23 replies to this topic

[holy]

Me and others have discussed having this secton, so thought we would make it to see how it turns out. It is located under Media Allstars.

[Explosion]

Awesome holy!

[nekomimimode]

fukken sweet

[Archangel]

Seriously?...
We didn't even have much pokemans discussion in the vidya section.
Can't be helped.

[Zephiel]

I wouldn't mind it as a subsection of video games, I guess, but like Archangel said we only have a lot of Pokemon discussion and stuff due to the new games, which in this case I guess would be fine a subsection video games but I don't think it would warrant it's own section. Before the black/white stuff it wasn't even discussed nearly as much as a few other things. Heck, we have a lot of people interested in RPing (2 club's worth and then some) but we still don't have an RP section. I mean hey it's fine if you guys think we need this, it doesn't REALLY bug me, I just think in a little while the pokehype will drop off and we'll have another random section which doesn't get much activity so a subsection might make more sense.

[Jatts]

..... seriously? There are many more people who have been asking for a RP section for awhile now and we don't get that. But then the new pokemans come out and suddenly we need a section about it I guess...

[Fusion?]

I concur. Pokemon really didn't need its own forum. I think it would look better as a subforum of Video Games. Because it's one of them.

Roleplay was much more deserving of a main forum, and a constant audience for that matter.

[chk]

Yes please. Since long time, i felt encouraged to contribute something. I'm not posting very often as you might notice, but i did in the Pokemon threads. I might not be a Pokemon expert, but i sure like talking about it and perhaps helping others.

[Zephiel]

 Karusune Kiyoraka, on 10 March 2011 - 03:06 PM, said:

>Create new section to contain excitement of a popular thing
>Everyone complains because they are not being specifically addressed

I would appreciate it if you didn't generalize Karu, I was just using RP as an example because of how popular it is. I could have said "Tales of" as well as that was immensely popular at one time on the site, etc. as well as Yu-Gi-Oh.

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This is why we can't have nice things.

Also, Pokemon is not just a game. It's also an Anime, trading card game, brand name, among other things. Saying it belongs in video games is wrong. :/

Fair enough, but so are many other games in this case. Does this mean we need an entirely different section for it? I'll use Yu-Gi-Oh as an example. We've often had many times were it's come back into popularity and people have sought out to play eachother and discuss it in various aspects; people want to play the TCG online, in some instances the anime is discussed, and there are also several games. However, one of these aspects are far more popular than the other and is the main thing that gets dicusssed. We don't have nearly as much discussion on the pokemon anime, brand, or TCG as there are on the games, the same is true for Yu-Gi-Oh as a TCG/Games which is why they do not need their own individual section.

EDIT: Looking at the pokemon section, at least 80% to 90% of the topics are about the games specifically anyways.

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Edit: Let's not forget that three or four doujinstyle.com members alone own their own RP communities and there are at least a thousand of them out there. Whenever someone tries to create one, you guys never get involved, and then it falls apart, but then you complain about NOT having an RP section. Seems rather ludicrous to me.

Perhaps because not everyone wants to go off into another community entierly and we would rather have everything be centralized? I don't know about some members, but I've stayed on DS for so long due to many reasons, one of which is that it has become my central forum and any activity on other forums has either dropped off or decreased immensly because I spend much more time checking DS and posting here. If RP was centralized here, people could just stay here and post here without having to register on 4 different communities. Also, perhaps people have personal reasons for not doing so, maybe they don't like the way things are done on those sites and thus didn't join.

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Edit 2: For those complaining about creating a section just because something has all of the sudden become popular again due to the release of a new game: you have 0 right to complain. That's how this website became DoujinStyle. It was ALL based around the same idea; this website was originally centered around media games and included Touhou just because it was getting popular because of a game release. So holy added the section to the website. If you disagree with Pokemon having a section because of the speculation of interest, then you disagree with Touhou being on this website as well.

I wasn't around before the site was DS so I can't say too much about this. However, Touhou has continued to rise in popularity over time at a much greater pace for the online community/DS community than Pokemon has. Yes, we have many members who are deeply into the games, but why not create a pokemon club then? Is pokemon so drastically changing to the site that if it was in an open club it would be totally different than it's own area?

