Reviving the forums

[Emral]

Discord killed the forums. It's harsh, but accurate. Before discord, screenshots, episode progress updates, help questions and idle chitchat were posted on the forums. In their current state, the forums barely see any traffic at all. But people keep reassuring me that it's okay because discord is more convenient and everyone is still engaging with the game and community through discord.

So why care?

The forums are googleable, the discord is not. In order to enter the discord, you have to actively join it. In order to find conversations on discord, you have to search it. To people who aren't willing to join the discord for one reason or another, the community looks dead, because all they see is the forums. To people who join the discord, they are roped into the stream of conversation, which only fills the niche of the old IRC chat, rather than the parallel conversation threads that every forum thread can provide. It may be impossible to find an answer to a question posted 3 months ago, or to assemble all the project updates on one's favourite project (at least, without joining a different discord where said project is being discussed).

In other words, while the established community may be doing fine doing all their business on discord, what we lose is the outwards appearance of a living and active community, and conversations regarding community content can hardly be described as "archived" or "visible to newcomers". This hurts growth, as fewer people will be interested in joining, and knowledge, as a lot of information is hidden behind an account wall and a dubious search feature. There's literally a joke on the smbx discord of MrNameless answering the same question every few days with a link to the previous time they answered it. It's in good jest, but it shows just how bad discord is for long term sustainability of community knowledge.

When I first joined as a member, it was because I was inspired to see people's graphic packs, community project updates, trailers, levels and discussion of current community events. It's exciting to see the efforts of the community unfold in real time, and in order to help the continued health of the community, as older members leave and newer members come in, I think it is important to restore some of that excitement.

I go off on a tangent here about other changes in the community climate. This is not part of the main point I'm trying to make, but if I have your attention it might be interesting to you:

Spoiler: show

Back in the day, we had Tower of Biased, Adventures of Knux, 2k1x and other projects that incorporate community members as characters in a story. Opinions on their content aside, I think they worked conceptually because we didn't know each other super well, and included each other out of respect for the work we saw them do in the community, on the forums.
In today's day and age, doing the same thing would be a bit weird, I think. With discord, we see each other's posts, opinions and character all the time. Instead of going onto someone's thread because you think their stuff is cool, the guy who does cool stuff is now in your face posting about it and also the games they played last month and also what they ate for breakfast. Discord is a type of non-consentual flow of information from people that makes you know them a bit too personally, and it removes the magic that would validate a creative interpretation of their online persona as an inclusion in a fan project riffing on current topics that affect the community. At least in my opinion. Not like there are many noteworthy topics since discord anyway.

So how can this be fixed?

1. Cross-post more progress updates on your work to the forums! This one should go without saying, but if you have a new screenshot for your episode, or a new screenshot for the screenshots thread, or a funny thing you found, make a thread for it! Even if it gets no replies now, people might see it in the future and be inspired. Carry your voice to the people you don't know are going to be watching!
2. Engage with more forum content! This is the other side of the coin. Level reviews, feedback on graphics and episode demos, attempts to help people with their graphic requests... It's true that there isn't a lot of incentive to do it right now, so there are some thoughts about systemic changes I've been mulling over that might help (but would require some level of administrative effort):
2.a. Allow people to opt-out of one-level-thread-per-user. I think a system with the best of both worlds would be a user-level-thread where users post progress on wip levels as well, with an OP that links to other level threads that are posted as soon as they're released. A fresh level thread is also more inviting to replies, at least in my opinion.
2.b. A karma or bounty system for replying to content in meaningful ways. This would encourage graphics/code request solutions, level reviews, episode reviews and such. If we had points per account on a forum-wide level, and posting one of these types of replies would grant you with extra points, it might feel like a game to post on the forums, while letting people be nice and helpful to each other in the process. The bounty system would basically catalogue a list of unreplied stuff, like unplayed levels in mario maker. People who feel inspired would naturally go down the list. I don't know how it would be kept up.
2.c. (Automatic?) Crossposts from discord. This one is kinda cheap and not true engagement, but turning discord content into forum content can be a thing. Either with a bot that auto-posts starboarded screenshots (for example) or assigning a job to a mod to post a "weekly digest" thread they post the newest developments of interesting stuff the community talked about, starboarded gifs and videos (crossposted to imgur for permalink) and progress on hype projects. It's kinda like the old newsletter, in a way. Wouldn't have to be high effort all the time, I think.
3. Level of the month, talkhaus "mosts" style community awards, or other such recurring events. We'd need someone who had the time to help organize them.
4. Contests and events. This is basically the only avenue I've worked on so far, and it has limited success. If you have cool ideas for events that would tap into the idea of reviving the forums, please get in touch and we can work on something.

