Important Going Forward

[Aldarion]

Maybe promote non-political stuff in the "Essays and Commentaries" section? I feel that analysis of movies and games would also help promote the board, and also help expand board into non-political areas without actually attempting to abandon politics (which, as pointed out, is an important factor in this forum, especially since alternatives are in full-on SJW censorship mode).

 

[Free-Stater 101]

The downside is that people on the sister boards and in general would be even more inclined to think we are fascists, since they can't see what we're talking about for themselves. They will invent stories about rampant racism or worse, child stuff being on it (remember that the SB PM was also baselessly accused of that).

If your first instinct is "well, who cares what other boards think?" Then you should consider that those places are the main grounds for recruiting more members into this site. We can't feed too much into the rumors about us. The politics stuff should probably stay visible to anyone.

Maybe limit posting there to only members with a certain post count, but other than dissuading both trolls (good) and people who will primarily come here for the politics (bad, we need all the people we can, even if they are mainly interested in the politics) I don't see what it accomplishes.

The post count I was thinking of would be about a hundred post, hardly an astronomical number. Besides, it isn't like we receive floods of immigrants from SB these days.

Who cares what people who have already made up their minds about us being evil think? We have rules and despite what they may say, the sites outlook on various positions and what is and isnt a ban offensive is clearly defined for any newcomer, that should be enough.

 

[GoldRanger]

Maybe promote non-political stuff in the "Essays and Commentaries" section? I feel that analysis of movies and games would also help promote the board, and also help expand board into non-political areas without actually attempting to abandon politics (which, as pointed out, is an important factor in this forum, especially since alternatives are in full-on SJW censorship mode).

How? What constitutes as "promotion"?

Who cares what people who have already made up their minds about us being evil think?

You've fallen precisely into the trap I warned you about. Yes, we should care what people think about us. Not everyone on SB and SV are in the extreme left's clique. Someone neutral who hears all the bad shit they're saying about us might become curious and take a look at the site for himself... Whereupon he encounters a wall of secrecy. The first thing in his mind would be: "well, they're clearly hiding something, and/or they are ashamed of their politics". He won't give a damn whether you need 100 or 10 posts to see the subforum, he won't even bother signing up.

I will not be ashamed of my politics, and I would never agree with hiding all our political talk under a rock.

 

[Aldarion]

How? What constitutes as "promotion"?

Find people interested in writing it... other than that, not a clue. Maybe have an ideas thread for brainstorming. Basically anything that would entice people to write about something other than politics in there (though as I noted, we shouldn't abandon politics... but it shouldn't be the focus).

 

[GoldRanger]

Find people interested in writing it... other than that, not a clue. Maybe have an ideas thread for brainstorming. Basically anything that would entice people to write about something other than politics in there (though as I noted, we shouldn't abandon politics... but it shouldn't be the focus).

A brainstorming thread (a stickied one preferably) is a good idea.

Maybe creating a sub-subforum for "political essays" and having the main subforum for non-political essays would work.

 

[Aldarion]

A brainstorming thread (a stickied one preferably) is a good idea.

Maybe creating a sub-subforum for "political essays" and having the main subforum for non-political essays would work.

Me likey. Maybe have a subforum for worldbuilding as well? Though I guess people would rather go to dedicated writing forums for that stuff.

 

[GoldRanger]

Me likey. Maybe have a subforum for worldbuilding as well? Though I guess people would rather go to dedicated writing forums for that stuff.

We need to put a hard limit on how many subforums we make. Too much and it becomes confusing, and many of them (the niche ones) will end up barren. Not gonna be a good look for the site.

 

[ShadowArxxy]

We need to put a hard limit on how many subforums we make. Too much and it becomes confusing, and many of them (the niche ones) will end up barren. Not gonna be a good look for the site.

I would suggest only splitting off subforums in situations where a highly contentious or disproportionately popular subset of one of the existing forums is basically taking over its "parent" space.

 

[Bear Ribs]

That seems reasonable. Also there's room to split forums later once traffic reaches levels that people will have trouble sorting them. For now I'd think that Alternate History and World Building could go in the Creative Writing Index with them being split off if and when there's enough of them to support their own forum.

It might be a good idea to plan ahead and make some sort of tag that will let Admins sort threads out quickly and easily if and when the forums split.

 

[Free-Stater 101]

You've fallen precisely into the trap I warned you about. Yes, we should care what people think about us. Not everyone on SB and SV are in the extreme left's clique. Someone neutral who hears all the bad shit they're saying about us might become curious and take a look at the site for himself... Whereupon he encounters a wall of secrecy. The first thing in his mind would be: "well, they're clearly hiding something, and/or they are ashamed of their politics". He won't give a damn whether you need 100 or 10 posts to see the subforum, he won't even bother signing up.

The same viel of secrecy that SB enforces on non-members just to a less severe extent? The fact is that while we should care about our image we shouldn't do it to the point we are literally catering to the needs of our detractors.

We have clearly listed rules which define what is and what isnt acceptable behaviours on the board if that isn't enough to give us a benefit of a doubt to passers by the odds are the second they see a post by one our more colorful members they shall leave anyway.

