In a recent comment (on How Should GMs Learn to GM?), TT reader mcv suggested that we start a Q&A forum for GMing questions — a place where GMs of all skill levels can come to ask questions, and have them answered by the TT community.
This is a great idea, and I’ve actually been thinking about it recently — but would it work on TT?
Because there’s nothing sadder than a ghost town forum, I don’t want to make this call on my own — what do you think? If this is something you’re interested in, read on!
For my part, I like this idea because (as mcv pointed out) as a single-author blog, discussion here necessarily revolves around the topics that I decide to write about.
What if you have a question? You can always email me (as people do), and I’ll try to be as helpful as I can — but why not have a forum just for questions?
That way, GMs of all skill levels could ask questions about GMing, and the TT community could answer them. It’s a powerful concept, and if it turned out well it could be a very useful resource for GMs.
My conception of a Q&A forum goes something like this:
- I’d install PHPBB, or something similar, and set up a single forum, Q&A.
- If you have a question, you register (once) for the forum and ask your question.
- TT readers frequent the forum, as do I, and (hopefully) you get some great answers to your question!
Forums build a sense of community in different ways than blogs do, and they can be an excellent way to get to know fellow gamers. A Q&A forum here could also be a hotbed of post ideas for RPG bloggers (myself included!), and could spur your creativity — and make you think of questions you might not have thought of otherwise. In short, I see a lot of potential in the idea.
Naturally, I have a few concerns, too:
The last thing I want to do is tack a ghost town messageboard onto TT — would enough GMs use a Q&A forum to make it worthwhile?
The Masters’ Council already exists for this purpose (among others), and unfortunately I don’t think it works particularly well. Would a Q&A forum here work any better?
Forums require moderation to be worthwhile, and I worry about the potential time commitment — I wouldn’t want a forum to detract from being able to write TT!
…which leads to 4 questions for you, the TT community:
- 1. Would you ask questions in a Q&A forum for GMs?
- Would you answer questions from other GMs?
- Are you willing to help out with moderation? (If so, please email me.)
- Is this a good idea? Would something else (emailing me questions, which I then post on the main blog, for example) work better?
If a Q&A forum for questions about GMing is something you’d like to see here, let me know by answering those questions in the comments, or by emailing me directly.
My decision about this idea will depend almost entirely on the level of response to this post. I hope that doesn’t sound ominous — I’m just a bit wary of this idea!
I think it is a good idea. I would certainly check in frequently to answer questions and, more rarely, ask them. One thing that GMing at cons has convinced me is that lots of things I take for granted stump a lot of GMs, allowing me to pass on lots of advice.
I would definitely answer questions and help out in areas that I feel would contribute to the subject.
As for asking questions; I don’t get that many questions regarding GMing, if I have any, it’s usually targeting a specific game mechanic that might be problematic and for that I usually turn to Wizards.com forums (D&D or D20) or on MonteCook.com forums for any Malhavoc related topic.
Moderating a board on a forum is like moderation in an IRC room. It takes a lot of responsibility and requires time from the admin if the moderation is to be any good. I’m not sure I have the time for that at hand.
On an ending note, Martin, if you do decide to install a Messageboard system, count me in for visiting it on a regular basis.
I think a forum would be a great idea. Granted, I’ve only been reading TT for a couple of weeks now, but the content here is really great.
I’d definetly be willing and interested in both posting questions and answers in a forum.
Although this was my idea, I’m not entirely convinced myself. On usenet and other forums you occasionally see questions like:
“I’m a new GM and don’t understand how to…”
or:
“My group is in this situation and I don’t know where to go now”
or even just:
“I have this really cool idea. What do you think?”
I really like those threads and love to contribute, but they’re rare and spread out over many different forums. I only read TT (a blog), the SJG forums (more about mechanics and background), and usenet (don’t get me started. and volatile).
So can TT fill this function? And how? I think there’s a way to preserve the blog structure and avoid the wild anarchy of forums (although I don’t really have anything against anarchy as such), by letting visitors post an article (or whatever that’s called) with their question but having a moderator approve (and edit, if necessary) it first.
Or just add a form specifically for asking GMing questions (might be more accessible than decoding Martin’s email address from the contact page), and once a week Martin (or someone else?) turns that week’s questions into a blog entry.
The main issue with the Masters’ Council is that it hasn’t really reached critical mass yet. Go post there, people — you will get responses. You’ll even get well-thought out responses.
