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!

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.

I cannot believe he ever thought it would be suitable material for this site!

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"!

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.

Really enjoyed your 2013 review, David. It was an even more eventful year than I'd realised!

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.

Cool, I look forward to reading that!

Sorry I missed the other one, it sounds intriguing.

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 I became aware of this almost immediately, and unpublished the article so that further work could be done on it, but I was too late to stop the automatic tweet having been triggered.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.

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.

http://twitter.com/Knightmare_CITV/status/406775674121498624

http://twitter.com/Knightmare_CITV/status/417454271131840512

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!

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...

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.

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.

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.

I'm inclined to think that the low forum activity is a reflection of a wider shift away from forums and blogs towards social networking sites. I suspect that a lot of the people who want to talk about Knightmare (or about anything for that matter) aren't choosy about where they do so or how impermanent it is; so if they happen to be on Facebook or Twitter or YouTube anyway then that's where they give voice. People are increasingly used to getting little more than passive acknowledgement (a like or a favourite) for their efforts: if they came here and got thoughtful responses consisting of words in paragraphs, I'm not sure they'd know what to do.

I'd be interested to get your views on this – are these articles worth doing? If so, would you have any ideas for a genuinely original article?

Expressing yourself as a Knightmare fan via any available channel is always worth doing. As for genuinely original articles: fresh interviews with cast, contestants and crew are always a possibility.

Some of the people who find the urge to write at length (and write well) about Knightmare would prefer to it in their own blogs, and that's understandable.

I honestly don't believe that the 'stock' of Knightmare is exhausted yet by any means. But as Alex and Chris have both rightly insinuated, it's more of a challenge now to be innovative than it once was.

Is that why one of them has changed his name? Welcome back, by the way.

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.

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.

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.

Has the forum ever been advertised on Facebook? I think a lot of people just don't realise it's here. Heck, I've been aware of Knightmare.com since 2001, but didn't notice there was a forum until 2010!

The forum was advertised on Facebook last year - on the 17th of November to mark its own 10th anniversary! Alas, the post made to promote the forum only received 20 likes; below what is now considered to be the norm of 100.

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.

Sounds positive. Hope this can raise awareness of the site and forum.

"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.

In my original post, I asked people to look at their forum postings and contact me if they thought it would make a good article.

Unfortunately, nobody did. Sadly, therefore, there are a huge number of articles that have been seen by a mere 25 people, rather than 25,000.

I'm not entirely comfortable merely converting peoples' posts into articles, though I suppose there isn't a good reason to do so. We could always email people and ask them, but even if they answer, this is another time consuming job to be carried out.

Off the top of my head, there could be a series of for/against articles on various aspects of the show (which could be nicely labelled as the powers that be/the opposition). Anyway, comments on the worth of this approach from long-standing forum members please!

KaM said:

I honestly don't believe that the 'stock' of Knightmare is exhausted yet by any means. But as Alex and Chris have both rightly insinuated, it's more of a challenge now to be innovative than it once was. There's value in taking time and care to make contributions worthy.

Absolutely. Though I feel inclined to add that in the context of ‘fan stuff’ we shouldn’t limit ourselves to Pulitzer Prize winning criticism . There needs to be a balance between site activity and innovation.

I've also had plans for little projects that, for one reason or another, haven't been fulfilled. For some of these, I suspect, the moment has passed. Some may yet be possible. And, encouragingly, some have emerged that could not have been foreseen before.

An example of the latter: one of my colleagues here at Leicester has been working on Knightmare as part of her doctoral thesis on the representation of fantasy in children's television from the 1950s to 1994. I'm very much hoping to encourage her to pen a contribution for the site (for where better than here?)

I honestly don't believe that the 'stock' of Knightmare is exhausted yet by any means. But as Alex and Chris have both rightly insinuated, it's more of a challenge now to be innovative than it once was. There's value in taking time and care to make contributions worthy.

It's been a decent 12 months for Knightmare, all considered, and I'm convinced that this can be met with new content. The timing has just been a little frustrating. I definitely look forward to helping out more once the civil war with my 80,000 word thesis is finally over (and hopefully without any beheading. Crumbs, even Knightmare didn't succumb to a formal execution. Imagine...!)