The Big Ol' Make TFS Better Suggestion Thread

[BrilliantRain]

I am not to my knowledge one of Kon's buddies from the chat. However, nor do I particularly dislike him.

[Deaths Pale Mistress]

Perspective is everything, Bladestorm is entitled to his own opinion, not the one you give and whether you like it or not.

[Kailan]

DPM, please don't help ferment sour grapes. Bladestorm's grievance involves the IRC channel, which has little if anything to do with the forum. I second Kon's request to keep the drama where it belongs.

(Though I admit to some curiosity as to where this impression comes from, especially since 90 percent of my actual job is banning bots trying to sell you guys WoW gold and bootleg designer clothing in the smut forum. :P)

[BrilliantRain]

I mostly nuke spambots too. Well that and review crunch, though I think I may have been a bit lax on the reviewing lately.

[AstraKiseki]

(But the whine is delicious~!) He was banned from the /tg/ #exalted chat for basically the same reason and reaction.

Something did come up in my head to throw another penny in and make this post useful. It'd be nice if the mods did do more reviews involving the places they patrol or at least make their presence known in their given forum. At least it'd feel like someone is listening, maybe? Though yeah, I know you guys have lives and often don't have the time.

[Kailan]

Something did come up in my head to throw another penny in and make this post useful. It'd be nice if the mods did do more reviews involving the places they patrol or at least make their presence known in their given forum. At least it'd feel like someone is listening, maybe? Though yeah, I know you guys have lives and often don't have the time.

Actually that was one of the reasons I was considering doing a weekly review of a story or an art piece, or maybe doing a link a week to helpful online resources and tutorials for writing/artins. I just.. haven't done it, partially because until now, I wasn't certain there'd be a positive reaction to it. People were upset enough when all we did was reorganize the writing forum so that longer works had their own area.

[BrilliantRain]

I do try to comment and be active in the crunch forums as well as post new crunch roughly once a week. If anyone has any suggestions of other things they'd like to see from me, I'd be glad to hear them.

[Fenris]

Actually that was one of the reasons I was considering doing a weekly review of a story or an art piece, or maybe doing a link a week to helpful online resources and tutorials for writing/artins. I just.. haven't done it, partially because until now, I wasn't certain there'd be a positive reaction to it. People were upset enough when all we did was reorganize the writing forum so that longer works had their own area.

That's something I'd like to see, but I do realize that you all have lives. Lives that demand more time away from the computer than my own more often than not so I try not to push the issue much. (...that sentence doesn't look right at all, ah well.)

[Wintergold]

I'm trying to get back into the swing of things myself after being really sick since August. I'm gonna try giving more critiques as well. And show how you can offer critiques politely and professionally!

[Dinosaur]

I'm trying to get back into the swing of things myself after being really sick since August. I'm gonna try giving more critiques as well. And show how you can offer critiques politely and professionally!

Yay! ^VVVV^

[Path]

Actually that was one of the reasons I was considering doing a weekly review of a story or an art piece, or maybe doing a link a week to helpful online resources and tutorials for writing/artins.

I think that sounds great. Regular content = awesome.

[Gyro]

So just very recently I decided, on my own initiative, to start hanging out here again.

Must be fate, no?

Anyways. I felt like I should respond to this question with my own reasons for dropping in and out, see if that data helps anything.

The comic was what brought me in here. Having Rai around to talk about it and all ancillary subjects hooked me on. I think there's some merit to the content-drive: something singular that everyone else flocks around, and from which other projects erupt.

Admittedly, porn was what kept me here even after the comic died. It was more the picture variety than anything else, but I have found some stuff I really really like of the text variety. But content for that also slowed, especially of the picture variety, which was the original kind of unique thing. There was picture pr0nz for Exalted. I was very excited about this. Not so much anymore.

At times I've felt part of the community, at times not. Moreso in the beginning, less as things went on. I guess I was never present for a lot of the shared experiences-for whatever reason. I missed word, I never got into the chat so much, whatever. Consequently I've also managed to miss the majority of the drama. All I've noticed is that the forum has been quietly winding down as I've occasionally dropped by. I've posted some fic here that's not especially good, by my own standards. I should work on that.

But anyways, the first stage of Things I Will Be Doing To Help Out is post more. Say things about stuff people have done. If I can maintain that, maybe I can get up to offering some real constructive criticism. Maybe experiment a little more with writing in Exalted myself, even if it does mean I write stuff I'm not particularly proud of.

