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| Expanding the Forum; How to bring more people to the site | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: 17 Apr 2012, 07:00 AM (437 Views) | |
| Attelis | 17 Apr 2012, 07:00 AM Post #1 |
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Combomaster
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GENTLEMEN, I come with some propositions to bring more people to the forum and achieve more. As a small community, I feel we'd benefit from attracting more users and having more things to do on the site. First of all, we should consider other forms of animation. Pivot is awesome, but its userbase is dwindling, and it is not a whole lot different to animation programs such as stykz and EZToon. For this purpose, I think we should advertise to these groups as well. This might re-purpose P_F to a 'silent film' website, but is that bad? (Please provide your opinions guys) Secondly, I suggest doing away with the ranked forums like beginner, inters and pro, and use a portal, much like the one on Newgrounds. Why? Because people want that! On Darkdemon, it has been wanted ever since it was removed. The concept of an animation portal for silent film, not just pivot, would be great. It would also bring several types of silent animation together, so the users would be able to have a second portal for music, or even just a radio! This gives people even more stuff to do, and it doesn't take long either. After all, if you submit an animation to a portal and you get the 'best animation of the week', you'd feel a lot better than if you worked really hard on an intermediate level animation and got told to work on easing, right? Also, I think we should still have an 'animation showoff' forum where we can post submissions for critique, and get ranked in a similar way to how we are now; just in only one subforum. I also think we should seriously reconsider the structure of the forum, such that forum games and spam are combined, and 'Random Talk' and 'Spam' are more clearly defined. 'Tutoring' is currently also boring. What incentive to tutors have to tutor? For this purpose, I think tutors should get insane amounts of P_F points when the system is finished, to encourage people to help each other. Back to rankings; if we DO keep animation rankings in the allocated 'critique' forum, I suggest we make each rank explicitly defined. Right now, intermediates require good easing, decent poses and semi-realistic movements, while pros also have to consider physics and/or complex effects. That's great, but that's a bit broad. We should be talking about how figures need to react, WHY the ranks are split up the way they are, and how people can improve once they reach 'pro' status. Last of all, we need to make animation accessible. We need to have a big sign on the forum for users who haven't logged in saying 'Hey! Welcome to P_F! Download pivot here, make an animation, save it as a .gif, and then upload it to cubeupload or your preferred hosting site and share your creations with the community!' We need to make the process of coming into animation as easy as possible. (Note: if we do mention a host, we should ask them if they're ok with us using their site as our endorsed host. Some hosts may disagree with that) This might sound a lot like what Darren posted on Darkdemon, and that's because I was inspired by it. Darkdemon wants to change, so why shouldn't we? We're just going to change different aspects, because after all, we're a different forum, just with the same purpose. Edited by Attelis, 17 Apr 2012, 07:00 AM.
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My Animations A discussion on the direction of this site. Please read. | |
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| MopxD | 17 Apr 2012, 07:33 AM Post #2 |
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進撃の巨人
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Lol I was kind of thinking the same thing. Pivot is dead now why not expand the forum? The points will then have a lot more to do and a variety of members will be intrested to join. And I like the fact that each new type of animating gets a rank. We can do it for loads of things not just animating but for music or film making etc. But for this to happen one of the admins has spend some time creating the subforums and posting how each of those subforums will work. And the point system hasn't even got started yet.. Edited by MopxD, 17 Apr 2012, 07:34 AM.
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| Attelis | 17 Apr 2012, 07:43 AM Post #3 |
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Combomaster
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Pivot's not dead, but it is dying, because everyone just cares about animation rank, not entertaining. We need a balance of rank animators and entertainers. We can save pivot. I think if we expand too much, we wont have a specific purpose any more, and there will be no draw to us VS bigger sites like newgrounds or youtube. We need to still define what makes our forum special, but make it more broad. That's why silent animation works so well; it loads quickly, is easy to get into and has a WAY bigger userbase. Plus, we can invite 3D animators too! I also like the idea of an silent animation/silent film forum, because then we can have a group of people in charge of the radio, or make it a game. Maybe. Forum and subforum organisation is also no sweat; really easy. I could document the steps necessary if you guys need, or put me on as a temp. admin to reorganise everything, once a new structure has been decided on. I'm pretty easy either way. I'm not sure how to make a portal, but I can learn that too if I must. I'm not keen on it, but I love animation so I'll do it. <3 EDIT: A suggestion to change the site's front page here ----> http://w11.zetaboards.com/AnimHub/site/ Edited by Attelis, 17 Apr 2012, 02:23 PM.
