'ello 'ello

hey guys
so this is something I wanna trial out - an informal place for us to talk about OT-related topics, such as y'all pitching ideas for events or quality of life updates, OT staff seeking input, suggestions for splash edits, etc
(i.e what can we do to make y'all more interested in #serious threads, for example)

it is not explicitly Serious Feedback, rather, i wanna make the idea of giving feedback and Being A Staff Member much less serious than they can annoyingly be dressed up to be, without going off the rails entirely

i'm a bit more disconnected with OT than i was my first go around, so this is partly me getting back in touch with y'all

general housekeeping stuff
- be lax, be free to chill out, but don't shitpost. read the room.
- if you have any Serious Concerns, first consider the overall staff feedback thread or otherwise messaging a staff member of your choosing
- nothing suggested by you or the OT mods is guaranteed unless explicitly said so

that should cover it, but feel free to ask if you have any questions

There is a selfie thread, how about something for Halloween, like "Post your costume/decorations" that could cover a bunch of holidays.

EnglishALT said:

There is a selfie thread, how about something for Halloween, like "Post your costume/decorations" that could cover a bunch of holidays.

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I love this idea! Maybe we could also have some "poll/topic of the week" stuff. I'm sure it's been done before, but it wouldn't hurt to try it again... right?

EnglishALT said:

There is a selfie thread, how about something for Halloween, like "Post your costume/decorations" that could cover a bunch of holidays.

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more than welcome to lead the way, alt

Auticorn said:

I love this idea! Maybe we could also have some "poll/topic of the week" stuff. I'm sure it's been done before, but it wouldn't hurt to try it again... right?

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Will have to think about this one (considering how we've largely shied away from stickies lately, we won't consider yet another pinned thread until the completion of the marathon) but it could be fun. Only thing is that even OT has started to feel the activity slowdown that other sections of PC have far more dramatically felt in years previous, and thread creation has slowed down to a point where it is reasonable that even a casual poster would see every thread posted within a month. Can't speak for Tyler, but I think your suggestions speaks to a PC that doesn't really exist nowadays, one that needed spotlights on OT/OVP threads.

okay so i'm pretty bored of the AMAs clogging up the top of the page now, and i want to have something in place for the next time the AMA fever hits so activity isn't choked out by the blue wave
what do you guys think should happen? my instincts tell me to just close the threads indiscriminately and open them up cyclically in the future, but i'm ignoring those instincts, lol

I think AMA's right now are at a point of just fading into the regular irrelevance, most of them seem dead/dying, always has been a trend for only 2-3 weeks. I honestly would not know how to fix other than to literally close and open them during a certain period lmao.

Maybe you can have a limit to how long it has to be before you can bump your thread or create a new one.

On Marriland, AMAs have their own subforum, but I think that may work becuse it's a (at least I think) smaller tighter community, so there are less AMAs (less members to make them) and they have more activity (or at least they used to lol *shrug*)

Mystical Isa said:

Maybe you can have a limit to how long it has to be before you can bump your thread or create a new one.

On Marriland, AMAs have their own subforum, but I think that may work becuse it's a (at least I think) smaller tighter community, so there are less AMAs (less members to make them) and they have more activity (or at least they used to lol *shrug*)

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Honestly doesnt sound too bad IMO, whenever the AMA fever hits to have a subforum within OT thats filled with AMA's, though if that's worth the effort is another question entirely

the problem is that pc is inherently hostile to subforum activity, and OT in particular has a problem with killing subforums attached to it

however
i do like the possibility of having a potential AMA subforum essentially be like mirage island
rather than keeping the forum visible all the time and ensuring death to the concept, and rather than having AMA fever clog up the main OT forum for nearly a month at a time, i would be happy to cycle the subforum's visibility and solve both those problems by sustaining the novelty of AMAs and giving everyone a chance to go wild for a select time period

ALSO

what do y'all think could be done to help encourage more serious and/or political discussion, as the DD merge has definitely left somewhat of a void in the last couple of months

Sounds like a good solution to me.

As for serious/political topics, its a tough one to call. I for one just straight up avoid anything related to politics on this forum since I'm mainly shitposting and stuff to have fun, and politics isn't exactly a "fun" topic these days is it? :P

My guess as to why those topics haven't done well since the merge is that there just isn't enough people who actually want to debate on these forums. However I cannot speak for anyone else besides myself so this is only my speculation.

There isn't much one can do to encourage people to post in political threads when they want to avoid it like the plague, non-political serious threads on the other hand, I feel as if they barely exist in comparison to threads about politics.

