Arigatomina wrote:Discount Menu wrote:Case in point: you're not allowed to introduce yourself to the community. The Off Topic forum was shut down because people were making friends
That's why the OT was shut down. Applying that reason to the removal of the intro section makes you wonder how you can have a community if you don't want new members making friends with existing members. ^^;
I agree with everything you said. The intro and OT sections invited members from the main site to come into the forum - especially viewers who don't make their own vids. At the time, Phade said the OT section: "
...has become too much of a clique/social gathering of people who are not really contributing to world of anime music videos." Who are these people who don't contribute? I didn't know who those useless members were at the time, but a few years later it's blatantly obvious. The non-editing viewers. They're not creating, so they don't contribute amvs to the collection. They don't know how to make vids, so they have nothing useful to post in the editor-specific threads. There's a wall between those who post in the forum and the masses on main site, and without an intro section to invite them in, few of the non-contributing members (aka: the viewers) climb over it. The wall has kept most of them out of the forum for almost seven years now. Intentionally. Does the org really want to invite those useless members back into the forum?
I'd like to see an Intro section here. I'd be able to convice some of my viewer-only friends to join the org for their amv needs if I could point to an intro section and show them that the org forum is not just for editors, and that they *can* come here just to talk about their enjoyment of amvs with fellow fans. It would be so much more convenient than chatting in a single "amv" thread in a big forum that has nothing to do with amvs as a whole. They'd get a kick out of filling out their favorite vid lists and using the star ratings to have vids recommended to them, and all the little viewer-specific activies the org has to offer. But I don't think a section for them in this forum would work. I think the intro/ot sections would just end up being closed again for the same reasons they were closed in the first place - too much work for the mods and since those members don't make vids they're not contributing to the creation of new amvs. They can browse the library as much as they want, and the org could make it nice and comfortable for them out there, but since they're not restocking the shelves they don't belong in the back rooms.
Maybe a separate forum (small, simple, but permanent and thus better than chatrooms where you don't remember who you talked to from one day to the next) for non-editors, one linked out there on the main page where they can talk about vids as much as they want, with a single sticky inviting them over if they want more information about making vids themselves. Of course editors who want to talk to their fans can post over there as well, but those who prefer to distance themselves from their viewers can just pretend that forum doesn't exist. You could even have a link to this mini-forum sent out in the emails when a new member joins, that way they know where to go so their fellow viewers can show them around. I'd bet a lot of people join just to stream a local video, and then forget the site exists and never come back. If they were directed to a viewer-friendly forum the moment they join they might make some friends and decide to stick around long enough to become editors themselves.
The first thing I'm going to address is your rhetoric (which, to be fair, is repeating Phade's own subtext) about how "viewers/non-editors aren't contributors". At first, I thought you were being sarcastic, but your arguments that followed indicated otherwise. The premise that non-editors don't contribute to the community is flawed. Sure, they don't contribute to the community discussions
now, but that's again part of the structure of the forums (i.e. we're not allowed to talk about anything not pertaining to AMVs). More importantly, though is the fact that non-editing viewers are the majority of our audience, and most of us editors
like having an audience. Yes, if you ask most of us, we will by and large say that editing is ultimately for our individual selves, but most of us also won't deny getting a nice fuzzy feeling when they see their video air in front of a live audience and receiving applause afterwards. Without a non-editing audience, there's only so many people to show, and hey guess why announcement threads have such a limited shelf life? Viewers are just as important as editors,
as long as we give up this god damn catalogue rhetoric.
The other thing I need to address is that I vehemently disagree with your suggestion for a separate forum for non-editors. The whole point I was trying to drive home is that a community is about people hanging out with people, and that's the point of an OT forum. Segregating people by titles is only going to divide people and create friction between the perceived groups. Really, your suggestion, if I'm reading it correctly, is founded on the premise that editors and non-editors are
somehow fundamentally different. If anything, I'd bet that separating the viewers from the editors would only make things even worse (i.e. "Oh, you're not an editor so I don't have to take your opinion seriously"). If you don't buy that argument, fine, but I'll offer this one instead:
Creating a separate forum for non-editors is simply more complicated and more work than having a general off-topic forum. Occam's razor and all that, remember.