That's my thoughts on this for now. I think if we don't treat the forums well, the lack of traffic will eventually bring the community to its knees. Discord regulars will be blind to it for a while, but the lack of newcomers will start to hurt bad, and making will no longer be fun. If we can at all help it, let's not allow it to get to that point.

Please post your thoughts on the matter below. I'm aware it's a quite doom-y post, but I think it's not to be understated that the publicly visible part of the community has changed for the worse in recent years, and the community size has shrunk dramatically. Personally, I want to see this community flourish. And I'm not in any of the discords, so I can't see it right now and it's a bummer.

Thanks for reading!

[TheNightingale]

Great post. We were talking exactly about this a while ago on discord.

This is maybe why the community doesn't get as much new members as before, guests just think SMBX is dead at first glance and then move on. Newcomers are likely to join the forums before discord and get a bad first impression about the community

[kr4k1n]

I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks the forums have been a bit too quiet lately. I agree that Discord has made things more personal and less anonymized. Me and a couple other people in the main discord have seen this post, so it’s all good.

[Squishy Rex]

It's basically becoming it's own version of "Video Killed the Radio Star" and I couldn't agree more. I have to admit, I've barely looked at the forums in the last twelve months mainly due to Discord just being the more convenient option, and even of the few times that I have, there's usually just myself and the odd couple of bots online. While Discord is arguably a better platform for chatting and more real-time engagement, it's not suitable for providing a long-term catalogue for episodes, assets etc. (part of the reason I've kinda had a change of heart in regards to Discord threads). Sure it's a nifty thing, but the forums really do it better, at least in my opinion.

I honestly like the ideas you put forward, there's so many areas of the forums that have been untouched for years, and it feels like wasted potential. Heck, maybe it's time for the forums to get a new coat of paint too? The Karma/Bounty system could bring back the badge system or something similar?

There's a good discussion to be had here, let's keep this one off Discord people!

[Saltlord]

While I do appreciate Discord for the more immediate discussions it enables, it's quite easy for content to get overshadowed or lost in the constant stream of consciousness that is the #showcase-channel. Besides, outside of contests, I think it's become exceedingly rare to find more thought-out reviews of content. Like, briefly sharing your thoughts on a screenshot or GIF of a level is cool and all, I frequently do that myself. However, it's not even remotely comparable to sitting down, playing a level and thinking about what it excels at and what its flaws are. Which is why I'm in favor of a karma system of sorts! As suggested by Squishy Rex, it could work nicely in tandem with the old badge system by rewarding users who frequently engage with the content of others (in good faith) with a little icon or whatever on their profile.

[Blake Izayoi]

I agree with this post in its entirety. While I do believe Discord has been good for the SMBX community, I do also believe Discord should never be the main area for a community, but rather a supplementary to a community.

Back when I was a kid, I had no internet access. I used to go to the public library weekly with a USB stick in hand to browse the SMBX forums. It was so mesmerizing to see all the new content from when I last checked... all the new levels to play, graphics packs to use, and sometimes even a whole new episode to play. I just don't get that same feeling anymore with Discord.

I especially like the idea of a karma system, encouraging cross-posting, and a "level of the month" thread. Cross-posting would be the best way to have both worlds of the forums and Discord. I really miss forums as a whole, not just for SMBX, but across the internet. Everything is in a Discord server these days, where you have to put yourself out there when you join. Forums on the other hand, easy to access, and for most you didn't even have to sign up to view anything. You could be totally anonymous if you wanted to.