Fragmentation of effort leads to ghost towns. Cross-publicity leads to thriving communities.
renbot, DM T, Drew: Thanks for your votes. 🙂
(mcv) Or just add a form specifically for asking GMing questions (might be more accessible than decoding Martin’s email address from the contact page), and once a week Martin (or someone else?) turns that week’s questions into a blog entry.
My backup idea was to have folks email me questions, which would then get answered as a post, or put up as Q&A posts for the community to answer. I like your once-a-week variation on that.
Regarding the topics that would show up in a TT Q&A forum, it seems like having only one forum, with a very explicit purpose, would focus those topics pretty well. No time spent foguring out which sub-forum is the right one, or whether you can post threads about football — it’d be a forum for GMing Q&A, and only GMing Q&A.
As for my email address, making it available only in that form means I get zero spam. Zero spam is a good thing. 😉
Jeff: I admire what The Masters’ Council is trying to do, and there are some good resources there. But when I look at the stats on the front page — # of posts and # of users, and most importantly, last post dates — it doesn’t seem to be very active.
The oldest thread I could find was from March of 2004. There have been 3 posts in the past month (according to the lasts posts shown on the main page).
If TMC hasn’t come close enough to critical mass in 18+ months to have more than 3 posts in a month, is it likely to? Hypothetically, if a new GM comes with a question, will it get answered in less than a month?
Those are the concerns that make me hesitant to promote TMC.
Allow me to cast my vote for the moderated Q&A / community-response column. I know this would mean more work for you, Martin, but my experience is that fora are not terribly helpful for actually getting questions answered.
After a certain critical mass of commentary is reached, new readers are still discovering the site and asking a lot of the same questions, because there’s no solid through-line to follow or straightforward archive to review. Meanwhile, the forum veterans–ostensibly there to share their expertise–get so tired of repeating themselves that they either offer “go read threads a, b, c, x, and y” or ignore new posters altogether. The knowledge accreted tends to pile flat instead of building anything. (This is not a slam on the Forge, but Ron and Clinton have said that if they could go back in time, they wouldn’t start it as a forum.)
A blog archive is considerably easier to digest, and (with a search engine) makes it easier to determine whether your question has been asked before. A human moderator also vastly improves the ratio of signal to noise in questions.
If the workload is too much, there’s always the possibility of a group blog–appoint several trusted moderators and set up an email address that bounces to all of them; any moderator could pick a question from that queue and post it as a new blog entry, if he or she agreed to post the first answer-comment.
You have certainly done a great job developing this as a quality site for GM advice.
In response to your questions:
1. I might ask questions. As you point out, there are other sites (although this is the first that I have heard of the Masters Council), including individual game sites and list serves. I would still rely on RPG.net as my primary gaming forum. A lot will depend on how the forum develops.
2. I would be more likely to answer questions.
3. Not beyond replies to and discussion of breaches of etiquette.
4. Might be a good idea. The RPG.net forums developed from the comments on the reviews. The discussion and comments on your columns might be a good indicator of whether a forum would attract readers and valuable discussions.
Your reasoning is sound, Brendan, so I’m going to play Devil’s advocate with your comment. 😉
The main difference between the hypothetical TT Q&A forum and other messageboards would be the fact that there’s only one forum.
With a single forum devoted to a single topic, seeing if your question has been answered can be done two ways: by using a search function (which would work with several forums, too), or by clicking “show all” (or whatever) and skimming a list of previous posts.
I actually find blog archives fairly frustrating to navigate, especially if you search for something general enough to return a lot of entries. TT’s archives used to look just like the front page — now they show only titles, and in alphabetical order (not chronologically). I also added the Key Posts page, to help folks find popular items here.
I made these changes because the bigger the site gets, the harder it will be to find things — in other words, even with a pretty solid archive setup, I’m not sure archives are better than a forum in that regard.
As far as signal:noise goes, I really can’t play Devil’s advocate on that one — mailing in comments will result in zero noise, while a forum will (almost inevitably) result in at least some noise.
The “multiple answerers” mailing list approach is intriguing. I’ll have to think about that one some more.
I understand you don’t want to put your real email address on the site, but a web form would probably make it a lot easier for a lot of people.
(Preventing spam is a lost cause for me, but I’ve got a pretty good spam filter.)
Jeff Dougan wrote: Fragmentation of effort leads to ghost towns. Cross-publicity leads to thriving communities.
