[Yuun]

Hello there!

   After talking to Mein Kloud about some things regarding usergroups, user activity (mainly on the forum), shoutbox stuff, etc., I've come to suggest the addition of lounge threads to this forum to increase activity (which seems to be lacking in a way, more on that later) and make it easier for people to, say, "fit in" with the community. As both of us were not sure if you guys have ever heard of or seen such a thing, we've decided to post a thread regarding this model so we can gather your opinions on it and decide whether it's worth or not to implement it.

Now what are those so-called "lounge threads"? :Nier:

   While roaming around the forum, I've noticed that many of the threads we see are "one-time response" kinds, where you don't post much more than the thread asks you to without actual discussion of whatever is within. Here's where those threads come in.
The way they work is as follows:

• A thread, which will act as our "lounge", is stickied by the staff/admins in a sub-forum that's related to generic talk, such as General Discussion.
  
• In this thread, people are able to post freely about things that aren't relevant enough to be posted as threads. It would act as a "forum discord", in a way that people talk about whatever they want and keep talking till the thread reaches a certain amount of posts (say, 1000), where we lock the thread and post a new one.
  
• This will also be implemented in usergroups, which is one thing we're also planning to add so people can talk about certain topics privately with like-minded people and chill.
  
• This may replace the shoutbox depending on its success, but that's definitely uncertain and will be discussed more later.
  

   So, after reading this, you might have some questions. "How can we be sure this will truly work?", "Is this really going to bring more activity to the forum itself (not the discord)?", "Isn't it going to incentive shitposting?". Well, let's give a bit of a background to this idea.

   This kind of lounge "threading" is not exactly a "new" thing, but it is also not known to many people. I've only seen this being implemented in one community so far, which is close to dying at the moment, and it had great success back in the day. Heck, the usergroup I was in generated something close to 80,000 posts alone over the span of "just" two years, and in the open forums, over 350,000 posts in one year and six months. Now, as far as I've seen in the threads I've lurked on here so far, the posting of useless stuff doesn't seem to be a real issue at all here like it was back there, which is better for us.

    With that said, if you people are still sketchy about whether this will work or not, we can give it a try! We stick a thread in the GD sector, set a goal of one thousand posts within one week/month, and if it gives good results, it's in. Cloud is already up to doing this as he's already seen how it works, so it's all up to the community and the other staff to decide if it's a good idea or not! Post what you like about the idea, what are the possible cons of it, ask more in-depth questions about the idea, and help us find out if it's worth it!


  Thank you all for reading this thread and have a nice day!

[«SmG» Cloud]

Thanks for writing this all up for me Yuun. I am curious to see what other members think about the idea of lounge threads.

[SmG Stinger]

The reason there isnt much useless posts here is because its constantly moderated :P
Im not sure having a giant section for people to spam and shitpost will be beneficial though, but we'll see

[SmG FlasH™]

Having a section for just people to post random stuff is basically off topic. I feel like a lounge thread cannot replace a shout box, because the purpose of the shout box is to receive the reply as soon as you send the message. A lounge thread would require the users to post and then wait for someone's reply, and in order to view the reply, the user would require to refresh the page. In comparison, shout box would be better imo.

[SmG Phoenix]

Don't see why we couldn't just use Discord for it.
You use an example of it saving a community, but we don't know if that community used Discord or something similar to it. The problem here is that we don't want to subtract 1 from the other necessarily, rather escalate both which is an entirely different thing.
And as Flashy said, feels too much like off topic. Lounge feels too much like delayed messaging rather than instant messaging.

[UzzyFTW]

It's a really good idea but we could use #members in Discord for a slower discussion at the same time

[SmG HelHeim]

I generally like the idea, because I also would like to see more people active on the forums, and I have been on sites where they had them, and they extremely fun and chill.
But idk how hard it is to maintain, so I can't comment on that

[Yuun]

The reason there isnt much useless posts here is because its constantly moderated :P
Im not sure having a giant section for people to spam and shitpost will be beneficial though, but we'll see

Figured.  
It's not going to be a giant section nor a place for people to post useless stuff though, it's only one thread where people talk to each other in a non-spammy way so the forum itself gets more active. Read the reply I made to Phoenix for more details!

Having a section for just people to post random stuff is basically off topic. I feel like a lounge thread cannot replace a shout box, because the purpose of the shout box is to receive the reply as soon as you send the message. A lounge thread would require the users to post and then wait for someone's reply, and in order to view the reply, the user would require to refresh the page. In comparison, shout box would be better imo.

Like I said above, it's not a section we're talking about here; just one thread which, granted, is slightly offtopic but without spam and where people talk to each other about whatever they want to instead of having to create a thread about it where you only reply once without any talk. And yeah, it might not even be necessary to replace it with the shoutbox, that's why I said it was uncertain since I was also thinking about the "instant" perks it has.
Also read below in the post I wrote for Phoenix for more info!

Don't see why we couldn't just use Discord for it.
You use an example of it saving a community, but we don't know if that community used Discord or something similar to it. The problem here is that we don't want to subtract 1 from the other necessarily, rather escalate both which is an entirely different thing.
And as Flashy said, feels too much like off topic. Lounge feels too much like delayed messaging rather than instant messaging.

Well, the point here is to create activity on the forum itself. We had a Discord where people were indeed active, but the forums were also active due to actually having something that's kind of, uh, "recyclable", which were in this case the lounge threads. People had a motive to actually post more in the forum instead of just logging in once or twice a day and lurk for any new threads in which they can post on, similarly to here. It created, you know, a kind of "balance" in activity between the discord and the forum. And don't worry, there's no need to actually replace the shoutbox for it if you guys don't want to!

We also had an offtopic section for people to post on, which also didn't count as posts exactly like the one you guys have here right now. It was literally the place where people went to actually shitpost whatever they wanted to that couldn't be posted in the lounges (within a certain limit, you weren't allowed to actually post useless crap even on offtopic), so as long as it's also there people will know what not to do when in the lounge.

Helheim's comment also highlights something I wanted to talk about, which is the maintenance of those threads: whether people will shitpost on it, how hard is it going to be for staff to manage it if that happens, etc. Like written in the OP, it managed to get a large amount of posts in a relatively short time span; while we definitely had more members to post, with the risk of low quality stuff showing up being higher, we actually had way less staff to moderate it (4 active people plus the owner) and we still managed to pull it off successfully. Keep in mind I'm not saying it's going to be a walk in the park, but it's not going to be to the level of Dark Souls either if everything goes well as planned. :Photobomb:

While I'm fairly sure it can work, at the end of the day it really depends on the community being active enough even if the admins decide to try it out. Cloud knows it and many people who may also join later on also do (wink), so it's really all up to believing it will work here and make it happen!

It's a really good idea but we could use #members in Discord for a slower discussion at the same time

Like I said above, what we need is more activity on the forum. It's not that you can or cannot discuss the stuff you want on the discord, but managing to do it on both places!

I generally like the idea, because I also would like to see more people active on the forums, and I have been on sites where they had them, and they extremely fun and chill.
But idk how hard it is to maintain, so I can't comment on that

Yeah! Read what I said to Phoenix as well, it also answers your question.

[SmG Demon]

Agreed.
There were/still are, many forums that thrive simply because of this.
Good idea Yaeyae.