Some time ago one of my friends asked me why Epic Slant didn’t have a forum. My response was that I felt a forum wouldn’t be used at all and would just sit barren. If readers wanted to discuss my stories they would just do that in the comments. Why would they come a step further and go to the forums? It seemed redundant to me. I still believe that is true but I’ve come to the realization that a forum here doesn’t really just have to be about Epic Slant.
Over the course of a year blogging I’ve really had a lot of fun. This fun has nothing to do with gaining an audience and building a site. It comes from the fact that I’ve met a whole host of really awesome people because of it. Every day when I pull up my blogging buddies on twitter there are all sorts of things going on. It works pretty well but I feel like tweets aren’t a great way to have a really in depth discussion between multiple people. Since we already all tweet each other, comment on our peer’s blogs and discuss things why couldn’t we support a forum?
I am under the impression that we can and I thought I would set out to create one. If half of the friends I’ve made via Epic slant show up there than it would be a rousing success in my book. If nobody uses it what so ever than I have the outcome I expected anyway and I’m only out a little bit of time. In short, there is no way for me to lose and the opportunity to gain a lot of what I enjoy most: community.
This forum will (hopefully) serve as a place for MMO bloggers to congregate, chat, and possibly learn a few things to make them better writers or site administrators. It will also give our readers a chance to interact with us more (if they so choose). We might even convince a few industry folks to head over if the community is solid. I intend to ensure (with your help) that it is a place free of flames, drama and/or game bashing. Ideally it should be a forum where anyone is comfortable to visit. If we grow I’ll be bringing on additional moderators to ensure we keep the same mature and respectful audience.
I think that is enough hype for now. You can visit the forums via the link in the navigation bar or from one of the ones I’ve littered throughout the story. The registration is separate from Epic Slant so you will need to register there. It is always difficult to get these things off the ground given how little content that exists in the beginning. I would greatly appreciate anyone who gets a few discussions going to get the ball rolling. I’ve put a few out there. Feel free to pass this on to anyone you’d like and don’t hesitate to provide feedback! It won’t hurt my feelings I assure you.
All characters are © 2007 - 2012
Any chance you could provide a link to these supposed forums?
I am sure I could be convinced to do so! I believe I put the forum on a sub-domain!
(And in the event you were serious, http://forum.epicslant.com)
BTW that link doesn’t work because there is an end parentheses in it.
You can get to the forums at the top of the page, though.
Which link? There were several and numerous ones worked! My shame is great =(
Edit: Oh you mean the URL link. I’ll fix that.
It’s good you figured out what I was talking about because most of the time I don’t know myself!
I’ll gladly participate in forums that encourage intelligent discussion of MMO design topics. I’ll endorse your forums as a place for That’s A Terrible Idea readers (the few that there are…) to share their thoughts in a more general and less directed fashion.
I suggest given bloggers a good way to advertise through their posts… Perhaps a special color to the names of active bloggers with a visible link to their work. Perhaps allow readers to mark the blogs that they read as a form of sub-community identification? Just a couple of ideas.
Thank you kindly for doing so! I love the ideas (in fact one of them is already in effect! Bloggers names are in light blue).
The signature block is one method by which bloggers can advertise as well. I’m certainly up for hearing other methods as well!
I’m also digging the idea of letting users say which blogs they read. I’ll play around with the user settings tomorrow.
You should make link text a different color from normal text. There’s no way to tell where links are without mousing-over every word on the forum.
Im in ur forum, readin ur stuffz.
Or in other words, fantastic idea. I shall install myself properly.
So far so good! We’ve got a few users and some participation! Not bad for a day or so of life.