Topic: Idea to boost activity

[Lord Raven]

So I'm not going to make post #1000001 about how activity on the forum is low.  Instead I'm going to suggest something; weekly or biweekly columns on something random.  Not on pkmn.net, but just something where someone or a group of people continuously update a thread with talking points.

For instance, Richard has the Pokemon of the Week thing.  I did the Video Game Review weekly thing, which I did not feel was very well received despite praise; no one wanted to read through 20K characters of just me rambling about a game, with no pictures or anything.

I was thinking things like, football legends of the week in Sports (american football and/or soccer), football teams every two weeks, a video game music series, or a series where someone talks about a game or we have a weekly video game "book club" type thing.  Hell, for Pokemon stuff, we could do "Pokemon Routes of the day" or "Gym Leader of the fortnight" or something random like that.

Any thoughts?  I don't want to hear things like "I like those ideas", I want to hear more specific ideas, more refinement in these ideas, hammering out some specifics, etc.  It's hard to get content on this site when other places get them faster, so I figure we should take it the other way and try to make it more community based.  We did pride ourselves on being quirky once upon a time and this is a rather quirky thing to do I think.


Let me say one thing though; we can post these reviews and all of that all we want, but it doesn't make a difference if no one shows interest.  The point is to stimulate discussion; I didn't like in my review thread how people just went "wow nice review, this game looks cool."  I wanted people to ask questions about them, talk about certain themes in more detail, etc.  Make comparisons maybe?  I have no idea.  I could bring it back, and instead of making it a review format, putting a lot more visuals to it and putting on paragraph-long descriptions of things.  I know everyone didn't like sifting through two whole posts about a video game they may not have played or won't plan on playing.

I want some substance on here, and while you may be doing something interesting or you may be sad on something that'll make you want to vent in certain Random Randomness threads, I don't feel there's much substance to it.  If that's what you like, then by all means.  I'm also not saying that we take these things seriously, although I probably will to some extent because my idea of humor isn't silly so much as bitterly sarcastic, but I want a good mix of things.  "Pokemon route of the fortnight" has plenty of room for silliness, "video game review of the fortnight" has less room for silliness but it's definitely a common bond we all share in terms of video games.  Video Game book club is cool too because we can talk about games we've mutually played and maybe get someone else interested in it.  Who knows?

[That Girl in the 'Roo Suit]

Knowing me, I could probably write up a route of the day sort of thing (I like that ) but nothing really until I get this dissertation out of the way (So, like, October). I don't think we need to cover actual content as much, every other site out there does it for us. I do like that one thing we always have done is to not take ourselves too seriously, so something small but fun would work quite well.

Also, shotgun route of the day (read: week/fortnight). Even if it's not a long article, I will likely just point blindly at a random map from a random game and say "That'll do," but it will probably start with MooMoo farm, because that farmer is so sad it gives me hte feels =[

[Kerou 犠牲]

I don't think the Sports idea would work because there's only like, 5 posters who seem to show an interest and it's not really going to draw more people in

HOWEVER

I do like the idea of doing something quirky and Pokémon related because at least that does have the potential to spark interest in people who lurk. I agree we should avoid overly serious because there's other sources for that, we need to tap into our niche.

In terms of ideas, I'm thinking of like, a casual guide towards Gym Leaders I could do (to expand from your bi-weekly idea); perhaps a light hearted post which looks at what not to do against a certain Gym Leader. I mean, it'd probably be harder to write than some of the other options but if I can do it well it can end up fun, right?

Example: (basing off Emerald since I've just done that)

Brawly - Fighting Type

what not to do: use a Geodude you just caught from Granite Cave, explain why
a Whismur you may have caught in Rusturf Tunnel, explain why
etc.
but comically or whatnot

obviously I'd bulk it out, go semi serious by stating what he has in his team but then maybe look at each Pokémon specifically and say what won't work. I mean, you always get these guides telling you what you should do but I don't think there's anything to say what you shouldn't do.

even if it's a bad idea I can always trial it and if it's crap then we can move on and try something else

In terms of general community stuff, I think we should definitely try and revive some sort of IRC activity because there has been a consistent amount of people showing up in the chat for a good few moments now. We could always base it off the old quizzes which used to be done back in the day; just pick an old (or current) game-show and base it on that; we could make it Pokémon related or anything really.

