brainstorm land

[athena]

So my fellow Keyframers... the latest edition of the site has been up for about a month now... the forum's kicking along rather nicely, we've got new profiles and new reviews coming in... I've got Duck Dodgers, Danny Phantom, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends and Atomic Betty on tape to be profiled this week... plus a book review for Jerry Beck's "Animated Movies Guide" also coming up--the publishers were nice enough to send me a copy...

ANYWAYS... lots o' stuff... but my question always is, what else can we do? what else should we do? I mean sure, I can sit here and add profiles to the end of time... but I think there should be more to this site than just that.

I want Keyframe to be the best site for animation out there... what do you guys think it would take to make that happen?

[Magnus]

One idea for the site could be to have some kind of ranking system for the reviews to show the ones people like the most. Just a thought.

[P.C. Unfunny]

It would be nice if users can post editorials about anything animated related.

[Nikolus]

One idea for the site could be to have some kind of ranking system for the reviews to show the ones people like the most. Just a thought.

Yea. Review comments might not be such a bad idea either.

[lupercal]

I'm shutting up, because Athena probably has a hard drive full of my ideas already, like "We should regularly make fun of Dreamworks", or "I think we should make it impossible to give 'Shark Tale' more than 1.5 stars."

Loop

[athena]

One idea for the site could be to have some kind of ranking system for the reviews to show the ones people like the most. Just a thought. Hmm... my concern is that could become a ranking system on top of a ranking system... like we're already ranking the animation and I'd kinda like the focus to remain there.


Yea. Review comments might not be such a bad idea either. I do however like this idea and it's something I had been toying with myself. Adding a 'Discuss' link that would start a thread in the forum using the review as a springboard... my only question was whether it or not people would use it...


It would be nice if users can post editorials about anything animated related. Well the forum is a good venue for that but I will also happily accept guest writers to our News & Articles area.

I'm also going to be putting in a call for more volunteers to work on the site... not just yet because the upgrade kinda mucked with the Admin site and I'm still cleaning that up... but sometime in the new year I'll be looking for people. Toonboy is already an Animation Editor (meaning that he has been adding profiles)... I'd be interested in another Animation Editor--specifically someone with a strong interest in anime... and also a News Editor to make sure our animation news stays a little more up to date.

This isn't really a formal call for volunteers... more of a something-to-keep-mind if anyone is interested in doing more on the site.


I'm shutting up, because Athena probably has a hard drive full of my ideas already, like "We should regularly make fun of Dreamworks", or "I think we should make it impossible to give 'Shark Tale' more than 1.5 stars." hehe... well I'm all in favour of making fun of DreamWorks... or any of the major studios really... and my only objection to your Shark Tale scheme is it would require too much coding. ;)

I'm still trying to figure out a way to parent profiles as we talked about before... although another idea I had since I'm having to rework the alternate titles so the search engine can find them is that we simply add either the parent or the child profile as a hidden alternate name for the profile... meaning if you searched for that name you'd still be able to find the profile even if that's not the 'official' title that we're listing it under... if that makes any sense...

[lupercal]

I was going to write this last night, but it was late, I could tell it would be lengthy, and I finally decided to start watching 'Please Teacher', which I've only had sitting around for about a year...

Review reviews. Ah... why don't we have reviews of people's ideas about reviews? Heh.

Thing is this: encouraging too much discussion about reviews - particularly reviews 'talking back' to each other, sets up the probability of adverserial responses, IMHO.

I'm completely in favour of referring to other reviews when reviewing, as a means of developing a point or using it as a jumping off point for a tangent - so long as it's a positive or neutral reference. e.g. I've often written "as so-and-so mentioned in her review", or "so and so is quite right when she says..." - however I'm not in favour of 'taking issue' with other reviewers. Certainly not in actual reviews. I was guilty of this at least once myself, way back, when someone panned something I liked, and wrote something like "I guess I just don't get it", and I wrote, something like "Yep, you don't" - which I quickly recognised would get me antsy if someone wrote it in response to me, so I deleted it. I've felt antsy myself about a couple of reviews which I felt were having a shot at something I said (I can't remember what, or who, so don't worry. I don't think it was anyone here). It just made me want to write another review, in response to that comment.

Having discussion threads about reviews is less of a danger, IMO, but I'm still not really wildly in favour of it.

Having a 'favourite reviews' thing OTOH I think is a good idea, particularly as it might encourage people to note what it was about the review which the person thought was working for them, and use it to improve their own writing (also it was nice to have some appreciation of something I'd written, so thanks for that post)

I would also be cautious about any new feature, whatever it was, which risked making the main page too cluttered. There's a fair bit going on there already.

BTW I might just mention... in fact, dammit, I will just mention that I think I was dubious or at least indifferent to the idea of forums on the site when Athena discussed it with me in email a long time back. I think I said something like, "you'll end up with a bunch of 13 year-olds role-playing" (this was based on my experience of certain other animation related forums, or one in particular) - however I've been pleasantly surprised by how this is working so far.

Loop

[athena]

I'm completely in favour of referring to other reviews when reviewing, as a means of developing a point or using it as a jumping off point for a tangent - so long as it's a positive or neutral reference. e.g. I've often written "as so-and-so mentioned in her review", or "so and so is quite right when she says..." - however I'm not in favour of 'taking issue' with other reviewers. Neither am I... and I think the sort of ground rules that we have in the review area--essentially everyone is entitled to their own opinion... those should definitely stay as they are... however, you are a prime example of someone whose reviews are more than just reviews... there's history, there's trivia, there's all kinds of places in many of your reviews that could be seen as jumping off points for more conversation... I mean, many forums actually have threads which are essentially "what did you think of such-and-such a newly-released film?"... Keyframe just split off those potential threads into somethng else... and a 'Discuss' option would simply bring them back into the fold.


Having a 'favourite reviews' thing OTOH I think is a good idea, particularly as it might encourage people to note what it was about the review which the person thought was working for them, and use it to improve their own writing (also it was nice to have some appreciation of something I'd written, so thanks for that post) What I'm afraid of is that the 'favourite review' option will simply turn into a "do I agree with this reviewer?--yes/no"... and I would personally rather see other people write their own reviews to express--yes, I do agree that this film was just plain awesome... because otherwise you get two people writing two reviews--"4 stars" or "1 star" and then potentially everyone else just choosing sides... that doesn't really do service to the star-value on the profile.


BTW I might just mention... in fact, dammit, I will just mention that I think I was dubious or at least indifferent to the idea of forums on the site when Athena discussed it with me in email a long time back. I think I said something like, "you'll end up with a bunch of 13 year-olds role-playing" (this was based on my experience of certain other animation related forums, or one in particular) - however I've been pleasantly surprised by how this is working so far I wasn't particularly worried about the 13yr-old spammer syndrome... if we were going to be hit with that in the forums we would've seen more if it show up in the reviews first... but for whatever reason Keyframe has always attracted a fairly mature, thoughtful crowd--for which I am immensely glad.

Actually the thing I was worried about was having to jab people with red-hot pokers in order to get them to talk... :devil: