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So...Clubs... Can we talk about them?


EH_STEVE

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Clubs were implemented here a short while ago, seemed like a decent idea at the time. But, personally, I've grown to dislike the entire concept. I find it's bringing traffic down or at the least, hiding it. Unless I'm missing something here, if I don't actively go to a Club, then pick topics (or however it's sorted), I have no easy way to see if anything's been posted in it. It's like a hide and seek of posts.

 

Not only that but I find there's a more than a few one or two posts only per topic in a lot of these. No discussion. Just a "hey look at this". And that's it. Seems counter-intuitive to achieving the increased traffic and conversation we want going on here, again, unless I'm missing something?

 

I'm not saying we should get rid of them, but I think as a community we should discuss their usefulness as a tool for the Forum. Because, I'm starting to not see it.

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I personally think clubs are a fine idea conceptually but it does seem like a thing that can only fully work to its strengths depending on the community, their general level of interest in them, and how well they can actually make use of them. Before implementing the feature I did research and see how it was being used on other sites running the same forum software as us and it was appealing for me to see it being used to host new discussions by allowing user-created pages, so naturally I felt it was worth trying out for us here. It's not a feature I anticipated would redefine our site in any sense but I do think it's good that we've pursued it and can at least say we've experimented with it to see how we could benefit. If it doesn't work then it's not a big deal since we don't really need it to provide the basic needs for site like this.

 

If it has to come down to it, I don't have a problem with seeing clubs removed if people feel they're more trouble than their worth, and we wouldn't have to lose anything because I believe there's a way to just move any discussions from them to their respective forums.

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3 minutes ago, Deen said:

I honestly don't check them _at all_ purely because of the few extra clicks for them, not sure if anyone else is sharing that perspective though.

Yeah that makes a lot of sense to me, I don't think that's at all unreasonable. Accessibility matters a lot to any kind of feature so any extra effort needed to get to them does hold them back from being used more. Unfortunately I'm not sure if there's a better way to actually improve that here without going into excess leverage that would make it seem like clubs would replace conventional posting, which I'd rather avoid because I feel that's too drastic of a change for little gain.

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40 minutes ago, Deen said:

I honestly don't check them _at all_ purely because of the few extra clicks for them, not sure if anyone else is sharing that perspective though.

That's basically me as well...

 

Perhaps encourage phasing discussion out of them but keep a Club for WHAT and maybe one for each Game Night? Plus, I'm not saying disable them. There's still use to keep all of one's similar topics in one place, especially if there all by a user that wants to document all their articles together; almost like an archive.

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15 minutes ago, EH_STEVE said:

That's basically me as well...

 

Perhaps encourage phasing discussion out of them but keep a Club for WHAT and maybe one for each Game Night? Plus, I'm not saying disable them. There's still use to keep all of one's similar topics in one place, especially if there all by a user that wants to document all their articles together; almost like an archive.

I like having them around. But I can see where you're coming from too.

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I think it's worth keeping in mind that contrary to how it might seem otherwise there's really just a few people playing Mario Kart for like an hour or two once a week and there's no real game night scene beyond this anymore, and most chat they have about Mario Kart is actually held on the Discord server because that better suits the ephemeral nature of those discussions. So I'm not sure if clubs are capable of providing anything of real value specifically for game nights because clubs don't solve any problems game night people are having and just don't offer anything better than what they were already working with before clubs were implemented.

 

I can agree clubs may potentially still be beneficial for the site, but I don't know if game nights are necessarily what should be focused on in solving that.

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Clubs are basically the subforums we always wanted but for some stupid reason you can't post in there unless "you're a member"

 

I've found myself interested in replying to a number of threads that show up on the side bar but found my self immediately leaving because I couldn't. I'm not going to go around "joining" a bunch of groups just for the privledge of replying to a thread now and then. Great concept for a more popular forum but a terrible divider for an already low-traffic forum.

 

I think it's ok for things like events and game matches, but when it comes to things like discussion for an entire franchise some of these threads would have been better posted on the General Nintendo forum.

Edited by Carl321
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I'd also like to echo the sentiment that clubs weren't a bad idea; just not the best one for a community as small as ours.

 

In fact, I was considering starting a thread for players of Fire Emblem Heroes to help each other with team building, but then realized that some of the most active people in the general FEH thread aren't even in the Archanean League.

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Personally, I'm only in one club and it's a joke club that I was invited to. I have no intention of looking for and joining other clubs simply because it's so much additional effort. I would much rather discussions just be posted in regular forums where it's easier to see activity and contribute.

 

In general, I don't really think it's good for a community as small as this one to splinter and hide discussion. If clubs and their threads were more easily accessible, such as appearing like a regular forum/subforum for members, that would be another thing entirely.

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On 9/8/2017 at 3:21 PM, Carl321 said:

Clubs are basically the subforums we always wanted but for some stupid reason you can't post in there unless "you're a member"

 

I've found myself interested in replying to a number of threads that show up on the side bar but found my self immediately leaving because I couldn't. I'm not going to go around "joining" a bunch of groups just for the privledge of replying to a thread now and then. Great concept for a more popular forum but a terrible divider for an already low-traffic forum.

 

I think it's ok for things like events and game matches, but when it comes to things like discussion for an entire franchise some of these threads would have been better posted on the General Nintendo forum.

Just pointing out one thing. I'm the only one that has a "Public Club."

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Clubs keep all the discussion there and thus any threads pertaining to why a certain club exists aren't in the main board anymore so it doesn't look like there is any activity on the topic.

 

As far as game nights go....  both Mario Kart nights have had significant drop offs in number of racers.

 

Tuesday and Saturday Smash Nights died in January of this year... as much as I'd even consider a club for a game night with them or even buming the threads again... it was a futile task as no one but me posted or cared to show up so down went  BOTH Smash game nights.

 

Then, even the Switch Game night I tried to start because of all the multiplayer games like Bomberman, Tetris, Splatoon, and now some indie titles.... but no one wants to play.... its worthless to revisit them.

 

And it does seem like even the Clubs themselves aren't that active...

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