We could always do events in the sense of, on such and such, everyone in the chat can all play say Pokémon Platinum together or whatever, really laid back and enjoyable where we can all talk about how we're doing in terms of progress, in terms of enjoyment, etc. Nothing serious, just nice little gatherings of discussion and whatnot. We could even have topics to show the progress, show who's involved (it doesn't even need to be written up in the form of Nuzlocke or story, just briefly what everyone has and other fun suggestions people can add, even if they aren't playing).

I'll try and think of more stuff tomorrow (it's late atm and I am thinking off of minimal sleep so sorry if these are terrible) but yeah, it's a start at least =P

[Sappy]

I'm starting a stream at 8pm on Sundays (GMT), which I believe is a time that suits most people, found here. I'd love it if people could join me in chat then discuss the stream in the thread, see what Pokemon they want me to nickname. I've got a poll up and running for starter at the moment.

It has potential to be a lot of fun ^^

[Lord Raven]

Sappy it would be cool if there were actually a thread about the stream too, as opposed to just IRC.  Not everyone's gonna be in the IRC.

Brawly - Fighting Type

what not to do: use a Geodude you just caught from Granite Cave, explain why
a Whismur you may have caught in Rusturf Tunnel, explain why

I'm not thinking in terms of guides, but more in terms of like a fake biography (Brawly puts the Bra in Brawl), or maybe even a war story type thing.  Just a bunch of fluff pieces that are kinda dumb but funny.

I don't believe we should have all funny; just some serious (well semi-serious) and some funny.  A good balance.

[lets all go out for some frosty chocolate milkshakes]

//reaches into my own ass// wow do i have two terrible ideas for you!!! no idea why im posting them instead of keeping them to myself like i do most things but here we go

"RU/NU Pokemon Makeover Of The Week/Fortnight/whatever"

collaborative effort on the forum to enrich the underdogs of pokemon and bring some livelihood to the boring ivory tower "i memorised a bunch of charts" state of current competitive battling,

random scrub-tier RU/UU pokemon are chosen by............i dunno who chooses it, maybe "staff" can choose it, maybe you choose a bunch and people vote for who they want to discuss

people try their hardest to figure out a moveset or ways to use a pokemon or several in a team that's totally unexpected or makes use of an otherwise useless trait, a la the recent pokemon championship Follow Me!Parachisu double battle thing. it'd be something that isn't just the same old "heh, OU pokemon of the week, this is why this will win every time with minimal effort from me, ffffaaaarrrrtttt,"

it'd force people to be Creative and give forgotten pokemon some love, would also Excite Members because their fave (who they cant battle w/ cos it sucks) would finally get attention. Could possibly be a hugboxy "safe space" sandbox for people to learn/explore NU/RU/UU tier, i dont know how common those are here

possibly the forum would have a Surprise Strategy for an OU threat that they cooked up all by themselves w/o sucking it off some other forum since theres some vague animosity and competition amongst all these pokemon forums for some reason,

i know this place likes the "gym challenge" stuff so you could probably do Type Challenges and have a bunch of badges, try to beat an initially daunting team w/ ur crappy team, all "i won the underdog tournament" awards and all that kind of stuff, some slushy crap about "its the trainer who makes the pokemon, bluhhhh if u r a good trainer u bring out the best in all pokemon", thered be big sloppy makeouts between all members

"Nostalgia, The Worst Drug" Pokemon Championships

a kind of Retro Throwback Week, where you'd set up competitions but only be allowed to use pokemon from, say, a certain gen

maybe even item/move restrictions, make it like olde gen days and try to provide a Retro Experience for people who were late onto the scene, could indulge all those intolerable nerds who wont shut up about "ohhhh only Gen I is the best" so during Gen I month they could just go "hnngngngnggnnhhhh gushhhhh this was my first competitive team i love it so much hhwwooaarhhh"

all of you twentysomethings could get misty-eyed over Old Pokemon Days
everyone would have to switch their avatars to like, Gen w/e style and someoen could write up a small self indulgent piece on What This Game Meant To Me

you get the idea, it'd be hardcore nostalgic stuff which lets face it all of us who have been around since Gen I miss terribly





ofc with either of these ideas it'd have to be Pokemon Of The Month instead of fortnight since "shortlist ---> vote ----> breed n train ----> competition ----> hot slushy mess" would not be a quick and dry process, but ideally something different from the usual "competitive battling with boring OU pokemon" cos that kind of stuff is like, yawn, who cares imo

idk if this is possible since i care not for competitive battling in the least so i dont know whether "lets try to polish this turd of a pokemon" or "lets pretend its 2003" is even feasible or whether people could be arsed to do it and mantain it
not to mention i haven't been on here long enough to know whether you lot pulled htis off already, which you probably have!! oh well


im just making this up as i go along really so thats why its such a mess and massively long and also a clown idea that i think is fit to post, but i had fun here so thats all that matters really

