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cjhobbies00 2008.10.28 01:59 PM

Forum Diversification
 
First off, let me say that I was against further forum diversification not too long ago. I thought that the forum should have Shiina as its focus and that there were enough forums out there dedicated to other things.

...Sorry to say that I no longer think Shiina is enough to keep the forum going. Right now there is still enough passion (or anger, depending on which side you're on) for Shiina and TJ in the main forums, but without any new releases in sight it'll only be a matter of time before people lose interest in Shiina and stop coming to the forum.

I propose that we add more sub forums dedicated to other subjects, Movies/TV, Sports, other Genres of music, etc etc.
I would like to hear some proposals or ideas from the community. What sub forum would you like to see created?

Maybe EMF can become even more diversified through the possible changes, though I'm not suggesting that we take Shiina off the banner anytime soon. I don't want us to be too diversified though. Don't want no Diehard Fall out Boy fans up in here.

Ringo~Bingo 2008.10.28 02:09 PM

I don't know ? this place is primarily a Shiina/Jihen based place, so to start incorporating sports/movies/games more than the current threads we have already for them might turn the place into a Shiina/Jihen based place in name only ? I have this horror image in my head of 500+ more members who have no interest in her just hanging about in sports threads clogging the place up and maybe even ruining it ? I like this place because it's focus is just Shiina mainly.. I think we already have the threads for the mentioned subjects already so I'm not sure we need the rebranding ? but others may disagree so we'll see I guess.

cjhobbies00 2008.10.28 02:17 PM

I was thinking the same thing not to long ago.

But right now I'm thinking that we may be able to create more ways to furthur incorporate members into the community, so that if Shiina runs out of steam (God Forbid), she won't take the forum down with her.

Not suggesting we should be recruiting NFL fans. But maybe the forum can be something more to the more casual members who visit here.

ShinjiPG 2008.10.28 02:27 PM

I actually think it could be good.
We have the Off-Topic boards and both have a lot of topics that get lost in the amount of pages the boards have. With more boards, each topic inside them would be more visible for new posts. I don't know, but I bet there must be some topics which would interest me, lost somewhere in the 8 pages of the Off-Topic (General) board, not to mention the (Music) board.

And I don't think it would attract members unware of who Ringo is, mainly because of the banner.

PS - For some reason, I'm not very good at expressing myself right now and this whole post sounds wrong to me. Hope the most important parts are understandable -_-

Glathannus 2008.10.28 02:43 PM

I think the categories of discussion that should get their own subforums, are the ones with the most massive threads. A videogames subforum is almost long overdue. Sports? Not so much (but I could be biased because I don't participate in that discussion).

I'm divided on whether or not we should have a Product Reviews board for related artists. Very divided. But it's an idea I've been pondering for quite awhile. Some of the artists Shiina Ringo involves herself with, have huge backcatalogs that many of us are familiar with, but we have no organized place to talk about it. My borderline fear is that if we set this up, we will attract new user registrations from people who have never been interested in Shiina Ringo. It's something we might want to hide from people who aren't yet registered, but...

Do you have any idea how much it would raise this community's site rank at Google and other search engines, to start up all those threads? You type "Heart Bazaar" into Google and we are #2, right below Wikipedia (though if you try Kanji it's a very different story). For the related artists who are still active, could you just imagine our site showing up in Google right below the artist's official website? I still want Shiina Ringo to be the central theme of this community, but if we are easy enough to find while people search for information on other artists, eventually we will spark more people into asking the question "Just who is this Shiina Ringo, and what is she all about?". We might be able to promote her around the world better than her own official website(s) can.

The problem is giving curious visitors a way to preview the music before they buy, without us getting in trouble. Apparently Kronekodow Ltd isn't going to grant any fansites any permissions for anything. So even if we had an elaborate setup of 32kbps WMA streaming samples (which wouldn't take away any incentive to buy the CDs), we'd still be "breaking the law". So the question is... do we care, and more importantly, do we think EMI or JASRAC or Kronekodow is actually going to care?

