Official Feedback Request: The Mall

Why not make it a subforum of treehouse? Treehouse can be all the random topics like -insert scenario here- whereas anything that warrants the serious tag that isn't hugely discussion worthy can go to the mall (which should be renamed lifestyle forum imo).

Forever said:

Why not make it a subforum of treehouse? Treehouse can be all the random topics like -insert scenario here- whereas anything that warrants the serious tag that isn't hugely discussion worthy can go to the mall (which should be renamed lifestyle forum imo).

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In my opinion, forums transformed into to subforums kill off activity. Prime example being Celebrations, as it's practically a ghost town now unfortunately. I don't really see a need to make The Mall into a subcategory of The Treehouse when it can stand perfectly on it's own as a Lifestyles forum.

The Mall, however, needs to be renamed into something more precise to lifestyle topics. There needs to be a clear distinction between the naming of both The Mall and The Treehouse in terms of it's topics. If you go into each section, you can see that there is a difference in topics - it's just that on the cover it's ambiguous.

TL;DR: Badly.

Not only has the existence of the Mall itself caused confusion, it's basically taken a small chunk of what was originally the spirit of OVP from the Treehouse. While that in and of itself isn't bad, I loved OVP, it's a hollow resurrection of it. Because the scope of "Lifestyle" was far too confusing for people, it was further narrowed into three subjects that could easily and most likely fit into The Treehouse. This unnecessarily segregates these three topics from the Treehouse and removes some potential of seriously enjoyable posts in the Treehouse, which in turn degrades the quality of the Treehouse content. Because we're funneling these three specific topics from there, we've lost out on an entire category of posts that are serious in the Treehouse, which I think further descends the Treehouse into it's own sordid madness. This madness does not increase the quality of the threads in the Treehouse and removing content allows that to spread within there unchecked and does not make me want to visit there. I liked the mall-like threads in the Treehouse; they brought me in and allowed me to have a browse at whatever else caught my eye because they are largely serious threads that don't really call for a whole lot of seriousness.

By taking them out of the Treehouse you make them "important" on their own. This does draw a crowd, but it's not one that I honestly like. Because they are outside of the Treehouse they become focused topics and lose the natural chit-chat status of the Treehouse, which actually chills activity within them. Now it feels like you actually have to have something worthwhile to say, or have something that distinguishes you from the rest of the posts. Threads slowly rot and die as all but a few niche members who care about those topics post in them, and eventually even those will grow tired and post somewhere else.

The three subjects we designated for the Mall are not sufficient to sustain activity enough to warrant it's own forum, or even a subforum of the Treehouse! They are too narrow, and widening the scope of allowable threads merely waters it back down to being confusing, or just a narrower form of Other Voting Polls.

Furthermore, modding one more member is a questionable endeavor. Even if we have one such member whom staff can indeed trust, I don't think they will be able to fix what the Mall never had from the start. There's just not sufficient interest, even when people post there occasionally, and forums based on better ideas were closed for having activity levels similar to that. WoPC comes to mind as does Member Encyclopedia. Both were closed for being "too inactive/lacking interest" and these arguably had not much better post rates, and even better reasons to exist than The Mall does. In the end The Mall has more negatives against it than others closed for similar lack of activity reasons, and plenty of people will likely agree with me that those sections did not deserve to die if it weren't for their lack of ability to survive the lulls in forum-wide traffic across slower seasons and still maintain a decent rate of posts and replies.

First Generation has more threads than the Mall does and that's such a relatively low-traffic place that it's easily the only Official forum that could be termed that staff could tolerate being low activity; but that one at least has a very logical and organizational reason to exist. It's not like H-Staff is unfair about activity levels. But The Mall hasn't really served a very compelling purpose when it comes to organizing threads in a way that people can clearly classify where a thread goes. I get that The Treehouse is a catch-all bin; but there's no reason to extract all the things that are good about it and end up with what is effectively a "Recycle Bin" forum.

Apologies for breaking it down as such, but felt it needed in order to address certain points and break the argument apart into specific sections.

Melody said:

TL;DR: Badly.

