Books books books? June 9, 2015 7:58 AM Subscribe
I respect and understand that lots of new work is being/has just been done on fanfare and the whole of metafilter, so I get that additional projects might not be forthcoming right away, aaannnddd.... I'm wondering about fanfare books?
I'm curious if books create some special/different challenge than adding, say, podcasts did? Is it the sheer potential volume that's a worry? Something else?
Every time I read something really provocative or with a wide, nerd audience, I wish I could talk about it with metafilterians. I know there have been metafilter book club efforts at various points, so I think the interest is there. I'd love to understand more what concerns or thoughts come up around books and also register my "vote" that I'd love to see books whenever (or if-ever) it seems possible.
(Or, in the meantime, if anyone wants to talk about Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts with me, just send me a message.)
I'm curious if books create some special/different challenge than adding, say, podcasts did? Is it the sheer potential volume that's a worry? Something else?
Every time I read something really provocative or with a wide, nerd audience, I wish I could talk about it with metafilterians. I know there have been metafilter book club efforts at various points, so I think the interest is there. I'd love to understand more what concerns or thoughts come up around books and also register my "vote" that I'd love to see books whenever (or if-ever) it seems possible.
(Or, in the meantime, if anyone wants to talk about Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts with me, just send me a message.)
This might get me to actually go to fanfare.
posted by Gygesringtone at 8:02 AM on June 9, 2015 [18 favorites]
posted by Gygesringtone at 8:02 AM on June 9, 2015 [18 favorites]
I would like this so much! I find myself reading Sparknotes sometimes after I finish a book so I can see if I agree with their assessment of the themes because it's the closest to an interesting discussion (as opposed to just a review) I can find on the internet. It would be so wonderful if we had this on Metafilter! I know there's always a lot to do but I would be so, so happy about this.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 8:02 AM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 8:02 AM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
Yes, we do want to add books to FanFare at some point. Books do create a different challenge because of the time commitment involved with consuming them. The chances that a good number of MeFites are reading the same book you are at the same time are fairly low compared to, say, watching a TV show or listening to a podcast.
A common complaint we've heard over and over about FanFare is that there are too many posts with too little discussion. We don't want that to happen with books so we're thinking about it very carefully. We don't simply want to open the gates to books and have dozens of posts with no discussion.
I think FanFare Clubs are a step in the direction of harnessing media consumption energy. Those have just launched and we're watching them to see how they're being used for our existing media and what that might mean for books.
There have been MetaFilter book clubs in the past, but nothing currently happening that I'm aware of. So we don't have a pool of existing energy around books that we can bring to the site. (For example, club organizing was happening at the wiki and we were able to bring that activity to the site.)
So yes, books are definitely something we want to add to FanFare. We're thinking about the best approach and we'd love to hear your ideas for making it successful.
posted by pb (staff) at 8:04 AM on June 9, 2015 [9 favorites]
A common complaint we've heard over and over about FanFare is that there are too many posts with too little discussion. We don't want that to happen with books so we're thinking about it very carefully. We don't simply want to open the gates to books and have dozens of posts with no discussion.
I think FanFare Clubs are a step in the direction of harnessing media consumption energy. Those have just launched and we're watching them to see how they're being used for our existing media and what that might mean for books.
There have been MetaFilter book clubs in the past, but nothing currently happening that I'm aware of. So we don't have a pool of existing energy around books that we can bring to the site. (For example, club organizing was happening at the wiki and we were able to bring that activity to the site.)
So yes, books are definitely something we want to add to FanFare. We're thinking about the best approach and we'd love to hear your ideas for making it successful.
posted by pb (staff) at 8:04 AM on June 9, 2015 [9 favorites]
I would like it and not like it. I would like it because there isn't a whole lot in the way of online book discussions places I'm interested in going, and I wouldn't like it because I read a lot and pretty quickly so by the time the book discussion gets going, I'm already onto the next book.
posted by Kitteh at 8:09 AM on June 9, 2015
posted by Kitteh at 8:09 AM on June 9, 2015
I would almost prefer an actual Mefi book club where we just all read one book at a time. I'm not sure I can motivate myself to read an entire book so I can read 6 or seven brief comments about it. A one hour TV show, though, sure.
That said, I am currently reading Riddley Walker and I think I might need Mefi's help on this one...
posted by selfnoise at 8:16 AM on June 9, 2015 [6 favorites]
That said, I am currently reading Riddley Walker and I think I might need Mefi's help on this one...
posted by selfnoise at 8:16 AM on June 9, 2015 [6 favorites]
I soooo want to talk about Riddley Walker. That is one of the most... something books I've ever read!
I think clubs is a great way to focus books on fanfare (and am already a fan of fanfare clubs for movies), though I'm not sure how it would work to limit fanfare books to only clubs...? I think books would benefit from a lot of pre-read temperature taking too: in fanfare talk you could poll people for interest.
posted by latkes at 8:22 AM on June 9, 2015 [4 favorites]
I think clubs is a great way to focus books on fanfare (and am already a fan of fanfare clubs for movies), though I'm not sure how it would work to limit fanfare books to only clubs...? I think books would benefit from a lot of pre-read temperature taking too: in fanfare talk you could poll people for interest.
posted by latkes at 8:22 AM on June 9, 2015 [4 favorites]
I would definitely not argue with having FanFare Books be limited to club-based posts so as to confirm that more than one person has actually finished reading the volume in question at the time of the post.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:30 AM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:30 AM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]
Riddley Walker and The Vorrh, yo. Let's do this.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 8:41 AM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 8:41 AM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]
There used to be a book club on Metachat, but it died out due to lack of interest. That seems to happen all the time with book clubs, online and off.
posted by Melismata at 8:48 AM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by Melismata at 8:48 AM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]
Metafilter: a step in the direction of harnessing media consumption energy.
posted by Melismata at 8:48 AM on June 9, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by Melismata at 8:48 AM on June 9, 2015 [4 favorites]
Perhaps, given that books have such a longer tail of who's reading what when, a separate subsite would make more sense? Leave posts open for a couple years, allow for genre sorting/tagging so people can use it for book recs as well as for discussions, and copy over the club stuff from Fanfare to allow for focused/scheduled readings.
Just noodling, thinking the separate subsite might make it simpler from a user point of view--not having to filter out movies/etc.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:57 AM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]
Just noodling, thinking the separate subsite might make it simpler from a user point of view--not having to filter out movies/etc.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:57 AM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]
My thought would be something more in the book club style, but in a way that takes feedback/recommendations from users for which book to read. That way we'd get more of a critical mass of readers, but also not relegate ourselves to the lowest possible hanging fruit. And there'd be nothing stopping someone who's already read the book in question from joining the discussion.
posted by softlord at 9:00 AM on June 9, 2015
posted by softlord at 9:00 AM on June 9, 2015
I soooo want to talk about Riddley Walker. That is one of the most... something books I've ever read!
FAVORITING THIS LIKE WHOA
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:07 AM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
FAVORITING THIS LIKE WHOA
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:07 AM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
It would be nice to have a place to discuss newly released books, but I'm not sure how many books really reach critical mass to have a discussion. Like, have enough people read the new Neal Stephenson book already to discuss it?
posted by smackfu at 9:07 AM on June 9, 2015 [6 favorites]
posted by smackfu at 9:07 AM on June 9, 2015 [6 favorites]
Why would they have to be newly-released?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:09 AM on June 9, 2015
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:09 AM on June 9, 2015
Is this something I would have to read a book to understand?
Seriously, this sounds great. I am in favor!
posted by Strange Interlude at 9:13 AM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]
Seriously, this sounds great. I am in favor!
posted by Strange Interlude at 9:13 AM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]
Certain authors are just soooo well liked here that I think you could safely propose almost any Terry Pratchett for example and get a good showing of participation. I can save my Black Sunlight commentary for my own weird head.
posted by latkes at 9:14 AM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by latkes at 9:14 AM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
I've wondered about fanfare for cookbooks? I would love to see other people's comments on recipes from particular cookbooks. I don't know if a post per-recipe would clutter up things too much...perhaps one post per chapter much like a regular book? Some cookbooks don't have sections or chapters. Just putting it out there.
posted by about_time at 9:15 AM on June 9, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by about_time at 9:15 AM on June 9, 2015 [4 favorites]
recipes.metafilter.com would be pretty damn amazing
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:18 AM on June 9, 2015 [22 favorites]
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:18 AM on June 9, 2015 [22 favorites]
Would the concern about having a million posts with exactly 1 comment each be alleviated at all if posts were centered on authors rather than specific books? Granted there would be some odd imbalances between the threads for, say, Stephen King on the one hand and Harper Lee on the other, but that doesn't seem like a showstopper to me. Are there other downsides?
posted by Ipsifendus at 9:18 AM on June 9, 2015
posted by Ipsifendus at 9:18 AM on June 9, 2015
I'd love a books subsite, though I'd prefer it not be through Fanfare, which is hard enough to navigate as it is.
posted by jeather at 9:22 AM on June 9, 2015 [6 favorites]
posted by jeather at 9:22 AM on June 9, 2015 [6 favorites]
Yeah, it would be difficult to discuss prolific authors; to use your Stephen King example, there'd be a bunch of people only interested in It and then people carefully reading through his canon, and it would all be a bit of a mess I think. What would seem to me to make more sense would be individual posts for books (maybe do whole-series posts too, but that could run into spoiler issues, essentially forcing people to complete a series before being able to discuss it), and let Fan/Book clubs sprout up to cover an entire author's output, or the Culture series, or post-apocalyptic dystopian knitting horror books or whatever.
Subsite definitely makes more sense. Perhaps a toned-down version of this shade, looks kinda like old paper. Profiles already link to librarything, don't they? Perhaps build some of that functionality out (kinda like imdb links on fanfare).
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:26 AM on June 9, 2015
Subsite definitely makes more sense. Perhaps a toned-down version of this shade, looks kinda like old paper. Profiles already link to librarything, don't they? Perhaps build some of that functionality out (kinda like imdb links on fanfare).
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:26 AM on June 9, 2015
if posts were centered on authors rather than specific books?
That'd be hard to manage spoiler-wise, particularly for authors of series: think for example of GRRM's A Song of Ice and Fire books or Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin books. Do you have to have read the whole series before you can safely read the post?
Although I think spoilers are hard for books anyway; if you're doing a book-club style read, how do you pace the read so that people aren't spoiled on events they haven't read to yet? Split the book into chapters, similar to how FanFare has split Netflix series drops into episodes? agree a schedule up-front?
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 9:28 AM on June 9, 2015
That'd be hard to manage spoiler-wise, particularly for authors of series: think for example of GRRM's A Song of Ice and Fire books or Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin books. Do you have to have read the whole series before you can safely read the post?
Although I think spoilers are hard for books anyway; if you're doing a book-club style read, how do you pace the read so that people aren't spoiled on events they haven't read to yet? Split the book into chapters, similar to how FanFare has split Netflix series drops into episodes? agree a schedule up-front?
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 9:28 AM on June 9, 2015
It's good to brainstorm about this, but just as a note, I think this will happen faster if we can figure out a way to work it within Fanfare -- building a separate subsite would be a much bigger, and therefore more remote, project. To me, it seems more likely we could tweak things about how Fanfare works, if we needed to change things to make books work there.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 9:31 AM on June 9, 2015
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 9:31 AM on June 9, 2015
Probably fair to set the bar at "this discussion will contain spoilers for this book and previous books in the series." Or maybe "spoilers in terms of chronological publication date."
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:32 AM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:32 AM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
I know this isn't super popular but from the beginning I've wished fanfare had more of it's own identity and own "front page" where you could then drill down into sub-sub sites. So FanFare is the cover, then you can click, Podcasts, Books, TV, Movies, Performance Art, etc. I think the FanFare for contemporary TV people often find the other subjects to be clutter. Whereas as a FanFare for movies person, I skim over all the TV shows...
posted by latkes at 9:34 AM on June 9, 2015 [8 favorites]
posted by latkes at 9:34 AM on June 9, 2015 [8 favorites]
To me, it seems more likely we could tweak things about how Fanfare works, if we needed to change things to make books work there.
We've got the "categories"; would it be possible to set it so you could turn them on or off when you're signed in? For example, I don't listen to any podcasts so I could just x out the podcast option instead of needing to view categories for both movies and TV shows.
I also agree that books have a very long, if you will, shelf-life; there are books I read years ago about which I'd still like to see an intelligent discussion, including books I read in high school or college, and books I'll read in the future where after I finish them I would totally go back to see what other people thought. I think there are a lot of "classics" and older books that could work well for this.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 9:36 AM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]
We've got the "categories"; would it be possible to set it so you could turn them on or off when you're signed in? For example, I don't listen to any podcasts so I could just x out the podcast option instead of needing to view categories for both movies and TV shows.
I also agree that books have a very long, if you will, shelf-life; there are books I read years ago about which I'd still like to see an intelligent discussion, including books I read in high school or college, and books I'll read in the future where after I finish them I would totally go back to see what other people thought. I think there are a lot of "classics" and older books that could work well for this.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 9:36 AM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]
I think it's a great idea.
However I do agree that Fanfare is kind of weird to navigate (though I'm really glad we have it). I mean it'll be like half a dozen episodes of an obscure podcast, then a classic film, then an episode of an old TV show, then an episode of a new TV show... I'm just not sure the default MeFi house style of displaying things post by post in the order they were posted is the best idea for Fanfare in the long run.
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:53 AM on June 9, 2015 [9 favorites]
However I do agree that Fanfare is kind of weird to navigate (though I'm really glad we have it). I mean it'll be like half a dozen episodes of an obscure podcast, then a classic film, then an episode of an old TV show, then an episode of a new TV show... I'm just not sure the default MeFi house style of displaying things post by post in the order they were posted is the best idea for Fanfare in the long run.
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:53 AM on June 9, 2015 [9 favorites]
My ideal display would be something like - the front page shows all movies posted and/or with new comments within the last month (or two weeks, or one week, or the last 20, or whatever), and for TV shows and podcasts it would do the same, but display the show TITLE and not each individual episode post. So like "TV shows with new episodes or activity in the past [x]."
This is not so much a request as an idle fantasy.
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:57 AM on June 9, 2015 [6 favorites]
This is not so much a request as an idle fantasy.
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:57 AM on June 9, 2015 [6 favorites]
I've wished fanfare had more of it's own identity and own "front page" where you could then drill down into sub-sub sites.
