Community Events Discussion

[jssf1992]

Alright, I've been wanting to have community events, both here and on the Discord.  Most of the normal members probably know me most for hosting the Remix Tournaments, and older members and staff probably know me best for how much I've pushed for community events over the years.

In following with that, I'm hoping to try to do more in future, and with more variety so that more members and members with different interests would join in and enjoy getting more involved with the community.

So, this thread is set up for further discussion of ideas, to both give ideas and respond to ideas given.  I would be very happy for any discussion, staff or not.

Obviously, forum games are something worth mentioning; Werewolf/Mafia and it's varieties, possible variations to the Remix Tournament, and others.

There have been a couple of art contests here, and perhaps doing something similar again.

We have had a tournament of sort for Touhou before, comparing scores of players, a bit involved, but possible.

Then of course, we've had Miracle Meet (a weekly meet-up to play games as a community) for a long time, but it has been a while since we had respectable participation.  Obviously, getting more people to participate would be nice.

Organizing longer cycles of trying to get people together to play something is one thing I would like to try doing.  Taking longer to organize one or two meet-ups and then move on to a different game/time might have some more success in today's uncertainties.

There is also D&D and other forms of roleplaying.  This has been brought up here more than once, but interest is has always been spotty.  Trying to get something like this going can be a daunting task, but can be a very rewarding one, speaking from experience.  However, such things would take more commitment than any other thing I've brought up.

 

[buskerdog]

The art thing is something I think could be a good idea. Although, making it less of a contest and more of just a making and sharing thing - so there is less pressure and also so people who might not consider themselves as "artists" might feel more inclined to join in (see: my Touhou Doodles thread)

My own suggestion and something I would absolutely LOVE to do is a Touhou-themed game jam. However, I'm not sure of how many technically able people there are to participate in that.

 

[Drunken_Flower]

actually i don't really know what to do
the Music Tournament is by far the most successful from all, though we barely got enough participants

Touhou doodles is a nice one, whether it being competetive or not.
we just need to keep it alive somehow. passerby also seems to post something once in a while.
people just feel "reluctant" to submit something. whether feeling not good enough or feel out of place.

last Art Contest is the only one successful in the new forum (i won the 2018 by the only one (privately) submitting but not really)
iirc there was a lot of participants in the old forum but yeah, idk where they go.

Game jam? im planning to learn game dev-ing but i cant get my lazy ass movin for some reason idk why. (help)

Miracle Meet have been exist for quite a time yeah, this one is also almost lacking in participants. it been decently alive for quite some time.
(for you who don't know what that is, basically weekly, we go on discord VC, do something either game or something something together)
though the problem is mostly because it being held in realtime, timezones does not help
also people with shitnet or potato computer having hard time to join
same can be said for Anime Night

RP...
i passionately despise RP, sorry

Touhou (Danmaku) Contest?
rember we have a "Perfectionist" Club? yeah me neither. It was active for a while but no one ever submitted somethin....

OH YEAH ALSO
I rember we ever got Doujin tournament, basically the same as the remix tournament but Doujin
maybe revive that one? (i barely read new doujin help) (Sakkun also missing)

also i rember there was an attempt for a Writing thread, not a tournament, just a thread.
where you make a story by the last image posted.
it died with 1 reply. (Cejic also missing)

rember we have Two Words Story? it's too chaotic.

basically
we don't have enough activity in general.
with forums being left in time with IRC existence.
combined with all the missing old forum history does not help.
also if you been scavenging in every corner of Touhou community, you know how is our reputation.

lemme count active members
me, Jssf, Busker, Garison, Ken
Dana(Amamiya) wouldn't come if aint (vaguely) sent a message on his discord.

Renko, Maribel, Sumireko
idk what they up to

Maden just fixing stuff
goddam Site Editors aint do nothin

some discord actives
oi @Kurzov be alive more

and some passerby

 

[Ken Hisuag]

i passionately despise RP, sorry

Ditto.

I don't have Discord; while I like the idea of the Miracle Meet, I can't think of a way I would be able to coordinate myself with it. I have no art skills to speak of, but I do have some experience in creative writing, so that would be a possibility. Not the #-words stuff, though; I've yet to understand how that's even supposed to work.

Forgive me for being unfamiliar with some terminology, but what does "Doujin" refer to in this context?

basically
we don't have enough activity in general.
with forums being left in time with IRC existence.
combined with all the missing old forum history does not help.
also if you been scavenging in every corner of Touhou community, you know how is our reputation.

lemme count active members
me, Jssf, Busker, Garison, Ken
Dana(Amamiya) wouldn't come if aint (vaguely) sent a message on his discord.

Renko, Maribel, Sumireko
idk what they up to

Maden just fixing stuff
goddam Site Editors aint do nothin

some discord actives
oi @Kurzov be alive more

and some passerby

Not to forget Nitorium and Rorogogo. or popcorn for that matter but . . .

