Suggestion: 2 Forum related questions/suggestions

Hi, I just joined (I've been lurking on the site for a while) and I have a couple of questions regarding the actual forums.

Do you have any specific media/music forums? Or threads like "What are you listening to right now?" or somewhere where people can exchange/share music or music videos, or clips and such, they not necessarily need to be pokemon related... I don't know, the General Entertainment board seems a bit too general and I don't know if it's frowned upon making several threads sharing thoughts on different artists, bands or genre and it feels kind of weird to use a single thread for many different bands. Maybe the topic is not popular enough to be given it's own section and well, the plugdj from PC is kind of dead... Don't you guys want to make it more popular? hehe... Perhaps creating a vBgroup would be the best way, but don't seem to be able to make such a thing.

And that takes me to another topic, why don't you guys let users create open and closed (profile.php?do=editusergroups) usergroups and that way there's no actual need for the pokemon clubs and fan clubs to be forced into a single thread, it would definitely keep the forums cleaner, a single forum for us users to make threads looking for people to join the groups and communicating there seems like a better way to me, but that's just my opinion :)

I believe the second suggestion is aimed to Shining Raichu for being the Fan Clubs & Groups moderator and the admins that will need to work out the permissions (which are really simple to actually, I love vBulletin for that) and the first one goes to Antemortem, the General Entertainment moderator!

Thanks for reading! :D

Edit: Oh oh oh, I have another thing in my mind... It's about the Blog thing (Look, I'm not being cheap, but I live alone and I work to pay for everything, sometimes I barely make it out of month without debts, I'd really love to donate the 10$, but I can't right now), in the FAQ it says that you must be picked by staff or something like it (I think 5000 posts is about too much, I understand why you do it tho), I really like writing (no fanfic), should I just drop my stuff in the Fan Fiction and Writing section and see if that get's me somewhere?

Re-Thanks!

Hi danks_!

I wouldn't say GE is too general, because it's general for a reason - music isn't big enough of an interest here to warrant a forum of its own so it's covered by GE. There is this thread which sounds exactly like what you're asking for, "What are you listening to?" and there is also this thread for sharing your own creations, much of it seems to be music, "The Creative Media Showcase".

As for discussing certain bands or artists, you can probably create a thread for discussing them. Dedicating a thread to a single song or music video is too narrow, but a band should be fine from what I've understood, considering there are threads discussing single movies.

I'm not an expert at how groups and usergroups and stuff work so I'm not sure if you mean what I think you mean now :p But we used to have groups as a vBulletin function but they weren't really working well; having clubs through threads has always been a popular thing on PC though, so we decided to stick with that and disable the group function. Ask the mod in the clubs and groups forums, but I think it should be perfectly fine to make a club for a band or an artist there, as long as you are willing to make an effort to keep a discussion going as the club leader ^^


As for your last question - you mean you would like to use the blog feature to showcase your writing, rather than to ramble about diary stuff like most do? In that case I would strongly suggest you go to the Fan Fiction and Writing section instead yeah. They could use more active people!

danks_ said:

Hi, I just joined (I've been lurking on the site for a while) and I have a couple of questions regarding the actual forums.

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Hi there!

I know I'm being ninja'd here, but posting some stuff anyways. RHCP above is right about Gen. Entertainment though.

And that takes me to another topic, why don't you guys let users create open and closed (profile.php?do=editusergroups) usergroups and that way there's no actual need for the pokemon clubs and fan clubs to be forced into a single thread, it would definitely keep the forums cleaner, a single forum for us users to make threads looking for people to join the groups and communicating there seems like a better way to me, but that's just my opinion :)

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An admin (audy) may need to field that one. That said the forum sections for clubs tends to work well enough as it is, and also easy to moderate. If you are actually referring to social groups, they got killed off because they were messy and really hard to moderate.

Edit: Oh oh oh, I have another thing in my mind... It's about the Blog thing (Look, I'm not being cheap, but I live alone and I work to pay for everything, sometimes I barely make it out of month without debts, I'd really love to donate the 10$, but I can't right now), in the FAQ it says that you must be picked by staff or something like it (I think 5000 posts is about too much, I understand why you do it tho), I really like writing (no fanfic), should I just drop my stuff in the Fan Fiction and Writing section and see if that get's me somewhere?

Re-Thanks!

Click to expand...

Depends on what you are writing about. If it's stories rather than fics that's fine for that section, but if it's blog entries then that's something that just hasn't been done there before. I'd suggest PMing the mod of that section (Astinus) about it with some more details about what you want to post, and he'll let you know. I don't have much qualms with it myself though as long as it follows the rules of the section, because more activity is always nice.