[Zephiel]

 Karusune Kiyoraka, on 10 March 2011 - 04:48 PM, said:

First of all, generalization seems to be working quite well in this case to prove my point therefore I would say the generalization is quite fitting considering that most of the complains seem to come from people who have a specific intention in mind when they are making a claim. If it proves my case, I generalize. There's nothing wrong with that. I am not generalizing in the essence of an attack, but in the general intention of from what I see since people seem to love to complain when we add something and it's not necessarily what they wanted. We saw that with the download removals, the change to IPB, the recent updates, changes made to the theme, adding a dark theme, adding new moderators, and I could keep going on and on and on but I think I successfully proved my point. We're not going to make everyone happy and I am not going to try to make everyone happy because if I tried to do that again, I would end up leaving again.

I would love to see you bring any statistics to play before making these claims. If you haven't already seen, the pokemon area is becoming quite popular already and we are keeping it in beta to see if in a few weeks if it is still doing rather well, and if so we are going to keep it in there. There is absolutely no harm in doing this and to attack the idea seems rather absurd considering you're being provided a free community where we actually do take into account what the users are saying before we do things here on the website. Hence why Keiro himself made personal sacrifices of quite a lot of money to keep the website up so that we could have a website that actually loads quickly and properly.

Well I guess this is my fault for misunderstanding your intentions then, and for that I apologize. And no, I don't think you should go out to try and make everyone happy because I know full well what that will lead to.

I'm not saying you went off half-cocked and just threw this together on a whim, even though I know full well as an administrator you or anyone else in that position has that power and that right. Sure, there is no harm in testing the waters and by no means do I mean to come off as "OH GOD NO, TAKE THAT SHIT DOWN RIGHT NOW", I just question it's longevity and I may be dead wrong and it'll turn into it's own thriving thing. Yes, the area is becoming more popular, but is that different with most clubs that start out with a boom of activity and a bust of activity? To say that it's going incredibly well based off of just a couple of days worth of information seems a little too soon to me for this sort of thing. Again, I may be wrong and it may turn out great given time, perhaps it'll only continue to grow. But just to say that it's super popular right after it's creation seems sort of premature. I don't think it'd be alright on either end to bring statistics in for that reason alone; it's like if I wanted to say my club had a 100% increase in activity from nothing only after just having made it and getting people involved, the data doesn't mean anything yet.

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The biggest thing that people discuss when it comes to Touhou, from my view point, is the games. Yet, we have a Touhou music section there as well. There are more pokemon fans than touhou fans therefore by that logic, we really should be breaking pokemon down into other areas if we were seriously interested in going into it, but it's merely a side thing that we know people enjoy. A lot of people keep it in the closet because there really isn't much pokemon discussion, but from everyone that I have talked to and from the looks of that section (have you even LOOKED in that section?) the need for the section was actually quite overwhelming. There are people that aren't even playing black and white posting in there. If it dies, we remove it, if not, then we don't. There's no reason to even complain about it from that point of view.

I absolutely agree this is more discussion on the games with regards to Touhou than mostly anything else, and I'm sure after it got put on the site it's activity slowly grew and rose to what it is today. Pokemon might very well follow that same trend, I'm not trying to argue "Oh it'll fail" anymore since thinking about it in this sense has definitely changed my viewpoint on that. And yes, I have looked at the section and I noticed the majority of the threads are about specifically the games and judging from what I know of Pokemon fans that will only continue to rise.. I honestly don't think that many people are attached to the anime, perhaps the TCG or brand as whole though so I will concede that. I just think giving it it's entirely own section when one aspect clearly stands out so much more than the others is a bit much. The difference between Touhou and Pokemon is that while both sides discuss the games much more than the other, I would go so far as to say Touhou has more fans of it's sub-categories (Music, anime/manga, etc.) than Pokemon does in respect to a ratio for each. Yes, we have had many topics about Pokemon games, but comparatively few about the anime/manga, etc. where as Touhou has spawned many topics about the games and quite a few about random other areas. Again; I stress that given enough time yes this same trend may follow with Pokemon as a whole on this site so testing the water for a few weeks is definitely a good idea and I appreciate that the admins are taking the time to test and get information before just throwing something out and sticking with that. All I am saying is judging from what I have seen and what I know from past experience on the board; the games generate so much more discussion than anything else so taking into account those minor areas seems fruitless (and again, comparatively speaking I think there are many more Pokemon fans who ONLY care about the games than there are Touhou fans who ONLY care about the games).