Good point. No need to fragment further, so perhaps instead of starting its own forum, TT should point to an existing GM-orientied forum? Unfortunately The Masters’ Council doesn’t sound like a very good choice, if I understand Martin correctly. Even so, we could still adopt it and bring a bit more life to it. (But how many TT regulars are there really?)
(Jeb) A lot will depend on how the forum develops.
I’m kicking around some ideas about how to open a Q&A forum with some good, well, Q&A — rather than a “welcome to the forum” post and nothing else. Here are a few of them:
– I’ll have some questions myself (I’m full of questions!)
– Write a “call for questions” post here
– Email other RPG bloggers and see if they’d be willing to ask a question or two
– Alert the media — EN World and Gaming Report, at a minimum
The discussion and comments on your columns might be a good indicator of whether a forum would attract readers and valuable discussions.
Interesting — I hadn’t thought of trying the column first, and then seeing if that could branch into a forum. Do you think it would be frustrating if the column went away, once people got used to it?
Or should it go away? Could it be maintained as a 1/week “forum roundup,” for example?
(mcv) I understand you don’t want to put your real email address on the site, but a web form would probably make it a lot easier for a lot of people.
I have looked into some WP plugins for comment forms, I just haven’t found one I’m confident in yet. When I do, I’ll definitely consider putting a comment form here on TT. 🙂
But how many TT regulars are there really?
It depends how you define “regular,” I suppose:
– There are about a dozen people who comment on most posts, and many more who comment occasionally. Like the majority of blogs (as far as I can tell), most people read without commenting.
– TT recently crossed the 1,000 comment line. The site’s been around for 6 months, and averages 10 comments/post (not counting the miniposts, which usually don’t generate comments).
– Traffic-wise, about 60% of TT’s traffic comes from repeat visitors. In December, TT has been getting an average of 400-600 unique visitors a day, and the total so far is about 5,000 unique visitors for this month.
The thing about a single Q&A forum, at least in my mind, is that it wouldn’t take very many people to get it off the ground.
As long as there was a flow of questions — a trickle at first would be fine — I think there are enough regular commenters here to answer those questions quickly, thoroughly, thoughtfully and cleverly.
I’m less fond of a forum approach, largely because I’m already reading plenty of forums. (Though I like the comment thread community, so who knows– if you open the forum, I’ll probably get sucked in.)
An alternative would be to have open posts every once in a while. Perhaps you could just create a “Q&A: Gimme Your Questions” post, and create posts from various comments. It might work as a gauge of our interest in “helping posts”.
Reading way too many forums already is also an issue for me. Why I do manage to keep up with TT and some other blogs (slashdot, most notably), I don’t know. Because of the predictability, it’s easier to plan into your life, I suppose. Forums are sometimes incredibly slow, and the next time you check, everybody has had a really big fight in 10 different threads and 1000 messages.
(Scott) An alternative would be to have open posts every once in a while. Perhaps you could just create a “Q&A: Gimme Your Questions†post, and create posts from various comments. It might work as a gauge of our interest in “helping postsâ€.
I’m not completely clear on what you mean. Here’s what I think you mean: Every week or so, put up a post called “Weekly Q&A for GMs #19” (etc.), have GMs ask questions in the comments, and then answer them as posts.
Is that about right?
mcv: Would having a subscription feed (RSS) for posts in the forum help make it easier to keep up with/more predictable?
At least one of the forum options I’ve looked at supports this option, which sounds pretty neat.
Regarding the differences between in-blog Q&A and forum Q&A, one plus about the forum option is that someone who’s completely new to TT will probably have an easier time finding a forum than they will finding the most recent Q&A post. Or is that a faulty assumption?
I’m not completely clear on what you mean. Here’s what I think you mean: Every week or so, put up a post called “Weekly Q&A for GMs #19″ (etc.), have GMs ask questions in the comments, and then answer them as posts.
Is that about right?
Yes, or at least very close. I was thinking that you could take questions from the comments and blockquote them into new posts… something like, “Fred asks us about Zombie Wights.” (blockquote his question) “What advice do you have for Fred?”
Seem feasible?
Scott: Yep, that sounds feasible. How would GMs who were new to TT know to wait for the next open Q&A thread?
Include it in the title… say “Tuesday’s Q&A: Have a question for our readers?” If it gets too far from Tuesday, they’ll anticipate the next one. (Hopefully.)
Or, you could write an “introduction post” that you link to at the head of each Q&A post. The introduction could include the time-table (“I’ll put up requests for questions once a week”) and your goals for the posts. You could also explain that instead of replying to questions in the comments, commenters should wait for it to be promoted to a post. That way you only have to write it once… and we only have to read it once, but everyone has a chance to read it.
