That's true, but since the very reason we're having this conversation is that DLP is no longer sustainable via new member enthusiasm, I don't think there's an alternative to real commitment from the mods and forum veterans. As it is, DLP has as much activity as we are willing to give it.

Still, perhaps we can look into a system where approved members get the ability to the thread OP? So it's a big group of us that can chip in as fancy takes us, rather than relying on the thread starter and forum mod to do everything?

 

If you're considering the single-forum-with-tags approach there's definitely things to make the experience worthwhile (if with a bit of help from our admins).

For example, this plugin allows tag pages to be managed / edited by users: https://xenforo.com/community/resources/tag-essentials.4572/ -- If you look at the examples, you can browse threads by forum or by tag, if that's what you're looking for.

 

I'm not well-versed in mod/adminship, so have no idea how easy any of this would be to implement.

I like the idea of big pots for stories, rather than navigating through to the correct subforums, and as long as everyone puts the fandom in the title, I don't think it would matter too much.

Tagwise, I don't mind if we end up on Ao3-style full retard. Yes, it's annoying, and useless... But it does offer a reasonably powerful, freeform search tool. There would be lots of stupid tags, but does it really matter? Allow a custom setting for ordering of tags (alphabetical, most common, most searched, chronological, hidden) and people who don't like it can turn it off.

I like using the "New and Almost" threads, but mostly because I know lots of people use them much more frequently (often, anyway) than creating threads in For Review. If there was some form of clamping down on it, then I'd use FR much more.

Perhaps a button, next to "New Posts", for either "New Threads/Posts/Unread Threads For Review" might be nice, if people wanted purely to see what was currently up for review. New Threads to only display threads that had been started since you last clicked, Posts to function as "New Posts", and "Unread Threads" to be more threads you'd never visited, although that's because I tend to leave a library thread open and jot thoughts down if I'm doing anything with it.

Whilst it would be a pop-up, and I never read them on SB/V/QQ, something along the lines of "Hey [thaumologist]. it's been [19] days since you last Reviewed, and [351] days since you last put anything up for review!" might be good. Before checking, I hadn't realised how long it'd been since I last put anything up at all, especially as I've actually got a few I'd wanted to stick up when I get a chance to re-read.

One final though, is maybe limit voting on threads without a post? If we're putting things in the library, or saying they shouldn't, then I feel we should actually explain why.

 

I think we should also expand our wheelhouse in terms of other fandoms. I've recommended expanding the library to published fiction before, but we should also take a look at all the other types of online fiction. Fictionpress, fiction.live, light novels, the various serials, Spacebattles/SufficientVelocity/QQ, etc. Hell, there's even a Literotica story in the library from the long long ago time of 2010(with 4.5 stars to boot). I know that DLPers are reading stories in all these places, and some of us are even discussing them in places like IRC and Discord. Lamora and Probellum are running or have run quests on fiction.live, while people like apoc, Mishie, and I have all read quests there. Fair warning, fiction.live is a cesspit that is very difficult to find quality in as it's subsumed in smut, but that's true of fanfiction too tbh.

As another argument in regards to the forum redesign to make Other Fandoms more prominent, take this very thread as an example. I knew this thread existed and wanted to post in it, and it took me a couple minutes to find it. I ended up in the Other Fandoms Library, then clicked through to Other Fandoms, then clicked into Other Fandoms Discussion before finding this thread. What a shitshow.

 

I'm also a huge fan of the tags as Thaumologist is. There are some tags you can use to find classics (fucking awesome or the syed tag comes to mind). And I guess it allows for kinda off-the-wall traits shared by various stories that belong all over the fandom to be grouped easily and to be found easily.

 

So we've had a bit of a resurgence in Other Fandoms - thanks everyone who's posted something. Even if I gave your thread a low rating, I'm still glad that you put it up for review.