Not only has the existence of the Mall itself caused confusion, it's basically taken a small chunk of what was originally the spirit of OVP from the Treehouse. While that in and of itself isn't bad, I loved OVP, it's a hollow resurrection of it. Because the scope of "Lifestyle" was far too confusing for people, it was further narrowed into three subjects that could easily and most likely fit into The Treehouse. This unnecessarily segregates these three topics from the Treehouse and removes some potential of seriously enjoyable posts in the Treehouse, which in turn degrades the quality of the Treehouse content. Because we're funneling these three specific topics from there, we've lost out on an entire category of posts that are serious in the Treehouse, which I think further descends the Treehouse into it's own sordid madness. This madness does not increase the quality of the threads in the Treehouse and removing content allows that to spread within there unchecked and does not make me want to visit there. I liked the mall-like threads in the Treehouse; they brought me in and allowed me to have a browse at whatever else caught my eye because they are largely serious threads that don't really call for a whole lot of seriousness.

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The fact is, whatever forum that ends up being voted on each Forum Frontier go-around is going to take away activity from The Treehouse. The Treehouse is supposed to be a, in lack of better words, a crap shoot of miscellaneous topics that otherwise wouldn't fit into the mold of another forum. Take Science, for example, which seems to be a popular item on the agenda in this upcoming Forum Frontier. Any science based topics that would have been in The Treehouse will now be taken away.

Unfortunately, if any forums are going to become permanent it is going to degrade the amount of topics that can be made in The Treehouse (i.e. the more forums that stay, the more diverse forums we'll have, the less of a need we'll have for The Treehouse.) If you truly enjoyed those topics in The Treehouse, then there should really be no reason why you can't continue them in The Mall. In fact, it should be a driving force for you to want to visit The Mall. Nothing has changed in post quality with the posts being in The Mall; you are still having "serious threads" about different things in life, but they "don't really call for a whole lot of seriousness."

By taking them out of the Treehouse you make them "important" on their own. This does draw a crowd, but it's not one that I honestly like. Because they are outside of the Treehouse they become focused topics and lose the natural chit-chat status of the Treehouse, which actually chills activity within them. Now it feels like you actually have to have something worthwhile to say, or have something that distinguishes you from the rest of the posts. Threads slowly rot and die as all but a few niche members who care about those topics post in them, and eventually even those will grow tired and post somewhere else.

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I'd have to disagree with this point. As an active member of The Mall, I can safely say that there is still a natural chill chit-chat status here than what you'd see in The Treehouse otherwise. Granted you'll still see a "post-and-go" mentality here and there, but you're going to run into that anywhere on PC (including The Treehouse for that manner.) Any post that any member makes in any forum is worthwhile, as it varies from person to person on the impact.

You're going to have threads rot and die anywhere on the site, including in The Treehouse. The difference between The Treehouse and any other forum on this site though is that considering how diverse your topic can be in The Treehouse, you're not going to see these events as easily as new threads are constantly going to made (The Treehouse currently ranks as one of the top thread publications on the site.)

The three subjects we designated for the Mall are not sufficient to sustain activity enough to warrant it's own forum, or even a subforum of the Treehouse! They are too narrow, and widening the scope of allowable threads merely waters it back down to being confusing, or just a narrower form of Other Voting Polls.

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I'm still a believer than the three subjects can survive on it's own. If we can have a forum dedicated to computers and it's encompanying technology - which in itself is a small window of topic creation - than I think it's fair to say with all the types of food out there, including how it's prepared/cooked, all the different ways fitness can be applied to life whether it's working out at the gym or sports, and fashion where it can include what you wear and what the hottest trends are going on, I think it can survive as it's own forum. But again, this is my opinion and you're allowed to have yours.

Furthermore, modding one more member is a questionable endeavor. Even if we have one such member whom staff can indeed trust, I don't think they will be able to fix what the Mall never had from the start. There's just not sufficient interest, even when people post there occasionally, and forums based on better ideas were closed for having activity levels similar to that. WoPC comes to mind as does Member Encyclopedia. Both were closed for being "too inactive/lacking interest" and these arguably had not much better post rates, and even better reasons to exist than The Mall does. In the end The Mall has more negatives against it than others closed for similar lack of activity reasons, and plenty of people will likely agree with me that those sections did not deserve to die if it weren't for their lack of ability to survive the lulls in forum-wide traffic across slower seasons and still maintain a decent rate of posts and replies.

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Just curious what makes you think there isn't sufficient interest? In my opnion, while yes the thread count could be a bit higher, there has been a good amount of talk and discussion going on within the forum. I think a major cause of this is the ambiguity of the forum, which when cleared up will garner more attention and interest to post. While I think the thread creation could be better, I don't think it's any case for red alarms to go off as the post count is still good.

