Forums Fixing The Dumping Ground

[Showcase One]

I think it's about time we adress the elephant in the room. Yes people. Grab your power banks, some popcorn and message the admins of reddit, this is gonna be a big one.

FIXING THE DUMPING GROUND

I would like to take the chance to talk about a often looked over part of the forums but still a large factor. Video promotions. More specifically the promote yourself section.

The promote yourself section used to be a highly sought after and well maintained section of the forums with great feedback, videos and healthy discussion.

These days the promote yourself section is nothing more than a rotten dumpster largely neglected but spammed to death by channels of all sizes looking to advertise their videos.

The problem is that rather then engaging in discussion, supporting each other and giving feedback people are taking advantage of it as a place to dump their videos hoping to get more views. In reality all they are doing is dumping them in the shadows of something great (the forums). They see the forums as an opportunity not to discuss topics that matter but to post their videos and neglect everything else. Rather then paying attention to the other videos people are only paying attention to their own, only to get them minimal traffic from the forums.

Without healthy and worthwhile discussion it's just another useless place for youtubers. Now I'm not saying the videos are nessecarily bad I'm just saying there needs to be a realisation that it's not a place to dump your videos and automatically get views. If people engaged in discussion and maybe even gave feedback not only would the creators videos improve but the forums would provide a bridge in the gap between advertisement and viewing.

Now to discuss the solutions to this problem. The promote yourself has the opportunity to be a great place and opportunity for creators if cleaned, maintained and done right (I'm not talking about getting a garbage truck in). Perhaps we could have users spend credits per post to post their videos, and earn extra credits for every worthwhile review or comment they post in the videos section. Maybe they could pay per month to have access (this could be implemented for the media section). However perhaps the simplest solution is to re-enforce the idea of discussion. Have people dedicated to going through the section and commenting to try and spark conversation with the creators themselves. Find people willing to help clean up and maintain the section. If we can bring it back to life it can be great again.
MAKE THE PROMOTIONS GREAT AGAIN!

With the introductions of the media section could we see the dismissal of the promote yourself section? I don't know? Only time will tell. But these solutions could be implemented with both.

Now. Big things start small. So I'd like to challenge all of you. Yes you! Every time you come on these forums. Try to write atleast one worthwhile comment in the promote yourself section. Spark conversation. Because if we all work together, we can make a difference. We can bring the section back to its humble beginnings.

Thankyou

 

[LW]

It'll be replaced with the media section either way which I fear that it'll take the same route.

 

[Jonathan]

lol, nice post, pretty much sums up the state of the promote yourself section. I'd like to see a new section for the media tab rather than video thread been placed in the promote yourself section which they currently are. I agree with LW001 on the fact that the media section could just end up the same way. Though with a larger start page & maybe popular media at the top? it could still work. Otherwise its just gonna end up like the MGN version with loads of videos but no-one engaging with them. I mentioned on my media feedback thread for a start page change to something like this: https://8wayrun.com/media/. It has way more going on and could easily encourage engagement if the sections were popular first followed by recent for instance.​

 

[zeke morgan]

It'll be replaced with the media section either way which I fear that it'll take the same route.

The only good thing about the media section is that moderators / forum staff do have to approve each post before it shows, meaning that more attention should theoretically be given to each post and if its not up to scratch then its not making its way on there. I understand people's frustration with the promote yourself section though, as even now I look on it and its just pages upon pages of people going 'Check out my video' and no discussion or interaction between content creator and the intended audience.

I think the idea of limiting the amount of people that can access / post in the media section could be something to be discussed, even if this is on a monthly basis and deemed as a forum credit store option - the only issue with that is that people may then start to spam other areas of the forums to get the credits to post.

I have high hopes for the media section and hope to re-outline the rules regarding this new section in the coming days so users are informed what will be expected from them regarding this section.

 

[LW]

pages upon pages of people going 'Check out my video' and no discussion or interaction between content creator and the intended audience.

Show me the five posts that have anything but a clickbait title and a media tag por favor

I think the idea of limiting the amount of people that can access / post in the media section could be something to be discussed, even if this is on a monthly basis and deemed as a forum credit store option - the only issue with that is that people may then start to spam other areas of the forums to get the credits to post.