I know this is not the thread for this discussion but ME TOO. I think having top-level categories: TV, Movies, Podcasts, Talk and then being able to subdivide is a great way to have top headings work there. The chronological thing works for posts and AskMe where the time factor is important but for a lot of the uses we're seeing of Fanfare that stuff isn't as important as being able to collocate shows from a series or movies in a series or movies in a club. Not sure where to go with this but I think Fanfare as destination could maybe be punched up a bit and also in a way that would make books a more natural add-on.
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 10:16 AM on June 9, 2015 [14 favorites]
I know this is not the thread for this discussion but ME TOO. I think having top-level categories: TV, Movies, Podcasts, Talk and then being able to subdivide is a great way to have top headings work there. The chronological thing works for posts and AskMe where the time factor is important but for a lot of the uses we're seeing of Fanfare that stuff isn't as important as being able to collocate shows from a series or movies in a series or movies in a club. Not sure where to go with this but I think Fanfare as destination could maybe be punched up a bit and also in a way that would make books a more natural add-on.
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 10:16 AM on June 9, 2015 [14 favorites]
Yeah, we've been talking about it (how to improve Fanfare's front page/ease of finding the good stuff) for a while without any firm conclusions -- other things have been more front-burner but now some of that backlog has cleared. So if folks have thoughts about how to improve findability and engagingness on Fanfare's front page, this thread seems like an ok place to start getting some of those thoughts out too -- since I think it could be part of the recipe for making Books happen.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 10:22 AM on June 9, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 10:22 AM on June 9, 2015 [4 favorites]
Ooo I'll make a sketch
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:34 AM on June 9, 2015
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:34 AM on June 9, 2015
I read about a hundred books a year, almost all fiction and mostly genre, and I'd absolutely love to discuss them with other mefites. But I totally agree with pb's point that FanFare with television and movies is already swamped with a lot of low- or no-activity posts and this would certainly be even worse with books.
I think you'd be able to count on any active discussion for a few (not all) of the top ten NYT bestsellers and a few perennially popular and/or remarkable books. And that would account for maybe a third of the books that mefites would most like to talk about -- the other two thirds, despite being things many of us would love to discuss, would be below the threshold of enough people at the same time wanting to discuss them.
It seems to me that FanFare has from the start suffered from trying to be All the Things. The media posted should always have been limited to only a few demonstrably high-interest things. Participation attracts more participation and, given the way that MetaFilter works with the main page and chronological posting, a lot of low- or no-activity threads means that the few high-participation threads are visible only to those who look for them. This is why so many mefites who aren't already regular participants in FanFare don't find it interesting.
Right now on the main FanFare page, there are 60 posts covering the last six days. Of those sixty, two-thirds have fewer than ten comments, and half have five or fewer comments. Only six have twenty or more, while three have between 150 and 300. It's clear that a very few shows/movies/podcasts are very high interest, a similar number have moderate interest, and the rest have low or nearly no interest.
This pattern will be replicated with books, except that we could expect overall interest and activity on books to be less than half of what it is for the current media covered. There probably won't be nearly as many posts, but at any one time we could expect one book to attract more than ten or so comments while the rest will be three or four, or none. Meanwhile, the whole of FanFare will be further diluted with this low-activity posting.
There isn't really a good structural solution to this problem. The chronological format exacerbates it -- and I think there's good reasons to consider making the man FanFare page a gateway featuring the highest activity posts of the last thirty days -- but it's not really the underlying problem. The underlying problem is that MeFi is not a large enough community to sustain discussion on this wide a range of items. We're just not big enough.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 10:39 AM on June 9, 2015 [8 favorites]
I think you'd be able to count on any active discussion for a few (not all) of the top ten NYT bestsellers and a few perennially popular and/or remarkable books. And that would account for maybe a third of the books that mefites would most like to talk about -- the other two thirds, despite being things many of us would love to discuss, would be below the threshold of enough people at the same time wanting to discuss them.
It seems to me that FanFare has from the start suffered from trying to be All the Things. The media posted should always have been limited to only a few demonstrably high-interest things. Participation attracts more participation and, given the way that MetaFilter works with the main page and chronological posting, a lot of low- or no-activity threads means that the few high-participation threads are visible only to those who look for them. This is why so many mefites who aren't already regular participants in FanFare don't find it interesting.
Right now on the main FanFare page, there are 60 posts covering the last six days. Of those sixty, two-thirds have fewer than ten comments, and half have five or fewer comments. Only six have twenty or more, while three have between 150 and 300. It's clear that a very few shows/movies/podcasts are very high interest, a similar number have moderate interest, and the rest have low or nearly no interest.
This pattern will be replicated with books, except that we could expect overall interest and activity on books to be less than half of what it is for the current media covered. There probably won't be nearly as many posts, but at any one time we could expect one book to attract more than ten or so comments while the rest will be three or four, or none. Meanwhile, the whole of FanFare will be further diluted with this low-activity posting.
There isn't really a good structural solution to this problem. The chronological format exacerbates it -- and I think there's good reasons to consider making the man FanFare page a gateway featuring the highest activity posts of the last thirty days -- but it's not really the underlying problem. The underlying problem is that MeFi is not a large enough community to sustain discussion on this wide a range of items. We're just not big enough.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 10:39 AM on June 9, 2015 [8 favorites]
I agree with a lot of what you're saying Ivan, but that's why I've always wanted a reorg/redesign of FanFare away from the scrolling posts tradition. I could actually see FanFare bringing in a lot more people to the metafilter world if it were structured differently.
posted by latkes at 10:47 AM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by latkes at 10:47 AM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]
Since FanFare began as a substitute for the late lamented TWOP forums, and therefore TV-centered, and has expanded from there, the idea of sub-subsites sounds good to me. Or just move the "Categories" menu front and center and make "hide descriptions" the front page default to make room for more posts. And on the Categories pages, allow a sorting by popularity (TV Ratings, Movie Box Office, Books Best Seller Lists)... okay, this pony has become a unicorn... but think about it.
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:58 AM on June 9, 2015
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:58 AM on June 9, 2015
"I could actually see FanFare bringing in a lot more people to the metafilter world if it were structured differently."
That's possible and it's what I hoped for when TWoP closed and we first discussed doing something like this. I felt then -- not quite as strongly now, but still -- that MeFi would be a good fit for a lot of the demand for high-quality community discussion of television on the web. I've been surprised that FanFare hasn't, as far as I can tell, attracted new membership and is mostly an in-community thing.
And I think you're right that the format is a big part of the problem. However, there are good reason to have structured FanFare as it is -- I was a proponent of this at the time because, frankly, I feel like moving away from "the MetaFilter way" is a risky, questionable decision. I'm uncomfortable with the idea of a wholly-differently structured subsite -- that raises a lot of issues. And it's also notable that AskMe has worked quite well within this paradigm and there's lots of reason why you'd otherwise expect that it ought to be organized differently than it is.
So I think that two things are going on in this, and they work together. It's that there's too many low-activity threads, and FanFare has not gained any outside MetaFilter visibility. If FanFare were somehow promoted to the people who liked TWoP or otherwise are interested in this sort of thing, then we'd get more members and more activity. If there were more activity, there would be more interest in participating in threads and there'd be more reason for people to join MetaFilter to participate. The structure wouldn't be so much a problem, just like it's not really a problem with AskMe.
But as long as FanFare has limited participation, the structure exacerbates this and entrenches it.
Now, with regard to my changing thoughts on how much outside, pent-up demand there is for FanFare, I think that I underestimated how much people found, and now find, this sort of discussion outside of TWoP -- A. V. Club, Previously.TV for example. And then the landscape of the internet has changed, where a lot of this kind of fan interest and participation occurs in social media. So I no longer believe the demand is as large as I once did. But I do still think that FanFare could and would attract new members, if those interested outside MetaFilter were more aware of it. I think that we could probably increase activity in FanFare in the medium term (within a year) by at least 50% by attracting new users somehow. My sense is that AskMe's success without any deliberate attempts to advertise it has everything to do with the web and Google in the years immediately following 2003. I don't think that's today's web and I don't think that FanFare will grow on its own the way that AskMe did.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 11:06 AM on June 9, 2015
That's possible and it's what I hoped for when TWoP closed and we first discussed doing something like this. I felt then -- not quite as strongly now, but still -- that MeFi would be a good fit for a lot of the demand for high-quality community discussion of television on the web. I've been surprised that FanFare hasn't, as far as I can tell, attracted new membership and is mostly an in-community thing.
And I think you're right that the format is a big part of the problem. However, there are good reason to have structured FanFare as it is -- I was a proponent of this at the time because, frankly, I feel like moving away from "the MetaFilter way" is a risky, questionable decision. I'm uncomfortable with the idea of a wholly-differently structured subsite -- that raises a lot of issues. And it's also notable that AskMe has worked quite well within this paradigm and there's lots of reason why you'd otherwise expect that it ought to be organized differently than it is.
So I think that two things are going on in this, and they work together. It's that there's too many low-activity threads, and FanFare has not gained any outside MetaFilter visibility. If FanFare were somehow promoted to the people who liked TWoP or otherwise are interested in this sort of thing, then we'd get more members and more activity. If there were more activity, there would be more interest in participating in threads and there'd be more reason for people to join MetaFilter to participate. The structure wouldn't be so much a problem, just like it's not really a problem with AskMe.
But as long as FanFare has limited participation, the structure exacerbates this and entrenches it.
Now, with regard to my changing thoughts on how much outside, pent-up demand there is for FanFare, I think that I underestimated how much people found, and now find, this sort of discussion outside of TWoP -- A. V. Club, Previously.TV for example. And then the landscape of the internet has changed, where a lot of this kind of fan interest and participation occurs in social media. So I no longer believe the demand is as large as I once did. But I do still think that FanFare could and would attract new members, if those interested outside MetaFilter were more aware of it. I think that we could probably increase activity in FanFare in the medium term (within a year) by at least 50% by attracting new users somehow. My sense is that AskMe's success without any deliberate attempts to advertise it has everything to do with the web and Google in the years immediately following 2003. I don't think that's today's web and I don't think that FanFare will grow on its own the way that AskMe did.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 11:06 AM on June 9, 2015
Why would they have to be newly-released?
Fanfare in general seems aimed at newly released content, with rewatches as a side item.
posted by smackfu at 11:07 AM on June 9, 2015
Fanfare in general seems aimed at newly released content, with rewatches as a side item.
posted by smackfu at 11:07 AM on June 9, 2015
Although I think spoilers are hard for books anyway; if you're doing a book-club style read, how do you pace the read so that people aren't spoiled on events they haven't read to yet?
You don't, IMO. You warn readers that the discussion will involve spoilers and that's that. Novels, novellas, short stories, etc. are aesthetic wholes. Trying to pace a discussion through a novel seems about as valuable as trying to pace a discussion through a movie. It can be done, sure, but the profit to effort ratio seems awfully low.
I don't have a lot of interest in the contemporary sf/f/YA that seems to be the bread and butter around here—and less in the issues of status, allegiance, and authenticity that always seems to swirl around them—but I'd still dig a books subsection, if only just to look at.
posted by octobersurprise at 11:16 AM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
You don't, IMO. You warn readers that the discussion will involve spoilers and that's that. Novels, novellas, short stories, etc. are aesthetic wholes. Trying to pace a discussion through a novel seems about as valuable as trying to pace a discussion through a movie. It can be done, sure, but the profit to effort ratio seems awfully low.
I don't have a lot of interest in the contemporary sf/f/YA that seems to be the bread and butter around here—and less in the issues of status, allegiance, and authenticity that always seems to swirl around them—but I'd still dig a books subsection, if only just to look at.
posted by octobersurprise at 11:16 AM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
how do you pace the read so that people aren't spoiled on events they haven't read to yet? Split the book into chapters, similar to how FanFare has split Netflix series drops into episodes? agree a schedule up-front?
Could we talk about the book in a single thread but also agree to a schedule? That way we could experience the book together, as it were, but still benefit from previous ideas.
It would be nice to have the book jacket added to the side bar with a "MeFi Book Club Current Selection" note.
posted by lyssabee at 11:19 AM on June 9, 2015
Could we talk about the book in a single thread but also agree to a schedule? That way we could experience the book together, as it were, but still benefit from previous ideas.
It would be nice to have the book jacket added to the side bar with a "MeFi Book Club Current Selection" note.
posted by lyssabee at 11:19 AM on June 9, 2015
John Scalzi's current serially released book could be a good test case.
posted by ocherdraco at 11:28 AM on June 9, 2015
posted by ocherdraco at 11:28 AM on June 9, 2015
I think posting books as a whole would be more valuable for readers in the future; I think part of the utility of a books section (at least for me) would be the ability to read criticism and discussion even months or years afterwards, and if it's split up into chunks (either throughout the discussion or in separate threads) I think that would make it really hard to read.
I do like the idea of having something like separate headings on the FanFare page for books, podcasts, TV, and movies (and maybe sports eventually? I know the mods have said no to this but I think it could be really nice and be either its own thing or go under the TV section).
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 11:29 AM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
I do like the idea of having something like separate headings on the FanFare page for books, podcasts, TV, and movies (and maybe sports eventually? I know the mods have said no to this but I think it could be really nice and be either its own thing or go under the TV section).
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 11:29 AM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
I've always liked something what jessamyn suggests above: top-level categories of media that you drill into. This would eliminate the clutter issue.
I don't think book spoilers present any unique issues that TV shows don't. If you're dividing up the book, specify in each post what chapters or page numbers you're covering and don't allow discussion of material beyond that, just like you would with a TV show. If you're discussing the work as a whole, then make that clear and posters beware.
posted by Sangermaine at 11:54 AM on June 9, 2015
I don't think book spoilers present any unique issues that TV shows don't. If you're dividing up the book, specify in each post what chapters or page numbers you're covering and don't allow discussion of material beyond that, just like you would with a TV show. If you're discussing the work as a whole, then make that clear and posters beware.
posted by Sangermaine at 11:54 AM on June 9, 2015
I'm not really around today so won't dig in on this too much, but just some quick thoughts on key stuff:
1. Yes, we're definitely going to make Books happen as a part of FanFare. I think it's the next major thing we need to do with the subsite. Getting the Clubs/Events plumbing in place was an important precursor to that, since the nature and pace of book-reading is so very different from serial/episodic TV stuff in terms of how people would naturally organize at any given moment to be primed to discuss a work as a group. Being able to, on-site, organize the idea of a book discussion or a series of book discussions seems really key, and now we're at the point where we have started to support that.
