Forums are fun!*
*Unless you have to moderate them.
Over at Look For The Nines, the official-for-now site for The Nines, I set up a forum to handle discussion about the movie. I had deep ambivalence about doing this.
Forums pre-date blogs, instant messaging, and even email as we understand it. Stretching back to their BBS roots, forums allow truly user-generated conversations. On a blog like this one, the comments sections are limited to the topic of the post, and have a very short shelf-life (except for the endless and pointless Prince of Persia thread I had to finally shut down.) Forum topics, on the other hand, can cover anything, and can run as long as there are still people interested in the conversation.
That said, I think message boards bring out the worst in people. Given the opportunity to say anything, an annoying percentage of people will say anything, which is to say, nothing of merit. While there are various systems of karma and tagging to help punish true miscreants, there’s no magic plug-in to detect illiterate, off-topic rambling.image labeler "game" in which real people would look at a forum post and vote on whether it’s sensible?”>1 The best one can do, it seems, is offer avatars — those little pictures beside users’ names. I subconsciously discount anything said by a person with a stupid avatar.
I knew I couldn’t ponder my forum misgivings for very long: As of 11:20 p.m. Sunday night, 1,300 people will have seen The Nines. I wanted to offer a virtual meeting place where viewers could dissect and discuss what is honestly a pretty complicated movie. And that meant a forum.
So I bit the bullet and installed one. The technical stuff wasn’t that rough at all. After considering various forum structures I liked and despised, I decided to limit it to just two boards, Before and After. The former would be for all general discussion about the movie and its release (no spoilers), while the latter would be specifically about story points and things in the movie (that is, spoilers-a-go-go). Why just two boards? In my experience, sites with extensive folder structures become unworkable. It ends up being so many clicks to check on an old thread that one quickly gives up. In the end, one or two boards (often labeled “General Discussion”) carry 95% of the active threads.
Unlike blogging software, the tricky part with a forum isn’t getting it set up, but getting it rolling. Since you’re relying on random strangers to post entries, you need a certain critical mass to get it running. It’s a lot like throwing a party: no one wants to be the first to arrive, standing awkwardly near the keg, wondering if there’s a better party elsewhere. So we needed people, stat. For this, I relied on the power of celebrity.
Ryan Reynolds posted a link to the site on his MySpace page, which got the ball rolling. (It’s worth noting that of the 12 or so forum participants so far, three of them run Ryan Reynolds fansites.) With 16 topics and 43 posts, it’s not exactly Digg. But I’m hoping that it will get some post-Sundance traction. And if not, it’s only cost about two hours of time.
For a change, I’ve actually delegated something: I’m not the moderator on the site. But I will be stopping by to answer questions from time to time, assuming there are questions to answer.
- But here’s a suggestion for coding wizards: How about a service like Google’s image labeler “game” in which real people would look at a forum post and vote on whether it’s sensible? ↩
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January 15th, 2007 at 7:24 pm
Why not just rely on IMDB’s forums for your movie? Those are moderated too.
January 15th, 2007 at 8:14 pm
I like your “forum labeler” idea. Hopefully there’ll be more stuff like that when the semantic web finally gets constructed.
I tend to dislike the IMDb forums, mostly because people think of it as an area to vent their dislike of the film. Honestly, they really should be taken down and placed off-site, on say, The Internet Movie Forum. IMF sounds like a great acronym.
Anyhoo, a previous blog comment may have already asked this, but there’s a chance that this film will see (partially) worldwide release, on DVD at least? If not, you might be able to set up a system online using PayPal or something, that allows access to a password-protected/encrypted torrent file, so at least we could download the movie. Legally.
January 16th, 2007 at 8:24 am
Why not just rely on IMDB’s forums for your movie? Those are moderated too.
While I haven’t spent an extensive amount of time on the IMDB forums, they strike me as a hard place to host a reasonable discussion. The majority of the posts seem to be about who is or isn’t good-looking and who is or isn’t gay, and, as Caleb said, are generally pretty negative (lots of flaming and deleted posts, etc.). SMF is a good forum package, and there is even an Akismet plugin to help fight forum spam.
January 16th, 2007 at 11:36 am
Take a look at the imdb forums for The Nines and you’ll know why I avoid them. Not only is it still 1997 in imdb-land, but the level of general movie savvy is remarkably low.
January 16th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
I can’t stand the IMBD forums. I, too, am interested in what kind of general release The Nines will be getting, as I live far from Sundance and LA and I have an important, demanding job at the local video store that I just can’t take time off from. The place would fall apart without me.
January 16th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
i understand the complaints about forums, but one of my frustrations with blogs and a reason why i think the interactivity of them is over-hyped, is because of how limiting the comments function is. at least you often reply to comments. so many bloggers don’t, which gives the impression that you’re talking to a wall.
blogs are being touted as conversations and more interactive than print - and to some degree that’s obviously true. but you’re right, forums are a much more conversational medium. it’s a pity they’re so often abused.
November 12th, 2007 at 1:09 pm
24% of Americans believe that the Internet is able for a time to replace them with a loved one. For obvious reasons, such sentiments particularly prevalent among residents of the United States alone. Both men and women can replace the beloved, beloved trips to the World Network. However, the willingness to such transactions vary among followers of different ideologies: conservatives frowned relate to this idea, and the “progressive-minded” on the contrary, Nerkarat it.
Study company Zogby International also showed that every fourth resident of the United States have their own representation in the web-site or internet-stranichka. Creating internet-dvoynikov most passionate about young people (18-24 years of age) - 78% of them have personal Web page. In doing so, 68% of those surveyed said that the World Wide Web, they do not appear in its original capacity, their virtual overnight seriously different from the real.
Only 11% of Americans would agree implantable microchip in his brain, which would provide them with direct contact with the Internet. But the situation is changing, in the case of children. Almost every fifth resident of the United States would agree to equip their child safety device which would allow him to track the movement in space on the Internet.
10% of U.S. stated that the Internet brings them to God. ” In turn, 6% are convinced that because of the existence of the World Wide Web God away from them.
And how you feel? Sorry bad English.