Art forum, writing forum

[Dr Unne]

Did anyone else notice that they suck? The writing forum has sucked for a good long time. The art forum used to be OK, but it's been sucking more and more lately. Almost no one posts in either of them any longer. And I've never seen so many threads with 0 posts than the travesty that is the poetry sub-forum. It's a real shame.

I think art and writing discussion used to be good back when they were all in one forum. Art discussion generally dominated the forum (which is why we split writing off into its own forum, I think, I don't really remember), but every once in a while some writing thread would pop up, or a nice book discussion, and it'd get plenty of posts. I think it was good because people who liked art would browse the forum, and say "Oh look, a writing thread" or "oh look, someone wrote a poem", and people would talk about it. And people who liked writing would browse the forum, and happen to see an art thread, and post. Whereas now, only people who are VERY interested in writing go in the writing forum, and people who are VERY interested in art go in the art forum, and there aren't many of those people here, so things are stagnant. If they were one forum, people who were vaguely interested in either of those would at least be in the forum and there'd be a better chance of people posting.

"So", you ask, "why don't you just post more in the writing forum yourself, you ugly dork?" Well, I absolutely love reading and occassionally writing, but I never go into the writing forum, because I know any thread made in the writing forum would die a horrible death of starvation, because no one would read it. Because no one goes in there. I think plenty of people at the MB are interested in such things, but the forums themselves and their atmosphere (or lack thereof) are holding things back. I do post in the art forum sometimes, but even then, threads don't get nearly the number of replies they used to.

As a minor point, I HATE having signatures having their own threads in the art forum. I'd love to see that disallowed, or confined to one huge sticky thread. There's a sticky thread to request someone to make you a sig, but people still make threads to show off sigs they've made, or web page banners, or stuff like that. I think it degrades the quality of art in the forum. That's an entirely subjective opinion on my part though, I'll admit. But some text and lens flares slapped onto a sprite or anime graphic you stole from some other site online isn't art in my book.

So I think we need to trick people into posting more, so to speak. I think the art, writing, and poetry forums should be combined into one. And I don't think sig threads would fit into such a huge and hopefully busy forum, so I'd love to see those zapped. We've tried things to make the forums better in the past, but usually the staff is too apathetic to pull anything off, and I can't blame them. I think the forums themselves are the problem. Combining the forums won't take any protracted effort on the part of the staff. It would also make it easier to moderate them. And the resulting greater staff presence could help keep things alive in there even more. Combine them and give it a nice name, that's my suggestion. What was the old name for the forum when they were one forum? I can't remember it, but it was a good name.

[eestlinc]

I agree. I love the poetry subforum, but NOBODY ever posts there, and it being so isolated makes it very dead. You really have to know the poetry subforum is there and want to post in order to end up in it. It's a shame, too. poetry and writing shouldn't be separate, and art would be ok to merge if there weren't those "signature threads". One creativity forum would be nice.

[Loony BoB]

I've definitely noticed the poor state of the Poetry Forum. It makes me sad. Not that I help it or anything... it's the only one I really browse through, though. But while I've noticed the decline in posts, I choose to be neutral on what's done about it, at least for now. I'm happy for it to go either way - so long as I don't have to spend hours going through the whole damned forum splitting Art from Writing and Poetry from Fanfics should people want to split it up again, I don't mind. ;)

[crono_logical]

I don't partiularly think we should merge them back together again, yet. Especially with all the crappy "art" threads about, they're gonna cause the problem of before of the long story threads being drowned out again :p

Perhaps take poetry out of the writing forum so it's no longer a subforum? Problem is that'd make a dead forum in the top level, which we don't really want, even if it's more visible. Alternately, maybe a creativity forum, with the other 3 current ones as direct subforums, so they all appear more equally, although some people won't like the extra clicking involved to navigate :p


But some text and lens flares slapped onto a sprite or anime graphic you stole from some other site online isn't art in my book. Too right :D Anyone with access to a half-decent image editor can do that :p


I guess the creativity forums need a bit more thinking on if anyone wants them improved :p

[eestlinc]

the poetry forum wouldn't be as dead if it weren't shoved off in a corner.