Actually, there is one thing I've written in Exalted that I'm proud of: the PBP game I run online. Once things happen, I edit and format everything into a narrative format. So I suppose I could start posting that, with the player's permission. There's a Zenith-caste luchadore. We have cake. Would people be at all interested in that?

Those are the kinds of things I can do. As for my ideas on what could be coupled with the forum, a webcomic or something to generally drive the conversation and the creative inputs of everyone else is something I think would be a very good idea. Visually-based media is a quick sell and doesn't require a lot of time investment. I'm sad that we can't be the Official Forum Of Keys of Creation, but maybe there's something else we can do. Unfortunately, I'm not a visual artist at all, so I can't really help with that :-\.

I kind of feel bad that I've missed out on a lot of stuff. I like it here.

[Linkage]

I'm new here, so probably very little say but -- I would suggest opening a.. game channel -- I know of one, but.. i've only spent a week there and can tell they're openly hostile to anyone who doesn't share their views on the game (I've seen the bash and troll rpg.net/WW forums several times)

In an a irc channel for people to look for/create games; Looking at the recruitment forum here, there is a game, that as far as I could tell, died off because it only found three players -- likewise i'm running a game for some friends who played 1e and have been looking for a game since 2e came out.. but could never find one online (Some of us aren't capable of finding offline games, etc)

Either way, draw people from here/ww forums into a single channel, let st's who have game ideas find players there and players find games, vice versa.

This works out for TFS in several ways -- simply make it obvious this community is the source of the channel -- link in the topic -- This leads to people playing there coming here to get opinions on their crunch, and the more games running the more characters people will have to write fiction/draw/etc.

In other words, a place for people to -play- exalted leads to more people having source material to discuss/play with here, thus the frequency of posts increases.

Sounds a bit outlandish, but.. IMHO the best way to increase traffic in a community based around exalted is.. to get people playing exalted.

(Edit: I must appologize for the typos EVERYWHERE, it's late and I am tired, and honestly I haven't the will at the moment to fix it, will do so in the morning)

[Kailan]

Wait, people talk about trolling those forums *here,* or do you mean somewhere else?

Because AFAIK, we're pretty cool about different playstyles for the most part, and a lot of us post in those places still. Tempers can and do flare on occasion just like on any other board but it's really laid back otherwise. I've never seen any of that kind of behavior on TFS, unless it's to shake heads at a troll post or immature behavior on one of those forums.

...though I reserve the right to at least smile tolerantly at the fandom people who publicly scoff about how lowbrow and "scary" we are while lurking in the adult forum to ogle the porn. We're well aware that we're a guilty pleasure to some folks. :P We do have an IRC channel, in fact, but it might be better to make it more obvious to newcomers; right now it's only in the general topics subforum. We're low on games at the moment, but I think that's because a lot of us are also low on free time during the holiday season.

(Also if you mean Kingdom of Heaven, it's not dead - it's paused because its members have offline things that take precedence. One of our number is deployed and has odd hours, while I'm a classical musician in concert series hell until the end of the year. ;) We fully plan to return to it in January.)

[FlenceburgExile]

:3

[Linkage]

Wait, people talk about trolling those forums *here,* or do you mean somewhere else?

Because AFAIK, we're pretty cool about different playstyles for the most part, and a lot of us post in those places still. Tempers can and do flare on occasion just like on any other board but it's really laid back otherwise. I've never seen any of that kind of behavior on TFS, unless it's to shake heads at a troll post or immature behavior on one of those forums.

...though I reserve the right to at least smile tolerantly at the fandom people who publicly scoff about how lowbrow and "scary" we are while lurking in the adult forum to ogle the porn. We're well aware that we're a guilty pleasure to some folks. We do have an IRC channel, in fact, but it might be better to make it more obvious to newcomers; right now it's only in the general topics subforum. We're low on games at the moment, but I think that's because a lot of us are also low on free time during the holiday season.

(Also if you mean Kingdom of Heaven, it's not dead - it's paused because its members have offline things that take precedence. One of our number is deployed and has odd hours, while I'm a classical musician in concert series hell until the end of the year. We fully plan to return to it in January.)

Ah -- The channel I was referring to has nothing to do with this forum; I know some of them (one or two in this thread) frequent there, so I was trying to avoid stepping on toes -- but I still stand by my statement, the easiest way to get a flow of content onto the forums is to give people a chance to generate source material -- playing games.

The reason I suggested a seperate channel than the freedom stone channel, is the potential to draw in players from WW forums and other places -- then link it back to here; Increase the community size, while giving a steady flow of games for people who want them, etc.