Not sure if this is the correct topic, but I have some suggestions to make on an issue that has been discussed in the discord.
Of course I am a little bad with words so please, try to use your love to understand what I’m saying. (haha, get it?)
I feel like there’s an unnecessary amount of specific topics in place, which might scare a newcomer like me off, because this implies that a person should know exactly where to actually talk. Of course, we should use the search bar, but some people might get worried if they worded what they searched for right or not. And sometimes when someone wants to discuss something, they may want to discuss about two different topics at the same time in the same paragraph, and the way that the forum is now, it may make a person unsure on where to talk about these two, because for them, these two topics might feel related.
For those that still don’t get what the problem here is, let me give you an example:
Say someone asked you: "What do you think of this new Spiderman issue???"
If you were really into the Spiderman comics, then you could easily answer this with your opinion.
But if you just watched the movies and didn’t really care for the comics that much even though you happened to hear some spoilers about those issues, but still have an opinion on the Spiderman series, you’d have a rather hard time to answer this.
On the other hand, I don’t want to suggest a general hub for everything ever, because that might make people unsure of what to talk about, and they might have to go through too many posts just to check if what they want to say has already been said. Not to mention, it would be waaay too messy.
If you don’t get the issue in this, think of the most general question you’ve been asked about. “So what are you into?” “What music do you like?” “What type of person are you?”, the sort of questions you’d have trouble answering fully if you were in 7th grade.
And so, after talking with my boyfriend about this, just to get an input that I trust, outside my own, I wanted to suggest a middle ground. That would be to make general discussions for specific topics. For example: I may want to talk about the characters, but going to each specific character page to say one little thing sounds like a hassle, and chances are, my opinion on the character may have already been said, not to mention that I enjoy talking more about character interactions and notice some little things about how they talk to each other. And so, for this example I would suggest to make a topic for a group of characters. Like a topic for the Ushiromya family, the magical characters, the main cast of the higurashi series, the secondary characters, etc etc. Or if you want to get more specific, have a topic about Battler’s direct family, Jessica’s direct family, George’s direct family, magical beings from chiru, magical beings from EP4. (Sorry for mentioning just umineko topics, but those are the ones that come to my head first.)
Another example could be to have a q&a topic where people could ask some questions meant for the other members of the forum, some advice, favorite music, etc. But nothing too big, like some questions about the stories in the 07th expansion series, things that require discussion, those I think warrant their own topics.
Now I understand that there might be objections to this, mainly that it wouldn’t seem organized and would still be messy. Now my counter argument is that, the fandom has been quiet lately, so there should be no issue about topics getting lost for now, and they could still be archived. And even if it became a bit too messy, like people talking about a topic that’s related to the main topic, or talking about some other side of the topic, I’m pretty sure people have the capacity to read through them, as long as there aren’t too many posts.
I know there’s still some argument to be made against this suggestion, but rather than being scared of things not being organized, it’s better to take risks and try.
I remember that I had some other suggestions, but I forgot what they were… oh well, I’ll edit this post if I remember.