Whether or not we convert fans of related artists into Shiina Ringo fans, could be less important than how easy our community is for existing Shiina Ringo fans to find. If we can raise our site rank from related artists, we actually become even easier to find in a "Shiina Ringo" search. Currently we are on Page 7 of the results, and more than half of the results inbetween are garbage. WebRing-whoring isn't the exclusive method to bump ourselves ahead.

Inaudible-Whisper 2008.10.28 04:15 PM

I'm all for encouraging more discussion, but as you all agree I'm against anything that will encourage a load of randoms to sign up with no interest in Shiina. There's probably a fine line in creating new sub-forums but I definitely think it's something to consider. As Shinji said, it will also help to keep relevant threads higher up in their relevant sub-forum and if we spread out the off-topic threads into their new homes, people could end up finding long lost threads that were once on page 148 that they might have not even knew existed or were to afraid to bump.

I don't think the forum is deperate for a new lease of life or anything. It goes through popular phases and quiet phases, but it's far from dead and Bongo has shown that new guys can and do fit in fine if they put the effort in. That said, I'm all for anything that gets the regulars and new guys to post more.

cjhobbies00 2008.10.28 04:21 PM

i was thinking that the sub forums can only be seen by members. It makes sense, seeing how we really want new members to share a certain amount of interest in Shiina.

And i'm sure some people would want a sub forum dedicated to more personal threads, limiting the sub forums to members only would be perfect.

Tokyo Jihad 2008.10.28 06:29 PM

See I think the key is to not fragment the forum with a whole mess of sub-forums. I think we kinda have too many as it is (Images; Related artists and then off-topic music I think its redundant.) I'm more of a fan of a few big, diverse categories where you can be more exposed to new and different things. I think the catch with us is because we're still small time we just keep getting a few MASSIVE threads that are impossible to wade through, like the videogames thread. Instead of making a post about Diablo 3 in that thread, why not make a new thread?

Personally I think the day will come where we do "outgrow" being Shiina-centric, where that's priority one. Shiina will always be that common spine of the community, but I think the days of the OT being the commanding presense on the forum is likely. I already think it's the heart of the forums now.

Basically, I think one day we just put the OT boards on top of the Shiina boards.

Scribble R 2008.10.28 06:30 PM

When I read the original post, my face dropped, tbqh. Then I thought it could be a pretty good idea. But instead of having sports/movies/random subjects, these forums could be a cool anti-jpopmusic (Not saying jpopmusic is bad), in that it could draw attention to the Shiina Ringos/Ego Wrappins/The Boredoms/Coccos/etc. instead of the Ayumi Hamasakis/Koda Kumis/Namie Amuros/etc.

'Quality music' is subjective, yes. But all the Japanese music I really enjoy tend to be from artists that are virtually unheard of in the West. It would be cool if the 'Non-Related' Artists forum could be 'beefed' up, and we could get up threads for these obscure artists, review them, etc. (When you think about it, SR would be a good figurehead for that, as she was the anti-Ayumi Hamasaki anyway)

I'm kinda new (Been lurking for ages though), and I like the community here -- but it's a pity that it doesn't seem as active as it could be. The main reason I come here now is in hopes that I'll see an announcement of a new Tokyo Jihen/Shiina Ringo album, and that doesn't happen every day...

Yeah, I think it's more of a thread-creation thing.

Inaudible-Whisper 2008.10.28 06:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tokyo Jihad (Post 40859)
Personally I think the day will come where we do "outgrow" being Shiina-centric, where that's priority one. Shiina will always be that common spine of the community, but I think the days of the OT being the commanding presense on the forum is likely. I already think it's the heart of the forums now.

I think that's the case with the majority of forums though. You gravitate towards it because of usually one specific shared interest, and then if you like the community you stay, but there's only so much you can say about one thing so usually every forum dedicated to that one thing has a more popular off-topic section which really keeps the whole thing running. Hence the popular NeoGAF saying "Came for the games, stayed for the off-topic". The same rings true for every other forum I've been on.


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