This is a point I forgot to throw into my initial post but had in mind before writing it (granted I didn't have much time as I was at an event) though didn't we have that already? There's people spamming replies with "cool" and "ok" and similar stuff way too much already (look at some NaA replies) just to get to five or thirty posts. Many people just sign up to promote themselves, open the forums, find the promotion section and SIKE you need thirty posts. So they go to another section and post it and SIKE you need five posts for links. "Wtf do these people want, interacting with others five times? I just want to post episode 500 of my Skyblock let's play!" they think, thinking of the fastest way to get five messages. Some go the spammy route and make three threads and five replies on "I need 5 posts", check my reports :^) and others just write random crap on the first five threads they see.

Then they can finally open the discussion forum and post links. WAIT WHAT I HAVE A MESSAGE FROM A MOD? MAYBE HE LIKED MY VID... oh a warning, I need to get to thirty posts... Doesn't this lead to spam? Also if it were just for mod approval that could've just been a setting changed in the Promote yourself forum...

 

[zeke morgan]

Show me the five posts that have anything but a clickbait title and a media tag por favor

This is a point I forgot to throw into my initial post but had in mind before writing it (granted I didn't have much time as I was at an event) though didn't we have that already? There's people spamming replies with "cool" and "ok" and similar stuff way too much already (look at some NaA replies) just to get to five or thirty posts. Many people just sign up to promote themselves, open the forums, find the promotion section and SIKE you need thirty posts. So they go to another section and post it and SIKE you need five posts for links. "Wtf do these people want, interacting with others five times? I just want to post episode 500 of my Skyblock let's play!" they think, thinking of the fastest way to get five messages. Some go the spammy route and make three threads and five replies on "I need 5 posts", check my reports :^) and others just write random crap on the first five threads they see.

Then they can finally open the discussion forum and post links. WAIT WHAT I HAVE A MESSAGE FROM A MOD? MAYBE HE LIKED MY VID... oh a warning, I need to get to thirty posts... Doesn't this lead to spam? Also if it were just for mod approval that could've just been a setting changed in the Promote yourself forum...

To be honest no system is going to be perfect, if we end up releasing the media section as an unlock needing forum credits then people could spam to get these, if we do if free people might spam this, if we give access to certain people at a time people will complain / spam this. The forum team are just trying to make things better and get a more fluid and interactive system up - the new media tag would also be indexed for search engines (as outlined by Anthony) and as such may help with SEO. You are right it does seem currently that people are spamming one word answers and recently I have been trying to reach out to those I have seen do that to try and promote some more meaningful interaction across the forum

 

[Anthony Smith]

I can say this. The "dumping ground" issue is nothing new and is something we've had our eye on for quite some time. Here are the ways we've tried to fix this.

Re-making the rules for the section to include best practices.

SERIOUS NOTE below in spoiler

Spoiler

This section may be closing soon due to the rampant lack of rule following combined with the lack of people following the best practices we will be looking for better ways to serve this purpose going forward. We're not yet sure what we're going to replace this section with but it will be something that will give incentive to people so that they help their videos be seen by providing more data about what the video is.

Hi There,

Before you post a NEW thread in the creations section there are some things you'll need to know:

• To post here it costs a few credits. this shouldn't be a huge deal. the cost is equivalent to receiving a few post likes, or participating in the forums in a few ways. Essentially this is our way of making sure that people don't come here just to dump links. People submitting content here should be participating in the community as a whole and this is our way of making sure of that.
• To post here you must be a FULL member of the forums. This means you'll have to gain a certain number of posts and other interactions. This ensures that only those who actually interact with the community will be rewarded by being able to share their creations here. The idea is to keep out people who just want to spam their videos then leave.
• Posts with the theme of "Reviews here" or "Let me review your channel" are not allowed in this section because anyone can hop post to post giving helpful advice if they wish. There's no need to clutter this area with additional post that accomplish the same goal while devaluing posts that are following the proper flow and design of this section.

So there are the two big ones. What follows is a best practices guide that will help you get the most bang for your time here as well as actually get your content seen by human type people!!