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Sorry if not adding a section for (insert topic here) means you might have to spend 2 minutes of your time registering on another board. There are thousands if not millions of RP communities out there and very few actual touhou/doujin communities. There are quite a few pokemon communities, but if you ask the people here that discuss it you would see that most of those communities are not enjoyable because of the types of communities they are and the types of people they generally attract. I would say we have a rather mature community around here, therefore we can expect people to be able to maturely discuss pokemon here.

Who's to say the same is not true for RP communities? There are a ton of them but that doesn't mean their quality is any good. Perhaps people feel like those communities are too immature, too serious, etc. for them to want to join them. I agree that DS is a mature community with a lot of great members, perhaps that's why people would like to have a RP community here instead of going elsewhere. To simply say "Well tough, there are a lot of great RP communities go find them" could be equally argued with "I'm sure there are quality Pokemon communities as well, why not find them", but that's just the thing; we LIKE it here. There are a lot of RP places where we don't want to be in that kind of community; could be some people are way too serious, some people aren't serious enough, or just that we prefer to stay here with people who we know and we can easily interact with. I have no problem with the section being here if it generates that level of activity and is truly wanted by the members, I just feel an entire section devoted to something where one large thing in it stands out to such an overshadowing extreme as it's other parts is a bit much.

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Let's also not forget the person that runs the website, owns it, and decided to put in the pokemon section because that really plays a part here. holy wanted to add the area because IRC discussion has been about 90% pokemon since before Black and White even came out for the last couple of weeks. There has been a lot of discussion, and some people playing the older games, therefore we decided to try it's own section.

I don't go on IRC very much, so I will take your word for it. However, I ask you again; how much of the discussion is about the games and how much of it is about random other things. IRC is sort of it's own separate community from the site at times from what I gather, so it may be entirely different; but I am sure that more people care so much more about the games with regards to Pokemon than those who care equally about the games an another aspect of it.

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Stepmania had it's own section before and it died. There is more activity right now in the pokemon section than there is in the DOUJIN section.

There is more activity in tMS, the Touhou section, and probably a few other sections than in the Doujin section. Obviously because the section is new, there is a new game in the series, etc. there will be more activity than the dwindling Doujin section. Again; taking into account data right out of the gate on this sort of thing strikes me as premature. Was the Doujin section not highly active when it was first put out there as well? Do you think that if a new section was made around something such as MMOs, a specific popular anime, etc. it wouldn't also see a very quick peak in activity from it's creation?

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Before you start making a case on why we should throw pokemon into a club or somewhere that no one can see just because you don't want to see it, perhaps you could take a look at it and wait to see if it dies down. Just because it's not your cup of tea doesn't mean it's not someone else's.

I'm more than willing to wait and see what happens before I say "Get rid of it entirely," I just feel that it'd be best as a game subforum.

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Isn't there already an RP club anyway? Or did that die off when it wasn't active enough?

Actually there are two RP clubs and I know I do have activity in mine and I'm very sure the other is probably more active than the Doujin section. But I'm not going to get into a RP club vs RP club argument.

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I understand the interest in an RP community, but I guarantee it would die off over time or it wouldn't be as active as even the Doujin area because I have seen other areas try it that have a userbase that is quite similar to DoujinStyle's own user base. Roleplaying is more of a hobby than anything else and there are a lot of communities out there. I even tried to start one of DoujinStyle users where people wouldn't even have to register, they would just bring their own account from DoujinStyle and be good to go that way we could really expand the section. There was NO INTEREST in it.

I vaguely recall that as well, but again; it was off-site, have we tried an onsite RPing section? I can only think of people making clubs. In total there have been probably 4 or 5 RP clubs, more so for one particular thing than most other clubs (unless you can't clubs for just random chit chat). There IS interest in RPing, but I believe it isn't as present because there isn't a section and we WANT to stay here to RP because we greatly enjoy this community. Like you said; you made the Pokemon section and WHAM lots of users making lots of posts, maybe RPers would do the same. Also: Pokemon is also a hobby as much as any other video game/series is.