2. Like LM said, reworking the front page of FanFare to be a better portal to finding stuff you're interested in, rather than a page of stuff that maybe something is something you're interested in but probably you need to go searching instead, is the other big priority. We've got a few basic ideas there, but brainstorming is totally welcome. The key goal should be to find a Metafilter-compatible approach to facilitate finding and participating in fun discussions about pop media; we don't need to be tied to the standard reverse chron presentation that works well on other subsites, and would probably be well-served in this case by deviating from that a bit with more of a "here's the kinds of things there are and an easy way to look; here's some recent stuff people are enjoying discussing" sort of mix that surfaces new and ongoing discussions, club activity, etc.
3. I have a hard time seeing an approach to book discussions that doesn't treat each book as an individual whole. Spoilers for partial-read milestones seems very fiddly and hard to support, so if folks want to in some specific case organize that for a discussion or a Club they could do so but I don't see it as a norm for the site. It's simple and straightforward to leave it at: if you want to discuss a book, read the book; if you don't want to get spoiled, don't read the thread until you're done.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:55 AM on June 9, 2015 [5 favorites]
1. Yes, we're definitely going to make Books happen as a part of FanFare. I think it's the next major thing we need to do with the subsite. Getting the Clubs/Events plumbing in place was an important precursor to that, since the nature and pace of book-reading is so very different from serial/episodic TV stuff in terms of how people would naturally organize at any given moment to be primed to discuss a work as a group. Being able to, on-site, organize the idea of a book discussion or a series of book discussions seems really key, and now we're at the point where we have started to support that.
2. Like LM said, reworking the front page of FanFare to be a better portal to finding stuff you're interested in, rather than a page of stuff that maybe something is something you're interested in but probably you need to go searching instead, is the other big priority. We've got a few basic ideas there, but brainstorming is totally welcome. The key goal should be to find a Metafilter-compatible approach to facilitate finding and participating in fun discussions about pop media; we don't need to be tied to the standard reverse chron presentation that works well on other subsites, and would probably be well-served in this case by deviating from that a bit with more of a "here's the kinds of things there are and an easy way to look; here's some recent stuff people are enjoying discussing" sort of mix that surfaces new and ongoing discussions, club activity, etc.
3. I have a hard time seeing an approach to book discussions that doesn't treat each book as an individual whole. Spoilers for partial-read milestones seems very fiddly and hard to support, so if folks want to in some specific case organize that for a discussion or a Club they could do so but I don't see it as a norm for the site. It's simple and straightforward to leave it at: if you want to discuss a book, read the book; if you don't want to get spoiled, don't read the thread until you're done.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:55 AM on June 9, 2015 [5 favorites]
I've always liked something what jessamyn suggests above: top-level categories of media that you drill into. This would eliminate the clutter issue.
Just want to point out that we do have top-level categories for TV, Movies, and Podcasts. Look for the Categories box in the sidebar. Several people have mentioned that as something they want, but they aren't finding it. So it sounds like an area where we could improve visibility.
posted by pb (staff) at 12:00 PM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
Just want to point out that we do have top-level categories for TV, Movies, and Podcasts. Look for the Categories box in the sidebar. Several people have mentioned that as something they want, but they aren't finding it. So it sounds like an area where we could improve visibility.
posted by pb (staff) at 12:00 PM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
I'm aware of those but what you have now isn't really what I meant. I want tabs or links along the top for each category, or if you're open to a more radical change, then the landing page should show just the categories (including FanFare Talk) with no posts displayed. You have to go into a category to see the posts there. It would be much cleaner and more organized. Perhaps have an Everything category option if people do want a complete stream of all posts from all categories (sans Talk).
posted by Sangermaine at 12:05 PM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by Sangermaine at 12:05 PM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]
ah, I see. It's not just the ability to filter to a specific category that you want. You want a page without posts first, and then the ability to go into a specific category.
posted by pb (staff) at 12:07 PM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by pb (staff) at 12:07 PM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]
I didn't know what Riddley Walker was and now I have it on reserve at the library and I didn't realize that Stephenson had a new novel out which I've now purchased, so thanks everyone!
posted by Kwine at 12:10 PM on June 9, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by Kwine at 12:10 PM on June 9, 2015 [4 favorites]
Yes. Right now the front page is a jumble of movies, TV shows, podcasts, etc. The categories are off on the side, with Talk post beneath it. I find it fairly confusing.
posted by Sangermaine at 12:12 PM on June 9, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by Sangermaine at 12:12 PM on June 9, 2015 [4 favorites]
I think it would be nice to have an optional Fanfare view that would sort based on liveliness of discussion — what I want is an option to see the "hot" stuff, so that if I went to that view today I might be like, "OK, what's hip and happening at Fanfare right now is Game of Thrones, Mad Max: Fury Road, and Hannibal" and maybe that results in me bumping Hannibal a little further up my to-watch list because a) people really seem to dig it and b) I'm interested in coming back to read comments. For me, personally, I think I'd enjoy a Fanfare where anything with fewer than eight or 10 comments in the thread didn't even appear in the main index because I feel like there's an overwhelming preponderance of semi-obscure stuff to slog through on the front page that has very little discussion going on, and while some of that material is undeniably great and discussion-worthy (hello, Tokyo Story!), the stuff that I would specifically be interested in is hard to pick out from the sheer volume of postings about shows that have an average of 2-5 commenters per entry. In those cases where I am personally interested in a show that gets low traffic on the site, I can use My Fanfare to add and isolate those threads.
I guess Recent Comments kind of gives me this ability, but I'd like to hit Recent Comments and then tick off "10 comments or more" and cruise the discussions that way. Anything to reduce the sheer unfettered bulk of postings would be a huge help, in my eyes.
I'd also like the ability to see a listing of only current media. Like, a list of only TV shows airing in 2015 or movies released in 2015 would be interesting to me, especially as we count down to Oscar time and the movie awards season revolves exclusively around films released in the calendar year.
And books would be a great addition to the site, but not so much if they're thrown into the same free-for-all where every other piece of media known to man is vying for our attention.
posted by Mothlight at 12:15 PM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]
I guess Recent Comments kind of gives me this ability, but I'd like to hit Recent Comments and then tick off "10 comments or more" and cruise the discussions that way. Anything to reduce the sheer unfettered bulk of postings would be a huge help, in my eyes.
I'd also like the ability to see a listing of only current media. Like, a list of only TV shows airing in 2015 or movies released in 2015 would be interesting to me, especially as we count down to Oscar time and the movie awards season revolves exclusively around films released in the calendar year.
And books would be a great addition to the site, but not so much if they're thrown into the same free-for-all where every other piece of media known to man is vying for our attention.
posted by Mothlight at 12:15 PM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]
I find it fairly confusing.
That's completely understandable. It's set up this way because we're using the same system of organization that we use at other MetaFilter subsites. So, for example, if you only care about Human Relations questions at Ask MetaFilter, having to find that link in the sidebar under Categories could be confusing. It could be frustrating that all of these other questions are in the mix on the front page. At the same time, we've had this structure for a long time and we're hoping that people's knowledge of how the subsites work here translates to FanFare.
It sounds like it isn't translating as well as we'd hoped and we are open to other ways of organizing things.
posted by pb (staff) at 12:16 PM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]
That's completely understandable. It's set up this way because we're using the same system of organization that we use at other MetaFilter subsites. So, for example, if you only care about Human Relations questions at Ask MetaFilter, having to find that link in the sidebar under Categories could be confusing. It could be frustrating that all of these other questions are in the mix on the front page. At the same time, we've had this structure for a long time and we're hoping that people's knowledge of how the subsites work here translates to FanFare.
It sounds like it isn't translating as well as we'd hoped and we are open to other ways of organizing things.
posted by pb (staff) at 12:16 PM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]
Yeah, I really think that either there's very limited posting (relative to now) and we keep the standard MeFi structure, or FanFare should be restructured, especially the main page, to reflect its own unique requirements.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 12:20 PM on June 9, 2015
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 12:20 PM on June 9, 2015
There would have been no way to know what would and wouldn't work without launching it and getting all this user feedback!
This is why I like this site - the responsiveness to users' needs.
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:20 PM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]
This is why I like this site - the responsiveness to users' needs.
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:20 PM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]
I don't think posting need be limited for FanFare to be more user-friendly. It's an organization problem, not a content problem, imo.
If the low-content posts are tucked away where they can be found by interested people, but not covering the main page, then who cares how many there are?
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:22 PM on June 9, 2015
If the low-content posts are tucked away where they can be found by interested people, but not covering the main page, then who cares how many there are?
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:22 PM on June 9, 2015
Well, that was what I suggested. Keeping all the low-activity posts, we'll need to restructure FanFare, particulary the main page. If we keep the structure as it is, particularly the all-inclusive reverse chronology of the main page, it would work much better with limited content.
"There would have been no way to know what would and wouldn't work without launching it and getting all this user feedback!"
*cough* I think that my comments and predictions from that very first thread have proven to be pretty on-the-mark. Particularly, I said a) reverse chronology is how we do things here (for good reasons) but that b) with things like posts for old shows and other things that would be low-activity, it would be a problem. I've been harping on the low-activity thing, and how that would affect the perception of FanFare and its community-wide participation, from the very beginning of the discussion.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 12:28 PM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
"There would have been no way to know what would and wouldn't work without launching it and getting all this user feedback!"
*cough* I think that my comments and predictions from that very first thread have proven to be pretty on-the-mark. Particularly, I said a) reverse chronology is how we do things here (for good reasons) but that b) with things like posts for old shows and other things that would be low-activity, it would be a problem. I've been harping on the low-activity thing, and how that would affect the perception of FanFare and its community-wide participation, from the very beginning of the discussion.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 12:28 PM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
It's not just the ability to filter to a specific category that you want. You want a page without posts first, and then the ability to go into a specific category.
Well I think it comes down to "What do you see first?" that leads people to determine what the site is about. On MeFi it's posts, great, dive right in and read a post. On AskMe it's questions, ask or answer a question. On Fanfare I think the presumption is that people have a special thing they might want to talk about and they want to find where people are talking about that thing. So having the categories be more prominent and be the major "Hi, come talk about: podcasts, movies, tv, here are the hot discussions" push of the site was what I was envisioning.
That said, I'm aware it's a hard problem, but MeFi has always been sort of like the public library where people say they can't find stuff and then someone goes and explains the Dewey Decimal system to them first. There's SO MUCH there and that's awesome but maybe there are other ways to draw people in. I think this is true for music as well. The Challenges and some of the collections are arguably the things that would attract/interest people. So longtime MeFites will be fine with the filing cabinet approach but others might be more incentivized with a more UX-y approach.
Like, I think about Projects and how I hate carousel slideshow things on websites but I'd be SUPER into a set of screenshots of the projects people had made (or pictures, or book covers, or whatever the thing was) and I think if the goal is more engagement--and I'm not saying it has to be--there are other methods.
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 12:29 PM on June 9, 2015 [7 favorites]
Well I think it comes down to "What do you see first?" that leads people to determine what the site is about. On MeFi it's posts, great, dive right in and read a post. On AskMe it's questions, ask or answer a question. On Fanfare I think the presumption is that people have a special thing they might want to talk about and they want to find where people are talking about that thing. So having the categories be more prominent and be the major "Hi, come talk about: podcasts, movies, tv, here are the hot discussions" push of the site was what I was envisioning.
That said, I'm aware it's a hard problem, but MeFi has always been sort of like the public library where people say they can't find stuff and then someone goes and explains the Dewey Decimal system to them first. There's SO MUCH there and that's awesome but maybe there are other ways to draw people in. I think this is true for music as well. The Challenges and some of the collections are arguably the things that would attract/interest people. So longtime MeFites will be fine with the filing cabinet approach but others might be more incentivized with a more UX-y approach.
Like, I think about Projects and how I hate carousel slideshow things on websites but I'd be SUPER into a set of screenshots of the projects people had made (or pictures, or book covers, or whatever the thing was) and I think if the goal is more engagement--and I'm not saying it has to be--there are other methods.
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 12:29 PM on June 9, 2015 [7 favorites]
*cough* I think that my comments and predictions from that very first thread have proven to be pretty on-the-mark.
Ah, fair enough! I guess I didn't follow the initial discussions all that closely.
Still, I think it's not the worst thing that it was rolled out as it is, because now it's much clearer what works and what doesn't.
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:36 PM on June 9, 2015
Ah, fair enough! I guess I didn't follow the initial discussions all that closely.
Still, I think it's not the worst thing that it was rolled out as it is, because now it's much clearer what works and what doesn't.
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:36 PM on June 9, 2015
There's SO MUCH there and that's awesome but maybe there are other ways to draw people in. I think this is true for music as well.
For sure, yeah. And I think that's the key challenge, how to better help connect people to awesome stuff. For FanFare, for Music, for miscellaneous neat stuff on the site. We've talked about a couple related ideas we want to dig into as well, like maybe having a little bit of the front page, site-wide, dedicated to a random/rotating "cool thing elsewhere on the site" plug that could act as a nice prompt for folks to go poke parts of the site they might not otherwise regularly think to do, etc.
posted by cortex (staff) at 12:43 PM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
For sure, yeah. And I think that's the key challenge, how to better help connect people to awesome stuff. For FanFare, for Music, for miscellaneous neat stuff on the site. We've talked about a couple related ideas we want to dig into as well, like maybe having a little bit of the front page, site-wide, dedicated to a random/rotating "cool thing elsewhere on the site" plug that could act as a nice prompt for folks to go poke parts of the site they might not otherwise regularly think to do, etc.
posted by cortex (staff) at 12:43 PM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
Yeah, I really agree with jessamyn's comment.
I have a lot of concerns and even, weirdly, anxiety about moving away, at all, from this whole one main page reverse-chronology thing. That's essential to how our community is largely integral, it's not fractured. It's of a piece with the no-threading philosophy and I think it's absolutely, positively the most important and successful aspect of what makes MetaFilter what it is.
And so with that in mind, I've been deeply conflicted from the start about FanFare because, as I just wrote, it seemed to me that this format wouldn't work with a FanFare that covers a large amount of media. It would end up cluttered and low-activity and would work against community engagement -- both from inside the existing community and with regard to attracting new members. But because I feel like this whole unitary approach to conversation is so important to MeFi, I leaned fairly strongly in the direction of limiting content.
Now, that ship has sailed. As far as I can tell, there is zero chance of switching to a limited-content approach. So that means we need to change FanFare's presentation to overcome these problems.
And, yeah, arguably some other subsites would benefit from a different approach, too. I think that we talked in the past about both music and projects, so it's not just jessamyn mentioning that today.
The difference, though, is that I can't see music or projects ever being a very big part of MetaFilter. They're really awesome, but they're niche. And FanFare, while not as popular as many of us expected, is still moderately popular and, I think, could very well become much more popular -- even more than MetaFilter proper and second only to AskMe -- with some changes and different conditions. And that worries me -- the idea of a huge and successful subsite that's as popular as the blue that approaches discussion in a community from a fragmented perspective really bothers me. I mean, it might be fine. But it might change MeFi in ways what we don't want.
"Still, I think it's not the worst thing that it was rolled out as it is, because now it's much clearer what works and what doesn't."
Oh, sure. Aside from the fact that I'm not some divine oracle that everyone should trust, you're simply right that we'd have needed to try something and see if it works, and then adjust it as necessary, regardless. I'm not complaining. I have a sense that some of the points I made in that original discussion did make a difference in how they've thought about this. I do have to confess a little frustration, though, because over the long run I feel like there's been kind of a headlong rush into expanding the scope of FanFare without really addressing these issues. And my inference about this is that the mod thinking is sort of a "build it and they'll come" approach, as well as a laudable bias toward giving people the opportunity to talk about the media they want to talk about and not worrying so much if, well, there's anyone actually talking very much. In contrast, I don't think the problem is mostly harmless, I think it's actively undermining FanFare.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 12:48 PM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
I have a lot of concerns and even, weirdly, anxiety about moving away, at all, from this whole one main page reverse-chronology thing. That's essential to how our community is largely integral, it's not fractured. It's of a piece with the no-threading philosophy and I think it's absolutely, positively the most important and successful aspect of what makes MetaFilter what it is.
And so with that in mind, I've been deeply conflicted from the start about FanFare because, as I just wrote, it seemed to me that this format wouldn't work with a FanFare that covers a large amount of media. It would end up cluttered and low-activity and would work against community engagement -- both from inside the existing community and with regard to attracting new members. But because I feel like this whole unitary approach to conversation is so important to MeFi, I leaned fairly strongly in the direction of limiting content.
Now, that ship has sailed. As far as I can tell, there is zero chance of switching to a limited-content approach. So that means we need to change FanFare's presentation to overcome these problems.
And, yeah, arguably some other subsites would benefit from a different approach, too. I think that we talked in the past about both music and projects, so it's not just jessamyn mentioning that today.
The difference, though, is that I can't see music or projects ever being a very big part of MetaFilter. They're really awesome, but they're niche. And FanFare, while not as popular as many of us expected, is still moderately popular and, I think, could very well become much more popular -- even more than MetaFilter proper and second only to AskMe -- with some changes and different conditions. And that worries me -- the idea of a huge and successful subsite that's as popular as the blue that approaches discussion in a community from a fragmented perspective really bothers me. I mean, it might be fine. But it might change MeFi in ways what we don't want.
"Still, I think it's not the worst thing that it was rolled out as it is, because now it's much clearer what works and what doesn't."
Oh, sure. Aside from the fact that I'm not some divine oracle that everyone should trust, you're simply right that we'd have needed to try something and see if it works, and then adjust it as necessary, regardless. I'm not complaining. I have a sense that some of the points I made in that original discussion did make a difference in how they've thought about this. I do have to confess a little frustration, though, because over the long run I feel like there's been kind of a headlong rush into expanding the scope of FanFare without really addressing these issues. And my inference about this is that the mod thinking is sort of a "build it and they'll come" approach, as well as a laudable bias toward giving people the opportunity to talk about the media they want to talk about and not worrying so much if, well, there's anyone actually talking very much. In contrast, I don't think the problem is mostly harmless, I think it's actively undermining FanFare.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 12:48 PM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
OOH GOLLY BOOKFILTER YISSSSSSSSSSS
I've been dreaming about this and whining about it existing for gadzoinks now. Probably almost a decade.
The only suggestion I have is it would probably need a field for author and title so that it's easy to browse by author or title. I think the current tag system would take care of genre, language, country of origin and other such classifications.
It would be good if people could be encouraged to tag the everloving shit out of books, so that for instance if I'm looking for a translation from the French written by a Senegalese author, I could conceivably search for it. Or a science fiction book with transgender protagonist. Or a book about whisky written by a cat with a law degree.
posted by Kattullus at 12:56 PM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
I've been dreaming about this and whining about it existing for gadzoinks now. Probably almost a decade.
The only suggestion I have is it would probably need a field for author and title so that it's easy to browse by author or title. I think the current tag system would take care of genre, language, country of origin and other such classifications.
It would be good if people could be encouraged to tag the everloving shit out of books, so that for instance if I'm looking for a translation from the French written by a Senegalese author, I could conceivably search for it. Or a science fiction book with transgender protagonist. Or a book about whisky written by a cat with a law degree.
posted by Kattullus at 12:56 PM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
I'm not a programmer so this may be a stupid idea, but could there be some kind of autotagging system that draws data from places like GoodReads? There are already all sorts of places that categorize books, no need to reinvent the wheel.
posted by Sangermaine at 1:03 PM on June 9, 2015
posted by Sangermaine at 1:03 PM on June 9, 2015
I like this but speaking as someone who has organized two reasonably successful Metafilter oriented book clubs in the past -- one tracking a Yale course on American literature on MetaChat, and one on a LeCarre book on Goodreads -- I'll echo the point that these discussions work best when everyone is reading at the same pace. A FanFare around a particular author's books, or timed for a particular time for everyone to get the book finished, would work best.
The MetaFilter book club I was part of which died due to not enough of us keeping up with the reading to keep the book club alive was the Summer of the Wake (Finnegan's Wake, that is) on Goodreads.
posted by bearwife at 1:04 PM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]
The MetaFilter book club I was part of which died due to not enough of us keeping up with the reading to keep the book club alive was the Summer of the Wake (Finnegan's Wake, that is) on Goodreads.
posted by bearwife at 1:04 PM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]
I have a lot of concerns and even, weirdly, anxiety about moving away, at all, from this whole one main page reverse-chronology thing.
We have this too! The format works at Ask MetaFilter even though the page is filled with questions you probably have no interest in. And then you happen to stumble into a question about coffee shops in Boston (when you're nowhere near Boston and hate coffee) and you end up really glad you happened on it. This doesn't seem to be the case at FanFare. It sounds like people don't want to stumble on media they're not actively consuming. (Or perhaps the conversations aren't as compelling when they do stumble across something they're not personally invested in.)
posted by pb (staff) at 1:08 PM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]
We have this too! The format works at Ask MetaFilter even though the page is filled with questions you probably have no interest in. And then you happen to stumble into a question about coffee shops in Boston (when you're nowhere near Boston and hate coffee) and you end up really glad you happened on it. This doesn't seem to be the case at FanFare. It sounds like people don't want to stumble on media they're not actively consuming. (Or perhaps the conversations aren't as compelling when they do stumble across something they're not personally invested in.)
posted by pb (staff) at 1:08 PM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]
It sounds like people don't want to stumble on media they're not actively consuming.
Part of the issue is, since there is a post for every episode of a show or podcast and they all show up in order, it can actually be more difficult to spot a Cool New Thing because you're scrolling past a dozens episodes of Thing You Already Know You Don't Care About. That's less the case in Ask because every post is unique content.
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:10 PM on June 9, 2015 [7 favorites]
Part of the issue is, since there is a post for every episode of a show or podcast and they all show up in order, it can actually be more difficult to spot a Cool New Thing because you're scrolling past a dozens episodes of Thing You Already Know You Don't Care About. That's less the case in Ask because every post is unique content.
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:10 PM on June 9, 2015 [7 favorites]
It sounds like people don't want to stumble on media they're not actively consuming.
I think that's an unfair characterization. I think showbiz_liz is right, the blizzard of new FanFare posts quickly buries any one post so you're likely to miss interesting things in the mess. I know that's happened with me before.
Perhaps this gets to the heart of the organization issue? It sounds like you place a high value on this perceived ability to stumble on to new things, but I think the nature and scope of FanFare and AskMe are significantly different to the point that the format hinders such discovery in FanFare.
posted by Sangermaine at 1:15 PM on June 9, 2015
I think that's an unfair characterization. I think showbiz_liz is right, the blizzard of new FanFare posts quickly buries any one post so you're likely to miss interesting things in the mess. I know that's happened with me before.
Perhaps this gets to the heart of the organization issue? It sounds like you place a high value on this perceived ability to stumble on to new things, but I think the nature and scope of FanFare and AskMe are significantly different to the point that the format hinders such discovery in FanFare.
posted by Sangermaine at 1:15 PM on June 9, 2015
Books. Books books books books books. That is all.
posted by Justinian at 1:16 PM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by Justinian at 1:16 PM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]
Would it be helpful to use something akin to the "Proposed Events" of IRL -- i.e. gauging interest in discussing individual Fanfare media items (movies, shows, books etc.) before they are transformed into "real" Fanfare discussions? Might help with clutter and connecting people, particularly when combined with individual sections for each medium.
An enhancement might be the ability to subscribe/favorite tags and (in the case of books) authors so you get notified a la IRL when someone is proposing a discussion of that tag or author.
posted by Celsius1414 at 1:19 PM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
An enhancement might be the ability to subscribe/favorite tags and (in the case of books) authors so you get notified a la IRL when someone is proposing a discussion of that tag or author.
posted by Celsius1414 at 1:19 PM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
"There are already all sorts of places that categorize books, no need to reinvent the wheel."
I'm obsessive -- and trying to break myself of it -- about the metadata for my book collection. I have a Kindle, but I manage everything with Calibre. Looking at Calibre, the metadata sources I see available (subject to the plugins I've gotten, though I don't have all these enabled for metadata searches) are: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Big Book Search, Douban Books, Edelweiss, FictionDB, Goodreads, Google, ISBNDB, ONON.ru, Open Library, and Overdrive.
Not all of those provide actual APIs, but some do.
In practice, this is all kind of a pain with different international editions and different formats and such. And fucking Amazon always includes subtitles and the (ugh) "A Novel" and even series titles as part of the title, and that's a bane of my existence.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 1:21 PM on June 9, 2015
I'm obsessive -- and trying to break myself of it -- about the metadata for my book collection. I have a Kindle, but I manage everything with Calibre. Looking at Calibre, the metadata sources I see available (subject to the plugins I've gotten, though I don't have all these enabled for metadata searches) are: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Big Book Search, Douban Books, Edelweiss, FictionDB, Goodreads, Google, ISBNDB, ONON.ru, Open Library, and Overdrive.
Not all of those provide actual APIs, but some do.
In practice, this is all kind of a pain with different international editions and different formats and such. And fucking Amazon always includes subtitles and the (ugh) "A Novel" and even series titles as part of the title, and that's a bane of my existence.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 1:21 PM on June 9, 2015
"It sounds like you place a high value on this perceived ability to stumble on to new things, but I think the nature and scope of FanFare and AskMe are significantly different to the point that the format hinders such discovery in FanFare."
I don't think we should discount the value of "stumble on to new things" in FanFare, though. My sense is that people would actually like to get turned on to new shows (movies, podcasts, books, etc) from FanFare, but that right now that's difficult to do. Not impossible -- I've definitely been alerted to new shows I might want to watch because they appeared in FanFare. But difficult, because most people aren't like me, and I am a pretty regular user of FanFare and I scan the main page for new posts and activity daily. So I'm more likely to see that sort of thing. For more casual users, or users who are more selective about things they're interested in, the quantity of posts impedes this.
Seems to me that there's been a number of people, including mods (present and emeritus), suggesting a "high-interest/activity" highlight on the main page. I'd like to see a main page that still includes content, but only these high interest threads, and then is otherwise an organized gateway to everything else.
But I really, really do think that somehow we should try to retain this emphasis on involving the whole community and not just defaulting to fragmented conversations. I absolutely think that a well-designed main FanFare page would both channel those already-interested to the things they are most interested in (without them having to go looking and while encouraging them to participate when they otherwise wouldn't bother -- that's an important part of this) and encourage people to take an interest in something new. Something like just a plain categorized interface would sacrifice some important valuable aspects of the best of MetaFilter.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 1:37 PM on June 9, 2015
I don't think we should discount the value of "stumble on to new things" in FanFare, though. My sense is that people would actually like to get turned on to new shows (movies, podcasts, books, etc) from FanFare, but that right now that's difficult to do. Not impossible -- I've definitely been alerted to new shows I might want to watch because they appeared in FanFare. But difficult, because most people aren't like me, and I am a pretty regular user of FanFare and I scan the main page for new posts and activity daily. So I'm more likely to see that sort of thing. For more casual users, or users who are more selective about things they're interested in, the quantity of posts impedes this.
Seems to me that there's been a number of people, including mods (present and emeritus), suggesting a "high-interest/activity" highlight on the main page. I'd like to see a main page that still includes content, but only these high interest threads, and then is otherwise an organized gateway to everything else.
But I really, really do think that somehow we should try to retain this emphasis on involving the whole community and not just defaulting to fragmented conversations. I absolutely think that a well-designed main FanFare page would both channel those already-interested to the things they are most interested in (without them having to go looking and while encouraging them to participate when they otherwise wouldn't bother -- that's an important part of this) and encourage people to take an interest in something new. Something like just a plain categorized interface would sacrifice some important valuable aspects of the best of MetaFilter.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 1:37 PM on June 9, 2015
That's less the case in Ask because every post is unique content.
Yeah, that's true. There are some repeating themes in Ask, but each new episode of a particular show is going to be very similar to the previous episode.
...I think the nature and scope of FanFare and AskMe are significantly different to the point that the format hinders such discovery in FanFare.
Yeah, I think you're right and that's what I'm trying to puzzle out here. What makes FanFare significantly different? In 2015 we have averaged 46 new questions at Ask MetaFilter every day. In FanFare we average 10 new posts each day. Why does FanFare feel more crowded? I think the repetition that showbiz_liz mentioned is part of it.
posted by pb (staff) at 1:41 PM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
Yeah, that's true. There are some repeating themes in Ask, but each new episode of a particular show is going to be very similar to the previous episode.
...I think the nature and scope of FanFare and AskMe are significantly different to the point that the format hinders such discovery in FanFare.
Yeah, I think you're right and that's what I'm trying to puzzle out here. What makes FanFare significantly different? In 2015 we have averaged 46 new questions at Ask MetaFilter every day. In FanFare we average 10 new posts each day. Why does FanFare feel more crowded? I think the repetition that showbiz_liz mentioned is part of it.
posted by pb (staff) at 1:41 PM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
Seems to me that a big issue is that people have strong, non-overlapping tastes. I have zero interest in Game of Thrones and I never will. Therefore, FanFare appears crowded with a glut of "useless" GOT posts to me. Lots of people have zero interest in my media interests and are afraid that my boring book posts would crowd out their interests.