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My Animations A discussion on the direction of this site. Please read. | |
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| MainFrame | 17 Apr 2012, 06:26 PM Post #4 |
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You are right. We need to seriously restructure the whole forum. I am currently working on a little something with the help of a little developement team. If I can pull it of , Pivot_Forum could be completely moved to a new server , the domain changed to www.PivotForum.com and the whole site build anew . Give me some Months, I'll get it done until Summer. In the meantime, I'll let Yong know what I'm doing. Anyhow, if you have any additional ideas, please create a list and send it to me. But first and foremost I have to make some money and invest in some ads for the new P_F that we will need when it's done. Right now Ads are not an option. |
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| Attelis | 18 Apr 2012, 12:06 AM Post #5 |
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Combomaster
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Suggestions: 1. Don't call it Pivot_Forum. Talk with Yong and the others and find a new name for it. Something catchy and unique. Something like Daevot, Tethera or Spirelax. 2. Have a main page that's actually WORTH VISITING! 3. A place to upload stuff - a portal, that gets people interested. 4. Use PHPBB3 for the forum. It's so much more powerful. 5. Keep in touch. ;) Do we all use steam still? |
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My Animations A discussion on the direction of this site. Please read. | |
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| Croaks | 18 Apr 2012, 02:46 AM Post #6 |
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Major Poster
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I sort of think the same way every now and then, but I sort of like P_F's deadness a little. It's cozy, and it reminds me of small town for some reason. I like small town better than cities. Also, what about people that just do nothing but lurk in chat such as me? |
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| Andrew | 18 Apr 2012, 01:16 PM Post #7 |
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Grey Knight is not amused.
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I believe I have suggested something similar to your idea not that long ago, Endless. (It was not as detailed though.) Sadly, people seemed to not really like it. Especially the renaming bit. Oh and, I agree with Croaks here, to an extent. I wouldn't want to see this site turn into another "giant" like Newgrounds/DarkDemon. What I would like to see though, is for it to turn into something active, and with a small, but living community. Creating a single animation portal definitely sounds like a great idea. 'tis time we did something about animations here, in general. But why would we want to stop only on animations? I believe it would be a good idea to introduce additional portal for all the graphical goodies. Drawings, sketches, paintings, digital art, maybe even comics.~ Of course, it would require a more active user base, but in my opinion, this is definitely an idea worth implementing. Would probably add some colours to out site. And, MF. That's some really good news. The point now is - will it all be for free? Because I do not think I am ready to donate any money in order to keep something alive for now, with all the university matters I soon will have to deal with. |
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| MainFrame | 18 Apr 2012, 02:52 PM Post #8 |
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@Endless : Good ideas , the forum will certainly be coded in PHPBB3, don't think my friends will use something different. @Andrew : It will be completely free for everyone. I recently set up a server system for my family, but they just use a fraction of the resources. (Basically a room filled with servers but they only use one of the 8 we got) I guess the servers will be powerfull enough to handle a lot of traffic. |
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| Skyline | 18 Apr 2012, 04:27 PM Post #9 |
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Everything but the Rain
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If we were to change the name of the site I think every current member needs a say in it. |
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| Fangscream | 19 Apr 2012, 01:32 AM Post #10 |
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Ultomatoe Pastar
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Wow. So glad you actually brought this up. I've been TALKING a lot about how the forum could use more activity, but tbh I think you're the only one that's proposing full, realistic, clear ideas on what we could do get more members and get more activity. To the whole "portal" idea, I was a bit skeptical, being so used to the whole ranking system. But I think you're right--a portal would be pretty cool here. And yes, I soooo agree with the whole moving on from just pivot animation to perhaps including other types of animation. And lol, didn't notice that it'd be like a silent-film thing until you mentioned it. Once you did mention that, I started thinking about animations with sounds. What would we do, not allow these? And if we did allow animations with sound, would those not often times get more attention than those without sound? And if we refuse to allow animation without sound... hm. I... I'm just not used to animating in flash without some sort of sound to accompany it. :C Then there's the whole issue about the forum name. Holy crap, that's a pretty important change--considering the name's been the same for what, ~3-4 years? Dang man. Hahaha, how about Animation_Forum? Hopefully nobody takes that name/has already taken that name before we do. |
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| Attelis | 19 Apr 2012, 05:37 AM Post #11 |
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Combomaster
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Thanks. As ideas, they're still a little underdeveloped but hopefully we can iron out the creases before implementing the changes.