I don't know what our reputation is, but I think I can probably guess. To be fair, some of the higher-ups have dipped a bit into the forums now and again (recent example being Dana's Share Music You Like), but a lot depends on the sub-interests we all have and how comfortable we each are with interaction and committed involvement. I made my account here almost a year before I actually got involved with any activities, and it took something I had an interest in already to secure that involvement. There's a few names I've occasionally seen pop back up unexpectedly, and it may just be a matter of putting out ideas until something catches on.

On that note, @frankdrawsnear has been around recently, so some art-themed activities may be a good idea.

 

[Drunken_Flower]

Forgive me for being unfamiliar with some terminology, but what does "Doujin" refer to in this context?

manga

 

[buskerdog]

lemme count active members
me, Jssf, Busker, Garison, Ken
Dana(Amamiya) wouldn't come if aint (vaguely) sent a message on his discord.

Renko, Maribel, Sumireko
idk what they up to

Maden just fixing stuff
goddam Site Editors aint do nothin

some discord actives
oi @Kurzov be alive more

and some passerby

@Clownpiece is also somewhat active, and although I thought @frankdrawsnear was just here for the art contest they also posted recently on my Touhou crossovers thread, so I guess he's around?

Prisimriver and Gundamfan used to be quite active, but I don't think they're around anymore...

I think part of the reason that a lot of people with registered accounts don't interact with the forums is because they're not that accessible; as in you have to go out of your way to actually get to the forums section. On the home page, what's the first thing you see? beeg sanae It's the discord, not the forums. And the only thing you really see from the forums on the home page is recent posts at the bottom, which sometimes aren't great because you don't get the context of the conversation. So maybe adding a "recently active threads" section to the home page, with a snippet of the opening post for that thread, would be a good addition. But now I'm getting into stuff that would involve restructuring the actual site; I'm not sure how difficult that would be or whether we should bother Nitorium with that.

 

[buskerdog]

(Cejic also missing)

Also even though he hasn't posted much @Cejic has been online recently.

Spoiler

Woah; Maden, DF, Cejic and myself all online at the same time.

View attachment 1579

 

[Maden]

I tried to look at the old forums in hopes to find some good ideas but unfortunately most snapshots on the Wayback machine are from that april fool's joke in 2014 :v
Lack of activity in the forums also seemed to be a problem in 2016/2017. Apparently due to staff changes and people migrating to Discord.
It's surely interesting to look at it and compare that to the current forum, but I shouldn't go too off-topic in this post.
 

Game tournaments only seem to work once or twice until people start to lose interest. At least that's how it's been whenever we tried it. Many who participated where also part of the Discord crowd and prefered to submit their replays there as well. Wouldn't hep the forums that much I'm afraid.

A game jam sounds nice, although I don't have any experience in game making myself. But as long as it stays casual that shouldn't be a problem. There are some easy to use enviroments available to make simple games. Should probably not matter if it's a joke game or not, as long as everyone has fun doing stuff.

Anything artistic sounds nice especially if it's also casual to make it easy for others to participate. No idea if it'd be something for me though, as I'd want myself to contribute something beyond basic stick figures. Been a while since I tried to draw stuff and never tried creative writing.
You guys don't happen to be interested in something related to papercraft, right? That's one of the few things that I'd manage to pull off, or so I think. :^) Unfortunately that might require some equipment that not everyone happens to have lying around somewhere. But that wasn't a serious suggestion anyways.

I think part of the reason that a lot of people with registered accounts don't interact with the forums is because they're not that accessible; as in you have to go out of your way to actually get to the forums section. On the home page, what's the first thing you see? beeg sanae It's the discord, not the forums. And the only thing you really see from the forums on the home page is recent posts at the bottom, which sometimes aren't great because you don't get the context of the conversation. So maybe adding a "recently active threads" section to the home page, with a snippet of the opening post for that thread, would be a good addition. But now I'm getting into stuff that would involve restructuring the actual site; I'm not sure how difficult that would be or whether we should bother Nitorium with that.

Yeah I get what you mean. Things might not get the focus they need since we've merged the forums and the rest of the website into one big entity instead of them being seperate things. Maybe I'll think of a way to restructure the bar above without making it too crowded again. Wanting to keep it relatively short was the reason why the Forum doesn't have it's own section and is instead included into the Community category.
Many people also register just for the download aspect of the site if I had to take a guess, so that may make it hard to tell who's actually interested in the forums or who's here for downloads and maybe to request some tech support.
We can definitely look into changing things on the home page. Should be doable. Maybe it'll come with seasonal images again as I'm working on the site again

View attachment 1580

Also, you'd be surprised how many people say they never noticed the discord link after months or years of using the site

 

[jssf1992]

Nice to see a lot of thoughts, even if some of it's negative.

This wasn't intended for just the forum, since that seems to be a question.  I see the Discord and Forum as two sides of the community, Discord as the faster, looser side, and the forum as the slower, calmer side.  Although, I would think that the forum is more suited to actual events because of that, I also acknowledge that I'm biased.