• Don't post your videos here as a way to "dump" them. For Petes sake you know better than that! This is a community, a place to start and maintain discussions, not a place for you to try to get cheap and easy views... ya noobcake!!
• One of the reasons posting videos to forums work is by relating videos to current events, topics, etc. as much as I'd love to watch part 227 of your ongoing Minecraft let'splay realistically that title sucks for making me want to watch your content or interact with you as a fellow creator. When marketing videos to other creators try keeping your target audience in mind with your post title. something like "I can't get thoumcraft to do any darn thing!!" will generate much more interest and start more conversations. This also puts you into a good position to possibly meet other collaborators.
• Another reason posting videos to forums works is because of SEO. Now I won't get too deep into this because it seems like I go off on rants about this topic like every week publicly... so to keep it short and sweet i'll list some things you can do to help yourself:
  • Describe your flippin' video in the post. How on this green earth am I supposed to find your video 2 years from now if you just dump a link here on the board with no (or not enough) text for google, yahoo, or Bing (haha, who uses Bing?) to find?! My suggestion is 3-5 sentences as it relates again to creators... remember in this section we're all familiar with the woes of being a creator so don't be scared to drop something like this on us:
    • OMG mid recording my mom/wife walks in asking if I had dirty laundry to give her... I didn't realize i left it in until it was posted!! But hey, now people keep asking if my mom/wife will do their laundry so I have a running joke!!"
    • I recorded this same bit 4 times, seriously I hate Elgato right now because of their buggy ass software, The finished product turned out alright but I think you can hear the audio change due to fans/air conditioning that weren't on during the first run through
    • I asked my fans to send in fan art and i'd show it off in 2 weeks, i've only gotten 2 pieces in and I record the show off video in 3 days. Is there anyone out there who can save my bacon since I put my foot in my mouth by attaching a date to the first video? I really only need one or 2 more pieces to show off and it doesn't even have to be polished. I'll be linking contributors in the description and shouting them out. HELP!!
  • TAGS!! If you see this box USE IT!! Tags are a powerful and misunderstood beast. these are words... or more importantly phrases that help search engines make your content (here and on YouTube) more easily discovered by people. Imagine this. let's take the example from above talking about elgato. if someone googles "elgato crashes when i stop recording" and your video is attached to a thread where people are discussing fixes and work arounds that gives you possible views, lots of name recognition, and possibly more cool people to interact with. and you get all that and more by filling out the tags and a couple sentences about your video/struggles, etc.

Now, if it's not apparent by now i'm not your regular mod/admin/staff I'm someone who's been making a living for years off of YouTube and social media, you can take my advice on the best practices section or you can assume that my 10 years of doing this has all been a waste and I obviously know nothing about how to get your content seen by people in communities, and in search. That's your call but I would like to ask the general community for a favor. Don't be scared to link this post to people who are obviously just dumping their links. Feel free to let them know that they should RTFM (playfully of course) because if we all make this change together it means that this whole section will be much more heavily visited which is good for all of us!!

This includes directions to worried users about the "dumping effect" to point abusers to RTFM or "Read The Freaking Manual" This covers the issue that partners are supposed to sell to the audience on these forums as well as actually provide context... or a reason to care. This is to provide SEO data as well as provide information for real humans in the community. At the time the biggest form of "dumping" we were seeing was from users dropping a link and never coming back until the next time they wanted to dump more. This meant that we were trying to train people to think about helping themselves... and couldn't really force the issue of making people care about others but were hopeful that search traffic and good community members would drive adoption of good habits.

That was more or less a failure even though once a month or so i'd personally go through and paste in a message about how users should take the best practices advice and link that to the user.

When we realized that this was a lost cause we started looking into ways that we could automate the self help part of it which lead us to the new media section. This plugin by default copied the video description which gave us some metadata for the video for search and also gave us a very pretty GUI for everything.

What it didn't do was copy over the YouTube tags from the videos... We were successful in working with the plugin developer to get that working and now it does that too. In my experience working directly with creators they dont... or barely... understand tags, how to use them, or why they are important so asking people to do that twice was just too much.

Now I hear you saying something like "well, where does that leave the "promote yourself" section? Well... it's going away... sort of. The media section is a better implementation for many reasons but partly because it gives better searchability and discoverability. it also doesn't keep active discussions at the top the way forums do so there's less need to "bump" them from users removing the desire to clog the section with dummy replies which we HAVE noticed but not worried about during the media sections development.

So how do we reward people who actually comment on the media section? That's something we're working on. we're hoping that the plugin dev will help us give credits for comment replies as well as fix an irregularity caused with the current charging mechanism.[DOUBLEPOST=1501821763,1501821523][/DOUBLEPOST]

lol, nice post, pretty much sums up the state of the promote yourself section. I mentioned on my media feedback thread for a start page change to something like this: Media Library | 8WAYRUN. It has way more going on and could easily encourage engagement if the sections were popular first followed by recent for instance.​

That's an issue we often have here at Freedom. Nobody likes "most recent" and nobody likes "most popular" we have that same issue with C.R.I.B. the community is split and nobody has a great reason to do it either way. I do personally wish we could get a system like reddit where it was most popular first BUT old posts slipped down the page after time. That's wishful thinking though.[DOUBLEPOST=1501824665][/DOUBLEPOST]FYI I just took a deep dive into some of the media sections options and found out how to add something to it that may help. the "trending" section now has some features that will help content that does well on our system shine BUT also slip down the ranks if it's ignored. I've added this to the top of the section and limited it to displaying 4 total videos by default.