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As far as other games and whatnot, why not bring it up, start a petition, or talk to holy about it? If you guys never voice your opinions, you don't have any right to complain when you don't get what you want. I never see discussion about it and I sure as hell only hear about it when people want to complain about other things we do.

Perhaps because we hear things like "there is no interest in it" which sort of makes it seem like the idea will be shot down before it even get's considered? True, people SHOULD make a thread about it for discussion somewhere and perhaps after all of this, I will do just that.

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By the way, your argument about Touhou becoming more popular in DoujinStyle is flawed. The DoujinStyle userbase is not your target population, so why limit it only to that? Your population is anyone that might be interested in this community. Look at the searches for "pokemon" and "touhou" using Google's keyword suggestion tool. Pokemon CRUSHES touhou in searches and search interest. You can't even compare them.

tl;dr: It's all fine and dandy if you have an opinion, but don't attack it just because you don't like it. You don't seem to have any REAL reason why pokemon shouldn't be there.

I don't understand what you meant to say here, I was meaning to say that more and more people come to DS for Touhou and Touhou specific things than Doujin or other things. Obviously outside of DS, I am wrong in that assumption and I worded myself poorly.

tl;dr: My reasoning is that it should be a sub forum of games because the games outweigh everything else in the series when it comes to what is popular about it here or online; The pokemon section from what I have seen is much more so about the games than it's subcategories. It's not that I don't like it, I dabble in Pokemon Online myself, I just don't feel it warrants it's own section when there isn't that much interest in anything else other than the games.

Edit: Really, if your biggest complaint is that the section shouldn't be there, I do partially agree. However, that's an entirely different discussion. If your biggest complaint is that there are sections that deserve it more, that's up to us to decide. You guys might not agree with it, but if it works I don't see a problem. People can create a club for what they want. That was the point. If your biggest complaint is that Pokemon doesn't deserve it's own section, good luck with that. 

Spoiler

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If it works, it works, I won't argue there but I think it's still too early for either of us to call it. I'm not complaining that anything else deserves it more, though other people may voice that opinion it is not my argument, I'm simply using RP as an example because it is something which I know has underlying popularity on DS much like Pokemon.

[Jatts]

We should have a new section for My Little Pony as well.

[Zephiel]

 Karusune Kiyoraka, on 10 March 2011 - 06:41 PM, said:

Your arguments are actually quite strong in support of an RP community. I'd be willing to go with a trial (and have actually asked holy about) for an RP section, but it was shot down in the past. RP sites come with a lot of drama usually because you get one person that believes they are better than another and vice versa, and it causes clashes. If you really want to push the RP idea, why not bring together a petition of the users on the website and then bring it to holy?

Thank you, and perhaps I will when I get the time. It's something which has been on my mind almost since joining the site as I came from a community with an excellent RPing section and brilliant RPers. And yes, I agree that most of the time it's due to a one or a few people causing problems in the community either in character through god-modding, etc. or out of it by bickering with the other users of what they ought to do. I believe I vaguely recall a push for an RP section before and it wound up being turned down for various reasons or just because it didn't fit the forum/lack of interest, but I believe our current user base would be interested. I'll probably see about making a post in general discussion or something to see if there is enough interest in having such a section or subforum.

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While I definitely do agree the video games have the most attention (at least 95% of it), we don't want to put it in the video games section for two reasons:

1. Many users are not interested in subforums as they require that extra click to access. You would be surprised how much of a difference a single click makes.
2. Even if there is little discussion of it, there is still reference to the content and relevance to the content that isn't part of the video game series. That's about the same relevance to Touhou Music and other non-game sections too.

I definitely understand that, I remember people complaining about how the polls for BEST DS MEMBER OF XYZ used to be stickies and people didn't just want to use pgdown or end on their keyboard to scroll past them quickly so yeah, having that extra bit of navigation is a factor.

Your second point is true as well and I will admit that even if I feel that the content is minimal enough to not be a concern much like how we do not have a section for Touhou Doujins or fan made anime because although there is interest there is not enough to warrant a section just for those. Perhaps in due time people will talk more about the other aspects of the series than just the games, hype works both ways and while I say that people only talk about the games, perhaps that is simply due to the new games and once that wears off other things will surface. This is why I do approve of the trial of the section that you guys are doing and we'll just have to wait and see what happens before we start making predictions I suppose.