Red's Hawt Chibi Pelippers said:

Hi danks_!

I wouldn't say GE is too general, because it's general for a reason - music isn't big enough of an interest here to warrant a forum of its own so it's covered by GE. There is this thread which sounds exactly like what you're asking for, "What are you listening to?" and there is also this thread for sharing your own creations, much of it seems to be music, "The Creative Media Showcase".

As for discussing certain bands or artists, you can probably create a thread for discussing them. Dedicating a thread to a single song or music video is too narrow, but a band should be fine from what I've understood, considering there are threads discussing single movies.

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I see, I was reading through the rules as I made the post, I did get the "no 1 video thread" rule, I think it's pretty good, I just had a couple of unanswered questions, thanks a lot for the feedback haha :D I must have missed both threads somehow!

Red's Hawt Chibi Pelippers said:

I'm not an expert at how groups and usergroups and stuff work so I'm not sure if you mean what I think you mean now :p But we used to have groups as a vBulletin function but they weren't really working well; having clubs through threads has always been a popular thing on PC though, so we decided to stick with that and disable the group function. Ask the mod in the clubs and groups forums, but I think it should be perfectly fine to make a club for a band or an artist there, as long as you are willing to make an effort to keep a discussion going as the club leader ^^

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Yeah I totally meant the vBulletin function for groups, ah it's okay, I was just wondering why the sudden change, I might have lurked the forum before, just not enough to understand it and also kind of recently, so I never got to see older features in the forum. But if that's what there is, then I'll better let it be. I like the way it is, it's just kind of confusing trying to enter a new club that's got some pages already, it's kind of messy haha.

Red's Hawt Chibi Pelippers said:

As for your last question - you mean you would like to use the blog feature to showcase your writing, rather than to ramble about diary stuff like most do? In that case I would strongly suggest you go to the Fan Fiction and Writing section instead yeah. They could use more active people!

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Yep, I meant for more than ramble and day-to-day stuff. I see, that'd be nice then! Good to know. I like to ask lots of stuff when I'm new everywhere, I hate getting infractions for making posts without being 100% certain, some people find it annoying that I ask so much sometimes haha.

bobandbill said:

Hi there!

I know I'm being ninja'd here, but posting some stuff anyways. RHCP above is right about Gen. Entertainment though.
An admin (audy) may need to field that one. That said the forum sections for clubs tends to work well enough as it is, and also easy to moderate. If you are actually referring to social groups, they got killed off because they were messy and really hard to moderate.
Depends on what you are writing about. If it's stories rather than fics that's fine for that section, but if it's blog entries then that's something that just hasn't been done there before. I'd suggest PMing the mod of that section (Astinus) about it with some more details about what you want to post, and he'll let you know. I don't have much qualms with it myself though as long as it follows the rules of the section, because more activity is always nice.

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Thanks to you too, I think with both your answers I'm pretty confident to start posting my weird stuff here and there!

I like the way it is, it's just kind of confusing trying to enter a new club that's got some pages already, it's kind of messy haha.

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Read the first post of a club and it should tell you most of what you need to know to join ^^ Many also display the past and current main topics for discussion in the first post, to let you know what there is to jump into and talk about at the moment you join.

I like to ask lots of stuff when I'm new everywhere, I hate getting infractions for making posts without being 100% certain, some people find it annoying that I ask so much sometimes haha.

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You won't get infracted for minor mistakes like posting a thread in the wrong place, so don't worry too much. Also, asking questions is good and there are always people willing to help around PC so don't worry about that either ;) As for your "ramblings", you could always make a blog on another site and link to it visibly from your signature. Hope you'll have a good time posting now!

Sure, I'll just make a test thread on the writers forum and see how it goes, see ya!

danks_ said:

\Yep, I meant for more than ramble and day-to-day stuff. I see, that'd be nice then! Good to know. I like to ask lots of stuff when I'm new everywhere, I hate getting infractions for making posts without being 100% certain, some people find it annoying that I ask so much sometimes haha.

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Alternatively, you could place a link in your signature to an external blogging website such as Livejournal or Blogger and use that to showcase your writing.

ANARCHit3cht said:

Alternatively, you could place a link in your signature to an external blogging website such as Livejournal or Blogger and use that to showcase your writing.

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I already linked my tumblr, most of the stuff I write get's mixed with all the stupid pictures I reblog.