Interestingly, I voted for Features too.
I did consider content before voting, but the way I see it… more posts by the Episode Forum Team probably won’t satisfy the community. Most times when a mod or admin starts a thread or even comments on someone else’s, there isn’t as much of a follow up as there is with our own threads. I mean, I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but sometimes it seems like we get given empty promises. It’s not something I’ve ever felt personally, but I’ve seen it around the forums and I imagine it does make people feel neglected.
Example of what I mean
The best example I can think of to explain what I mean is when all the talk of how contests actually work came up. I believe there’s been similar promises of an explanation about how …In My Bed!!! passed guidelines too. But I’m going to focus on the contest rubric one now…
There was lots of threads about this a while ago. Lots of discussions, lots of suggestions from forumers, etc. But back on May 5th on one of the posts, Liz said this:
We would like to know how the contests work
I know she went on maternity leave, so it wouldn’t have been hard for her to get back to this while she’s off, but the post does sort of make it sound like there was more than just her who were working on this… and she also did say it would be “out in a few weeks”.
For months, there was nothing on this… Until 8 days ago, this thread was made, which I’m assuming was their response, though there’s no official word on this so I could be wrong.
Episode Explained: Episode Grading Rubric
I’m almost 100% sure that everyone who wanted the contest rules explained probably has follow up questions or maybe just wants some clarification, but the thread was pinned and closed so there’s no possibility of a discussion or open dialogue.
I know this poll is only asking us what’s most important and not really asking what we want to see more of (therefore my entire point might seem irrelevant.), but with the majority voting for content, I don’t want the team to now focus all their energy on creating more content and neglecting this other stuff, especially when the team’s content could, excuse my disrespect, use improvement. I’d much rather see features get the attention instead.
So why I believe content from the Episode forum team won’t be helpful and thus shouldn’t be considered an important priority is because I don’t think it would actually keep the community happy. I think forumers would have a constant flow of questions and want replies and get frustrated when the team doesn’t reply. Or they’ll just be frustrated that the thread is pinned and closed so that no one can comment. Or they’ll be frustrated that the team makes topics about something different to what they specifically want. I just see this is a way to set up some false hopes if I’m honest…
I don’t mean this to be rude to the team, but I just think that the responsibilities they’ve got now is enough and don’t want to put pressure on the team to provide better content when there’s already quite a few of us regular forumers here that do a fine job of that already.
Why I voted for features is because, based on the little explanation provided in the brackets, it does sound like the one thing that has never really been incorporated into the forums.
I’m hoping by social media integration it means that they’ll work to make sure that forumers are treated the same as the insta community is, by making announcements here for things like the weekly shelves and beta-testing open calls too. I hope it doesn’t mean more contests that you can only enter with instagram (Dirty Dancing).
Integrated forum games/badges/rewards sounds really good too and it’s something I’d like to see, provided it’s done properly and gets followed through with. There was the forum badge contest when we first moved over to the new forums, and that kind of flopped So if this were to take more of a priority, I believe it would be something that would make the community come together, but also has the potential to disappoint the community too
Also, I’m surprised layout/style/theme is coming second, considering the uproar when we moved over to the new forums. I know changing up the layout isn’t the exact same as it was when the old forums were deleted, but it would still be a change nontheless and there’s no way to change something and have everyone be happy with the changes.