414 replies to this topic

[Iron Voltex]

I dislike that idea - one of the other critics clubs did that, and from my understanding it didn't go as planned.

Unless you guys all think you can take criticism, of course, in which case just say so here.

[MT Zehvor]

Well, obviously you can't go full blown review. Perhaps just pointing out the better parts of the comedy and a few constructive criticisms? It'll probably drive Hubert nuts, but the CCC needs some way to get its name out there. Not only would this accomplish that, but it might also bring some life into a rather quiet comedy forum.

 

Just an idea. 

 

Also I'm fine with harsh criticism. Probably won't agree with it, but if you want something to do, feel free to review any of my comedies at any point.

 

-MT

[Content with Life]

If we only point out the good parts, how can people learn which parts of their comedies aren't good and endeavor to improve?

 

Besides, I'm not always harsh when reviewing.

 

Rarity gave lower scores than me.

[MT Zehvor]

If we only point out the good parts, how can people learn which parts of their comedies aren't good and endeavor to improve?

 

Besides, I'm not always harsh when reviewing.

 

Rarity gave lower scores than me.

Several things:

 

A: I never claimed you were harsh.

 

B: The existence of one that performs an action to a greater extreme than another does not absolve the another of performing the action.

 

C: As I stated before, the point of this wouldn't be to give quality feedback. It's to A: Get the CCC's name out there more, and B: To bring some activity back into the comedy forum. Hopefully, the people whom you give a semi review to will request a full blown review later on, at which point you can actually go through and comment on things however you like. 

 

I'm not trying to be critical here, but the CCC is pretty much flat out dead. Not only is it dead, but it's going to stay that way unless something changes. This is one suggestion of how to change things. If you don't like it, then by all means, I encourage finding a solution that's more to your liking, but the CCC needs SOMETHING to be done to kickstart it out of the rut it's in.

 

-MT

Edited by MT Zehvor, Jun 07 2013 - 06:34 PM.

[Iron Voltex]

By extension, the entire Comedies forum needs it too. I do see and understand your points, MT; I am at fault myself. I haven't had the time I would like lately to be on BZPower, and outside of games that take only five minutes to catch up on, my activity has become extremely limited.

 

I'll try and give the idea a shot - however, I also suggest we begin brainstorming some ideas here for a Comedies contest.

[MT Zehvor]

I agree that the entire comedy forum needs it; however, there are very few places where we can actually do anything effectively. I've certainly tried to do it through this topic, via the comedy expos, the comedy of the year awards, but the problem with all of those is that they require that other people make the first move and participate, and we don't have the popularity for those kinds of ideas to work. The Comedy Contests run into the same roadblock.

 

I'm all for doing a contest, but I'd really rather it not end up like the comedy of the year award where only two nominations actually happened and no one wanted to vote. If we can get enough people, say, 5 or so, that are willing to commit to it, then we can move forward, but for the moment this doesn't seem like something too likely to work.

 

-MT

[Content with Life]

The comedies forum is dying.

 

Everyone else heads to epics and short stories, turned away by our reputation.

 

The reputation of being a place for terrible grammar, random jokes, weak plot and bad usage of the script format.

 

Unless we improve our rep, we're gonna crash and burn.

[MT Zehvor]

The comedies forum is dying.

 

Everyone else heads to epics and short stories, turned away by our reputation.

 

The reputation of being a place for terrible grammar, random jokes, weak plot and bad usage of the script format.

 

Unless we improve our rep, we're gonna crash and burn.

The problem isn't really the comedy forum's reputation; the epics' and short stories' forums are doing just as poorly as we are in terms of activity at this point (the epic review club hasn't reviewed a single story since mid May). The entire library's in a pretty bad spot.

 

This is probably a bit more pessimistic than I'd like it to be, but I think the real issue here is that BZP has stayed BZP since Bionicle's "death." More people leaving BZP than are joining it at this time. At this rate, every forum will essentially die out completely, possibly within the next 3 years or so. As Bionicle becomes more and more of a distant memory, less and less people will join to replace those who are leaving. Even fewer of those will be comedy writers.

 

That's why it's critical for us to give SOME feedback, or at least some sense of acknowledgement, to anyone who comes onto the forum and tries to write a comedy. New comedy writers are going to be very few and far between, and we need as many of them to stick around as possible for this forum to survive for any extended period of time. At the moment, I think there are, what, twelve or so active comedy writers on the forum? We don't have many numbers to lose.

 

I'll definitely spend some time doing this myself; the comedy forum has essentially been my "home" on BZP since I joined in 2007, and I'd love for it to last as long as possible.

 

TL;DR version, plan looks something similar to this:

 

Post on people's comedies whenever the chance arises. Preferably something positive to encourage them to keep writing.

Hopefully, this will keep the people on at the moment from leaving, and will keep new comedy writers here as well.

As time goes on, we can draw in more and more people, and perhaps this can lead to increased popularity in other facets of the comedy forum (CCC, this topic, contests, etc.)

 

EDIT: I realize this has the potential, should it succeed (which I'm not incredibly optimistic about in the first place) of dragging the comedy forum's reputation down again. For the moment, that's acceptable to me. In time, if we can get more writers on here and raise the forum back to a decent level of popularity, then we can worry about bringing the quality back up to standards, but at the moment, we're dealing with the very real possibility of a dead forum. And I would much rather prefer a forum with a bad rep for some period of time than a dead forum that will stay activity-less forever.

 

-MT

Edited by MT Zehvor, Jun 09 2013 - 12:31 AM.

[Content with Life]

Huh ... looks like we'll have to get to work, giving some feedback.

[Phovos the Raptor]

You know what always makes the comedy contests done in this thread bad? We're trying to nominate old threads and not starting anything new.

 

What we need is a contest with a predetermined theme, one that is fairly simple yet has some nice little ideas behind it. And we need to get the comedy writers to all write something new, to stay away from their comedies.*

 

I'm particularly at fault here. I write my BKR topic and that's it. I don't try and do something else (although that's partly because no one ever reads the different stuff I write and when I asked for a review on one of my stories, I got 1/10 for pretty much no reason what so ever. I always disliked Rarity's reviews, they seemed too self-righteous and hateful.) and that makes me stale. That continues on and makes everything else stale too.

 

Doesn't help that I'm busy on other forums elsewhere. Because, let's face it, it's been a long time. And even the twilight years weren't so good.

 

* Also, prizes help. Doesn't even have to be a good prize.

Edited by Phovos the Raptor, Jun 10 2013 - 07:34 AM.

[JL v2]

More one shots?

 

 

That could help. If I'm reading it right, we're at the stage where we simply need more activity, more comedies and more writers. While a full on series is definitely interesting, one shots provide a way for people to test out ideas yet also be writing comedies.

 

Also, about Phovos' "themed" writing, I'm interested. Which makes me think about an idea of multiple writers on one story.

[MT Zehvor]

Didn't we do a themed contest last summer? As I recall...it didn't get very far...I don't even remember the results being announced.

 

But I could be wrong on that account so correct me if I am.

 

And more one shots...sure. I'd go for that. I'll have to put that off for a few days until I get back from Texas, but once that's done, sure.

 

-MT

[Iron Voltex]

iBrow just had an amazing contest idea, possibly for the entire library. I might pm it to HH, or I'll post it here AND pm it. Or I'll keep the idea for myself.

[MT Zehvor]

iBrow just had an amazing contest idea, possibly for the entire library. I might pm it to HH, or I'll post it here AND pm it. Or I'll keep the idea for myself.

Whenever iBrow feels like reverting back to referring to himself in first person, I'd like to hear what he has to say.

[Iron Voltex]

...oops? xD

Anyway. Moving on, the idea was: apocalypse. But only if it occurs after August, that way I can participate too.