[Bedream]

Honestly, Discord's at its best when it's private, friend-circle servers. Help channels aren't great wherever I go because of how fluid conversations get on there. The same goes for talk channels, since there can be THREE conversations going on at the same time. Personally, I really, really hate public Discord servers, which includes stuff I'm into. It's why I barely talk on the SMBX2 server.

Also, when it comes to posting stuff, most of what you get (or at least I get on some servers) is just stars, whereas in private servers I got thought-out criticism. I know it depends on where you are on the Internet, but still.

[John Nameless]

I agree with the overall sentiment that the forums should VERY much be revived (especially just seeing a convo on the smbx discord being constantly derailed by another lmao)

But man do I some grievances with how the forums is currently structured right now.
Why do I have to login to use the search bar when every other forum I go to doesn't have this issue?
Why are profile pics which properly helps identifying whose who much better than using the NPC icons that depend on how much you posted, disabled when signed out now compared to before?
What happened to the old menu graphics that used the original SMAS SMB3 sprites?
And if those sprites can't directly be used due to good reasons, could someone at least make it look a bit better than being flat & boring?

That's not all of my grievances but yeah.

Honestly, I think making the forums itself more convenient to use (easier way to send "video" files like gifs or MP4s, spruced up UI, re-enabling some now disabled features, etc) to use would go a long way to encourage people to actually use them instead of introducing some new "encouragement" system like a karma/bounty system would.

Also, I miss the featured Worlds & Graphics page, I think it could be neat to re-introduce those (or at the very least just the graphics page) someday.

[Marina]

I also think having the forums is important for the purpose of having a digital third space. There are not many places left where people can exist (especially children) without being a product to big companies. Social media isn't your friend, and I don't think Discord is an exception, esepcially in recent years.

I don't think the forums and Discord need to replace each other, but who knows. Maybe we can become more hybrid. It does, like Emral said, though, require for everyone to cooperate. More crossposting from Discord to the forums is a great start, I think.

[Knux]

If this forum wants to gain its traffic back it will need to get rid of the Discord completely, but there are already SMBX sub-communities within it that exist. Discord is too big a thing to abandon completely and it IS convienent - IRC was doable in the early 2010s as a live chatroom, but going back to that would probably not gel well with the majority. We got by with it back then, but the landscape is so drastically different now that I wouldn't be surprised if many members now haven't even heard of IRC.

I am surprised to see a lot of people agree with your sentiment, Emral. I was under the belief that I'm a forum boomer now, and that bringing this up would have been shot down immediatly. But I will say this place hasn't felt like a community in years, since around 2016 for me personally. Granted, a lot of people I knew from 2009-2015 are gone now, but we can rebuild.

If the forums are to survive, we can't live side-by-side with Discord, unless you remove a significant portion of features for the server, but would that even go down well? That's my concern.

[mariobrigade2018]

If the forums are to survive, we can't live side-by-side with Discord, unless you remove a significant portion of features for the server, but would that even go down well?

What? WDYM by this? Emral already had some ideas on how this would be possible. I do truly think that they both can live side-by-side (Just don't have any new ideas on how that would go AMT)

[Emral]

I disagree with the notion that the death of discord is required for the forum to survive. It's a thought I had but quickly dismissed, as it's impossible to enforce and comes with its own downsides. I'd rather see the discord promote forum-centric features like events and new releases, coupled with more ease-of-access on the forums and motivation to post here (gamification might work for some?). It might not be enough, or we'll think about it and find different key problems I've not found in my original post, which we can discuss solutions for later*. Point is, I think the technologies can work together to create something fun and new, rather than retro and inconvenient in today's age.

* MrNameless writes above about forum search and the unfinished and sad looking theme, which are things that were totally invisible to me (darkreader prosilver user). So in response to the latter I sent some newly illustrated graphics to Marina earlier that should hopefully help with the image of the forums.

[kr4k1n]

I definitely thought of the discord being nuked and everyone moving back to the forums at first, but I’m with Emral on this.