it was limited to keep the new stuff close to the top as well as to keep people from trying to game the system. We won't be publicly speaking about the specific algorithm we're using for how things are ranked but I can say that views (generated through the forums, not on YT) as well as comments, and other interactions are used to give us a better picture of how well that user and the video is doing in our community. This is to keep reddit and other huge (and unreliable) traffic sources from playing a big part in our rankings.

I'm excited to see where this goes

 

[TwilightPrinze]

I think it's about time we adress the elephant in the room. Yes people. Grab your power banks, some popcorn and message the admins of reddit, this is gonna be a big one.

FIXING THE DUMPING GROUND

I would like to take the chance to talk about a often looked over part of the forums but still a large factor. Video promotions. More specifically the promote yourself section.

The promote yourself section used to be a highly sought after and well maintained section of the forums with great feedback, videos and healthy discussion.

These days the promote yourself section is nothing more than a rotten dumpster largely neglected but spammed to death by channels of all sizes looking to advertise their videos.

The problem is that rather then engaging in discussion, supporting each other and giving feedback people are taking advantage of it as a place to dump their videos hoping to get more views. In reality all they are doing is dumping them in the shadows of something great (the forums). They see the forums as an opportunity not to discuss topics that matter but to post their videos and neglect everything else. Rather then paying attention to the other videos people are only paying attention to their own, only to get them minimal traffic from the forums.

Without healthy and worthwhile discussion it's just another useless place for youtubers. Now I'm not saying the videos are nessecarily bad I'm just saying there needs to be a realisation that it's not a place to dump your videos and automatically get views. If people engaged in discussion and maybe even gave feedback not only would the creators videos improve but the forums would provide a bridge in the gap between advertisement and viewing.

Now to discuss the solutions to this problem. The promote yourself has the opportunity to be a great place and opportunity for creators if cleaned, maintained and done right (I'm not talking about getting a garbage truck in). Perhaps we could have users spend credits per post to post their videos, and earn extra credits for every worthwhile review or comment they post in the videos section. Maybe they could pay per month to have access (this could be implemented for the media section). However perhaps the simplest solution is to re-enforce the idea of discussion. Have people dedicated to going through the section and commenting to try and spark conversation with the creators themselves. Find people willing to help clean up and maintain the section. If we can bring it back to life it can be great again.
MAKE THE PROMOTIONS GREAT AGAIN!

With the introductions of the media section could we see the dismissal of the promote yourself section? I don't know? Only time will tell. But these solutions could be implemented with both.

Now. Big things start small. So I'd like to challenge all of you. Yes you! Every time you come on these forums. Try to write atleast one worthwhile comment in the promote yourself section. Spark conversation. Because if we all work together, we can make a difference. We can bring the section back to its humble beginnings.

Thankyou

That story with those memes. Your a LEGEND but also entirely right!

 

[BlueBard]

The problem is not the forum, it's people's mindsets

Think about it like this:

We can try to boycott, entice, or force people to reply and help other channels. But if it's coming from a place of 'this benefits me' then we're going to end up with really half-assed replies

(Writing an article of a reply does not equal you actually went through the effort of watching the videos or even really checking out the channel).

Which really frustrates me more than no reply at all.

I rather say round up a few people who are known for going through the effort of really helping others. Who give good concise and informed replies.

Give them a reward, then rotate them every month. Give everyone a chance to be 'channel reviewers' people will take this job a little more seriously if they know they are being watched and judged as a 'channel reviewer'.

 

[Showcase One]

The problem is not the forum, it's people's mindsets

Think about it like this:

We can try to boycott, entice, or force people to reply and help other channels. But if it's coming from a place of 'this benefits me' then we're going to end up with really half-assed replies

(Writing an article of a reply does not equal you actually went through the effort of watching the videos or even really checking out the channel).

Which really frustrates me more than no reply at all.

I rather say round up a few people who are known for going through the effort of really helping others. Who give good concise and informed replies.

Give them a reward, then rotate them every month. Give everyone a chance to be 'channel reviewers' people will take this job a little more seriously if they know they are being watched and judged as a 'channel reviewer'.

Thats exactly my point!

 

[BlueBard]

Thats exactly my point!

Then we are in symbiosis