First Generation has more threads than the Mall does and that's such a relatively low-traffic place that it's easily the only Official forum that could be termed that staff could tolerate; but that one at least has a very logical and organizational reason to exist. It's not like H-Staff is unfair about activity levels. But The Mall hasn't really served a very compelling purpose when it comes to organizing threads in a way that people can clearly classify where a thread goes. I get that The Treehouse is a catch-all bin; but there's no reason to extract all the things that are good about it and end up with what is effectively a "Recycle Bin" forum.

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This argument can't really be made considering First Generation has been around a lot longer than The Mall so it really shouldn't be compared. In fact, if you really wanted to compare the two, than you're talking about 127 threads since November 2015 for First Generation compared to 108 threads in the course of 4 months for The Mall. If anything, than the forum has more potential than First Generation does. And again, I'll reiterate, I think the lower than wanted thread count is a result of the ambiguity of the forum's name and would be higher if that ambiguity wasn't in place.

Right now, there is a clear cut way of where threads go for The Mall: if it's either food, fitness, or fashion related, it goes in The Mall. The issue is that when you have things like "post a picture of yourself" in The Treehouse - which, to put on the record, I contacted the moderators of that section to have it moved to The Mall for less ambiguity - than you're going to have problems.

It goes without saying, but I'm not meaning this to be an attack or anything. I understand the attachment to The Treehouse. However, although you don't want The Treehouse to become a "Recyle Bin" forum, it currently is that. Any topic that doesn't fit in a current forum will fall under The Treehouse. With the more forums that are created, the less topics are going to fit in The Treehouse. Although it does mean there would be change, that's not a bad thing as users of PokeCommunity would then be able to more easily find topics related to what they want to discuss about more. To put it bluntly, I think in the end what's going to happen is as more forums are made permanet, we're really not going to need The Treehouse anymore as a once broad category would then be divided into more specific categories. Ultimately, I think that's inevitably going to happen.

TL;DR - While The Treehouse is great now, with more permanent forums being added, we're going to eventually reach a point where we're not going to need The Treehouse anymore as a once broad category of topics has inevitably been divided into more specific forums for topics to go into. I.e. A huge recycle bin will be broken apart into a dozen recycle bins.

Is it necessary to have The Mall? No. Does it hurt to have it? No. But that could be said for any number of topics, really.

I think once it was clearer what was meant to go in the mall it was easier to come up with topics and all that and the activity picked up enough. The rocky start, I think, was because we didn't know what was supposed to go there. I think that'll be the case with any potential new forum that's primarily discussion-based. But since food, etc. aren't things that come and go in waves (like Pokemon games) or require any particular skills (like art) it could last for a long time. I do think that if we're going to keep the mall it should be a 'lifestyle' forum. The regulars and whoever mods it can figure out what that means. To keep it clear what it should be it might need a new name though.

The Treehouse - for sillier stuff, the nonsense and random stuff

The Townhouse - for lifestyle stuff: food, fashion, health & fitness, travel, culture, etc.

JohnnyMustang said:

I want to point out that the treehouse is merely an off-topic section, everything that doesn't have a section for it, goes there. It is not meant to be silly; the reason you might see it that way, it's because that's how most regulars approach subjects in there.

The more you change the name, the less sense it makes. If you wanna bring back the original idea of the mall, look up the definition in wikipedia or your most trusted sources. The definition of lifestyle can be confusing, but when the idea was suggested, this is totally not what I had in mind.

Most discussions are about food and I'm not entirely sure you can label that as lifestyle. How much sugar you put in your coffee isn't lifestyle; Ideologies, Phylosophy, Health, Culture, that's how lifestyle sounds to me.

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As posted by Castform, on March 2nd when nominating sections for Forum Frontier #1, which ended up becoming the winner:

Castform said:

"Lifestyle forum 8)

In this forum you'll create threads and discuss many things such as fashion, exercise, food, and decor among various other topics that have anything to do with day to day life!"

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Link to thread if you want further proof.

While you may have had a different ideology about what "lifestyle" meant, this is what was imposed, as well as you can check our feedback section in The Mall for further clarification as to what we were shooting for.

