New Articles Needed: Site and Forum now Linked
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how hugely disorganised ... the forum is.
I must admit to finding that sentiment a trifle disheartening, as someone who has invested a great deal of time in endeavouring to make the forum much more navigable and organised than it would otherwise have been. At one point, before its threads were tidied, General Discussion was 60 pages deep. Also, the Episode Discussion section, which seems to be regaining some of its erstwhile popularity for obvious reasons, has all its threads logically titled as well as a guide thread, with links, that also lists teams. So our castle isn't entirely ramshackle.
Yes, I perhaps spoke in haste.
Let me add then, what a monumentally massive improvement the forum organisation is over what it WAS
One problem is that many people are scared away by how hugely disorganised and cumbersome the forum is. Looking at the topic of a thread tells you very little about what you might find within it. Previous incarnations of the forum necessitated big threads that people were encouraged to update (e.g. "News relating to actor X"). However, in practice, these are very very difficult for new people to traverse or to search.
The Knightmare.com Forum is what it is: a repository of nearly 11 years' worth of continuous and often spontaneous posting on a subject about which there is an awful lot to say. Being awed by that is understandable; being scared by it is something I have limited sympathy for. Now, as then, any newcomer who introduces him/herself to the forum is warmly welcomed; queries are answered swiftly, knowledgeably and gladly. When a newer member recently enquired about what the KM cast are up to nowadays, as well he might, one of us told him. There was no suggestion that he should be trawling long threads to find the answer himself. Active forum contributors may be in short supply but it is a definite case of quality over quantity. I hope that all of this forum's contributors will continue to feel valued here, regardless of anything else.
Perhaps. But for the one person who does that, there might be 50 others that get scared away.
Heck, I'm scared by some of the threads.
As you say, that's partly because it's 11 years of continuous and spontaneous posting. It's also because there's been a bit of a shift in forum capabilities over time.
I think it is also because there's never really been much of a push for people to post in a particular way and never (to my knowledge) any correction when people post in an incorrect manner - for example, by going off topic as we're doing here
I'm not entirely comfortable merely converting peoples' posts into articles, though I suppose there isn't a good reason to do so.
In fact, there is at least one precedent for this, though the thread in question lent itself quite naturally to the conversion.
Erk. Slight typo from me there. I meant to say "there isn't a good reason not to do so". Damn double negatives.
It's good to know there's a precedent. However, the nature of that thread lends itself quite well to conversion. A sprawling thread with side comments, questions, "LOLs" and so on, doesn't do so well. In the first instance, I'd prefer that people volunteer. In time, as perhaps we get more time, I might feel differently
There's a phrase that Alan has used three times on this page, and that phrase is 'time consuming'. There's no getting away from this problem: none of the paths is short, and those of us who've already invested great amounts of time in keeping the Dunshelm fires burning online are fully entitled to wonder, with no disrespect to Knightmare, how possible, fulfilling and fruitful further large investments of our time will be.
I've been trying recently on Twitter to draw attention to the forum. I mentioned our 'dreams about Knightmare' thread to @ChallengeTV; I suggested to @KnightmareLive that they join in with our 'Knightmare Live' thread, providing links in both cases. (If our newest member PaulTreguard is Paul Flannery of Knightmare Live, welcome and good luck!) I will continue to look out for more opportunities like those.
Certainly seconded. Personally I'm fairly busy with AQ at the moment, which is at a fairly critical stage. I have a massive amount of work in order to get that off the ground, although my hope is that once it's going, it'll take less work to keep it going.
I'd then hope to be able to spend some time giving the forum some love.
Would there be value in careful curation of the forum i.e. are there threads worth turning into articles to ensure a wider readership?
I'm coming up to my 10th anniversary as a Knightmare Forum user. Perhaps I'll put together an article for Knightmare.com that highlights the threads I've enjoyed and admired the most. I may also review my old posts and Lexicon entries for a similar purpose. Beyond that, I don't know how comfortable I'd be with other people harvesting my posts for articles. Most of my Knightmare writing is, first and foremost, for my own pleasure, and in many ways I'm happier with it having a more select readership.
[/quote]THe difficulty with that, of course, is that in having written it, your writings are a source of research for people who do write articles.
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Perhaps this all comes down to the question of what is knightmare.com trying to achieve? Why was there a request for new articles? Is the site merely a place for existing KM fans to come and chew the fat or is it trying to promote the show and expand the fanbase? What are the site’s objectives re. traffic, interactivity etc?