Lack of activity and participants definitely would be a concern, but I strongly believe in 'build it and they will come'.  This isn't without some backing to it either, we get a lot of traffic, but only a small group of people actually stick around the forum for more than one or two posts.  Those that do, you'll notice, are the ones that get involved with the most active topic here: music.  This actually mirrors what happened with the original forum; many of the OG staff and members were actively interested in roleplaying and Werewolf, and thus many people joined that were interested those things (including myself), to point where roleplaying was the last thing happening on the second forum.

Thus, I think there is some logic to thinking that holding other types of events would draw in people interested in them.  This wouldn't happen instantly of course, which would mean starting small, but I do think such a thing could work out.  Of course, I'm also hoping some people would see this thread and chime in (no need to be afraid to do so, if someone reading this needs the reasurrance!).

also if you been scavenging in every corner of Touhou community, you know how is our reputation.

I wouldn't know, as this is the only Touhou community I interact with, but I can guess.

Though, I prefer the comedic type of role play.

I am the reverse, sadly.  Probably part of why I've leaned more toward structured rpgs in recent years.

The history of Miracle Meet is an odd one, as it wasn't always what it currently is (originally being an opportunity for members to talk directly to staff, not really needed in the day of accessable voice chat), and it could probably stand to go through a new change.  That said, longer planned and thought out meet-ups might get better traction.

A game jam could be interesting, if I have the right idea of what that means.  I know there are a few around that have some of the RPG maker series, though I might be the only one active currently.  I know there are some other software that work similarly.

 

[Drunken_Flower]

Actually, when I first came here, I didn't have a Discord account, so there was no Discord option showing for me. So the Discord option only shows if you're logged into Discord, otherwise it remains invisible, which can be confusing, but kind of makes sense.

wait what really?
that Invite panel is relatively new, not even a year or so maybe
maybe, if i recall correctly, maybe
replacing a small simple invite panel before it

FYI in the beginning there's just a WidgetBot on the bottom left of the screen which pop up messages everytime someone sent a message on the #general chat, you can imagine how many notification show up.
then it get deleted in few weeks.

 

[Drunken_Flower]

that was out of topic but yes

so yeah, back to the topic which is i don't really know what to do.
Forums nowadays just used as archive, like "how to" stuff, guides, QnA, reviews, memes(?), long term project, logs, blog (OH YEAH anyone know we have blog section? yeah me neither) and etc.
i mean at least that how i use it for other communities,
like, i always search for stuff before asking questions. for example "how to fix th06 D3DX9_43.dll"
those goddamn games not working reports aint even look in the bug/issues section first, heck they aint even post questions in the right place.
probably something like a long in-depth discussion work best here

about art section
yeah maybe i can fill that up, but if i post too much i might intimidate newcomers, which is not what we want
i do few mentoring here n there, but not many listen to me 

 

[Cejic]

In my experience the activity feed was nothing but "___ changed their profile picture", even with active threads. 

I've got the activity feed as mt phone homepage so i remember to check is every so often.

I'd love to see the forum moving again, unfortunately im short on time and motivation for hearding cats. Between job hunting, coding, and twitch its all a bit much. That being said if theres something specific i can help with do let me know.

 

[Kurzov]

Hm

 

[jssf1992]

Kind of sad that this died off so quick, but still . . . 

I was thinking about starting another Remix Tournament soon . . . but I kind of want to see if anyone else would like to host, as I would like to be a normal participant again at some point.

 

[buskerdog]

Kind of sad that this died off so quick, but still . . . 

I was thinking about starting another Remix Tournament soon . . . but I kind of want to see if anyone else would like to host, as I would like to be a normal participant again at some point.

I could do it.

 

[Ken Hisuag]

Kind of sad that this died off so quick, but still . . .

I don't know that it died off. The discussion was had, and suggestions were made both here and in new thread Maden made (likely in response to this one). Ultimately it's a question of what you had hoped for from the discussion. The shrine has gotten busier, and I assume it's only a matter of time before something happens. Garison has been doing an admirable job of trying out discussion topics to see what sticks; if one of them picks up enough of a following, we'll know where to go from there.

On that note, maybe we should be looking into a Rivals of Aether tournament?

 

[Ken Hisuag]

Oh, and on the subject of tournament hosting: Should we set up a rotation? Provided I still get to be a regular attendee most of the time, I'd be happy to occasionally take on the host role to give others the chance to participate normally. I don't know how many others would be interested, but considering we've only had four and half so far, we'd probably be fine even if it was just the three of us.

I don't know that I'd want to do tournaments in general too frequently, though; they tend to eat a lot of time, and even though they're a lot of fun, I'd be worried of getting fatigued. The spacing between RT3 and RT4 was about perfect for me (that being the time between the last comments of the former and the first announcement of the latter), though obviously its a rather vague situational thing to begin with. I'll still try to be here regardless.

 

[Minecraft Steve]

I'm happy to join the Art contests... but for some ideas I'm quite unsure. 

 

[Ken Hisuag]

Posting to this thread to bump it up to the front page for the benefit of new denizens, for the possibility that discussion had at the time would be useful for review thereof.