Due to the subforum allergy of pc, couldn't we just announce every now and then that IT'S AMA SEASON!! and allow the creation of such threads/enable the prefix. And it goes on for 1-2 weeks max. Then you just close all such threads when the time is over, bump all kinds of other threads, and disallow new such/disable the prefix again :3

Astronaut said:

Due to the subforum allergy of pc, couldn't we just announce every now and then that IT'S AMA SEASON!! and allow the creation of such threads/enable the prefix. And it goes on for 1-2 weeks max. Then you just close all such threads when the time is over, bump all kinds of other threads, and disallow new such/disable the prefix again :3

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That doesn't really stop the whole OT forum from being clogged up with AMA's every so often though, which was the main thing when having this discussion.

maybe it's just me but I don't really see the point in political discussion on a pokemon board lmao like I certainly dont join pokemon sites to argue with idiots who think minorities don't deserve rights and w/e else. From previous experiences with other places it only creates tension and animosity. I don't think anyone is going into those discussions here with the intent of having their thinking changed or w/e else u could possibly gain from encouraging it lol

re: AMAs - like Adri, Rika, and others have said subforums just don't usually do well on PC. That being said, like Adri suggested, it might be best if the subforum appeared for two weeks (max) every few months. Most of the time, subforum hype lasts a few weeks at the most, so this would allow the section to "capitalize" on that temporary hype.

that being said, according to Devs, in PC 3.0™, we will be able to potentially browse a section with multiple prefixes or exclude a prefix. That might be the best long-term solution. I'm not quite certain we'd be able to temporarily disable the prefix in vanilla vB without just completely removing the prefix. In theory, that might cause issues being able to display old threads with the AMA prefix when it's added again.

Not really sure what to say re: more serious threads, other than it's just a matter of people needing to make more. :B

Ultimately, if a certain kind of threads aren't made much, it's probably because not too many people want to talk about it. Sometimes it's worth pushing for and giving subjects with nice potential a good chance. But I'm not sure we need to encourage or force people to talk more politics etc. on this forum, kind of for reasons Wavee touch upon. I know some greatly enjoy it, and the #serious channel on our Discord is frequently used, but I feel like the serious/debate prefix in OT can exist for the times when somebody wants to use them, yet aren't something we need to actively work towards promoting. Naturally, I'm not myself a frequent poster in this kind of threads, so perhaps my view is slightly askew.

Wavee said:

maybe it's just me but I don't really see the point in political discussion on a pokemon board lmao like I certainly dont join pokemon sites to argue with idiots who think minorities don't deserve rights and w/e else. From previous experiences with other places it only creates tension and animosity. I don't think anyone is going into those discussions here with the intent of having their thinking changed or w/e else u could possibly gain from encouraging it lol

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I mean, this is certainly the crux of the issue, isn't it? I agree completely. I asked my original question to see what others thought, but I mean, this is kinda what I've thought all along, lol.

It's a point that I've raised a few times - a peek behind the curtain is that my hands are more tied than I would like on the issue, as Tyler and I did have to negotiate somewhat to even get a bad faith clause inserted into the rules. I don't think PC is as left as it likes to think it is! That being said, there has been progress towards curbing this unfortunate problem around here. Nowhere as much as I would like, nor stuff I can talk about, but more progress than if there wasn't a bad faith clause available.

As for everyone else - I've been busy for a while, but I can now start making more threads that will encourage topics that don't lean into what Wavee is talking about. Hopefully that will allow those that enjoyed the heyday of DD to feel more comfortable in talking again.

About AMAs. I would suggest maybe just having them be on each person's profile or on blogs? Though I haven't seen blogs used around here so I don't know if that's an option.

About serious topics, can't talk for everyone else but like Ty/IV I don't really come here to debate. If people post serious topics here they may be more to just ask people for experiences/opinion and not to debate.

And is there a feature that allows one to look hide a certain prefix? That could kind of solve both problems for people who want to hide serious topics or AMAs.

Blogs are... I don't know their exact status in the future, but I'm pretty sure they're going to join the dodo and Jahseh in time. They've been dead for over half a decade, unfortunately.

As for hiding a prefix, I don't believe that's an option....? You might have to ask one of the dev people about that. As far as I know, you can only specialise what threads with a specific prefix you're looking for by clicking on them, not actively excluding other prefixes from the lineup.

Blogs as they are now are very likely to be removed in a future update, but although we haven't finalized exactly how to replace them, we won't be providing nothing as an alternative. The most likely solution in my opinion is to integrate them into profiles, giving users an option to post to their profiles in a longform blog post format and removing blogs as a separate thing. Anyways that's not something that's happening soon, but I thought I'd clear that up.

Hiding a prefix will be coming in a future update.

I was thinking of starting a thread about the upcoming U.K. election, mind you not one focused on political attacks or slinging but just one where people can say if they voted, who they plan to vote for, what they think the final outcome of parliament will look like, and what issues concern them most.

Is there any appetite for a non debate political thread or is it just one too many?