[aero]

I think you've identified a problem, and there's a few angles to it that I think should be handled separately. I've never liked Discord being the main avenue of discussion. This isn't just an issue for us though. Basically ever forum has moved to a Discord/subreddit with the main forum dying, and the forums still going are ones that just never had a Discord server available to begin with. That said I disagree with 2b and 2c (mostly 2b) since it wouldn't really solve anything. I've tried cross-posting as a means of encouraging activity in an IRC revival, but it just didn't work because everyone is already on Discord and the feature differences discouraged engagement in IRC any more than as a novelty. It would be possible to make a bot that follows a forum RSS feed and updates or something but that would just be a regular reminder that this place exists much less an encouragement to engage. Having points and stuff is just not something I can support either because it always takes away from actual post content. When we had reputation it didn't work, badges didn't work, ranks can encourage spam, and even having avatars can be distracting. Not to get into a tangent, but it is very much intentional that ranks are the size of icons, avatar sizes are much more limited than they used to be, and when browsing as a guest you can't see avatars or signatures and it fits more posts on the screen when it used to be like one.

I would approach this a bit differently and try to make the forums a center for community archival as a focus and discussion revolve around that on here and coordinated in #archives on the Discord. I do like the idea of bounties when it comes to this such as let's say finding and releasing a catalog of old SMBX builds that were just laying around on a hard drive (wink wink) and then having expeditions into Internet Archive to find old content to share and simultaneously archiving new content there as a team (nudge nudge), you could possibly dedicate a section of the forums to it (cough cough).

I had a longer post than this but I didn't want to make a wall of text so I'll just leave it here for now to see where it goes.

[Marina]

Guys all we need is the collapse of social media in endstage capitalism for everyone to come running back to self-supported forums :)

[ilovehamburgerz]

Guys all we need is the collapse of social media in endstage capitalism for everyone to come running back to self-supported forums

That means no Youtube? (sarcastic here)

[kr4k1n]

Guys all we need is the collapse of social media in endstage capitalism for everyone to come running back to self-supported forums

“Reject humanity, return to monke” meme, but it’s the SMBX forums

[Knux]

we should bring back forum games

[Sux]

This topic is extremely necessary, as I had repeatedly thought about it before. It is saddening to see the game, which was a significant part of many people's lives here, marking their childhood, adolescence, and even adulthood, falling into obscurity.
I have always found it strange that, in the past, when we had SMBX 1.3 with many limitations, the community was extremely active. We had numerous levels, projects, and widespread participation in contests. Today, with SMBX2, the possibilities are vast. I don't necessarily see a lack of creativity in what is being produced, but rather a lack of promotion and engagement. It feels as though the game's growth has been inversely proportional to that of the community.

I am fond of the idea of reviving many of the features we had in the past, such as the 'Level of the Month' and the reputation system, as previously mentioned. It would also be interesting to bring back differentiated groups in the forum. I am referring to the return of the 'Contest Winners' category—just the mere status of having your nickname highlighted in a distinctive color was very appealing. Additionally, the 'Level Judge' group could be reintroduced, possibly in a rotating manner. They could provide reviews with constructive criticism for each new level posted, which in itself would contribute to elevating certain entries to 'Level of the Month' status.

I am not advocating for flooding the forum, but I do not understand the purpose of the current model where each designer uses only one thread to post their levels. Previously, it was one thread per level, which seemed more organized. It gave us a sense of something new every time we opened the subforum. Moreover, levels with better ratings were moved to another subforum. Now, I notice that everything is archived.

A great episode made in collaboration by the community could be good for engagement too, and I'd even like to take this opportunity to ask what happened to SLAM?

Contests and events are the main thing that keeps people engaged, and I think the best strategy is to invest in them and improve their quality. I'm a fan of the old format contests where the results came out little by little by tiers and there was great anticipation about who the winner would be and how high your level placed.

I particularly got to know smbx and the community through youtube, for those who have a channel with some reach could bring new members to the forum and increase the community if we improve publicity

[Valentine]

SLAM died because when i started it when I was like 16 and in way over my head, and now we're 2 more updates deep into smbx and all the levels would require numerous updates and fixes to even work. I'm certainly not going to be picking it back up because I'm not exactly interested in chaining myself to spur of the moment decisions I made 6 years ago and I doubt anyone else would want to either.