[Richard and Blaziken]

^Just spent 3 hours today and 4 yesterday writing my boring article that no one cares about. Only 6 paragraphs are on boring chart memorization, though.

Anyway, in terms of ideas, I'd be down for some gimmick tournaments or old generation battling tournaments or whatever. I can't really manage more than one article a week, but having someone that actively plays one of these tiers write articles about these Pokemon and their role in that metagame would be very interesting, to me at least. Once I run out of OU Pokemon, I'll be discussing UU, BL, and maybe some RU Pokemon and their use in OU, but not in the tier they reside in, so having someone dedicated to discussing how the Pokemon functions in its own tier would be cool.

If we could actually get more members interested in tournaments, this wouldn't be a problem, but many tournaments lately have had little interest in them, so that's why they sort of died out. I'm almost always up for a tournament though, so if we were to organize something like "Gimmick Tournament Of The Month", I'd be interested in it.

[Lord Raven]

//reaches into my own ass// wow do i have two terrible ideas for you!!! no idea why im posting them instead of keeping them to myself like i do most things but here we go

Don't say this; I'd rather hear ideas than none at all.

In all honesty I think this thread should be something to bounce ideas around and see what people want.  If you want to do it, then go ahead and do it, nobody's stopping you.  Maybe you can create your own thread for that one idea to bounce ideas around too, but I just want to see how much interest a weekly/biweekly/etc kind of discussion would get (I forget the term to describe an increment of a period of time).  I really like your ideas, though.  They're relatively creative, cool, and also some perspective (and I mean that term positively) to newer players, like for instance any of the 13 year olds we may have (the ones who were born after RBY came out).

[Inferna]

I like the thought of doing like a collaborative nuzlocke or something, we all play the same game and sort of making it into a little competition. Like what Mark did with his red play through and asked people to vote on nicknames but the voters decide as we go along what pokemon we're allowed to catch, making it interactive. All our journeys could intertwine. Yeah this probably sounds dumb but idk.
I personally would maybe do something art/sprite based?  Maybe critiquing the design of a voted for pokemon and we decide on how it should have been designed and just get right into the origins of a pokemon (like dragoncats really interesting unearthed section!) . Like others have said we could have a theme so we only did really cliche or  odd pokemon (say voltorb/klink/bergmite/swalot - off the top of my head there) and try to improve them or even make them worse! Everyone could sprite/draw their idea and we vote on the best and worst each week/fortnightly/monthly?

[Lord Raven]

Yeah this probably sounds dumb but idk.

As I said before, there's no dumb ideas and you mentioned a good idea.  I don't really wanna here someone saying something like this; even if it were a bad idea the worst that's gonna happen is someone's gonna comment on it and point out an issue (see:  what GL did above).

[Delicious_Scout]

As Samir/Yog  and Richard stated, there are other ways of playing Pokémon.

This said, I feel that it is a necessity to write a guide for trolling in competitive (and how it usually fails). And, of course, writing about many Pokémon that are not very well used but do have a niche.

Of course, I will pick my number so that I can assure I have a chance to write them.

______________

Also, as stated before, some streams coming from this site would help increasing the activity, especially if a team does them in order to keep some variety and activity between streamers. The ebst example of this is Vinesauce, which has a large number of views and many regular streamers, thus keeping momentum like a scarfed Scizor.

______________

Another feature that could work is announcing Nintendo promotions (like sales in both retail format and eShop one), due to the fact everyone likes Nintendo, but not giving too much money for their products.

[Sappy]

Sappy it would be cool if there were actually a thread about the stream too, as opposed to just IRC.  Not everyone's gonna be in the IRC.

There is a thread, I linked to it haha.

[Kerou 犠牲]

I'm not thinking in terms of guides, but more in terms of like a fake biography (Brawly puts the Bra in Brawl), or maybe even a war story type thing.  Just a bunch of fluff pieces that are kinda dumb but funny.

