A Formal Proposal: The Editorial Arena

[DoctorZettabyte]

Evening, morning, or good day, ladies and gents, and in particular, AJ. (Once again in a class of his own. :rolleyes:)

I am here this evening/morning/today to discuss and formally propose The Editorial Arena.

Depending on how active you are on the forums and if your care-o-meters are slightly above the zero mark, you may have read through AJ's State of the Forum address. In it, there have been several discussions on what to add to or change in WarBoards to improve it in the coming (now 1/6 of the way over) year.
An idea that has seen much discussion, apart from artsy-cutesy interior decor fluffiness is the addition of a new subforum (possibly to the Intellectual Roundtable), or an entirely new forum called the Editorial Arena.
Name notwithstanding, this forum or subforum would be a place for all of the longer posters at heart to go and provide insight into various topics, whereas discussion would ensue.

124167, Gunmonk and Toucan have each provided different ideas for a news area or subforum, possibly updated daily with the top international stories, or an actual RSS ticker. This could greatly increase daily traffic to the forums and the Arena itself, and potentially increase our userbase.

Our very own Neo has provided the idea of the “Queue”, a place for rough drafts of editorials to go until the authors touch them up and the moderators decide if and/or when they are ready to be discussed upon. I think this would remove a lot of clutter from the Arena and provide for more detailed arguments or discussions. This could be likened to a slower-paced IR with a practice room, so to speak.
Another idea to keep things interesting, while I doubt this would work, is a Soupe du Jour or Soupe de Semaine thread where one person would post an editorial (not necessarily long) on a daily or weekly basis. After posting, this person would hand the baton off to another person they so choose, or the next person may be decided by the moderator(s). The thread would be locked, however, to prevent it from getting clogged up with discussions from two weeks ago. The editorials should be short, but thought provoking.

So, WarBoardians, and AJ, this is the formal proposal for the Editorial Arena. What do you think? Is this worthwhile, or just another idea that should be tossed out? You decide!

[TinyDancer]

The Editorial Arena sounds fine to me, but the Soupe du Jour thing sounds like a bad idea. What if whoever's picked doesn't want to/doesn't have time to write something? It rots until people decide on someone else? That part just doesn't appeal to me.

[DoctorZettabyte]

Well, then someone else is picked ASAP then. The whole idea is to provide shorter editorials and essays that are meaningful and more close to home than other topics in the Arena. It's a daily/weekly thought-provoker.

-DocTera

[Magmaniac]

I think the whole idea is fucking stupid. And why did you make a new thread? This is already discussed in the thread about possible restructure. <_<

[Gunmonk]

First of all the member from Texas would like to recognize the OP of this thread and thank him for his due support and recognition. Secondly the Member from Texas would like to thank Aj and the moderating team for their continued effort and hard work.


As to the current proposition, it would actually remove a few threads out of the ML and reduce clutter. As we have seen, there have been many threads about current events within the past eight weeks (2 months).

As we are experiencing more visitors, and hopefully members, the ability to appeal to as many people as possible will become a great asset. By receiving a larger member base, we also in turn receive a greater pool of skills from which we can choose from and thus better ourselves.

Also as has been before stated in other threads and by Aj, there may be a desire to bring another site under the .Org banner. By having this larger base, of even a few more people, it would help as the aforementioned members might be interested in working on a new site and helping it get started.

I humbly ask for a provisional period of two months, move the threads about news and current events to this place and see what happens, this may vdery well be our mid level IR that has been talked about for awhile.As for moderation, that may be worked out later, I suggest that for now it be brought under seal and dunchy's jurisdiction for the moment

Regards,
Gunmonk (aka Brian)

[kongurous]

What people fail to realize is that the EC, CC, or IR could easily fill this same purpose and that adding a new forum specifically for it would be a waste of effort.

[Gunmonk]

What people fail to realize is that the EC, CC, or IR could easily fill this same purpose and that adding a new forum specifically for it would be a waste of effort.

However, the rules for the IR, or what were the rules for the Ir when GA had them made it to where a current event thread would be closed rather quickly.

Some new rules maybe?

[TheOutcast]

I think people will start to get the message on the Editorial Arena's purpose once other people start posting in it.

