Gathering Opinions

I'll admit that when I first heard the idea my first thought was "So we're going to be a second Hummingbird, just without the anime lists." But, you described it as a player.me, but with an anime focus. That isn't really attractive. I got bored of player.me within a week or two, and I imagine most people do. It's probably why it isn't exactly the most active social network.

I think expanding on the features lewd has to provide for its users is wonderful. Wanting to grow the userbase, and active amount of users per day is also something I'm happy you actively seek out. I'm hesitant on the LewdBook idea though. As it stands I don't think it's that great of an addition.

@[deleted] has more or less already articulated my vfeelings on this subject but I still have some things I'd like to say myself.

Melancholy wrote

while Lewd is pretty amazing as is, I'd love to make it a platform that more people can enjoy.

Personally speaking, what made me attracted to Lewd in the first place when I initially stumbled across it was that it filled a particular niche. That it was aimed at a very specific demographic of people on a very specific platform of discussion. I'm not opposed to trying to get more people involved with the site; the merge with Weeb worked out pretty nicely and I'd say we're all the better for it but that's because Weeb was already a pretty similar forum. To me, if you try to attract more users by broadening the appeal you lose that niche and the unique atmosphere that comes with it.

Melancholy wrote

there's only so much you can build onto a forum before you can't add anything new.

Who says you have to keep adding on to the forum in the first place? Or even to spur growth? I imagine there are several forums out there that have been running on Simple Machines Forum or phpBB for years and have carried on perfectly well during that time. If it ain't broke don't fix it, as they say.

I don't mind if you want to setup a social networking site (whatever that means) for anime lovers, gamers and programmers as well as the various mixtures of the three; I just ask that you leave Lewd the way that it is as I think it's optimal already.

Melancholy wrote

[2:31 PM] zey: the problem is while some of them are okay with changes like that I imagine, most are there for what Lewd is now.

^
there's twitter, fb, discord and even fucking hummingbird, there's no need to have people blogging their shit everywhere
of course you can say "if you don't like it, don't use it!" but the way forums work is that it'll siphon some activity (just like discord is doing), leaving this community dead if you don't use it yourself
either that or nobody will use it
bad idea
downvoted

I remembered when Aiba has shit ideas.
Social Media sucks.
But seriosuly I wouldn't mind it.

In general I agree with @[deleted] and @"All In One" that this is a pretty bad idea. When adding features it's best to consider it's applicability to the current users of the site, not aim it at new people. If you aim new features at people who aren't part of the community, it attracts people who don't fit into the community. And lewd is not a website, it's a community: the website (and discord) just happen to be where we converse. There is a certain multiple of our current users at which I will say "nope" and just leave, because the community will no longer feel tight-knit and whole. Lewd's groups are hardly ever used because the main community is so small it's got room for almost everything.

Melancholy wrote

Camo Yoshi wrote

I'm happy with how it is right now between the forums and the Discord. I kind of feel like Discord is our social network, in a way.

discord is an activity leech :feelsbadman:

I disagree, but maybe we should persue integrating discord and lewd more heavilly.

No LewdBook please, we already have enough social media crap.

hmmm, if you do it similar to how invision power poards do it, then probably people here would be fine with the idea. a general user feed on a user profile but not really so much of a requirement to do.

Melancholy wrote

I don't think I've explained my idea very well.

I definitely don't want to provide a way for people to appear more popular than other users; the idea of adding followers was simply so that if we did have a status feed, there'd be a way to show only posts made by people that you want to see. If we did have a following feature, I think it should be a hidden metric; as in, nobody can see who is following who.

>Facebook's structure of status updates and newsfeeds have created an environment of superficial interaction
I'm not basing my ideas of of how Facebook is structured. In my opinion Facebook isn't a good social network, a social network isn't very social if you're not interacting with anyone but people you already know.

I do have a fairly nice idea of how a status feed could work, while keeping true to the forum's atmosphere.