This differs a lot from askme because most of us have some vicarious interest in others' lives that transcends the specific subject of the askme.
I'm happy to hear about your day, whoever you are, but not happy to hear what you watched on TV or ate for dinner last night.
posted by latkes at 1:51 PM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]
This differs a lot from askme because most of us have some vicarious interest in others' lives that transcends the specific subject of the askme.
I'm happy to hear about your day, whoever you are, but not happy to hear what you watched on TV or ate for dinner last night.
posted by latkes at 1:51 PM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]
You have until 7/28 which is the day The Dinosaur Lords comes out.
Knights + Dinosaurs = The Doof Warrior of Genre Fiction.
Witness me, ankylosaurus.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 2:14 PM on June 9, 2015
Knights + Dinosaurs = The Doof Warrior of Genre Fiction.
Witness me, ankylosaurus.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 2:14 PM on June 9, 2015
I agree that FanFare would be more useful to me if it was front loaded for programs, not episodes. So that instead of seeing a new post for every episode, I'd just see the show in general and from there could click in to individual episodes. I understand that this would change how things appear on the main FanFare page.
Also, I'd like there to be on the show page level room for comment. Trying to evaluate whether or not a new show/podcast is worth the time is tricky - it's not useful to drill down to a specific episode. It would be nice if the current episode list you see on show pages was boxed and shifted to the right. The left would be open for comments of the strict no spoilers variety. "I really like how this show handles character development, but some of the acting is just too hokey for me." "I'm about half-way through the first season and it feels like the writers have lost their way a bit." and so on.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 2:28 PM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]
Also, I'd like there to be on the show page level room for comment. Trying to evaluate whether or not a new show/podcast is worth the time is tricky - it's not useful to drill down to a specific episode. It would be nice if the current episode list you see on show pages was boxed and shifted to the right. The left would be open for comments of the strict no spoilers variety. "I really like how this show handles character development, but some of the acting is just too hokey for me." "I'm about half-way through the first season and it feels like the writers have lost their way a bit." and so on.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 2:28 PM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]
Also, sports. We're pretty well behaved in the World Cup threads.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 2:29 PM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by robocop is bleeding at 2:29 PM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]
What makes FanFare significantly different? In 2015 we have averaged 46 new questions at Ask MetaFilter every day. In FanFare we average 10 new posts each day. Why does FanFare feel more crowded? I think the repetition that showbiz_liz mentioned is part of it.
I don't know about other folks, but for me there is a way, way higher percentage of random AskMe questions that I'm at least somewhat interested in than random FanFare posts.
In FanFare, I mostly want to find posts about things I've already watched/listened to, or things I've been considering watching/listening to and seeing "ooh, lots of people talking about this on FanFare" is a nudge for me to go ahead and do it (I still won't open those right away to avoid spoilers, but I'll come back to them if I go ahead and watch/listen to the thing.) The number of FanFare posts that fall in that category for me are dwarfed by the many, many shows that other folks are in the middle of watching that I'd have to spend a ton of time catching up on to join those discussions. There are a ton of automatic "nope, not going to open that" posts in FanFare, and it's really hard to sift through that to find things I'm interested in, especially to find new discussions that I might want to read/join if I knew about them (happily I can see ongoing shows or clubs in My FanFare, which is by far the easiest and most pleasant part of FanFare for me, but is unfortunately limited to things I've already seen and subscribed to.) I desperately want some sort of "new movies/shows added in the last X days" feature that lets me figure out if there's new interesting content while skipping over all those dozens of posts about things I've already decided months ago that I'm not going to watch/read the posts about.
Whereas when I browse AskMe, there are very few "nope, not going to open that" posts that are so boring I wouldn't consider reading them... there are some questions that I know I'm going to want to read as soon as I see them, others that fall more in a "meh, if I have extra time maybe I'll check that out," but only a small fraction are things I'd never even consider opening (and frankly, even scrolling through those and seeing what people are asking is a more mildly interesting activity to me than just scrolling through the names of movies/episodes I'm not watching-- I have post descriptions off in FanFare to avoid spoilers so I just get the names. ) So browsing AskMe is fun and interesting, I don't get that off-putting FanFare feeling of scrolling through and thinking "nope, nope, still not interested in this show, not this one either, this thing is new but I'm also not interested, nope, nope... ugh, there might be something new and interesting buried down there somewhere but I give up, this is too annoying."
posted by EmilyClimbs at 3:10 PM on June 9, 2015 [6 favorites]
I don't know about other folks, but for me there is a way, way higher percentage of random AskMe questions that I'm at least somewhat interested in than random FanFare posts.
In FanFare, I mostly want to find posts about things I've already watched/listened to, or things I've been considering watching/listening to and seeing "ooh, lots of people talking about this on FanFare" is a nudge for me to go ahead and do it (I still won't open those right away to avoid spoilers, but I'll come back to them if I go ahead and watch/listen to the thing.) The number of FanFare posts that fall in that category for me are dwarfed by the many, many shows that other folks are in the middle of watching that I'd have to spend a ton of time catching up on to join those discussions. There are a ton of automatic "nope, not going to open that" posts in FanFare, and it's really hard to sift through that to find things I'm interested in, especially to find new discussions that I might want to read/join if I knew about them (happily I can see ongoing shows or clubs in My FanFare, which is by far the easiest and most pleasant part of FanFare for me, but is unfortunately limited to things I've already seen and subscribed to.) I desperately want some sort of "new movies/shows added in the last X days" feature that lets me figure out if there's new interesting content while skipping over all those dozens of posts about things I've already decided months ago that I'm not going to watch/read the posts about.
Whereas when I browse AskMe, there are very few "nope, not going to open that" posts that are so boring I wouldn't consider reading them... there are some questions that I know I'm going to want to read as soon as I see them, others that fall more in a "meh, if I have extra time maybe I'll check that out," but only a small fraction are things I'd never even consider opening (and frankly, even scrolling through those and seeing what people are asking is a more mildly interesting activity to me than just scrolling through the names of movies/episodes I'm not watching-- I have post descriptions off in FanFare to avoid spoilers so I just get the names. ) So browsing AskMe is fun and interesting, I don't get that off-putting FanFare feeling of scrolling through and thinking "nope, nope, still not interested in this show, not this one either, this thing is new but I'm also not interested, nope, nope... ugh, there might be something new and interesting buried down there somewhere but I give up, this is too annoying."
posted by EmilyClimbs at 3:10 PM on June 9, 2015 [6 favorites]
"Or a book about whisky written by a cat with a law degree."
There goes my Raymond Burr biography!
Love this and further incentive for the super slick Matrix like rollout mefi book case and shopping stall.
posted by clavdivs at 4:11 PM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]
There goes my Raymond Burr biography!
Love this and further incentive for the super slick Matrix like rollout mefi book case and shopping stall.
posted by clavdivs at 4:11 PM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]
What if there were some way for the Fan Fare front page to only list the most recent episode (or maybe just the general title) of a TV show (or podcast or anything serialized) and then when you click it, you go to a listing of all the episodes for that particular show? It might allow you to retain the essential chronological listing Mefi-ness but reduce the clutter a bit. I too find it so overwhelming that I don't even look at the front page of Fan Fare - I just go to my wrestling and Fury Road threads and that's it.
posted by misskaz at 4:26 PM on June 9, 2015
posted by misskaz at 4:26 PM on June 9, 2015
Like, have enough people read the new Neal Stephenson book already to discuss it?
I for one have read it and want to beanplate about it with others, and have thus far been thwarted and limited to emails/gchats about it with indulgent friends. So, I want Bookfilter is what I'm saying. I do definitely have volume concerns about it though, because Fanfare is crowded as is, a lot of it with stuff that doesn't get many comments.
posted by yasaman at 4:34 PM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
I for one have read it and want to beanplate about it with others, and have thus far been thwarted and limited to emails/gchats about it with indulgent friends. So, I want Bookfilter is what I'm saying. I do definitely have volume concerns about it though, because Fanfare is crowded as is, a lot of it with stuff that doesn't get many comments.
posted by yasaman at 4:34 PM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
Along the lines of what others have said, I would love a slight re-organization but not something too disruptive. What I envision is a menu at the top of the page with tabs for books/movies/etc. Sort of like how we already have Recent Posts/Fanfare Talk/Clubs/etc., only maybe a little more prominent and possibly on the left side of the screen.
It's not a huge issue, but one of the things I find mildly annoying about the current interface is that if you click on a category like "Movies" you lose access to the rest of the front page so if you want to look at fanfare talk or my fanfare you have to navigate back to the main fanfare page. Granted, that's not a huge inconvenience, but I would like it if I could get to a page for a specific media type without feeling like I'm being taken away from the main site (if that makes sense).
One of the reasons I think this would be useful is that I (and I'm guessing others) will engage differently with fanfare depending on the media type. With TV shows, I'm much more likely to have a very specific set of shows I'm interested in discussing, so I'll always use myFanfare for that. However, with movies, books, and podcasts, I'd be more likely to want to browse through what other people have posted, so the chronological order thing isn't such a problem.
Encouraging people to filter by media type might also help with the sense of clutter, since TV shows with all their many episodes take up a lot of space in the the current chronological order set up.
posted by litera scripta manet at 4:38 PM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]
It's not a huge issue, but one of the things I find mildly annoying about the current interface is that if you click on a category like "Movies" you lose access to the rest of the front page so if you want to look at fanfare talk or my fanfare you have to navigate back to the main fanfare page. Granted, that's not a huge inconvenience, but I would like it if I could get to a page for a specific media type without feeling like I'm being taken away from the main site (if that makes sense).
One of the reasons I think this would be useful is that I (and I'm guessing others) will engage differently with fanfare depending on the media type. With TV shows, I'm much more likely to have a very specific set of shows I'm interested in discussing, so I'll always use myFanfare for that. However, with movies, books, and podcasts, I'd be more likely to want to browse through what other people have posted, so the chronological order thing isn't such a problem.
Encouraging people to filter by media type might also help with the sense of clutter, since TV shows with all their many episodes take up a lot of space in the the current chronological order set up.
posted by litera scripta manet at 4:38 PM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]
i just wanna read what mefites have to say about Nemesis Games
posted by NoraReed at 7:10 PM on June 9, 2015
posted by NoraReed at 7:10 PM on June 9, 2015
Something that TWOP had that Fanfare is missing is the difference between just-one-thread shows and whole-forum shows. I don't know how that would work for metafilter but on TWOP you sacrificed having to wait until you were caught up to visit the thread in exchange for a more substantive ongoing conversation, as opposed to a just handful of comments about each episode. Some shows clearly can sustain a real conversation for each episode, but the majority can't.
Then again, I've never actually posted in Fanfare, so what do I know.
posted by that's how you get ants at 7:37 PM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
Then again, I've never actually posted in Fanfare, so what do I know.
posted by that's how you get ants at 7:37 PM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
There's SO MUCH there and that's awesome but maybe there are other ways to draw people in.
phpBB format. A section for each of the categories and the 3 or 5 most recent posts. Clicking the category goes the Category Page with all the posts in that category displayed in reverse chrono.
I'm only kind of kidding.
posted by carsonb at 7:45 PM on June 9, 2015
phpBB format. A section for each of the categories and the 3 or 5 most recent posts. Clicking the category goes the Category Page with all the posts in that category displayed in reverse chrono.
I'm only kind of kidding.
posted by carsonb at 7:45 PM on June 9, 2015
I agree with a lot of the earlier discussion about Fanfare's layout, so I played with it in Chrome for a few minutes, thinking maybe I could make it easier to scan with just a couple of changes.
Here's a screenshot (classic "professional" theme, sorry--I wasn't thinking ahead). The changes are (1) turn off post descriptions by default, because they're a lot to scan past, (2) turn off the smallcopy by default also, because to me at least it seems substantially less relevant on Fanfare than it is on any other subsite, and (3) move the media category (Movie, Podcast, etc.) into the gray text at the end that TV shows use for episode numbering, because that's an inconsistency in the design and an opportunity to de-emphasize some heavily repeated text.
It's a pretty major edit, but I think it scans easily and leaves room for adding in more tags or labels. I think grouping titles that have multiple segments and ordering by titles that have most recently been added and/or supplemented with new segments makes some sense too, though I'm less sure of the ramifications.
With regard to books, which I'm very much in favor of, I guess I wonder whether sequels should get "episode order" numbers, but other than that, I suspect the "there are too many of them with not enough readers" problem isn't worse than it is for podcasts. MeFi seems pretty serious about books though, and I understand the concern. Maybe limit folks to one book post per week or even one per month to start? It'd be easy enough to relax the limit in the future.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 8:52 PM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
Here's a screenshot (classic "professional" theme, sorry--I wasn't thinking ahead). The changes are (1) turn off post descriptions by default, because they're a lot to scan past, (2) turn off the smallcopy by default also, because to me at least it seems substantially less relevant on Fanfare than it is on any other subsite, and (3) move the media category (Movie, Podcast, etc.) into the gray text at the end that TV shows use for episode numbering, because that's an inconsistency in the design and an opportunity to de-emphasize some heavily repeated text.
It's a pretty major edit, but I think it scans easily and leaves room for adding in more tags or labels. I think grouping titles that have multiple segments and ordering by titles that have most recently been added and/or supplemented with new segments makes some sense too, though I'm less sure of the ramifications.
With regard to books, which I'm very much in favor of, I guess I wonder whether sequels should get "episode order" numbers, but other than that, I suspect the "there are too many of them with not enough readers" problem isn't worse than it is for podcasts. MeFi seems pretty serious about books though, and I understand the concern. Maybe limit folks to one book post per week or even one per month to start? It'd be easy enough to relax the limit in the future.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 8:52 PM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
I would be game to chat about the new Stephenson.
I wonder if there is a way to use the Projects/voting infrastructure to get some threshold or critical mass of interest in a Book before a thread can be opened. Ten people have to be interested? That might make the actual threads pretty stale if it takes awhile to open a thread (say for an Austen novel), but it would effectively stop us from having one-participant threads, and would be a very low barrier to the recent and popular books.
On the more general topic of FanFare organization, I agree that multiple entries for episodes of the same show can make the front page feel cluttered. I would like it if there were only one post on the main page at a time for any given show/podcast. Perhaps that should stay in reverse chronological order to highlight the new, and to honor the MeFi tradition, but maybe it should be links to show pages. In the GoT case, I don't want to see more than episode titles for seasons I haven't seen, but I want to be able to quickly surf back the ancient history that I have actually watched. I see where people are coming from with the suggestions about using the front page only for categories, but I like the idea that the variety of media is shown commingled on the front page. That also, to me, honors the serendipitous discovery that makes MetaFilter so charming.
posted by janell at 9:14 PM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]
I wonder if there is a way to use the Projects/voting infrastructure to get some threshold or critical mass of interest in a Book before a thread can be opened. Ten people have to be interested? That might make the actual threads pretty stale if it takes awhile to open a thread (say for an Austen novel), but it would effectively stop us from having one-participant threads, and would be a very low barrier to the recent and popular books.
