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1 Topic by lighton 2019-04-12 10:41:32 (edited by lighton 2019-04-12 10:41:47)
- lighton
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Topic: Do the forums need promotion?
I'm wondering... how come many shows are on a lot of watchlists ( https://next-episode.net/game-of-thrones is on 144502 watchlists) but the forums aren't that active? People have no time for the forums because they spend all their free time watching shows?
- santah
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Re: Do the forums need promotion?
I believe Facebook and Twitter killed people's will, enthusiasm and time to browse and share stuff on Forums. Our forums have never been advertised more than they are now and while the website is more popular than ever - the forums are very far from their former glory. It is what it is I guess, but I, for one, am always happy to see activity in here
- Suasor
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Re: Do the forums need promotion?
I never used Facebook or Twitter because I found both more diddleware than really useful. I've been hearing from more Facebook users that they are dropping it, and similar sites, because they have become mainly marketing machines and then there is the somewhat random censorship. That said a lot of people are used to the forums on Facebook, although the censorship is turning more of them off. I don't post much anywhere because of lack of time but I have noted more activity here of late. The decline in non-Facebook messaging boards was pretty universal over the last five years. I have seen stats on that. Even Usenet (it still exists) took a big hit. On the plus side most of the trolls (including the professional ones) concentrated on Facebook and other social media and are less visible on site specific message boards like this one. I do check a number of sites like this, but often only once a week or so.
- lighton
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Re: Do the forums need promotion?
Suasor wrote:I never used Facebook or Twitter because I found both more diddleware than really useful.
+1! Some people spend 1-2 hours a day on FB, I'd rather watch good TV shows instead. Suasor wrote:The decline in non-Facebook messaging boards was pretty universal over the last five years. I have seen stats on that. Even Usenet (it still exists) took a big hit.
Interesting...
5 Reply by g371 2019-04-15 08:35:11 (edited by g371 2019-04-15 08:36:48)
- lighton
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Re: Do the forums need promotion?
g371 wrote:It's because the site is missing 2 features I requested and shows are not linked to forum and back normally It's hard to find the right topic and that sure kills motivation
Something like "Related forum posts:" on every show page, listing threads that link to that show? Sounds like a good idea!
- g371
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Re: Do the forums need promotion?
lighton wrote:g371 wrote:It's because the site is missing 2 features I requested and shows are not linked to forum and back normally It's hard to find the right topic and that sure kills motivation
Something like "Related forum posts:" on every show page, listing threads that link to that show? Sounds like a good idea!
Yep, and in forum topic link to show page from the header, so that you don't need to link it in the first post.
- santah
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Re: Do the forums need promotion?
lighton wrote:g371 wrote:It's because the site is missing 2 features I requested and shows are not linked to forum and back normally It's hard to find the right topic and that sure kills motivation
Something like "Related forum posts:" on every show page, listing threads that link to that show? Sounds like a good idea!
It's kinda hard (to impossible) to automate that, but we have dedicated forums and threads per show where this can be done, for example, dedicated subforum: https://next-episode.net/game-of-thrones (bottom of the page) and a dedicated thread: https://next-episode.net/american-dad (the forum link in More Info) These are set manually, so if you want me to link a show to its dedicated thread - just let me know
- lighton
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Re: Do the forums need promotion?
santah wrote:It's kinda hard (to impossible) to automate that, but we have dedicated forums and threads per show where this can be done, for example, dedicated subforum: https://next-episode.net/game-of-thrones (bottom of the page) and a dedicated thread: https://next-episode.net/american-dad (the forum link in More Info) These are set manually, so if you want me to link a show to its dedicated thread - just let me know
Hmmmm.... maybe it would be worth it to manually set that up for the top 1% of shows, those in the most watchlists? I have no idea how many current shows there are on the site, so maybe the 1% should be a different number.
- santah
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Re: Do the forums need promotion?
I think the best way to to that is to report any show threads (that are not linked with a specific show) to me so I can link them. If there are multiple threads for a show, and it's prominent enough - maybe even spin a separate forum for it? (like we used to do)
- g371
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Re: Do the forums need promotion?
santah wrote:lighton wrote:g371 wrote:It's because the site is missing 2 features I requested and shows are not linked to forum and back normally It's hard to find the right topic and that sure kills motivation
Something like "Related forum posts:" on every show page, listing threads that link to that show? Sounds like a good idea!
It's kinda hard (to impossible) to automate that, but we have dedicated forums and threads per show where this can be done, for example, dedicated subforum: https://next-episode.net/game-of-thrones (bottom of the page) and a dedicated thread: https://next-episode.net/american-dad (the forum link in More Info) These are set manually, so if you want me to link a show to its dedicated thread - just let me know
Yeah, I know very well the issue. But that manual linking anyway is way too big overhead, chances are nobody will be requesting that because people are lazy. So basically it's either selects with fallbacks or write your own forum engine to skip hacking 3rd party structure. I would link dedicated subforums and if there is none do a select on topic titles, cache the result and display in the show page. And hack forum topic view to try to link it to show in similar way, since this forum engine seems dead and most likely won't be updated anymore.
- g371
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Re: Do the forums need promotion?
But overall to make this nice, probably you need something similar to Discussions functionality in themoviedb.org. But I get it that that's the last thing you want to do, if you are a single developer and have stuff to deal with on 3 platforms To invest in this forum engine, imo, is borderline useless, because it would be a major pain to get it working fine on mobile, and probably the code also is some outdated spaghetti explosion. So I would not invest in anything other than a few quick hacks to cover essentials.
13 Reply by g371 2019-04-16 11:54:11 (edited by g371 2019-04-16 11:57:20)
- g371
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Re: Do the forums need promotion?
About the impossible part - imo, quite easy, here are mostly 1:1 matches with show titles: https://forum.next-episode.net/viewforum.php?id=97 - and to reduce the false positives just add some ordering by show popularity, because if 2 shows match the topic title, 99.99% it's the most popular one. And if there still are false positives, just add in shows table some flag column to ignore it. Next stage of dirty hacking is to add a button "Create a discussion" if there are no matches, do an insert in forum db and redirect to the new topic
- santah
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Re: Do the forums need promotion?
And we can eliminate all false positives by simply manually linking the show thread to its page on the site (as we've done so far). Just give me a list guys, of all show threads that are not linked on their show page - and we'll sort it out. Obviously, we have to do it in future as well and it's not optimal, but until the forums (eventually) get more active - it'd be a good solution.
- g371
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Re: Do the forums need promotion?
- lighton
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Re: Do the forums need promotion?
santah wrote:Just give me a list guys, of all show threads that are not linked on their show page - and we'll sort it out.
The most popular show without a show page -> forum link: https://next-episode.net/the-magicians-2015 https://forum.next-episode.net/viewtopic.php?id=9069
- santah
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Re: Do the forums need promotion?
How didn't I ever think of it?
- santah
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Re: Do the forums need promotion?
Thanks, linked!
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