[Dr Unne]

<i>Especially with all the crappy "art" threads about, they're gonna cause the problem of before of the long story threads being drowned out again</i> --crono_logical

The oldest thread on the first page of the writing forum is currently from July 7. You can either have story threads "drowned out", or you can leave them on the front page of a dead forum to rot, which is the current situation. They don't get "drowned out" as it stands now, but they STILL get no posts. Obviously keeping them in their own forum doesn't make them work any better. What's the harm in letting them be buried by art threads? At least a few people would see them before they were buried. Who sees them now?

The oldest thread on the first page of the art forum is August 25. At least 6 of those are sig threads, threads about web banners, or threads about digitally "playing" with an official artwork. If you dumped that stuff into the Help Forum, which is where it used to go a long long time ago, and where people still often instinctively create threads about sigs, it'd make even more room for writing / reading threads.

The purpose of splitting writing into its own forum was to attempt to artificially generate traffic for threads people didn't want to post in and were thus buried under threads people did like. The cost is that the few writing/reading threads that WOULD'VE been popular are also killed off along with the rest of the unpopular ones.

Three subforums of a main forum would be just as bad as if not worse than the current situation, in my opinion. You'd just be killing off the art forum too, granting it the same second-class seclusion as the poetry forum. Subforum = bad.

I draw your attention to the Lounge. Many threads in there are unpopular, and are buried very quickly. Look how many threads have 0-2 posts. Yet we don't split off a new forum called "Unpopular music" and attempt to save them. Let the unpopular writing threads be buried under art. Anything is better than the current situation. It's worth potentially burying a few unpopular writing / reading threads to save the ones that could be good enough to discuss. And I still argue that with more people being forced to read writing/reading threads (if they're in a forum together with something more popular, i.e. art), less threads will be buried as a result.

BoB, as I said, this takes no work. Merging three forums takes about a minute. I'd even be in favor of archiving the current forums and creating a new empty forum to get a clean start, instead of throwing all the current dead threads into one huge forum, so it'd be easier to undo if you ever decided to in the future. But we went a long long time with art, writing and poetry all together, and it might not've been ideal, but it DID have plenty of traffic being generated and a whole lot of popular threads with tons of posts.

[Meow]

i like the poetry forum, and sometimes even post stuff there; it definitely saddens me to see so little come of that small corner of the board. i think the question here is about traffic vs. organization, and to be honest i'm not too partial to either. On the one hand, it's nice to have the forums neatly divided, so i know i can go to one spot and only find one brand of creativity. But on the other hand, it really kills the turnover at any particular board (especially on the Writing end), as Unne and others have said.

After all, it came up recently in feedback that a newbie forum would be bad because there'd only be newbies in it; it'd defeat the purpose of even creating the thing. Perhaps a merger would do these three artsy fora some good.

[PhoenixAsh]

I agree with the merge and archive idea. If people are worried about losing threads, then just have a rule that tells people to write the thread type in uppercase before making a title ie. POETRY-An ode to monkeys.

[Meow]

Phoenix has a pretty good idea, there. People can begin their posts with some defining marker - [W], [P] or [A], for example - depending on the post's particular medium of expression. Even if someone forgets, it wouldn't be too hard for the Knights to keep an eye on the threads, adding them where forgotten. Better to keep up consistently than try to seperate it all out at the end.

(Golly, wouldn't that be fun, when half your modding job becomes tacking referential symbols on topic titles? Although, while i don't know squat about vBulletin, i would think you could set up a "multi-mod" shortcut to make it easy as hell.)

i dunno. Just my two cents.

[eestlinc]

this merger would also solve the eternal question of which forum to post a fanfiction poem about designing forum signatures with images from Picasso.

[PhoenixAsh]

Thank God, I was getting sick of those showing up in World Events.

[Big D]

...Let's not forget music videos, too. Another popular form of 'fan-art' which would fit nicely into a "general artistic expression" forum.

I quite like the idea of a 'merger'. One big forum will have more traffic than umpteen little separate fora, and who knows, those who visit there to post or view images or videos might have their imagination captured by stories and poetry, and vice versa. Could usher in a whole new era of creativity...