We could have a complex scoring system; 1 to 5 for entertainment, 1 to 5 for animation and 1 to 5 for the idea. That way you can both grade the animation and make the animations accessible to everyone.
I was thinking about this too. If we include sound, we will basically become a smaller, less impressive form of Newgrounds. If we keep to small filetypes (like .gif, .png and small .swf files) we become a niche forum. Having our own hosting would also make things so much more straightforward. We can't compete with newgrounds, not at all. But if we become more of a specialist site tailored to animation, people have a reason to visit. They'll go to newgrounds if they want to watch purely entertaining flashes or games, but if they want to see talented, skillful pieces of short animation, they'll come to us. That's our appeal.
We'll get mixed up with these guys. Plus, if we do implement a portal, we're not really a forum any more, but a more 3D community, so to speak. Then there's the issue of catchiness. Bigger websites like Google, Youtube, Yahoo, Darkdemon, Newgrounds, Flickr and Vimeo all have wacky 'non-word' names. Vimeo is sorta like 'video', which is close though. So if you wanted, we could bastardise the word 'animation' or something like that to make the name for the site. Actually. That's a good idea. Animtate. A mixture between animation and annotate. PERFECT.
We can still promote closeness and peer consideration on the forums if you want to emulate the effect of a 'small town' with a large crowd. You wont 'lose' the kind of interaction you get from P_F by getting more people, so to speak. I don't know what you're talking about lurking in reference to so I can't comment there.
THE BASTARDS
It wont be giant, because if we keep it at a niche (silent animation) only so many people will be interested.
1. To define the audience clearly. 2. To make it easy to achieve our goals 3. To maintain our 'niche' status, so we can attract fussy visitors. 4. Newgrounds and DeviantART already have general portals.
Sure, ok then. I'll make a suggestions thread for names now, then we can vote on a poll for it. Also @Everyone: we should try to implement this as soon as we realistically can. It doesn't have to be TOMORROW soon, but the sooner we get everything up and running, the sooner we can start making stuff and putting our name out there. EDIT: This is the thread, CLICKY CLICKY Edited by Attelis, 19 Apr 2012, 05:43 AM.
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My Animations A discussion on the direction of this site. Please read. | |
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| Fangscream | 19 Apr 2012, 05:44 AM Post #12 |
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Ultomatoe Pastar
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I like the way you think Endless. You think big. Your answers to our questions were quite satisfactory (to me, at least). The idea of keeping it as just pure, soundless animation instead of allowing all types of stuff in seemed a bit strange to me at first. But yeah, I think I get the idea now, and I have to say that I agree. Now we just need to let the rest of the forum know. Not too many posts here yet--granted it has hardly been a day. |
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| Croaks | 19 Apr 2012, 11:47 PM Post #13 |
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Major Poster
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Let's have one of dem small & fanceh forums. Dem IP. Board forums. |
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| Attelis | 20 Apr 2012, 02:49 AM Post #14 |
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Combomaster
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IP Board? Nah man, PHPBB3 is best. |
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My Animations A discussion on the direction of this site. Please read. | |
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| Thorfand | 20 Apr 2012, 03:51 AM Post #15 |
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We definitely do need a bigger userbase as there's around 10 people here that just chat. I wouldn't want to turn into a booming industry but I would like to see more activity going on a daily basis. These are great ideas Endless and I would like to see them implemented in the near future. |
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