On the more general topic of FanFare organization, I agree that multiple entries for episodes of the same show can make the front page feel cluttered. I would like it if there were only one post on the main page at a time for any given show/podcast. Perhaps that should stay in reverse chronological order to highlight the new, and to honor the MeFi tradition, but maybe it should be links to show pages. In the GoT case, I don't want to see more than episode titles for seasons I haven't seen, but I want to be able to quickly surf back the ancient history that I have actually watched. I see where people are coming from with the suggestions about using the front page only for categories, but I like the idea that the variety of media is shown commingled on the front page. That also, to me, honors the serendipitous discovery that makes MetaFilter so charming.
posted by janell at 9:14 PM on June 9, 2015 [2 favorites]
selfnoise: "I would almost prefer an actual Mefi book club where we just all read one book at a time."
Ah! How about merging an idea from IRL with FanFare to create a new BookFare? Proposal: Anyone can suggest a specific book to be read, and if people are willing to commit to reading that book, they click a "Yes, I will read this" button. If and only if enough people make that commitment (say, within a week?), then a thread will get opened for discussion.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 10:12 PM on June 9, 2015
Ah! How about merging an idea from IRL with FanFare to create a new BookFare? Proposal: Anyone can suggest a specific book to be read, and if people are willing to commit to reading that book, they click a "Yes, I will read this" button. If and only if enough people make that commitment (say, within a week?), then a thread will get opened for discussion.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 10:12 PM on June 9, 2015
I just realized how excited I am for us to have a "re-read your favorite childhood (fantasy) classics" book club in FanFare. Harry Potter? His Dark Materials? Chronicles of Narnia*? A Wrinkle in Time? Yes please!
Oh, and then we can have the Arthur Conan Doyle/Sherlock Holmes club! Or maybe a mystery book lovers club? I think I still have my Agatha Christie books somewhere around here.
This is going to be the best thing since...well, since we first got FanFare.
*I've put off re-reading these because I'm afraid the blatant Christian themes that I didn't notice as much when I was 10 might drive me crazy, but I would totally do it as part of a fanfare club.
posted by litera scripta manet at 10:30 PM on June 9, 2015 [4 favorites]
Oh, and then we can have the Arthur Conan Doyle/Sherlock Holmes club! Or maybe a mystery book lovers club? I think I still have my Agatha Christie books somewhere around here.
This is going to be the best thing since...well, since we first got FanFare.
*I've put off re-reading these because I'm afraid the blatant Christian themes that I didn't notice as much when I was 10 might drive me crazy, but I would totally do it as part of a fanfare club.
posted by litera scripta manet at 10:30 PM on June 9, 2015 [4 favorites]
I would be game to chat about the new Stephenson.
My first thought on seeing this thread was that there would be a queue of people waiting to go over that - or give it a going over.
posted by biffa at 2:20 AM on June 10, 2015
My first thought on seeing this thread was that there would be a queue of people waiting to go over that - or give it a going over.
posted by biffa at 2:20 AM on June 10, 2015
Fanfare is much harder to scan than Ask.
A representative Fanfare post from today:
iZombie: Blaine's World Season 1, Ep 13
Liv continues to investigate the deaths of a high-school band, while Major gets much too close to Blaine and Meat Cute.
What's iZombie? What's the genre? Can I watch it where I am? Would I want to? Who's Liv? Is it really worth my while to get hold of episodes 1-12? I'm none the wiser.
Representative Ask post from today: (paraphrased, but this sentence appears on the main Ask page)
What's the best alternative facial hair dye?
Great! I understand the problem and know instantly whether I am interested in participating in this discussion. Either I'm interested in facial hair dye or I'm not.
A couple suggestions for improvements:
- make it easy for me to exclude rewatch posts; in general stuff on the TV now is more interesting.
- consolidate all the posts on each show under a single main page entity, so e.g. GOT has only one entry on the main page, which sits chronologically at the date the last person posted about an episode.
- consolidate film club posts similarly so each film club has only one entry
- let me get rid of series I'm not watching and film clubs I'm not interested in, because by definition these things cause a lot of repeating posts that are noise for me.
Currently the front Fanfare page is a big mix of interesting stuff, uninteresting stuff, and stuff that might be interesting if I learned more about it. The third category is the most useful to me, but it gets drowned out by the second.
posted by emilyw at 2:52 AM on June 10, 2015 [11 favorites]
A representative Fanfare post from today:
iZombie: Blaine's World Season 1, Ep 13
Liv continues to investigate the deaths of a high-school band, while Major gets much too close to Blaine and Meat Cute.
What's iZombie? What's the genre? Can I watch it where I am? Would I want to? Who's Liv? Is it really worth my while to get hold of episodes 1-12? I'm none the wiser.
Representative Ask post from today: (paraphrased, but this sentence appears on the main Ask page)
What's the best alternative facial hair dye?
Great! I understand the problem and know instantly whether I am interested in participating in this discussion. Either I'm interested in facial hair dye or I'm not.
A couple suggestions for improvements:
- make it easy for me to exclude rewatch posts; in general stuff on the TV now is more interesting.
- consolidate all the posts on each show under a single main page entity, so e.g. GOT has only one entry on the main page, which sits chronologically at the date the last person posted about an episode.
- consolidate film club posts similarly so each film club has only one entry
- let me get rid of series I'm not watching and film clubs I'm not interested in, because by definition these things cause a lot of repeating posts that are noise for me.
Currently the front Fanfare page is a big mix of interesting stuff, uninteresting stuff, and stuff that might be interesting if I learned more about it. The third category is the most useful to me, but it gets drowned out by the second.
posted by emilyw at 2:52 AM on June 10, 2015 [11 favorites]
More prominent indicators of interest and activity might help with the scanning problem too. I'm imagining some highlighted and maybe color-coded indicator suggesting how 'hot' a topic is based on things like comments, favorites, club tags, or My Fanfare subscription counts. If the post content were mostly not displayed, the indicator could be pretty subtle and yet helpful in finding what has an audience / what folks are excited about, even if it's not generating long comment threads yet. If the posts take up as much room as they do now, the indicator could be as big as the vote counter on Projects and serve a similar purpose ("A lot of people on Metafilter think this is neat" or, in the case of particular episodes, "still neat").
posted by Monsieur Caution at 6:09 AM on June 10, 2015
posted by Monsieur Caution at 6:09 AM on June 10, 2015
What makes FanFare significantly different?
Other people (like emilyw and Monsieur Caution) have touched on this, but IMO a lot of it is that in order to make the above-the-fold part of the post not too spoilery, the actual phrasing of the post winds up vague and impenetrable unless you're already in the know. (This is a "discussing media on The Internet" thing as much as a MetaFilter thing.)
"Character does vaguely described thing and Other Character has vaguely described thing happen to them" doesn't really convey any useful information if I don't already have some idea of who these characters are and the situations they're in, so it doesn't entice me to find something new, and it sure seems like for a lot of people the cumulative effect is "MOAR WORDS I HAVE TO SCROLL PAST." Which, yeah, first world problems and all, but I think it does tend to add to the "needle in haystack" feeling I often get when looking at the front page of FanFare.
Bouncing off Monsieur Caution's idea for a re-design, for each TV FanFare post the title of the show would be a link to the show page (where there's a synopsis of the show in general that would give me some clue about whether I'm interested in the show at all), the episode title would take me to the actual episode post. (This may not be practical, I realize, or would require more effort in formatting from posters, which could be a stumbling block.)
The idea of having the front page of FanFare be more category-oriented rather than individual-post-oriented has some merit, too.
And while we're blue-skying it, I'd love to see the capability of some sort of organizing/filtering by genre, too.
posted by soundguy99 at 6:44 AM on June 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
Other people (like emilyw and Monsieur Caution) have touched on this, but IMO a lot of it is that in order to make the above-the-fold part of the post not too spoilery, the actual phrasing of the post winds up vague and impenetrable unless you're already in the know. (This is a "discussing media on The Internet" thing as much as a MetaFilter thing.)
"Character does vaguely described thing and Other Character has vaguely described thing happen to them" doesn't really convey any useful information if I don't already have some idea of who these characters are and the situations they're in, so it doesn't entice me to find something new, and it sure seems like for a lot of people the cumulative effect is "MOAR WORDS I HAVE TO SCROLL PAST." Which, yeah, first world problems and all, but I think it does tend to add to the "needle in haystack" feeling I often get when looking at the front page of FanFare.
Bouncing off Monsieur Caution's idea for a re-design, for each TV FanFare post the title of the show would be a link to the show page (where there's a synopsis of the show in general that would give me some clue about whether I'm interested in the show at all), the episode title would take me to the actual episode post. (This may not be practical, I realize, or would require more effort in formatting from posters, which could be a stumbling block.)
The idea of having the front page of FanFare be more category-oriented rather than individual-post-oriented has some merit, too.
And while we're blue-skying it, I'd love to see the capability of some sort of organizing/filtering by genre, too.
posted by soundguy99 at 6:44 AM on June 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
What if we stopped kidding ourselves and just made it shirleyjackson.metafilter.com
posted by shakespeherian at 7:01 AM on June 10, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by shakespeherian at 7:01 AM on June 10, 2015 [4 favorites]
We have always lived in the fanfare....
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 7:29 AM on June 10, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 7:29 AM on June 10, 2015 [4 favorites]
So... can we start with Les Misérables, say a chapter a week? (or would that crash the db? :)
posted by sammyo at 7:40 AM on June 10, 2015
posted by sammyo at 7:40 AM on June 10, 2015
Personally, the way I mostly use Fanfare is to consume some media, then Google "fanfare [movie/show name]". For the few shows/podcasts that I actually regularly watch, I have those in My Fanfare.
posted by smackfu at 7:43 AM on June 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by smackfu at 7:43 AM on June 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
Yeah I too would like to chat about Seveneves, I vote for making it the test case.
posted by mygothlaundry at 7:56 AM on June 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by mygothlaundry at 7:56 AM on June 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
What I'd do to improve Fanfare:
Front page shows only these threads: a) New TV Shows. b) Maybe new Movies. c) Sidebarred threads (see below). d) threads for Clubs a logged-in member is part of. No episode descriptions by default. Logged-in users can choose never to display certain things, eg a TV Show they hate.
If a given New TV show has had >3 threads in a row with <10 comments, it is bumped to clubs-only (too harsh?)
The Clubs page is made incredibly prominent, maybe with a big giant link at the top with pictures like the 'Recently added TV Shows' sidebar, only in a row (Don't know how you'd get this to work on mobile). Club browsablity is improved, maybe with a grid of images, number of members, total number of comments, average comments/thread? You want people to be able to find fun, active clubs as quickly as possible.
Podcasts, rewatched TV Shows, old films and books can only be posted within clubs and do not appear on the front page unless a member is part of the relevant club. However, links to the club may well appear on the front page.
'Most commented threads' in the smallprint menu links to a list of theads with most comments over the last 24h, 7d, etc.
The 'Recently added TV Shows' and 'Recently added Movies' are replaced by 'Popular Shows' and 'Controversial/Hot Threads'.
A sidebar shows threads that have been flagged as 'fantastic' a lot or contain comments that have been flagged as 'fantastic' a lot. Maybe also threads with an unusually high number of comments, if that doesn't dupe too much with other sidebar items. These are also visible on the front page. (see above). This incentivises things like, for example, users posting meticulous and high-quality reviews, threads in which the discussion goes way beyond the banal, etc.
Just my 2p.
posted by Acheman at 7:58 AM on June 10, 2015
Front page shows only these threads: a) New TV Shows. b) Maybe new Movies. c) Sidebarred threads (see below). d) threads for Clubs a logged-in member is part of. No episode descriptions by default. Logged-in users can choose never to display certain things, eg a TV Show they hate.
If a given New TV show has had >3 threads in a row with <10 comments, it is bumped to clubs-only (too harsh?)
The Clubs page is made incredibly prominent, maybe with a big giant link at the top with pictures like the 'Recently added TV Shows' sidebar, only in a row (Don't know how you'd get this to work on mobile). Club browsablity is improved, maybe with a grid of images, number of members, total number of comments, average comments/thread? You want people to be able to find fun, active clubs as quickly as possible.
Podcasts, rewatched TV Shows, old films and books can only be posted within clubs and do not appear on the front page unless a member is part of the relevant club. However, links to the club may well appear on the front page.
'Most commented threads' in the smallprint menu links to a list of theads with most comments over the last 24h, 7d, etc.
The 'Recently added TV Shows' and 'Recently added Movies' are replaced by 'Popular Shows' and 'Controversial/Hot Threads'.
A sidebar shows threads that have been flagged as 'fantastic' a lot or contain comments that have been flagged as 'fantastic' a lot. Maybe also threads with an unusually high number of comments, if that doesn't dupe too much with other sidebar items. These are also visible on the front page. (see above). This incentivises things like, for example, users posting meticulous and high-quality reviews, threads in which the discussion goes way beyond the banal, etc.
Just my 2p.
posted by Acheman at 7:58 AM on June 10, 2015
Although actually, I really like the look of emilyw's hasty prototype.
posted by Acheman at 7:58 AM on June 10, 2015
posted by Acheman at 7:58 AM on June 10, 2015
Please sign me up for all updates for when "Lady gets an itchy butt on the train" becomes a reality. Thank you.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 8:29 AM on June 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by MCMikeNamara at 8:29 AM on June 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
As someone who primarily uses FanFare for TV discussions (and the poster of that iZombie blurb quoted above) I would not mind at all if the entries for individual episodes, with their deliberately obfuscated, mostly-useless above-the-fold text, were replaced with an entry for the series as a whole that could be bumped to the front page when a new episode goes up.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:43 AM on June 10, 2015 [9 favorites]
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:43 AM on June 10, 2015 [9 favorites]
I think this is the first time I've seen a suggestion on MetaTalk and immediately pointed at the screen, shouting "YES! BUILD THIS NOW! PLEASE!"
posted by Wordshore at 9:21 AM on June 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by Wordshore at 9:21 AM on June 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
I'd like to see some sort of listing of the most active threads of the last week or so featured prominently, and then everything else reached through some organized links on the rest of the page. And that organization could be, say, a page listing all television shows, one with all the shows with episodes in the last seven days, and one listing current, ongoing rewatches -- with the same sort of thing for movies and podcasts and books.