JohnnyMustang said:

Then perhaps further research of the lifestyle meaning is needed.

However you modify it, the name should be clear or be a little more related to it. Because as of now, the section on its own, does not make sense. I can't name a section 'The living room' and talk about bed time. I don't wanna push this further because I reckon the effort put into it by you and user Kyoko. You clearly like the section, or that's what it looks like at least. But if you ask me: The name and the content is controversial.

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I don't think research of what "lifestyle" constitutes is generally needed, most people generally think of things like "food, travel, fitness etc" when someone talks about lifestyle as a topic. In fact, most of the things you suggested in your previous post would fit much better in RT than a lifestyle forum.

Honestly, I think people's problems with The Mall boil down to two main "issues".

1. Direction: Whilst refining has been done by members like Matt and Kyoko, some people still find it a little ambiguous and aren't exactly sure what to talk about. The only way we're really going to fix this is for someone to actually staff the section and to create proper rules and guidelines for the section and to actively moderate the content to ensure that things that don't fit don't stay there.

2. The Treehouse: The Treehouse is two things in my eyes. First and foremost it's a forum for casual discussion and secondly it's an off-topic section where everything else we don't have a section for goes. We need to accept that Forum Frontier is going to occasionally take small chunks of activity from other sections, usually the Treehouse since that's where we put things that don't fit anywhere else. Mind you, I don't for one minute condone completely shafting existing sections, especially if those sections are already hurting for activity. However, that's not the case with the Treehouse. It's taken a slightly different direction in its topics but its activity has not dropped significantly, if at all, so as much as I was against The Mall at the beginning I don't think this is a valid argument against its continued existence.

So with The Treehouse's activity clearly not harmed, that leaves direction as the lone issue. An issue that is easily fixed by doing what should have been done at the beginning and putting staff in there to moderate and direct. If that get's done, then there's literally no reason for the Mall to be merged back into the Treehouse. True, there's not exactly a reason for it to exist either, but that could be said of any section or content on this site not related to the Pokemon Franchise so I don't think that's a good enough argument.

So when will the final decision be made? Looks like people over at the mall are still active, and there are plans for food fights for another month it seems.

Senior staff are discussing it now. We also want to make sure that the members have an opportunity to share their opinions with us through this thread (or in other ways), since the Mall is a "member built" section. It will be a short while for us to come to a secure decision, since we have a few options to work through.

MUDKIP!!! said:

So when will the final decision be made? Looks like people over at the mall are still active, and there are plans for food fights for another month it seems.

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I believe the decision date is June 12th, I think it was mentioned in Forum Frontier #2. If it's different someone please correct me.

June 12th is indeed when the Mall turns three months old, so senior staff should have their decision by then.

never used it.

Pebbles said:

i am not against the board but i do think its slightly a waste of space because of the tree house
why not just put everything in there
like used to happen before mall got created
or have several sections instead of putting everything in one named mall

- food and drinks
- sport
- life
- school/work
etc
obviously in sub boards ....

i don't know just a thought{XD}​

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That makes sense, but also if The Mall is it's own section then it will encourage that kind of talk, and maybe people would get more ideas if they see the separate section and other threads, and get ideas and motivation that way. Where if they're combined, maybe some of those things would be put on the back burner in a way, and people wouldn't think to post them.

Like, wandering into the Treehouse, there's a certain flow going there, and some people might not really think to make a topic about working out, or dieting and what not. I think it's all presentation for the Mall, and what people think they're allowed to talk about.

Though, flipside is that you could just push for that kind of talk to be included in the normal Treehouse section, or point it out in the header and such and hope that works.

Thanks for all the feedback, everyone. :) We will be coming to a decision soon enough.

Satoshi said:

That makes sense, but also if The Mall is it's own section then it will encourage that kind of talk, and maybe people would get more ideas if they see the separate section and other threads, and get ideas and motivation that way. Where if they're combined, maybe some of those things would be put on the back burner in a way, and people wouldn't think to post them.

Like, wandering into the Treehouse, there's a certain flow going there, and some people might not really think to make a topic about working out, or dieting and what not. I think it's all presentation for the Mall, and what people think they're allowed to talk about.

Though, flipside is that you could just push for that kind of talk to be included in the normal Treehouse section, or point it out in the header and such and hope that works.

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This. I feel like there wasn't much about this in the treehouse, now people actually want to make these threads.