>It's not really a forum anymore then, is it?
The forum aspect of it would remain untouched; it'd simply have an extra feature added to the site. Sure, people could start calling the site a social network, or even as I call it, a community; but I don't see how what the site is, changes the community in the slightest.

[2:15 PM] Melancholy: hm, people seem to be against the idea of adding a feed and followers
[2:17 PM] Melancholy: maybe i should describe what my vision of a feed would entail
[2:17 PM] Melancholy: and i sort of agree about the followers thing
[2:18 PM] Melancholy: i basically wanted them as a way that people can customise which items they see in their feed
[2:18 PM] Melancholy: but i could do that with the friends system anyway
[2:23 PM] zey: read the posts

it's tough. it's hard to get a good balance. and maybe for Lewd the balance has been reached
[2:29 PM] Melancholy: idk, i just think lewd could be so much more
[2:31 PM] zey: the problem is while some of them are okay with changes like that I imagine, most are there for what Lewd is now. so you have to determine a middle ground that will appease the current users and also attract new users

I don't really know your userbase well enough, or at all, to help determine what that middle ground is =/
[2:32 PM] Melancholy: i mean, it wouldn't even be taking anything away
[2:32 PM] Melancholy: lewd would be the same, it'd just have more features, and i'd be able to market it as a social network for weebs
[2:38 PM] zey: some like the feeling of being able to know who most if not all of the community are. and I guess those are the people that like smaller communities. personally, I'm kind of one of them; I don't like larger communities as much, it's overwhelming for me. but, a social network for weebs would definitely be a larger community if done right

you need to really determine what features you want to bring in that would allow for that to be viewed in a good manner for those that like smaller communities, because the post you made doesn't go very in-depth. as a whole, those features seem fine (to me). but it depends what your goals further than that are, if any

but maybe you don't need to keep the users that like smaller communities, because that might not be your target audience

idk. just offering a bit of a view from both sides i guess
[2:38 PM] Melancholy: even in large communities, small communities can form
[2:39 PM] Melancholy: when you have things available like personal groups, it's easy to make a small community within a large one.(edited)
[2:39 PM] zey: well, again, it's very possible if you do it right. I think facebook did it wrong. discord is a kind of social network, and I think it did it right
[2:39 PM] Melancholy: the thing that facebook did wrong is they made it closed
[2:40 PM] Melancholy: a social network isn't very social if you're not interacting with anyone but people you already know.
[2:41 PM] zey: yeah. UX matters a lot here too. maybe it has changed in the few years since I used facebook, but I always found switching between groups annoying, and knowing what notifications I had for which. on discord, it's very easy
[2:42 PM] zey: idk if groups like that were part of your plan, but stuff like that would be important to do right. that's basically all i was saying, in a very very roundabout way
[2:47 PM] Melancholy: groups would work exactly the same way they do on lewd now
[2:50 PM] zey: I don't know how they work =/
[2:51 PM] Melancholy: anyone can make one, and when they do, they get their own private subforum and a different coloured name
[2:52 PM] zey: ah. I don't really see why it wouldn't work, then. just clarify what they're asking about and see what you get back from them ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
[2:52 PM] Melancholy: they just don't like change : 3

i wish i could be bothered to read this

Melancholy wrote

i'll explain further later today; the idea stems from a possible aquisition i might make some time in the near future; any feed feature would be specifically designed to not get in the way of the current atmosphere of the forum and would merely be in place to provide an option for those that aren't used to forums to interact with those that do use the forums.

Kimizuki wrote

i wish i could be bothered to read this

i wish you couldn't be bothered to post useless replies

So basically they'd see https://lewd.sx/search.php?action=getdaily and be able to hop in and participate in discussions on the fly or something to that effect?

I'd like to see @Melancholy vision in action for at least a few weeks to see if it's something that we really like. The downside is all of the time implementing it only for it to be shunned away if people dislike it.

A trial run of this wouldn't hurt.