I don't really have any good ideas about how those links should be structured and described on the main page, nor how the target section pages would look, but I don't like the idea of creating this functionality through user-defined "My FanFare" type things. If I may be so bold, that's not good design for the average user, that's good design for the power user. Which is fine -- providing tools for power users to structure things that work best for them is a much-requested feature and a good to implement. But it shouldn't be the go-to solution for solving these sorts of problems for the average user.
I don't think that anything should be more than two links down from the main page -- most of what people want to do should be reachable by a single link from the main page. But everything shouldn't be obfuscated on the main page in the sense of lots of category text links to these things -- the stuff that's a link away should be partly visible and interesting somehow on the front page. That's design stuff I'm not good at, but I can intuit that it's important for how engaging a site/page ends up being. A big menu of categories and such just in text is not the way to go -- that would make the main page be cluttered and uninteresting in a whole new way.
Which is partly why I think that we need to have some content featured prominently on the main page. That content should be the most popular stuff, giving people an immediate view and entry into the most active parts of FanFare. Again, I think it is very important to retain some sense of encouraging the whole MetaFilter community to share a view of at least part of FanFare and to encourage the whole community to give certain discussions a try. I know that with television shows and individual episode threads, there's the barrier of ignorance of the show for many people, as well as spoilers, but the thing is, I know that this is broadly how I get a sense of things that might interest me -- whether it's reviews of a movie or an episode of a television show appearing in the main page of the New York Times entertainment section, or on other websites. Seeing that many people are interested and actively talking about something is by itself interest-inducing in others, and then maybe people will click into a thread and get a sense of what people are talking about. With something like GoT, that's worthwhile, too, if they see that a lot of people are unhappy or whatever. But, mainly, I think that there should be some content that appears on the main page that gives a sense of what the community of FanFare, to the degree to which we can talk about it collectively, is interested in at any given time. Things that provide some amount of a shared experience, as the reverse chronology and lack of threading do elsewhere on the site.
But, aside from that, it seems pretty clear that what would work best for most people is finding it easy to get to the kinds of threads that they're most interested in, and avoiding wading through all the stuff that they're not.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 12:27 PM on June 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
I don't really have any good ideas about how those links should be structured and described on the main page, nor how the target section pages would look, but I don't like the idea of creating this functionality through user-defined "My FanFare" type things. If I may be so bold, that's not good design for the average user, that's good design for the power user. Which is fine -- providing tools for power users to structure things that work best for them is a much-requested feature and a good to implement. But it shouldn't be the go-to solution for solving these sorts of problems for the average user.
I don't think that anything should be more than two links down from the main page -- most of what people want to do should be reachable by a single link from the main page. But everything shouldn't be obfuscated on the main page in the sense of lots of category text links to these things -- the stuff that's a link away should be partly visible and interesting somehow on the front page. That's design stuff I'm not good at, but I can intuit that it's important for how engaging a site/page ends up being. A big menu of categories and such just in text is not the way to go -- that would make the main page be cluttered and uninteresting in a whole new way.
Which is partly why I think that we need to have some content featured prominently on the main page. That content should be the most popular stuff, giving people an immediate view and entry into the most active parts of FanFare. Again, I think it is very important to retain some sense of encouraging the whole MetaFilter community to share a view of at least part of FanFare and to encourage the whole community to give certain discussions a try. I know that with television shows and individual episode threads, there's the barrier of ignorance of the show for many people, as well as spoilers, but the thing is, I know that this is broadly how I get a sense of things that might interest me -- whether it's reviews of a movie or an episode of a television show appearing in the main page of the New York Times entertainment section, or on other websites. Seeing that many people are interested and actively talking about something is by itself interest-inducing in others, and then maybe people will click into a thread and get a sense of what people are talking about. With something like GoT, that's worthwhile, too, if they see that a lot of people are unhappy or whatever. But, mainly, I think that there should be some content that appears on the main page that gives a sense of what the community of FanFare, to the degree to which we can talk about it collectively, is interested in at any given time. Things that provide some amount of a shared experience, as the reverse chronology and lack of threading do elsewhere on the site.
But, aside from that, it seems pretty clear that what would work best for most people is finding it easy to get to the kinds of threads that they're most interested in, and avoiding wading through all the stuff that they're not.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 12:27 PM on June 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
Here is a draft of how my ideal Fanfare front page would look. (Probably it would include more posts per category on the main page, but this was just a quick draft of the basic idea.)
The current main page, just as it is now, could be a secondary tab - View All Posts.
This new landing page would have portals to a separate page for Movies, Podcasts, etc., which you could view either by Most Recent Activity or alphabetically. Currently, if you go to the 'all movies' section it's just a bare alphabetical list with no other info or sorting options.
The primary 'unit' of a TV show and podcast, the thing that gets bumped to the top with new activity, would become the series landing page, not individual episode posts. This just makes way more sense to me.
Thoughts on this?
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:41 PM on June 10, 2015 [7 favorites]
The current main page, just as it is now, could be a secondary tab - View All Posts.
This new landing page would have portals to a separate page for Movies, Podcasts, etc., which you could view either by Most Recent Activity or alphabetically. Currently, if you go to the 'all movies' section it's just a bare alphabetical list with no other info or sorting options.
The primary 'unit' of a TV show and podcast, the thing that gets bumped to the top with new activity, would become the series landing page, not individual episode posts. This just makes way more sense to me.
Thoughts on this?
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:41 PM on June 10, 2015 [7 favorites]
I don't think I like the quartered page design, but the way TV and podcast posts are structured is about perfect.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 1:03 PM on June 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 1:03 PM on June 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
My preferences is pretty close to showbiz_liz's sample. The frontpage would ideally have 3-5 items under each major section (TV, Books, Movies, Etc.). So, example:
Movies
Newest posts:
Ghostbusters
Avengers
Amelie
Most comments today:
Before Sunset
Most comments this week:
Up
Most recent club activity:
Robin Wiliams Club: Bicentennial man
[link to full Movies alphabetical listing or full list of all recent posts - stolen from showbiz-liz]
TV
[repeat]
Books
[repeat]
To me, this gives an ideal snapshot of what's going on in Fanfare without overloading me with a million posts, and it facilitates discovery of new movies/shows/etc. since it's a digestible amount of information.
posted by gatorae at 1:24 PM on June 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
Movies
Newest posts:
Ghostbusters
Avengers
Amelie
Most comments today:
Before Sunset
Most comments this week:
Up
Most recent club activity:
Robin Wiliams Club: Bicentennial man
[link to full Movies alphabetical listing or full list of all recent posts - stolen from showbiz-liz]
TV
[repeat]
Books
[repeat]
To me, this gives an ideal snapshot of what's going on in Fanfare without overloading me with a million posts, and it facilitates discovery of new movies/shows/etc. since it's a digestible amount of information.
posted by gatorae at 1:24 PM on June 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
Here is a draft of how my ideal Fanfare front page would look.
I like this very much.
posted by naju at 1:25 PM on June 10, 2015
I like this very much.
posted by naju at 1:25 PM on June 10, 2015
I think visually having something different in the sidebar is nice, and the covers that we currently have are very eye catching. I don't like the quartered page design because it's too much of the same text everywhere.
posted by tofu_crouton at 1:33 PM on June 10, 2015
posted by tofu_crouton at 1:33 PM on June 10, 2015
I wonder if instead of the quartered page design we could use showbiz_liz's structure but with prominent tabs for TV/movies/podcasts/books.
I like the idea of a tab for each category. However I do think there needs to be a main page which somehow shows content from every category. Otherwise it's not immediately clear what the scope of FanFare is.
The quartered page design was because, if you were to just do one column, the last category would be shoved down past the bottom of the screen unless you scrolled - also not ideal.
I'm not married to the quartering per se, it just seemed like one easy solution to the above two issues.
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:39 PM on June 10, 2015
I like the idea of a tab for each category. However I do think there needs to be a main page which somehow shows content from every category. Otherwise it's not immediately clear what the scope of FanFare is.
The quartered page design was because, if you were to just do one column, the last category would be shoved down past the bottom of the screen unless you scrolled - also not ideal.
I'm not married to the quartering per se, it just seemed like one easy solution to the above two issues.
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:39 PM on June 10, 2015
Thoughts on this?
I love it - the quartered page doesn't bother me, nor do the lack of images. Would the primary units, as you called them, be the most recent posts in each section (TV/Movies/Podcasts/Books)?
posted by lyssabee at 2:12 PM on June 10, 2015
I love it - the quartered page doesn't bother me, nor do the lack of images. Would the primary units, as you called them, be the most recent posts in each section (TV/Movies/Podcasts/Books)?
posted by lyssabee at 2:12 PM on June 10, 2015
Would the primary units, as you called them, be the most recent posts in each section (TV/Movies/Podcasts/Books)?
Not 100% sure what you mean but it would be like - click on the Movies header and/or Movies tab, get a list of movies in the order they were recently posted or posted-in.* Like on the example page I posted, but longer and paginated. Same for Books.
For TV and Podcasts, same deal, click on the header - and get a list of TV series or a list of podcasts in order of recent activity. NOT a list of episodes. (Possibly each show could have a list underneath it of say the three most recently commented-on posts in small text underneath it.)
*This is a big departure from how MeFi normally does things, I know - but functionally it's similar to how Recent Activity works.
posted by showbiz_liz at 2:28 PM on June 10, 2015
Not 100% sure what you mean but it would be like - click on the Movies header and/or Movies tab, get a list of movies in the order they were recently posted or posted-in.* Like on the example page I posted, but longer and paginated. Same for Books.
For TV and Podcasts, same deal, click on the header - and get a list of TV series or a list of podcasts in order of recent activity. NOT a list of episodes. (Possibly each show could have a list underneath it of say the three most recently commented-on posts in small text underneath it.)
*This is a big departure from how MeFi normally does things, I know - but functionally it's similar to how Recent Activity works.
posted by showbiz_liz at 2:28 PM on June 10, 2015
RE: Books
I think books would definitely benefit from a club angle, given the nearly infinite number of books and the problematic element of having the readership to discuss them. A club angle puts a set number of MeFites on the same line. Books should be posted once, like movies, and the clubs would be able to set the time, be it two weeks or a month per book.
As a pretty regular user of Fanfare, I've found myself to have adapted to its current structure without much problem and actually am surprised by the number of people who have stated they find the front page confusing. A visitor on a daily basis can quickly parse what's new without much effort, especially since there's so few posts per day, that the page is essentially paginated by the dates separating the posts. But obviously, for newcomers who find it bewildering, that does nothing to help promote its growth.
I do think, as someone above mentioned, the lack of awareness has hampered the growth of the subsite, as there's really not much of a reason for random passersby to visit it unless they see the link from the more popular and google driven parts of the site. Short of MeFites making an effort to promote the site in other places, I'm not sure much can be done without much thought and experimentation to make it otherwise.
One relatively easy change might be to add a link or break up the link of the posts on the front page. Right now, if you click on a post, you go to the episode discussion. It might benefit folks who are not knowledgeable of the show, if they could click on a link that took them to the main show page - where an summary of the show is located (or should be located). They can then also scan the episodes already posted and easily navigate to the first episode discussion and get a good idea of reactions and what's going on. So in short, work a link to the show page into the post for individual episodes.
I kind of like the idea of a sidebar which might feature the "Hot" topics, so for example, the big shows like Game of Thrones would appear there.
The only fear I do have are for show where there is earnest discussion, but not on the scale of the 200+ posts that the aforementioned GoT gets. If they're kicked off the front page, that definitely hampers the ability of people to stumble across them or give them a chance. It's why I much more like the idea of at worse, replacing episode descriptions with a show summary, so people have an idea of what the show is. (As is, I'm pretty happy with the current format)
posted by Atreides at 3:01 PM on June 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
I think books would definitely benefit from a club angle, given the nearly infinite number of books and the problematic element of having the readership to discuss them. A club angle puts a set number of MeFites on the same line. Books should be posted once, like movies, and the clubs would be able to set the time, be it two weeks or a month per book.
As a pretty regular user of Fanfare, I've found myself to have adapted to its current structure without much problem and actually am surprised by the number of people who have stated they find the front page confusing. A visitor on a daily basis can quickly parse what's new without much effort, especially since there's so few posts per day, that the page is essentially paginated by the dates separating the posts. But obviously, for newcomers who find it bewildering, that does nothing to help promote its growth.
I do think, as someone above mentioned, the lack of awareness has hampered the growth of the subsite, as there's really not much of a reason for random passersby to visit it unless they see the link from the more popular and google driven parts of the site. Short of MeFites making an effort to promote the site in other places, I'm not sure much can be done without much thought and experimentation to make it otherwise.
One relatively easy change might be to add a link or break up the link of the posts on the front page. Right now, if you click on a post, you go to the episode discussion. It might benefit folks who are not knowledgeable of the show, if they could click on a link that took them to the main show page - where an summary of the show is located (or should be located). They can then also scan the episodes already posted and easily navigate to the first episode discussion and get a good idea of reactions and what's going on. So in short, work a link to the show page into the post for individual episodes.
I kind of like the idea of a sidebar which might feature the "Hot" topics, so for example, the big shows like Game of Thrones would appear there.
The only fear I do have are for show where there is earnest discussion, but not on the scale of the 200+ posts that the aforementioned GoT gets. If they're kicked off the front page, that definitely hampers the ability of people to stumble across them or give them a chance. It's why I much more like the idea of at worse, replacing episode descriptions with a show summary, so people have an idea of what the show is. (As is, I'm pretty happy with the current format)
posted by Atreides at 3:01 PM on June 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
I would like this. I do not want to be a noodge but I would like this.
I have no idea what a noodge is but I also am in support.
It sounds like people don't want to stumble on media they're not actively consuming.
I think it's the reverse -- the current structure makes it almost impossible to casually find media you are consuming, much less new and exciting media you aren't.
I agree that FanFare would be more useful to me if it was front loaded for programs, not episodes.
No kidding. I hadn't looked at the FF page in a while -- my immediate reaction is that it is a hot wet mess right now. I agree with Jessamyn and others that it needs to first be organized by book/movie/tv/etc (ideally also with a "current hot discussions" to highlight posts that are getting a lot of discussion), rather than the current total mess of episodes all jumbled together. The book equivalent would be a out of order mess of posts about individual chapters of hundreds of different books, which self-evidently would not work.
