this and op with ghoulybits are pretty reasonable perspectives, as much as i partially fail to share their urgency.-Remi wrote:
Even though I partially agree with you, if you come to OT and expect quality, you only have yourself to blame. I'm not saying this as a joke, I mean it. OT is the last place I come to for entertainment, if the quality is suddenly lacking or I'm not having as much fun, it's as simple as not interacting, or interacting half-assedly. It's really not much to ponder over. OT will be OT, and there will be periods of quality spikes, and decline.
I also do think OT is not doing too bad at the moment, we've got the Compliment showdown coming up (even though you personally deny the success of the thread, it's always worth a shot), we have the Tournament of Power, and a Talent Show.
However, I would like to throw an opinion out there, and it's going to be both a controversial and unreasonable one:I'm all for ABOLISHING threads which update daily, such as the "I will change this title every-day" and TierLists thread. Despite those threads being very successful and somewhat fun threads, I feel like it's pulling in too much traffic. Especially the TierLists thread, which I believe will tire out eventually. I have nothing against the posters nor the concept, but I rarely like to interact with these threads myself, and I much prefer looking at new threads.
OT would be more 'fun' if we let these things die, or change the frequency of the thread updates. The posters of these threads have what it takes to produce quality, but having to manage a thread daily isn't really that great.
It forces someone to think of a thread title or idea every single day, as opposed to letting them use that creativity across multiple days to produce something worthwhile. It also just looks like another mediocre thread on the forum. Once again, I apologise if it hurts any feelings, but that's my true opinion on the matter.
Of course, that's only if I really cared about the Quality of OT to the extent that the people in this thread seem to. It's not something I think about, nor care about, that often.
If you'd like me to elaborate further, I can, but don't expect me to present you with too much facts and logic, it's mostly a personal opinion.
Also, you need personal threads here and there to offset all the good threads. Having such quality on so many threads will push our expectations too high.
in my experience, quality is bound to remain finnicky, and low and high quality threads will continue to have their merit in flux. i appreciate this arc, even though i also sense the absence of lore starting to sink in, and with other thread types forming their own precedent, it's hard to expect the effort usually seen in the early post-ot!pression era underneath the shitposting. we really had a fun narrative going on, with its own geopolitical intraforum context, and that's been lost in time.
that said, abolition won't solve this. historically, we've taken some approaches toward curbing undesirable types of thread expression and found that it came with limited positive effect, unless we tied it in with the lore at the time as a canonical infighting type of deal. expectation was another thing i seem to vaguely recall being discussed at the time too, where we were trying to figure out where to go with post quality and how far to take our effort lore and all.
we typically work best by nurturing and cultivating the things we're looking for. it's a little obvious, but it's particularly organic and freeing and allows for emergent properties just through giving the chance for change by building that precedent yourself.
all in all, can't really fault people much from my perspective. roleplay is ever-changing and its presence shifts with the nature and existing disposition of its forum-dwellers, and i think the mourning of that quality is in itself a faintly positive signal for its return should someone choose to engage in it.