[Strider]

I only usually visit the Writing Forum for a couple of ongoing stories that are constantly being updated, such as the one by Axwind. I'd post a lot more in there, but I haven't written any stories in a long while, and I can't churn out fanfictions or stuff like that like some other people can. Not that I would do that, but you get the point. . .

I can't speak much about the Poetry Forum because I can't write poetry or try to understand it to save my life. I like the idea of a amalgamation for those forums, though. Less clicks for me. :D

[Meow]

Originally posted by Big D
Could usher in <b>a whole new era</b> of creativity...

Okay, with that kind of rhetoric, now we HAVE to do it. xD

[Agent Proto]

hm... this is actually quite a good idea. I actually like it. but I have a suggestion. Maybe we should archive the current forums, and start a new forum in place of the new 'merged' forum that can consist of everything creativity-related. Like poetry, fan-fic, stories, art, fanart, etc. I actually like it.

And to make things more easier, have everyone who posts a new thread to indicate what kind of thread it would be by placing a [W], [P], and [A] as indicated by Blanco Meow.

We can also bring back the literature forum for discussions of books and other forms of liteature. Actually, it's a good idea.

[Dr Unne]

<i>Maybe we should archive the current forums, and start a new forum in place of the new 'merged' forum that can consist of everything creativity-related. Like poetry, fan-fic, stories, art, fanart, etc.</i> --Agent Proto

Actually I was going to suggest that very thing.

I don't know that literature discussion would generate nearly enough posts to warrant a separate forum. I also don't know that literature discussion would have any place in a "creativity forum" though. I was thinking you could put discussion of popular literature in the Lounge. It does fit into the Lounge in a way. I honestly don't know.

I really don't know that marking posts' subjects as art, poetry or writing is necessary. It might harm the atmosphere, breaking something that's supposed to be "art" (something that's supposed to mean something to people, that is) into harsh categories like that. It seems impersonal. We don't have people in the Lounge marking MUSIC or TV or MOVIES. Heck, 90% of everything in General Chat, I have no idea what it is just by looking at the title.

[eestlinc]

let us eschew labels. let us merge the forums. leave my poetry threads out of the archive and in the new forum.

[Burtsplurt]

Originally posted by Dr Unne
I don't know that literature discussion would generate nearly enough posts to warrant a separate forum. I also don't know that literature discussion would have any place in a "creativity forum" though. I was thinking you could put discussion of popular literature in the Lounge. It does fit into the Lounge in a way. I honestly don't know.

I don't know about creating a literature forum (although it is something I very much like at some other forums), but we could at least do with a place to discuss books. Writer's Corner seems to just be for fanfic nowadays (judging by the description), and threads about books just seem odd in the Lounge. Hmm, I'm pretty sure that book threads used to get moved to the Writer's Corner, but I haven't seen that happen for a while.

Anyhow, I think merging is definitely a good idea.

[Loony BoB]

Burt: Yeah, book threads are meant to be in the WC under the present system, and should be moved there if they aren't.

[crono_logical]

I always thought book threads were fine in The Lounge myself :p

[Nait]

I was the one to suggest the split in the past (at least seeing as how my two name suggestions, "Artist's Gallery" and Writer's Corner took flight), but can't be arsed to care now, mainly cuz I just don't go there anymo.

GROUP HUIGS! >:O

[HOOTERS]

I thought the customary thing to do when a forum went dead was to delete it and never speak of it again.

[crono_logical]

That's only ever happened to one forum before, and that was... can't remember what it was about :p

[PhoenixAsh]

So is anyone actually still opposed to this idea? Is it time to start deciding on names and descriptions yet?

Unne's point about not labelling categories made sense. So I change my suggestion to only include things that are obviously a category, and won't result in many creative tangents. Fanfictions for instance.

[Meow]

i only suggested the categories to ease redividing the forums, should we actually attempt this merger and eventually decide we don't like it. Like BoB mentioned, it'd be a bear to identify and move every post manually. But, if we're combining the forums with the intention of permanence, rather than on a trial basis, i see no point to all that.