Within the book subsection, once it has enough posts it would be great to be able to sort by author and genre. I would totally read and post in a Riddley Walker discussion, but I'm probably not going to find it in a purely chronological arrangement, for example.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:19 PM on June 10, 2015
I have no idea what a noodge is but I also am in support.
It sounds like people don't want to stumble on media they're not actively consuming.
I think it's the reverse -- the current structure makes it almost impossible to casually find media you are consuming, much less new and exciting media you aren't.
I agree that FanFare would be more useful to me if it was front loaded for programs, not episodes.
No kidding. I hadn't looked at the FF page in a while -- my immediate reaction is that it is a hot wet mess right now. I agree with Jessamyn and others that it needs to first be organized by book/movie/tv/etc (ideally also with a "current hot discussions" to highlight posts that are getting a lot of discussion), rather than the current total mess of episodes all jumbled together. The book equivalent would be a out of order mess of posts about individual chapters of hundreds of different books, which self-evidently would not work.
Within the book subsection, once it has enough posts it would be great to be able to sort by author and genre. I would totally read and post in a Riddley Walker discussion, but I'm probably not going to find it in a purely chronological arrangement, for example.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:19 PM on June 10, 2015
that's how you get ants: " don't know how that would work for metafilter but on TWOP you sacrificed having to wait until you were caught up to visit the thread in exchange for a more substantive ongoing conversation, as opposed to a just handful of comments about each episode. Some shows clearly can sustain a real conversation for each episode, but the majority can't. "
Yeah, I really want FanFare to have multi-episode threads for shows that don't have as much activity. Like, a half-season thread, or a quarter-season thread. "Episodes 1-4 of Not Crazy Popular Show" seems very doable.
"The entire universe of media consumption" is tough to do without some kind of editor/moderator making decisions about what is important enough to get spotlighted and discussed. most broad-topic media websites either have an editor who selects specific shows/books/etc that get the site's full treatment, or have the ability to drill down within subsections to find the things you specifically want to look at. The straight-up chronological view of FanFare is kind-of overwhelming and makes for a lot of five-comment "yeah I liked that episode" posts.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:25 PM on June 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
Yeah, I really want FanFare to have multi-episode threads for shows that don't have as much activity. Like, a half-season thread, or a quarter-season thread. "Episodes 1-4 of Not Crazy Popular Show" seems very doable.
"The entire universe of media consumption" is tough to do without some kind of editor/moderator making decisions about what is important enough to get spotlighted and discussed. most broad-topic media websites either have an editor who selects specific shows/books/etc that get the site's full treatment, or have the ability to drill down within subsections to find the things you specifically want to look at. The straight-up chronological view of FanFare is kind-of overwhelming and makes for a lot of five-comment "yeah I liked that episode" posts.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:25 PM on June 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
I would definitely advocate against combining episodes into multiple-episode posts because ultimately, something gets lost in the discussion because certain topics arise from one episode and overshadow the opportunity to discuss things in another episode. I have seen this occur in instances when for one reason or another, multiple episodes have been released at once (this relates to binge watching which is a topic of discussion right now over in FanFare Talk). Combining episodes will not result in more discussion, it will be the same individuals saying the same things, but just in an aesthetically pleasing thread of dozens of comments. It would be better to simply banish offensive low comment count posts to subsites rather than combine them, as it allows for episodic discussion, not just series discussion.
posted by Atreides at 6:59 PM on June 10, 2015
posted by Atreides at 6:59 PM on June 10, 2015
This isn't anything that MetaFilter would do, but I am utterly desperate for a website that has moderately complete synopses of books -- about what Wikipedia does for popular items would be good. It seems like about half the books I read now are series books and I read so much, and many SFF series books are sort of similar, and maybe I'm getting old, but I totally can't remember previous books a year later when the new book comes out. I'm about to start the new Tearling book tonight, and I had to look up several reviews just to be reminded of what happened in the first book. I'm so annoyed about having to do this.
I've thought about making a crowd-sourced site to do this -- and I've wondered why Goodreads or similar hasn't done this. But it turns out that publishers are very testy about synopses. I don't really understand this or how it works, but apparently you have to be careful about it. And so maybe that's the reason why no one is doing this. But I can't be the only person who has this problem. Used to be series books always had a summary of the previous story at the beginning -- I'm very annoyed that they stopped doing this, probably some publishing cost-cutting decision.
"...but just in an aesthetically pleasing thread of dozens of comments"
I don't think it's merely "aesthetically pleasing", if that's even anyone's consideration for advocating this. I think it makes a effective difference. As a veteran of TWoP, I definitely think it made the lower-interest show discussions work better than they would have if they'd had low-activity episode threads. It sacrifices the avoidance of spoilers for those not caught up, but what it gains is that anyone who is anywhere in the watching of the show can participate in the present discussion. This works because people who are caught up will read new comments by people about something two weeks earlier if they just now watched that episode and they will engage with it. I see a lot of older threads with new activity in my "recent activity", which is a main way I use MetaFilter. But, even so, older episode threads tend to feel pretty much like they've died whereas a single-thread for an ongoing show would remain active. It's not just aesthetic or psychology, it actually consolidates the discussion and therefore increases participation for something that is otherwise low-activity.
For example, one of the very best shows that was on last year was The Honourable Woman. I didn't watch it right away and only began to watch it right before the last episode. No one else here had bothered to post it. Likewise with Rectify, which has had only two episodes posted -- both of these shows, and especially Rectify are going to get nominated for a number of Emmys. I think Rectify is likely to be a major winner. (Well, that's hard to say because there's a bias against very small network shows, in this case Sundance.) But the point is that these are two of the best shows that were on television last year and we basically almost didn't talk about them here at all. And that's because MetaFilter isn't that big and because both these shows didn't have big audiences. So there's limited interest. But not zero interest, and especially given that they're both so extremely high quality. There's a lot to talk about. But individual episode posts for every episode? There wouldn't be enough activity to sustain that. Beside the problem of figuring out whether one ought to post past episodes of a new or recent show that no one has as yet bothered to post. Should I have posted all six previous episodes of The Honourable Woman? At once?
But a single show thread would probably work well for such shows. I totally understand the advantages of episode posts and the desire for it -- that's my preference whenever there's enough interest to sustain it. But a lot of shows can't sustain that format here. As people have pointed out, even at TWoP which had far more activity than we have here, there were still a lot of shows that worked better as single threads. Partly they made that decision as a function of whether they were recapping something and dedicating a mod for the forum and episode threads. But the decision to recap or not was often a direct function of interest, so it was related, anyway.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 7:21 PM on June 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
I've thought about making a crowd-sourced site to do this -- and I've wondered why Goodreads or similar hasn't done this. But it turns out that publishers are very testy about synopses. I don't really understand this or how it works, but apparently you have to be careful about it. And so maybe that's the reason why no one is doing this. But I can't be the only person who has this problem. Used to be series books always had a summary of the previous story at the beginning -- I'm very annoyed that they stopped doing this, probably some publishing cost-cutting decision.
"...but just in an aesthetically pleasing thread of dozens of comments"
I don't think it's merely "aesthetically pleasing", if that's even anyone's consideration for advocating this. I think it makes a effective difference. As a veteran of TWoP, I definitely think it made the lower-interest show discussions work better than they would have if they'd had low-activity episode threads. It sacrifices the avoidance of spoilers for those not caught up, but what it gains is that anyone who is anywhere in the watching of the show can participate in the present discussion. This works because people who are caught up will read new comments by people about something two weeks earlier if they just now watched that episode and they will engage with it. I see a lot of older threads with new activity in my "recent activity", which is a main way I use MetaFilter. But, even so, older episode threads tend to feel pretty much like they've died whereas a single-thread for an ongoing show would remain active. It's not just aesthetic or psychology, it actually consolidates the discussion and therefore increases participation for something that is otherwise low-activity.
For example, one of the very best shows that was on last year was The Honourable Woman. I didn't watch it right away and only began to watch it right before the last episode. No one else here had bothered to post it. Likewise with Rectify, which has had only two episodes posted -- both of these shows, and especially Rectify are going to get nominated for a number of Emmys. I think Rectify is likely to be a major winner. (Well, that's hard to say because there's a bias against very small network shows, in this case Sundance.) But the point is that these are two of the best shows that were on television last year and we basically almost didn't talk about them here at all. And that's because MetaFilter isn't that big and because both these shows didn't have big audiences. So there's limited interest. But not zero interest, and especially given that they're both so extremely high quality. There's a lot to talk about. But individual episode posts for every episode? There wouldn't be enough activity to sustain that. Beside the problem of figuring out whether one ought to post past episodes of a new or recent show that no one has as yet bothered to post. Should I have posted all six previous episodes of The Honourable Woman? At once?
But a single show thread would probably work well for such shows. I totally understand the advantages of episode posts and the desire for it -- that's my preference whenever there's enough interest to sustain it. But a lot of shows can't sustain that format here. As people have pointed out, even at TWoP which had far more activity than we have here, there were still a lot of shows that worked better as single threads. Partly they made that decision as a function of whether they were recapping something and dedicating a mod for the forum and episode threads. But the decision to recap or not was often a direct function of interest, so it was related, anyway.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 7:21 PM on June 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
The thing that worries me about showbiz_liz's draft is that you'll still have the risk of the front page being almost entirely low-comment posts, without an easy way to find the places where the discussion is actually happening.
posted by Acheman at 1:49 AM on June 11, 2015
posted by Acheman at 1:49 AM on June 11, 2015
Here's some more differences between Fanfare and Ask.
When someone asks a question, it's usually timely. Answering today is more valuable than tomorrow, and at some point the answers become almost irrelevant because the asker found their cat. Ask is well suited to an interface where it's easy to see today's things and incrementally more difficult to find older things.
With Fanfare, things are irrelevant at the time of posting if I haven't watched the thing yet, but then become relevant when/if I watch it and remain relevant for much longer. Even for currently airing TV, people record things, and watch on demand, and so the post only becomes relevant to somebody a day or more after it's up (for me often ten days later). For NON currently airing TV, the timing of the post bears pretty much zero relation to its user relevance.
So I think a time stream based interface is a much less good fit as almost the only way to interact with the content.
posted by emilyw at 2:36 AM on June 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
When someone asks a question, it's usually timely. Answering today is more valuable than tomorrow, and at some point the answers become almost irrelevant because the asker found their cat. Ask is well suited to an interface where it's easy to see today's things and incrementally more difficult to find older things.
With Fanfare, things are irrelevant at the time of posting if I haven't watched the thing yet, but then become relevant when/if I watch it and remain relevant for much longer. Even for currently airing TV, people record things, and watch on demand, and so the post only becomes relevant to somebody a day or more after it's up (for me often ten days later). For NON currently airing TV, the timing of the post bears pretty much zero relation to its user relevance.
So I think a time stream based interface is a much less good fit as almost the only way to interact with the content.
posted by emilyw at 2:36 AM on June 11, 2015 [1 favorite]
I would definitely advocate against combining episodes into multiple-episode posts because ultimately, something gets lost in the discussion because certain topics arise from one episode and overshadow the opportunity to discuss them in another
Episode-specific threads make sense for current shows, but is it really adding value to use the same approach for ancient history like (and I apologize for picking on this) "murder she wrote"?
I think a single thread for shows like that could be nostalgic and fun, whereas atomizing them turns it into something that leaves little room for holistic, general discussion.
posted by sevenyearlurk at 5:44 AM on June 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
Episode-specific threads make sense for current shows, but is it really adding value to use the same approach for ancient history like (and I apologize for picking on this) "murder she wrote"?
I think a single thread for shows like that could be nostalgic and fun, whereas atomizing them turns it into something that leaves little room for holistic, general discussion.
posted by sevenyearlurk at 5:44 AM on June 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
Just wanted to add a note that fanfare video games might also be nice too. I mean, think about this horrible fact: Neko Atsume has just added new cats and new cat toys, but there's NOWHERE on MetaFilter we can talk about this.
posted by Going To Maine at 3:50 PM on June 12, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by Going To Maine at 3:50 PM on June 12, 2015 [3 favorites]
For all your video game discussy needs, there's Mefightclub. I don't know if they have a space for Neko Atsume but I bet there are tons of people who would like that.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 4:15 PM on June 12, 2015
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 4:15 PM on June 12, 2015
Neko Atsume has just added new cats and new cat toys
I DIDN'T KNOW!!! This justifies the entire existence of Mefightclub.
posted by tofu_crouton at 5:29 PM on June 12, 2015
I DIDN'T KNOW!!! This justifies the entire existence of Mefightclub.
posted by tofu_crouton at 5:29 PM on June 12, 2015
Neko Atsume has just added new cats and new cat toys
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:14 PM on June 12, 2015
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:14 PM on June 12, 2015
this is a side issue, but someplace online isn't there a list of books authored by Mefites?
posted by Bookhouse at 8:15 PM on June 12, 2015
posted by Bookhouse at 8:15 PM on June 12, 2015
ermagerd there are little kitty purramids
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:27 PM on June 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:27 PM on June 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
Uhh, I hate to be the one to point this out, but with the ideas of being able to screen for popular posts and have separate sections for different types of media you are basically describing reddit.
posted by Literaryhero at 6:50 PM on June 13, 2015
posted by Literaryhero at 6:50 PM on June 13, 2015
Well, sure, it's different from MetaFilter -- but without threading and upvoting, it's not that much like reddit. As discussed, there are very good reasons to try to do FanFare the way we do things elsewhere on the site, but experience is demonstrating that FanFare has unique requirements. Even so, my position is that the essential ethos driving MetaFilter's structure -- a unified, not-fragmented community experience -- should be adhered to as much as possible within the context of an exceptional FanFare structure.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 7:22 PM on June 13, 2015
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 7:22 PM on June 13, 2015
Uhh, I hate to be the one to point this out, but with the ideas of being able to screen for popular posts and have separate sections for different types of media you are basically describing reddit.
Well, minus the rapey troll factions.
We're describing a subset of reddit, for people who don't want to deal with reddit. A population of which, i might add, I am a member - despite also being a redditor.
posted by Going To Maine at 7:29 PM on June 13, 2015 [1 favorite]
Well, minus the rapey troll factions.
We're describing a subset of reddit, for people who don't want to deal with reddit. A population of which, i might add, I am a member - despite also being a redditor.
posted by Going To Maine at 7:29 PM on June 13, 2015 [1 favorite]
Wait, wait — does MeFightClub actually have a Neko Atsume discussion area? Because if so I am SO there.
posted by Lexica at 10:25 PM on June 13, 2015
posted by Lexica at 10:25 PM on June 13, 2015
You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 8:00 AM on June 9, 2015 [33 favorites]