At least, that’s one way you could do it.
That’s a great idea, Scott — I love the “link to a one-time introduction” element.
I’m going to give the forum idea a little bit longer to percolate before making a decision. My thanks to everyone who has commented (and emailed me) so far — you’ve given me some great things to think about.
And if you haven’t weighed in yet, please do! 🙂
I’m ambivalent. Actually, I’m practically Charlie Brown wishy-washy on the question, since I really have no idea how it will work out. Thus, my only suggestion is that whatever you do be clearly labeled as a trial.
Martin: Jeff: I admire what The Masters’ Council is trying to do, and there are some good resources there. But when I look at the stats on the front page — # of posts and # of users, and most importantly, last post dates — it doesn’t seem to be very active.
The oldest thread I could find was from March of 2004. There have been 3 posts in the past month (according to the lasts posts shown on the main page).
If TMC hasn’t come close enough to critical mass in 18+ months to have more than 3 posts in a month, is it likely to? Hypothetically, if a new GM comes with a question, will it get answered in less than a month?
Those are the concerns that make me hesitant to promote TMC.
Even in the recent dry spells, I’ve never had a post go more than about 48 hours without a response. Most of TMC’s regulars have the posts on RSS feeds, so they learn pretty quickly.
I guess I’m less concerned with the stats part, just knowing several of the high-rate posters there through other venues. I’m not sure what caused the slowdown, as things had been going quite regularly for while. I would suspect something like a lack of outside cross-promotion, so that all of the founding-type members exhausted what they had to say initially. I think that new blood would ramp conversation up again, especially if several topics were posted to at once.
MCV: Jeff Dougan wrote: Fragmentation of effort leads to ghost towns. Cross-publicity leads to thriving communities.
Good point. No need to fragment further, so perhaps instead of starting its own forum, TT should point to an existing GM-orientied forum? Unfortunately The Masters’ Council doesn’t sound like a very good choice, if I understand Martin correctly. Even so, we could still adopt it and bring a bit more life to it. (But how many TT regulars are there really?)
I’d say that most of the posts came from half-a-dozen or so folks, most of whom know each other through outside venues. Thus, the response points I just made above.
If you haven’t gone and poked around TMC, let me suggest that you do so. At least a few 20 x 20 posters are among the count of half-a-dozen.
(CJ) Thus, my only suggestion is that whatever you do be clearly labeled as a trial.
I’ve been thinking about this aspect of things, and I agree.
There are currently 4 options being discussed:
1. Start a Q&A forum
2. Start a regular Q&A post feature/column
3. Start a column, assess the interest level, and then expand it into a forum
4. Don’t start a forum or a column
1 or 2 would both be labelled as a test — “This is a (one month, or whatever) trial of the Q&A forum/column. If you like it, spread the word,” or something similar — while 3 would be explained as a test not only of the column, but of the possibility of a forum.
Whichever way I go, I’d like to give it long enough to get a fair shake. If it’s not working out after that time, I’d assess things again then. As much as I’d hate to start something that some GMs find useful, and then shut it down, that might turn out to be the best course in that situation.
How long should the trial period be? A month sounds about right to me, but I’d love to hear suggestions.
Pull the Amazon trick with the free shipping. “We are offering free shipping under these situations for one month. If it seems to work as we expect, we may extend it and/or broaden it.” 🙂
Not so interested myself. I find myself more interested in more dents content than forums tend to have. I get feeds for a handful of gaming and GMing blogs, but few of them are dedicated exclusivly to either.
I’d really be interested in an active multiuser blog community or even a simple article system. Something where less prolific folks can publish without having to commit to frequent blogging. I’d contribute to something like that now and then.
:akm:
Jeff: This thread has been busy enough that I somehow missed your comment — my apologies!
I think that new blood would ramp conversation up again, especially if several topics were posted to at once.
Interesting. Maybe this isn’t the most representative time to be examining TMC’s stats, if as you say it’s just slower than usual.
If you haven’t gone and poked around TMC, let me suggest that you do so.
I’ve poked around there quite a bit, although I’ve never posted.
I’ll have to give pushing for TMC vs. starting a Q&A forum here some more thought. I don’t want to reinvent the wheel, but I’m actually not sure that this particular wheel — inclusive Q&A for GMs — is present at TMC, at least not in the form that I’m envisioning it.