If we can come up with a satisfactory answer to the ‘so what?’ question then perhaps a strategy can be developed to take the site forward in an appropriate direction (and maybe this will lead to a decision that things are fine as they are).
Gosh, all this talk of ‘strategy’ and ‘objectives’ sounds very formal but hopefully you understand what I’m trying to say. I appreciate that a fan site run by volunteers is unlikely to have a sophisticated governance model .
I think Drassil is correct in saying that people have moved on from traditional forums to social media. These days, people expect things to come to them and, with busy timelines constantly being updated with new information, competition for attention is fierce. The recent request for a rebuttal article to my jump the shark piece probably wasn’t seen by many because the original article had already been buried under a landslide of other people’s status updates.
Even if people comment on FB articles they probably don’t expect a response (and most probably don’t even check to see if any further comments are made). It’s also interesting to see how many very brief comments are made via mobile phone – this is a very superficial form of engagement. It was nice seeing a few comments of multiple sentences on my jump the shark article, though I suspect a significant number of those commenting had actually read nothing more than the article’s title.
Then again, thousands of people being exposed to a KM article inherently feels like a positive thing. So perhaps FB is good for exposure but not so good for discussion. It comes back to – does any of this matter?!
Anyway, we’ll see if a link on Challenge’s website sends a few more people this way...
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FYI, challenge did get back to me, and said:
"I know we aren't allowed to promote third party websites on air but maybe we could direct people to our website and our Knightmare page then put a link to your site on there? Our website guy is off until Thursday so I'll discuss with him :-)"
So hopefully, there'll be something on the horizon.
I see Challenge have now promoted the site and forum on their Facebook page!
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In the last month I've seen two tweets about new articles on Knightmare.com, but the links have led to 404 errors. Are the articles supposed to be visible, or were the tweets premature?
http://twitter.com/Knightmare_CITV/status/406775674121498624
http://twitter.com/Knightmare_CITV/status/417454271131840512
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The Lee Gunnell article was deleted after it received complaints.
The other one I'm less sure about, but I suspect it's since been reclassified, moved, or deleted. I don't think there's any way to update a tweet with revised addresses once it's been made.
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The other one I'm less sure about, but I suspect it's since been reclassified, moved, or deleted. I don't think there's any way to update a tweet with revised addresses once it's been made.
This was due to a clerical error when I submitted the article. I became aware of this almost immediately, and unpublished the article so that further work could be done on it, but I was too late to stop the automatic tweet having been triggered. With any luck the article will be published properly before the end of the day, given that it's a look back at the past year.
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Unless you're a fan of paedophile jokes, you haven't missed much.
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Unless you're a fan of paedophile jokes, you haven't missed much.
No wonder it got deleted if that was why. Don't need garbage like that.
On a positive note, good work on the 2013 review David! For me 2013 has been the best year Knightmare has had since Knightmare ceased broadcasting.
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Thank you for the positive comments about my 2013 review. I felt it would reflect poorly on Knightmare.com not to have one, so I'm glad it's been received well.
No wonder it got deleted if that was why. Don't need garbage like that.
Each time I've seen Knightmare Live, one of the advisors has tried to make a joke along these lines (e.g. Yewtree). And each time, Paul Flannery/Treguard has been quick to condemn them for "lazy comedy"!
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I actually stumbled on this article a few months ago by googling knightmare and looking through many pages of results. Questionable 'jokes' aside it's pretty offensive to fans of the show - despite a 'too little, too late' claim to the contrary, the writer obviously isn't particularly keen on the programme.
I cannot believe he ever thought it would be suitable material for this site!
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I'd just like to add my compliments to and say that I thought Drassil's 2013 article was very well researched and written.
It was engaging informative and brilliant summation of Knightmare in 2013 and everything that had happened within the fandom of KM in 2013.
It was a fantastic bite sized crash course for someone like me who was getting back into the fandom on what they had missed in the previous year.
Well done mate.
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Thanks for the tip, Chris: I've now read the deleted article in the author's blog. I find the tone slightly menacing and I'm sad that it was ever published on Knightmare.com. My compliments to whoever raised concerns about it.
And thank you, Ricky, for such high praise of my 2013 article. I'm not sure I'd have believed what a remarkable year 2013 was for Knightmare if I hadn't written it all out!
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