(01-09-2024, 06:19 PM)DioShiba Wrote: - There are still plenty of websites that have active forums
- There is still an interest in pixel art when you look outside of TVGR
- Many of the people who were part of the older user base felt isolated when the overall goals that Dazz had shifted and communication became lost between the staff on the site and them happened.
- Clearer goals and priorities for the site need to be better established and followed for everyone.
- A rule against politics and hot take topics should be made since it wouldn't align with those goals.
- Last but not least, more promotion of the forums to the masses and trying to bring in a user base who feels disillusioned by the current state of the internet and online communities on social media.
Okay, so let me start by saying that I read the entire post but I'm just going to quote the end to keep the page from getting too cluttered. I'm also going to direct my responses at those specific bullet points for simplicity's sake.
- Yes, but far less than there were back in the day, so to speak. I'm not saying forums are literally completely dead and we're the only ones hanging around by any means. I'm saying that the internet as a whole has moved on from them for the most part and those that remain (obviously not all - some survive on their own merit) were either the entire purpose of the site originally (think something like PokéCommunity which is just a forum, not a component to a larger whole) or was otherwise integrated more tightly into the core offering from the get-go. That latter point is actually one that's especially relevant here since originally (I'm sure you remember this - I'm just including it for anyone else reading who might not), submissions happened via threads on the forum and then uploaded to the site by staff. This obviously encouraged posting on the forum but also gave submissions more of a sense of community since others could provide feedback on them before they reached the site. This method of submission management was unsustainable and I don't regret the switch to a queue-based direct upload system but I do think it likely contributed to the decline of the forum's usefulness. The forum did have a real direction and purpose back then which was lost as the sites evolved.
- As with the above, I'm not saying pixel art is dead. There are plenty of indie games using pixel art still and I'm sure lots of artists still making it elsewhere. We still get plenty of custom submissions here as well. I'm just saying it's not in the spotlight like it once was. There aren't nearly as many people making and sharing sprite comics or animations and things like Flash games are also no longer as simple to produce. Maybe waning interest was the wrong way to phrase that. It's more that there's not as wide an audience now.
- I don't know if DYKG really had anything to do with it. Activity was declining long before he started making videos. I don't have a solid argument for or against this though so this one could go either way.
- As in the first point, I think they existed once and don't with the site's evolution. As for defining new ones, I'm really not sure what those would be. The sites have clear goals and priorities - archival of assets from games - but the forum isn't needed for that and I'm not sure what we could offer here that isn't already offered elsewhere. Drawing people back to a technology that most view as obsolete requires doing something unique that can't be found anywhere else.
- I'm not sure about this one. I think when handled civilly and moderated well, "real life" discussions can be fine. We started the Discord with a rule against political, religious, etc. discussion but eventually created a space for them and it has worked out surprisingly well. They're not strictly needed here or there and I'll be the first to admit that these topics have frequently gotten out of hand here in the past but an outright ban on any topic when trying to revive a discussion-based system may be a bit short-sighted.
- Again, what are we offering that's going to justify former users returning and new users joining specifically for the forum? This is a rhetorical question - I know you don't magically have the answers and neither do I. And I agree with you - many are sick of the current state of social media but the real question is how many of those people are willing to return to this kind of system? How many are even familiar with them at all? I'd wager a non-insignificant part chunk of our visitors are young enough that they've never really engaged in a forum setting before.