like to care for.

Or to drop the garden analogy... the beauty of forums for me is that you can have many different discussions simultaneously, with diverse groups of people, without feeling overwhelmed or having discussions be drowned out by others as they would in a chat room.
Greninjaman said:
@Archaic
What was the original forums like?
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What specifically would you like to know? You'd probably be surprised by how similar things were. The biggest differences comparing then to now are probably in terms of the typical age of users (which skewed much younger than they do today), and the sheer number of active threads in each forum (and how many replies each thread would typically get). As a rough guide, on the original Bulbagarden forums, the Pokémon General Discussion forum alone had received around 2000 threads and 29,000 posts between when it was first established in 2000 and the middle of 2001.
 
Archaic said:
This certainly explains some of our philosophical differences here.

To keep to that garden analogy.... I believe it's possible to plant many trees at once. While you do need to plant them far enough apart that their roots have space to spread (thread topics should be sufficiently distinct from each other), there's plenty of room in the garden to do that (20 threads per forum page + sticky threads). Of course, unlike a real garden, you can't care for trees you planted yourself on your own (you need someone else to reply before you can reply, and you can't just keep replying to yourself), and not every gardener (posted) will care about every tree (post in each thread). By planting more trees then, you encourage more gardeners to visit and care for the trees, since it's more likely they'll find a tree in your garden that they'd like to care for.

Or to drop the garden analogy... the beauty of forums for me is that you can have many different discussions simultaneously, with diverse groups of people, without feeling overwhelmed or having discussions be drowned out by others as they would in a chat room.
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this is fair perspective. i'm more "conservative", i suppose, in regards to thread posting because i want to be sure whatever threads i do post gets the maximum amount of attention. i think spreading it apart in different subforums is fine and harmless enough, but multiple threads in the same forum in a close enough period of time worries me because i fear i'm not giving my threads space to breathe and space to grow and flourish as i feel they should.

there's a calculus to this that's difficult to articulate, such as the best and worst times to post a thread, for example. i tend to stray away from posting threads in us east evenings, since in my mind, i feel like it does best during us east mornings as well as midday/early afternoon, since that's when the most people tend to be online, that sort of thing.
 
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I mean, I try to avoid posting a bunch of threads at once in the same forum as well, but not because of concerns about crowding. Quite the opposite, I think threads collectively get the maximum amount of attention when there's lots of active threads. Rather, my hesitance there (and the reason this new-thread-a-day challenge is only for a person to post 1 new thread a day) comes from how it's much healthier for a forum if there's a mix of people starting new threads. If the first page of threads was all threads started by the same person, that's not really encouraging more people to jump in.

As to the best time to post a thread though.... I've honestly never been concerned about that in the context of a forum. Perhaps that's partly because I spent most of my life online in Australia, but I basically never had the expectation that people would respond immediately. It's not a chat room or social media, so it's not like I need people to be awake and looking at it right at that moment for people to get engaged with the topic. Rather, I'd look forward to seeing what responses my thread had received over the course of the day or overnight while I'm sleeping. About the only time I might have had concerns about if people are going to see it or not would be if there was such a large number of active threads that it'd drop off the first few pages of threads completely, but that's not really been a concern on Pokémon forums for at least a decade at this point.
 
I always try to get a good feel of any new place I join to see what kinda vibes I should be putting out, cause I know sometimes my sense of humor can be a bit dark or rough :X3: And also I would hate to come across as an annoying or bored person seeking attention (I have many things to do, but as I said, I am chatty, so I can always yap in between whatever I'm doing).
 
kiadony said:
I always try to get a good feel of any new place I join to see what kinda vibes I should be putting out, cause I know sometimes my sense of humor can be a bit dark or rough :X3: And also I would hate to come across as an annoying or bored person seeking attention (I have many things to do, but as I said, I am chatty, so I can always yap in between whatever I'm doing).
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honestly being chatty is a good thing imo, it builds a sense of community and makes conversation feel more personal so you'd fit right in!
 
Mmm, yeah, was recently digging through some old Workshop threads to look something up, and saw old faces complaining about how they only had like 18 participants in the Awards that year ... we really didn't know how good we had it lmao ;-;

Forums are banger and as internet enshittification continues, I like to think that people will flee back to forums, but in reality I think that's not been how things are playing out (for now!) I do think there's something distinctly wonderful and unique about a real human interaction telling you about their real Pokopia experience, versus, idk, DefinitelyNotABot9000 on X saying some inflammatory shit on an alt account. I've met many lifelong friends on forums, including this one!!

For my part, I've been pretty silo'd in the art/writing subforums (I've been gradually dipping my toes in elsewhere, but the siren song of Workshop is too powerful), where I think typically some discussion threads are viable, but tbh my preferred form of engagement (and this is also the old ways imo) is typically "making a thread" = "starting a fic" and "chatting in a thread" = "writing a review". Which, uh, yeah, my writing speed has become glacial at this point, and that's kind of where I am lol. I still like to read and try to drop at least one review every 1-2 weeks (though I'm considerably backlogged for some contest reviews that I'm excited to share soon).

It's a fun challenge, and I'm always down to add some more badges to the pool--I wonder if we could do a forum activity drive? (I would, slightly biased, love if there were slightly different metrics depending on section, i.e. Workshop Reviews might take longer to bang out than a "hell yeah Pokopia DLC" post). Summer's usually a good time for that.
 
kintsugi said:
It's a fun challenge, and I'm always down to add some more badges to the pool--I wonder if we could do a forum activity drive? (I would, slightly biased, love if there were slightly different metrics depending on section, i.e. Workshop Reviews might take longer to bang out than a "hell yeah Pokopia DLC" post). Summer's usually a good time for that.
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Yeah, I intentionally left off the creative forums with this challenge and was sticking to the discussion forums, simply because the type of interaction there is going to be vastly different. Writing a fic or a detailed review is obviously going to be a lot more intentional and planned, whereas a lot of forum threads can be much more spontaneous.
 
That's quite an ambitious goal! Good work on it, some of the threads have been very fun.

I create threads some times and the thing that takes away my motivation to do more is the lack of replies. I get it you can't force people to comment but even the simplest of replies can give you more confidence. Some threads I'd wish had gotten more traction:

-Why did Pokken fail?
-New Openings and Endings Discussion
-Rank the Big Four Pokemon Apps
-Pokemon: Trainer Tour - Pokemon's first live action series-yes, I know the title is a lie but not even that comment I received :cry:
-Are you a battler or a catcher?
 
I don't really post threads because I don't think people have any interest in the things I like, lol... I'm also just very shy around strangers in general, so it can be difficult for me to post anything.

I also have a difficult memory of a thread I ended up regretting posting that kept getting replies and getting bumped to the top of its category's thread list, only adding to my shame. I deleted it since, but the memory kind of discourages me further...
 
I love making threads!! It's hard for me to keep up with a daily streak though since I tend to get distracted by a million other things, but threads are very fun and something I've enjoyed for years. It's nice to see the responses and how everyone feels about different things. <3 time to think up more......
 
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