I don't believe we should have all funny; just some serious (well semi-serious) and some funny.  A good balance.

Oh right, I've got you. Yeah, I do agree that it's all about finding the right balance, if we're gonna do things like this we need to come across with a certain charm

@ YOG

as a sort of advancement of that idea (or something that could go alongside or whatever) I think maybe a "community picks" idea could work where people who wish to contribute towards giving a certain Pokémon shine can be allowed, where they post why they love the mon, what assets it can have, stuff like that. People put their name down and then people can be randomly picked and if they're picked they are good to go. It can highlight the community aspect whilst giving everyone's Pokémon exposure.

plus, if needs be, people can go again and whatnot so it can be a consistent way of getting something out there

[Turner]

I'm not about to say these ideas are easy to implement or non-controversial but in my opinion I think the best things for this community/site would be as follows:

1) Get rid of the "What's making you sad/happy/confused/hungry/angry/whatever" threads. The rest of Random Randomness is basically irrelevant with these because it discourages people to make threads about everyday chit-chat and goings on in their life as most of them fit into those threads instead. What then happens is RR becomes a dumping ground for "le cheese!!!"-tier threads that I personally feel is a waste of time contributing to and probably won't give outsiders a great opinion of the community.

I'm not trying to say no fun allowed or anything like that, but it seems like 90% of posts in RR are the equivalent of either facebook status updates, or topics that are so 'random' they give no incentive to post. If we got rid of the former then it might encourage people to make slightly more inclusive chit-chat threads instead.

2)Get the news regularly updated and sort out the commenting system. I think comments are probably the best entry point for new users to 'sample' the community. Thanks to how the internet has developed, I think more than ever people want to make comments on news articles without having to sign up/login etc. If we updated the Pokemon news on the main page regularly and got a commenting system in place like disqus, the members here would be more inclined to comment and non-users would be interested in commenting too.

To give you and example, this is how I use PKMN.NET:

• Click on the shortcut to pkmn.net/forums on my bookmarks toolbar
• Browse forums

I don't bother with the main site because what's the point? I'm not trying to detract from the people who do write content, but all my news comes from other sources because frankly they are more up-to-date and better laid out than PKMN.NET. The only thing I notice that the other sites don't do is offer a commenting system, so many times I've had to either post on here (Not a problem, the discussion forums are great) or make posts on /vp/ instead, and we all know what that's like.

When it comes to Pokemon discussion, we're actually head and shoulders above the rest. I've gone through a lot of discussion boards and there really isn't much to separate them - same discussion, nothing really interesting or thought-out. Meanwhile on here we've actually got some extremely smart members, people who were the first to figure out a lot of the underlying lore of Pokemon and theories which have ended up being true more than once.

tl;dr - we've got a good community in terms of discussion quality, we need to play to our strength for that, but we no longer live in an age where people will bypass a site to check out a forum when alternatives exist. The main site needs overhauling and needs to invite comments (preferably anonymous, monitored comments too) so people can interact with the community and leave their thoughts without having to commit to creating an account.

Maybe some of this sounds harsh, and I know the work that's involved in doing this too - so I'm not expecting instant results, but I do think there's a big oversight going on. Some of the suggestions regarding regular columns and so on are great and would be attractive in 2007, but the way people browse the internet and partake in online communities has changed, almost all of this is fruitless and will eventually be abandoned if the actual entry point to the site itself isn't modernized. Social media may well be a fad that dies out, so I'm not suggesting everything becomes linked to twitter and facebook (I actually despise sites that do this) but the technology isn't going away and the way people browse the web isn't going backwards either.

[Kerou 犠牲]

^ I think if we're going to get new site news going in regards to Pokémon updates the articles themselves need to implement a conversational approach alongside the commentating system, just a small change in writing style could make a big difference, rather than making it come across completely serious and factual add some light-heartedness, some discursive points and whatnot to get people to comment on them and then hopefully move onto the forums for future discussions. I think too we should link in possible threads to these articles too.

I think also going on what we're strong at (and I know people are busy so please don't take this as a way of "you must drop everything to do this" sort of thing) but Name Rater and Sentret needs updating because the former especially is one of the key ways to bring in new members. Plus, we can add their "opinions" and other topics of discussion as well; plus I know having talked to some of the members on IRC recently that there's still a lot of hype and intrigue behind them.