124167, Gunmonk and Toucan have each provided different ideas for a news area or subforum, possibly updated daily with the top international stories, or an actual RSS ticker. This could greatly increase daily traffic to the forums and the Arena itself, and potentially increase our userbase.
I also think the RSS ticker is a good idea, so people will actually come across this forum, and possibly bring along new members.

[GroG]

Just from my own personal perspective, this just doesn't really interest me at all.

The core "business", if you will, of this site is video games. Putting a news ticker and all that stuff on there just doesn't fit. Unless it was video game news..

Oh well, just my 2 cents. I think a seperate forum or subforum would be OK, but all that other stuff would be overkill. From the looks of it, most current events stuff is posted here in this forum, anyways.

[kongurous]

However, the rules for the IR, or what were the rules for the Ir when GA had them made it to where a current event thread would be closed rather quickly.

Some new rules maybe?

GA isn't a moderator anymore.

I don't see your point.

[TheOutcast]

The core "business", if you will, of this site is video games. Putting a news ticker and all that stuff on there just doesn't fit. Unless it was video game news..

What we really need is more game forums, perhaps?

Either way, this isn't just a gaming forum, it's also a small online community for stuff like this to be argued or discussed. Or maybe I'm wrong and we don't really need the Editorial Arena after all.

[DoctorZettabyte]

I think the whole idea is fucking stupid. And why did you make a new thread? This is already discussed in the thread about possible restructure. <_<

If you'll read AJ's first post on page 13 of the "Possible Restructure" Thread, you'll notice that he clearly states:
The "Editorial Arena" has yet to be presented to me in a manner that makes it worthwhile.

I think this is "worthwhile". And why don't you like the idea, Mag? You simply say "I think the whole idea is fucking stupid". Any reason why?

Putting a news ticker and all that stuff on there just doesn't fit. Unless it was video game news.

I'm inclined to agree with you at this point. The whole idea of an RSS ticker was more to get newsbits to people in an organized fashion. I also agree that this is a gaming forum and always should be. So, dropping the news feed, now what do we think of it?

-DocTera

[Neo]

we don't need outside rss feeds playing on warboards :p

What would be interesting would be to see an editorial area though.

For instance, if you come across an article somewhere that discusses gaming technology and you wanted to present it to Warboards, but apart from a "Serious IR Discussion" type thread, then where would you stick it? Yo ucould stick it in the ML, or the Gaming Discussion forum, but either place will result in the thread being spammed, or in the latter case completely ignored.

While this forum is mainly based off gamers, we have a rather diverse group of members here, as such it's not like WB is a OMFG GAMER-ONLY BOARD!?!

The only problem is that the Editorial Arena would need to see activity, if it only had 1-2 people contributing regularly would it be worth it?

-Neo

[Basan]

As I recall reading around here somewhere *Cough*probably in the staff room*Cough* we had a RSS feeder for WB's not long ago. ;) Now the issue is: there were very few members that actually used it and the other is that I don't recall if it's still working on line due to the low adherence it had. :o

[AJ]

feed://www.warboards.org/external.php?type=RSS2
always been there, hasn't changed.

[Basan]

:D I knew that my post would generate that kind of response from ya, AJ. <3

[Neo]

feed://www.warboards.org/external.php?type=RSS2
always been there, hasn't changed.

You can also specifically change the feed as well, say if you'd like to pull posts from a specific forum.

for instance: feed://www.warboards.org/external.php?type=RSS2&forumids=2

That would only show a feed from the ML.

All you need is the forum id, which can be found by hovering over the link to the forum you want on the index page, or just look at your address bar when you're visiting a forum.

It's pretty nifty. If you have a website or whatever, you can actually show a feed of warboards on it. For instance, I had a feed from the Tech Annex on my site for awhile. Whats nifty is you can style the output pretty much anyway you wish.

-Neo

[Gunmonk]

GA isn't a moderator anymore.

I don't see your point.

Allow me to reiterate my point. When GA was the mod, a good 40-45 percent of everything posted was deleted because it didn't measure up to "Standards". However (I'm not knocking the new moderating in the IR), the new mods in the IR have not exactly had the same fervor.

The rules that kept the old IR together aren't really enforced. So we don't have any new rules to go by. I think allot of the member base, such as myself, still think by those old rules and post likewise. Without these new rules, we are without guidance of what is acceptable for the IR.

Now also, the editorial arena is a good example of what the mid level IR would look like. A place for people to post who only have a quick second to post something semi intellectual.