Again, it's not like we are reciving massive amounts of immigrants from SB here and our excessive compulsions to placate/emulate them in their entirety is holding us back from growth, we may look like SB, but we arent SB.

 

[ShieldWife]

Me likey. Maybe have a subforum for worldbuilding as well? Though I guess people would rather go to dedicated writing forums for that stuff.

We need to put a hard limit on how many subforums we make. Too much and it becomes confusing, and many of them (the niche ones) will end up barren. Not gonna be a good look for the site.

World building is cool, but considering we have a problem with too few posters, I would advocate for as few sub-forums as possible. We need to make it easy for people to see posts that they might like and for people’s threads to be seen. I would want sub-forums to, for example, allow a place where controversial things could be discussed and where people can seek it out of avoid it. I don’t see any reason why a thread about designing your own Bronze Age fantasy world needs to be on a different sub-forum from a thread about discussing the Mandalorian or a thread about who would win between Leman Russ and Thanos. Unless our forum is so huge that all of the people who want world building threads can’t find them between the discussions of shows, books, movies, and vs fights - which isn’t a problem for us.

 

[GoldRanger]

The same viel of secrecy that SB enforces on non-members just to a less severe extent? The fact is that while we should care about our image we shouldn't do it to the point we are literally catering to the needs of our detractors.

We have clearly listed rules which define what is and what isnt acceptable behaviours on the board if that isn't enough to give us a benefit of a doubt to passers by the odds are the second they see a post by one our more colorful members they shall leave anyway.

Again, it's not like we are reciving massive amounts of immigrants from SB here and our excessive compulsions to placate/emulate them in their entirety is holding us back from growth, we may look like SB, but we arent SB.

We are not SB. We don't have an already pre-existing huge userbase, and they're not the ones facing widespread negative rumors.

 

[CurtisLemay]

I'd love to do a round-robin sci fi world building exercise?

 

[LordSunhawk]

I'm not going to subdivide the forum up any more than I have to. I am hoping that by stepping up and contributing more creative content of my own (see Lucky 13th and TOSE rewrites) I may 'prime the pump' a little and get others to post their own creative works.

When they do, I beg of you all to please leave reviews and feedback, nothing depresses a new writer more than indifference, and nothing encourages more artists to show up than knowing they'll have an audience who'll pay attention.

I'm trying to think of ways to encourage this. *chuckles* Call me Don Quixote in this regard!

 

[ShadowArxxy]

I'm trying to think of ways to encourage this. *chuckles* Call me Don Quixote in this regard!

Here is your vibro-lance, sir!

Darths & Droids

 

[KilroywasNOTHere]

I'm not going to subdivide the forum up any more than I have to. I am hoping that by stepping up and contributing more creative content of my own (see Lucky 13th and TOSE rewrites) I may 'prime the pump' a little and get others to post their own creative works.

When they do, I beg of you all to please leave reviews and feedback, nothing depresses a new writer more than indifference, and nothing encourages more artists to show up than knowing they'll have an audience who'll pay attention.

I'm trying to think of ways to encourage this. *chuckles* Call me Don Quixote in this regard!

yes this very much this. A lot of times I have to deciate days if not weeks to write stuff and oft times not getting legit feedback just makes me feel like i'm pasting stuff on a wall.

 

[Scottty]

Some thoughts on the whole Free Speech topic:

On the one hand, if you have an absolutist approach, no censorship at all, "if we silence anyone we're just as bad as those other guys" etc - then sooner or later, you end up with a collection of the sort of people who are tolerated or welcomed nowhere else on the Internet.
And everyone else starts to leave.

On the other hand, having "forbidden" ideas distorts thinking, because people are afraid of being lead into thoughtcrime. Making it an offense to support something? Well, we've seen how that got abused on SB, where there were people who simply made a game of trying to taunt anyone they disagreed with into posting something infractionable.

 

[ShadowArxxy]

On the one hand, if you have an absolutist approach, no censorship at all, "if we silence anyone we're just as bad as those other guys" etc - then sooner or later, you end up with a collection of the sort of people who are tolerated or welcomed nowhere else on the Internet.

Parler's "solution" to this -- and by sarcasm quotes I mean I think it's a really shitty idea -- is that they have very few restrictions on free speech, but the terms of service also include a clause stating that any user may be banned at any time even if they haven't broken any rules, and also a clause stating that if Parler is ever sued due to someone's post, that user is required to pay all of their legal bills.

 

[GoldRanger]

Parler's "solution" to this -- and by sarcasm quotes I mean I think it's a really shitty idea -- is that they have very few restrictions on free speech, but the terms of service also include a clause stating that any user may be banned at any time even if they haven't broken any rules, and also a clause stating that if Parler is ever sued due to someone's post, that user is required to pay all of their legal bills.

Somehow I doubt such a stipulation is legal.

 

[ShadowArxxy]

Somehow I doubt such a stipulation is legal.

It probably isn't, no, but that doesn't stop them from putting it in the TOS.