Is it time to fold AV Forum in favor of a new format?
Forums aren't "dead", and they "haven't gone the way of Usenet", as some techies cry, as there are still plenty of healthy ones I know I frequent. It all depends on the participation and the interest of how large and enthusiastic a community it attracts, and how, er, "animated" the discussions get.
But I've also been on a few forums in my past, back in the day when the gold rush was over, that slowed to a crawl and died out, and I can recognize a few of the warning signs.
Let's be honest: We have less than ten regular posters, maybe six, possibly seven. New threads rarely get started, and the old ones have chugged along like warhorses back to 2005. We kid ourselves that many of the longer-time regular posters seem to be those too idiosyncratic (no, I didn't say 'k00k") about their "duty" to post here, like Shy's newslinks, Ben's cantakerousness, George's isolated comic-fanboy rants apropos of little, and even my...okay, fill in your favorite name for it.
Yes, I do read the main Animated Views page, and that's the problem: The headlines are more interesting. I've been wanting to see discussions break out about the front-page articles, about the D23 announcements, the history of FoodFight (caught a little on YT...eek!
), the movie/disk reviews and history interviews, etc., but find just the five or six--or three or four active--regulars still keeping the old threads going at the Cheers bar. The news-articles pages have a brief, interesting recap, as if linking to "Read more" elsewhere, but there is no additional info, and no space for comments. I'd start a new thread myself, but maybe it's the old-forum mentality that I don't feel I should break things up with new thread discussions out of thin air.So, serious question, for the regulars, and those with the power to do something about it:
SHOULD Animated Views and AV Forum be merged into Animated Views Blog?--Merging the front page articles, Rotoscopers shows, side articles, etc., , even giving ShyViolet's updated newslinks-on-a-theme a place of their own, into daily front-page postings, and allowing for a bit of poster-comment discussion under each article?
This would keep the discussion fresh, fill in the news stories with additional info, and possibly be picked up on the crosslinked Blog ether, like Cartoon Brew before it, which would let more readers find the site by "accident", widening the reader base (Among other things, a larger and more vocal reader base would certainly make the Oscar chats a lot more lively every February.)
I've been serious about this idea for a while, and hadn't brought it up out of not wanting to be That Guy--I'm just as stubborn about not wanting to see old Net haunts change or disappear, and even I remember finding this place after losing Toons on DVD. (
)And yes I know every troll in Usenet history who couldn't get his foot into the door wishfully tried spinning failed posts about "Is this group dying?" as sour-grapes backup strategy, but when a forum IS dying, it's pretty hard not to notice--Do we even come here expecting new posters to post here anymore, even if it's a Newport festival announcement, or is it just to pub-crawl with the regulars?
Think it's time to give us something new to talk about EVERY DAY, as there's certainly seemed to be enough out there lately for it.
