Joined: 29 May 2002 Posts: 583 Location: Chicago, IL
Posted: Mon Aug 28, 2006 11:18 am Post subject: Time for a new forum?
Okay, so now that Part Two is finished, and I'm gearing up to print the new book, I'm also beginning a revamp of all my various sites (dynamanga.net, WCN and MT). I'm also considering moving my forum away from TAC to my own site (dynamanga).
Well... the forum's kind of... slow these days. I'm not really sure what moving it would accomplish, other than the pride of handling it yourself rather than getting someone else to host it.
Eh, I'm a bad person to ask, perhaps. For me, forums are all about discussing the comic, and having discussion threads around for future readers to look over. If those things aren't happening, my interest in a forum drops quickly.
...Um, I believe my basic response is: if you want to, go right ahead. If you think it's a good idea, do it. It's YOUR forum, after all. _________________ I am no one... am I?
Joined: 29 May 2002 Posts: 583 Location: Chicago, IL
Posted: Mon Aug 28, 2006 10:55 pm Post subject:
Maybe I just fundamentally don't have the knack for keeping an active forum going. It always seems like a topic gets started and then it fizzles after I reply to it.
Of maybe I don't have enough readers, yet. Most comics forums I know either have a scad of fans eager to discus the comic at hand readily (like Narbonic, for instance), or they have something else to talk about entirely (like Spike's Iron Sideshow).
On the other hand, I do have other interests that I like to discuss beyond just my comic. I hold a gathering of local comics artists called ART NIGHT, for instance. I'd like a place to put that, but just have one topic area here, with no control over users (say I want to make that one private to just the locals, say.)
Plus, it would give a bunch of my friends from various circles a reason to join my forum in the first place. I play music, I hang out with scientists, have old college buddies. All of which are not here. I also know that being a part of larger forum collective turns some people off to signing up in the first place (no offense to TAC, but it's bigger than most of us, now, and is pretty intimidating to some newcomers.) On a similar note, it would be nice to be more than just another face in a huge crowd.
Anyway, if nothing else, it would force me to focus on the forum, since it would be my sole responsibility, and that is big motivation right there.
So, that's my thinking at the moment. Perhaps it's flawed, but there it is.
The update schedule doesn't help, and I doubt that can be changed without sacrifice art quality.
I'm not a huge forum junkie in general (barely enough time to read each day's batch of comics), but in my experience this has a lot to do with it. Some boards do become self-sustaining with little-or-no input from the creator. But most need a fuel source, and the greater the fuel supply, the brighter the fire.
BTW, I really don't think your input to the board could really have a quieting effect. Oh perhaps if somebody asks a question, your answering it will halt a long stream of speculation, but I suspect that's not the issue here. Most people use the forum partly to feel closer to the creator. I consider creator participation a big draw, and I think most other people do too.
Since PS is not becoming a 4-panel daily any time soon (don't you even THINK of it!), the key for you is going to be getting a critical mass of the right people who:
A: like each other and like chatting,
2: are kept apart by time and/or space,
D: have time available to spend on the board.
(My own limitiation is "D".)
This leads me to suspect that hosting your own board with different forums might be a good idea. Have a "general" forum for general chit-chat, and a comic forum to discuss the comic itself. Given the update rate, you'll probably find that the comic forum doesn't generate a whole lot more traffic than this one, but the general forum has some good possibilities.
One final thought. Back when I did some creative endevours, I thrived on feedback from my audience. I don't know if this would apply to you, but for me having a general conversation forum wouldn't have been particularly interesting or helpful. I wanted feedback, dammit! I guess a lively general forum would have some spill-over effect, so maybe it's still a good idea, but I still suspect it's not the key here.
IMHO, the best way for you to get feedback on the comic would be to improve the integration of the comic and the feedback mechanism. In my case, my creative output was actually posted to the forum itself, so all readers had to do was enter their comments right then and there. For a comic like yours, some kind of comments-per-page thing that gets saved with each page (for late-comers) would probably do the most to generate discussion. Alas, unless you're a CGI wizard and write it yourself, it might be hard to find a good package.
P.S. - one very simple reason for a lack of forum activity might be the fact that "forum" link at the *top* of the MT page sends you to the general MT forum, not to yours. My first thought after clicking that one was to say, "huh, I guess there isn't a PS forum." Fortunately, I was observant enough to notice the *second* "forum" link at the bottom of the page.
I guess that's kind of a variant on my "integration" point - the easier it is for a reader to get there and make a comment, the more it will happen.
Joined: 29 May 2002 Posts: 583 Location: Chicago, IL
Posted: Tue Nov 21, 2006 9:33 am Post subject:
That's actually some very useful input. I've been talking with someone about helping me get a forum running on my own servers in the near future. Especially after hanging out at Spike's forums since their inception, I can think of a lot of good reasons to have my own to customize. Seperate discussion areas alone would be worth it.