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When Doujin was first put on DS, there wasn't much discussion at all. There were downloads, people downloaded and they left. It was still one of the least popular, but there was a lot of posting here and there depending on the releases and if people needed help with specific things in regards to the games. Whenever we have added a new section, it has generally grown over time and has kept steady if it's serving a purpose. I do honestly believe we have more pokemon fans than we do almost anything else here aside from the obvious Touhou, and when you combine that you really have an opportunity. Why not expand to something that seems fit?

I guess as I do not hang out on IRC and can only speak for the people I interact with then perhaps I do not have the full scope of this and maybe there is a greater need for it than I first suspected. I can't speak for everyone and yeah you would know better than me who wants what as you are active in IRC and have been around longer, all I can say is what I see and from the places I hang out at and the people I generally talk to the interest didn't seem as high.

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If you have ever been to pure pokemon communities, you will notice a downgrade in maturity for the most part. There are mature pokemon fans, but they are harder to find and discussion usually becomes arguments or people not understanding what is being discussed. We don't suffer that here at DoujinStyle, therefore having a pokemon section (even if it's just a single forum) does make sense. I can't think of anything else personally that has that much of a following. I am sure there are things that people like, but it's not at the same capacity as Pokemon. Actually, the only other thing that is still relevant that is no longer covered seems to be music games, and even for those that it is still relevant to, there isn't much discussion anymore. Even if there was a Stepmania section, I am convinced that it would die.

Edit: I originally suggested we put it in the hobbies section, tbh.

I don't think it's necessary to even need to look at the pure communities to see that as pokemon has more or less become a series of memes for a lot of people which attracts the wrong crowds more often than not so I am sure this is true as well. I'd say that perhaps an MMO specific section may be relevant as we have had many instances of DS members romping together in them but I digress as I'd still believe that would work better as a subsection than it's own media section since MMOs are games and not a multi-media series (not to mention I sparsely play them anymore anyways). In the end, the best thing to do is just wait and see what happens, I never was arguing we cut the testing process and just move/drop it entirely, I just wanted to make my stance on things clear and say what I felt would best suit it for a location.

Also, I do recall that now that you mention it, I think it was agreed on at the time that there wasn't enough interest as a forum to make it but now that we have many more people who are into RPing I think we could manage it. Like I said, I'll probably make a post in general or something to see who is interested then send it off if I feel there is enough support.

[holy]

Theres been like 3 RP clubs I have had to delete in the past due to inactivity, why would I make a forum for it?

[Zephiel]

 holy, on 10 March 2011 - 07:32 PM, said:

Theres been like 3 RP clubs I have had to delete in the past due to inactivity, why would I make a forum for it?

Although this isn't really the place to discuss it...
At least two of them died due to their leaders leaving (the club started by Mikirin/Luna and the club started by WeightedCompanionCube) which caused activity to drop overall, even then there were only a handful of people in each club. Not to mention a lot of people don't like clubs for some reason. We now have two fairly active RP clubs and more members outside of those clubs who are interested in RPing which could be a difference, that and we don't have to worry about owners leaving in this case.

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Furthermore, those were 3 separate clubs, much like we have two separate clubs now. If ALL of those were in one area, one place, and ALL the members could interact I truly believe the activity wouldn't just fall flat.

[Tatsu011]

At first when I saw Zeph's wall of text, I thought it was a flame war about to begin, but as I read further, he brings up valid point.

My suggestion is that we should have an "Interactive Writing" section which can include Roleplays as well as CYOA's as well as Adventure Writings. Ive noticed that these become popular quite quickly.

[Zephiel]

 Karusune Kiyoraka, on 10 March 2011 - 09:29 PM, said:

In the past, roleplay threads have brought drama as well and are actually related to a few of the permanent bans currently set in place too. :/

Probably why it's healthy to develop that distinction between real and fantasy early on although I don't specifically know who or what happened. Just in my experience people cause drama because they feel ganged up on in the RP even if it makes sense in the context, someone is being mean even if it makes sense for them to do so, etc. People need to have that distinction but now we're pretty far off topic so I'll shaddap