Arref, what do you think about my points regarding TMC’s member count over time and post response time?
Member response is usually around 12 to 48 hours. That’s pretty good. Most of the faithful posters are hooked up with a link that tells them activity is going on.
If you think that member count has magic in quality or quantity, I haven’t seen that anywhere on the net.
If anything, more folk usually drive the pointless tangents and drama. YMMV
Arref: No, it was the fact that there had been 3 posts in the past month that concerned me, more than the # of members.
But based on Jeff’s comment about TMC having not yet reached critical mass, # of members is a factor. It’s not that a higher member count is magical, but it can be a good gage of interest level on the part of the target audience.
Thanks for responding. 🙂
In re: The Masters Council —
please note that unregistered/unlogged-in individuals will not be seeing all of the forums. It has been a bit quiet lately, but I have never been disappointed with the quality of responses. (I also try to stir up conversation fairly regularly, but have been away for a while for personal reasons.)
On the other hand, I _am_ biased.
(MT Fierce) please note that unregistered/unlogged-in individuals will not be seeing all of the forums.
I wasn’t aware of that — thanks! I’ve registered and am awaiting approval, so I’ll take a look at what else pops up after that. 🙂
Out of curiosity, what’s the source of your bias? I’m guessing you’re a founding member/mod/something similar at TMC — is that about right?
Exactly: I’m a moderator/instigator. (And you should be approved.)
MT Fierce: Yep, thank you. 🙂
Being registered adds 6 forums to the list. New posts today bring the # of posts in the past month up to 6, so definitely a slow time for TMC.
After looking at The Masters’ Council again, as well as RPGnet, EN World and several other forums, my gut is still telling me that there are good reasons to add a focused GMing Q&A forum to TT.
I’m going to continue thinking about this over the holiday weekend — feedback is still very much welcome! — and probably make a decision next week.
Yeah–I don’t disagree. Q&A definitely belongs in a forum, not a blog or some other publishing medium.
In that context it’s a tough call. I don’t read RPGnet at all anymore, and I only occasion EN World these days. I think the Forge Actual Play forum is about the only one I read regularly.
The advantage TT has is that a lot of folks have started visiting and there’s some commenting momentum. But I think there are other elements that play into success of a forum.
I think focus is very important to consider. Will this be focused on GMing techniques? All things GM? Q&A only or relevant discussion? Also, how tightly would appropriate topic and tone be defined and moderated?
My preference would be to have it be broader than just Q&A and address all aspects of GMing (but GMing only).
akm: One approach would be to start with a single forum for GMing Q&A, and if it takes off, expand to include other GMing-related forums.
At least at the outset, a single focused Q&A forum would be fairly unique — I’ve never seen a forum quite like that.
As far as tone/topics go, at least initially it would be for all questions related to GMing. The answers would likely lead to discussion, but every new thread in the forum would be a question in need of answers.
TT’s comments have needed zero moderation for the past 6 months (except for deleting spam), so I’m inclined to put a basic forum etiquette notice up — but not over-moderate. This is a great community, and I think that will carry over well to a forum.
Once it grows, more moderation might be needed.
I’ve registered for a gazillion forums and mailing lists, and I find I spend almost no time on the forums at all. I usually register so I can respond to one item or ask one question, and then rarely or never use it again. Forums are much more difficult to use than mailing lists, since I need to go check for interesting posts. (RSS and Atom feeds make them easier to use, though.)
Were there a TT forum, I’m sure I’d register, and even participate as time allowed. But I also didn’t know about TMC before reading the comments here (I’m now registered there). Though I’m registered on The Forge and EN World (or whatever that one’s properly called), I don’t really use those at all.
As a user, I find it easier to ignore online forums than mailing lists, and I’m pretty good at ignoring that as well some days. 🙂 If anything, my preference is that existing forums be used when relevant. If TMC is considered to have the right coverage, a link from the TT sidebar might be better than creating a new forum.
Good points, all, Frank.
The TT forum will definitely have RSS feeds available, and I’m considering some other things to make noticing it, remembering it and wanting to interact with it easier.
Martin: All sounds good to me. While it’s not exactly what I’d be looking for, I understand better what you’re trying to do now and I think it’s a great and much needed idea.
And the feed’s the thing! I’ll definitely subscribe to the feed and even pop out of lurker mode if I have something to add.
Glad to hear it, akm. 🙂
I’ve got some ideas to get lurkers (or folks who prefer to answer, not ask) out of lurker mode from the get-go — we’ll see if they work! 😉