As for comment integration, that is a little harder to do, especially considering my archive style (pages stacked on top of each other -- "elevator scrolling", Joey likes to call it.) In the near term, I want to get the comments engine on my newsblog going again. I had big problem with spam a while back, so I ended up shutting it down so I didn't have to constantly delete the spam. It would seem I need to upgrade my version of WordPress, but I'll need the help of a coder to do it. That is also in the cards.
If you do get your own forum, perhaps copy across some of the interesting threads on this one. Its good for new readers to be able to look at past discussions & it'd be a shame to lose stuff like the Chinese Restaurant translations or the Worst Critic Ever posts
Joined: 13 Jan 2004 Posts: 420 Location: Opatija, Croatia
Posted: Sat Dec 23, 2006 8:25 pm Post subject:
In my experience, small- to mid-sized webcomic community forums tend to generate most visits (see pre-BLC-Nightstar, BLC, Keenspot), while single-comic forums mostly only work when the comic is pretty famous and/or has a rabid fanbase...
It's preferable to have comics with similar audiences joined.
Though, talkaboutcomics is too expansive. I read several of the comics with forums in here, and while I'm glad that I can access all of them with only bothering with one account, it's pretty hard to find them in the swamp of links. As a result, I only come around here once in a while. _________________ Ride The Wild Wind - Push the envelope, don't sit on the fence
Ride The Wild Wind - Live life on the razor's edge
Joined: 29 May 2002 Posts: 583 Location: Chicago, IL
Posted: Mon Jan 01, 2007 5:23 pm Post subject:
Yeah, it's a quandry. TAC is just so gigantic, and I don't have any room for customization. I'm considering moving to a new webhost this year for my personal sites (www.dynamanga.net, www.paradigmshiftmanga.com,www.dirktiede.com), so if I do, I may just start up my own forum. It may give me more incentive to post more often and do some organization. We'll see. First I've got to get the updates rolling, though.
Joined: 29 May 2002 Posts: 583 Location: Chicago, IL
Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2007 2:07 am Post subject:
So, due to the recent blog crash, I've purchased some brand new server digs, and I'm in the process of the moving my sites over. It'll take a few days, and there may be some server dropouts between now and then.
However, the upshot is that not only will I be revamping a new, more robust blog, but that also means I'm going to start a BRAND NEW FORUM.
This one won't be going away, but I'm going to shoot to have just about everybody I know both online and off join us over there.
If I may, another comic that I keep track of on a regular basis is Zebra Girl by Joe England. It too has a weekly update schedual... if that. At times, it has been very sporadic, with updates as much as a month apart. However, the forums are very lively. So it is possible to get a lively community going with a weekly comic.
Its worth noting, though, that while Zebra Girl has the advantage of advertising via Keenspot (not to say that your advertising is ineffective... I found your comic through a small banner link on Dresden Codak!), it also has a different storytelling style. Zebra girl tends to pack a lot of information into individual updates, which gives the fans a lot to chew on between updates, where Paradigm Shift updates don't contain much in each of them. I find that it means the story is very well paced... it's certainly an absolute joy to read through the archives. You also give each panel every inch of space it needs... limiting the amount of room an individual page has for storytelling.
To sum that up: your pacing is excaberating the wait between updates somewhat.
It also doesn't help that you've got such a facinating story that it's tough to wait and see what happens.
Joined: 29 May 2002 Posts: 583 Location: Chicago, IL
Posted: Wed Feb 28, 2007 5:07 pm Post subject:
Wow. Zebra Girl. I remember that one. I haven't read that in ages.
You definitely make a valid point. Ideally, PS would be better served if I could update it closer to 2-3 times a week, information wise. I've often wondered how my decision to treat the story as a whole affects my online readership. However, the fact remains that I conceived PS as a novel ultimately to be read as a whole, rather than to optimize it for serialization which really will only affect each page for a week at a time. Yeah, it means squeezing in less per update, but it also guarantees that there will be continued updates, since cramming pages full of information leads to a much more difficult layout (and writing) process.
However, in regards to the new forum, I'm hoping to turn it into something beyond just a place to discuss comic. The plan is to get more people over here from other parts of my friend groups. For instance, I know quite a few people from the convention scene; I run a art group here in Chicago and regularly attend dinners with scientists and other creative folk; plus there are folks who I know from older email lists, LiveJournal and now DeviantArt (like you, starstriker), and it would be really nice if I could get everyone gathered into a single location for a change. I expect discussions on anything from the latest BSG episode to the current state of science; from art critiques to plans to create monuments for future civilizations. I have odd friends, after all.
Plus, we'd have the advantage of being the admin so I can customize the board to match the direction the discussions go. Need a seperate ART NIGHT forum? Done. Need to help someone with their account? No problem. You get the idea.
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