[PhoenixAsh]

Umm, I'm fairly certain I suggested it Blanco Meow :P.

The point was so that if someone came in looking for fanfiction specifically they could find it. Same with each other type of thread.
It was also a way to stop long story threads being 'drowned out', which is so far the only real criticism of the merge.

[Loony BoB]

It's being discussed more in depth in Staff - but your input is still welcome, so feel free to keep posting xP Ideas and thoughts are always appreciated. *nods*

[Meow]

Originally posted by PhoenixAsh
Umm, I'm fairly certain I suggested it Blanco Meow :P.



i'm quite aware. i made my post self-reflexive - as in, 'the only reason i <i>personally</i> voiced my opinion ("even if it's the same as Phoenix's," if you simply must have that) is because i <i>personally</i> think blah blah blah' - becuase i was speaking for myself alone, voicing my own opinion on the subject. Thus, i saw no real reason to allude to anything else. Hakuna matata, man.

Hooray?

[The Man]

I'd probably be arsed to look in those fora more if they got more traffic. So I'm in favour of the idea.

[PhoenixAsh]

Haha, I'm just kidding Meow, hence the :P.

So is there any actual resistance in the staff forum? I'm lost as to why this hasn't gone through yet.

[Dr Unne]

Patience is a virtue.

[Meow]

Awesome (http://www.eyesonff.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=55), guys. i like.

[Dr Unne]

What about sig graphics / web site design threads? I don't think you said in the announcement / thread in the new forum where that crap is going to end up. Help Forum gets my vote. I think we need to replace that gigantic sig request thread before a flood of sig request threads appears all over the place.

[Loony BoB]

Feel free to start a new Sig thread in the Help Forum. If we decide to do something else with it, we can move it later - although I don't think we will.

[Dr Unne]

Someone important can start a new sig thread, I'm not doing it.

Are you going to (please) close all sig and web-banner threads in the art/writing forum too (please)? It's your decision, obviously (please do it).

[Loony BoB]

*blinks* You mean that there were other threads while the main thread existed? Geez. Yeah. =P That should have happened already, feel free to use the warn button though, as I don't frequent that forum.

[Shlup]

I didn't read the threads that I moved to the new forum :p

[Del Murder]

Please move a vey odd poem by auron to the new forum. I will personally write a check to whoever pays for this site for whatever space it takes up.

EDIT: Hey, it was archived. I love you guys.

EDIT2: <a href="http://www.eyesonff.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=22138">Without Spam</a>. Quite possibly the greatest thing I've ever written. I'm just shamlessly plugging it before it gets deleted....how are my own powers being used against me!!

[eestlinc]

excellent work, delone. I think my poetry threads <a href=http://www.eyesonff.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=35117>one</a> <a href=http://www.eyesonff.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=29631>two</a> <a href=http://www.eyesonff.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=13719>three</a> and <a href=http://www.eyesonff.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=5411>four</a> should be archived.

[Del Murder]

What about repo man's poems?

[Linus]

I don't like this new forum because nobody takes my art seriously.

[The Man]

repo man's poems definitely deserve to be archived imho

[eestlinc]

oh yea, i need to get those saved as well. <a href=http://www.eyesonff.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=11954>here</a> and <a href=http://www.eyesonff.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=12144>here</a>

seriously, can someone either move those into the new forum or just archive them?

[Agent Proto]

I'm not going to archive poems just because you request them to be archived. I've archived original Del's "Without Spam" because that's actually great stuff. ;D

[eestlinc]

well, you could move my threads into the new forum. I did think the spirit of the creative forums here was that nothing was ever deleted.

[Agent Proto]

I'll save it for BooB to decide.

[eestlinc]

fair enough.

I suppose I could just repost them all in a new thread entitled "eest/repo's greatest poetry hits, 2001-2003"

[Leeza]

I wouldn't object. :)

[Loony BoB]

BoB*

Why the hell me? x_x;; Uh... I dunno, I just saved all my poems to my hard drive.

[eestlinc]

i just like having them in the writing forum here. It's comforting.