On the note of low ratings, I do think we should consider relaxing the point of entry into the Library. Just for Other Fandoms, because we hold our home fandom to a higher level. I'd suggest it would be worth lowering the barrier of entry to Other Fandoms to 3.5 stars - the smaller sample size of reviewers means that just one person with sand in their vagina can have a much greater impact on the overall rating. Not a huge deal, since we do have Almost Recommended, but something I'd like to see.

My other, perhaps more actionable suggestion, is that we add a new thread prefix to the Library. We already have Complete, WiP, Abandoned, etc. I'd like to add "Quest" to the list so that we can sort them separately. Not sure if that would be of value to everyone else, but I'd love to be able to filter past them at a glance.

 

I'll just like to say if you're like me and read on your phone you'll have to flip your phone sideways to rate a thread. At least on my phone you do. It took me a bit to figure that out.

 

So I just posted a Steins; Gate oneshot onto the Other Fandoms review board and I noticed that there's either been 0 Steins; Gate fics recced before or they weren't tagged with Steins; Gate.

I think one of the main issues, at least for me, with Other Fandoms is that even Other Fandoms kind of has a list of "main fandoms" like Worm or RWBY or Naruto and since I haven't watched Naruto or RWBY and haven't read Worm stuff in over a year I've kind of... just avoided that section in general because most of the stuff there I've either never watched or am not interested in. The only thing I've commented on in the past like... year in that fandom was the actual Worm thread and MoL.

I'm not entirely sure how to solve this; or if this is even a problem, but there's a whole lot of anime and games and more obscure original fiction/novels out there that a lot of us probably haven't encountered. Maybe it'd be a good idea to split Other Fandoms into general sections like "Anime", "Games","Fantasy Novels", etc. kind of like the ff.net homepage, with specific popular titles like Evangelion, Fate/Stay Night, Naruto, etc. as subsections within the general section of Anime.

Because, like, while I was making the thread for the oneshot I kept thinking to myself, is it even a good idea to stick it here or should I stick a rec in the multimedia, anime rec section instead since maybe there's a higher chance that someone who actually enjoys Steins; Gate will find it there considering the fact that the sequel is airing.

 

The new posts section on the side of the main screen kinda shortchanges the other fandoms stuff by only showing one of the new posts there, whereas it is one of the more active parts of the forum.

Not really a new point, I guess, but gonna echo that since it's something that's been annoying me for a while now. So yeah, more subforums might not be necessary but a new way of structuring the ones we have is.

 

Honestly, I would be fine with just folding the specific subforms into the general ones so we have something like this:

• Other Fandoms Review Board
• Almost Recommendable
• Anime, Cartoons and Comics
  
• Books
• Games
• Original Fiction
• Television and Movies

Or even separate Anime, Cartoons and Comics and maybe include a section for Crossovers. like so:

• Other Fandoms Review Board
• Almost Recommendable
• Anime and Manga
  
• Books
• Cartoons and Comics
• Crossovers
  
• Games
• Original Fiction
• Television and Movies

Move Firefly/Stargate/Star Wars (latest post between these was 2017!) into Television and Movies, Evangelion/Fate Stay Night/Naruto into Anime, My Little Pony into Cartoons and Dresden Files/Worm into Books.

 

So I ended up spending quite a lot of time (the last couple of months...) on SB and SV reading after I initially went to better understand how their organization works from suggestions in this thread. Through this experience, I have come to really despise the megathreads and the numbered threads (seriously who's gonna go back and read all the unsortable, unformatted, recommendations from [Insert Fandom] Recommendation threads 1 to 42?) and really like the forum aggregation function.

I think that on DLP especially, outside of the WBA, the review and library boards would be best served by an aggregation function. It would fit in well with the sub-forum structure we have now without substantially moving everything onto tags, and adds minimal work to thread posters or modders. Basically the main library puts everything into one place and really helps discovery, while the subforums can be selectively added or removed from the overall pile of threads with a user selection if they wanted to focus on one fandom only. It would be perfect for all the different fandoms.

Nevermind the tags business, that doesn't work on SB/SV either, so I suggest we use them optionally for searches on whatever minor thing somebody wants to tag but keep big things like WIP, Complete, etc in the thread title.