tushtush

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New Thread!
As usual, I remind you the board has to reach an average of 15 posts per day to be kept open.


Here's a link to the Board Statistics: "Scrubs" - forum profile :: BoardReader

And these are FanForum's statistics: "Fan Forum" - site profile :: BoardReader

Graph of the board's activity between March 2007 and May 2008 (thanks to 4N6 DNA)


Old Thread: Scrubs Post Counts: This board needs YOU...to post.

Last Count:
27th February: 139,387
6th March: 139,486
Total for week: 99
Daily Average: 14

biscuitzombie

*Raises hand*

Soooo, I'm kinda new here still and wanted to maybe bring a couple of things up that I was thinking about. Feel free to dismiss/laugh/ignore suggestions as appropriate.
And I'm sorry if this shouldn't be here, but I thought in the vein on trying to increase posts, I'd venture here with my ideas.

I recently got back into Scrubs and Johnny C's work more specifically quite recently and this is the place I come to discuss these things, you may have noticed. But I'm uch more used to running forums and participating in them than just participating and you obviously have a need to keep this place going and 15 posts a day is so easily do-able but so incredibly hard at the same time. So as a new member and someone who's had a forum or two in the past (and present) I thought I'd throw a few thoughts and ideas your way and see if anything sticks.
It's a few ideas for new topics and suggestions and then some things I've noticed as well.

*I'm not sure how off topic you can go, but one of the things that went down really well was a 'Good Day/Bad Day' topic. Good for venting or sharing and they were usually just short little posts just to say it and then carry on. If no OT posts are allowed, scrap this little baby.

*Episode Viewing- Scrubs is shown as repeats enough that people could either catch the episodes on TV or we could pick a random episode to watch once a week and then discuss. Sure it's probably been done before and I know you have some real old discussions about them but no one wants to go back to a two year old topic and revive it.

*While there's posts to cover just about every character and pairing, I think it's a little too split up. Sometimes it'd be nice to maybe just have a something a tiny bit more generic. Maybe season? I'm not sure, but sometimes it'd be good to just talk randomly about the things I like about scrubs but I wouldn't have a clue where to put it.

*A post share videos. I've seen a couple of great Scrubs fan videos on YT and again, if it's the whole cast, would be nice to have somewhere to post just them.

*Image gallery/artwork etc A thread for either cast member specific pictures or to share all different artwork people have made. Icons, banners, wallpapers... whatever.

*Discussion topics. Things that will include all characters and everyone can participate in. Something like 'Favourite character traits' or 'Favourite look for character' or whatever.

*Fan Fiction. No idea if anyone's interested but if there are members who like to share stuff, maybe that could work, if you kept it within certain guidelines and ratings etc. Or if not ff, maybe little wriitng based challenges. Even if you don't like writing, it could be interesting to do little challenges. like 100 word bits. It's just another random idea.

This one I'm not sure if it would work or not, but I'll share this story with what we did on my forum.
I run a forum & fansite for actor Sharlto Copley who played the lead in District 9 & also played the part of Murdock in the A Team movie. A lot of people who watched the film ended up watching the show and becoming fans. Anyway, the guy who played Murdock in the film & TV show both had a birthday in November and within 5 days of one another, so we made this week in November 'Murdock Week.' We advertised it on Facebook, made a video on YouTube (here: YouTube - Murdock week) , told all the fans we knew about, then had a schedule of things to do over those few days, with film viewings on one day (seperate US & UK ones) and TV show viewings, we got people to submit pictures, make graphics, write stories and write something that we sent to the actors (one through email & one we posted on Facebook).
As I said, i have no idea whether it would work for the show, but maybe pick a date where someone special to the show (Bill Lawrence, ideally or if there's a couple of actors who have a birthday together, that week instead).

Okay, that's all I've got.
I'm just trying to think of ways that might help people join in more.
I think more genric topics might help because I've only really spoke to one person on here I believe and partially it's because I tend to just post about Cox. So if there was some way that I could be discussing him and then someone who's a big Elliot fan (for example) could also be posting there, I'd feel more like part of the forum.

I feel that the forum may need a bit of help to get people posting more. A fresh perspective maybe.
Thanks for your time, hope I wasn't too annoying or boring.

- Alice -

I'm just going to work through each of the points with my comments.

*Would that just be like comments about your day? If it is that could either just go into the OT thread, which is meant to be a place where you can just talk about anything, or alternatively we could make a new thread specifically for it if anyone's interested, I'm all for it, anything to get the board going.

*We have tried that before a few times and it's never had much of an impact, we could always try it again if people want but to be perfectly honest I have my doubts whether it would work, we really have tried it several times before and created new threads for all the episodes and everything, and they always just get like 5 posts and then die. But if people want, we can try?

*We have generic season threads for seasons 1, 2, 4 and 5. Perhaps we should make a general Scrubs discussion thread (I actually thought we had one, but I just realised looking through the intro thread we don't. ) or ones for the remaining few seasons.

*We have a video thread, picture threads and a Fan Fiction thread:
Scrubs Official Picture Thread #1: They light up our sets, now our monitors!
Scrubs Icons/Avatars #5: 100x100 Never Looked So Good
Fan Art ~ Scrubbies Show Their Love
http://www.fanforum.com/f163/scrubs-.../#post34935240
http://www.fanforum.com/f163/scrubs-...-8-a-62870689/
Music Video Thread

These might not be up to date links, I just copied and pasted out of the intro thread and while we keep them as up to date as we can it gets difficult particularly if people don't link new threads into that thread. But all the threads are there if you ever want to look and see what we have, there is a lot there.

*Discussion topics would be outright brilliant! I think we've just (at least I have) lost the inspiration and feel we've talked about it before and so any discussion we start doesn't tend to last long like they used to, but it would be so incredible if we could do that.

*That sounds pretty good actually, I like the idea, we could spread it through Twitter and stuff. I think maybe BL's birthday, since he is the father of all things Scrubs.

biscuitzombie

We always had a good thread and a bad thread, but I think just one would work. It's just for those little niggles, like having a crappy day at work. Keep it superficial and just share what little things are happening in life.

When you've done them before, did you have a shared viewing? What we would do was arrange a time (we've done it so that people in Europe & America could watch at the same time by picking a time to suit all) that suits as many as possible and actually watch it at the same time. It might not be ideal this way, it just depends how you wanna go for it, but what we did was use MSN for an instant chat and just added whoever came along to the conversation. We watched the episode with everyone taking part and then we'd copy the chat onto the board.
But that idea did have it's flaws.
Personally, I think it'd be good if we all tried to watch the episode the same day and then post into the topic with little things we noticed, scenes we wish had happened, more of a certain character. Or maybe another idea would be to have a standard Q&A with the episode, like every episode we answer the same questions. Favourite character in the ep, least fave, funniest line, saddest moment etc. and then a Additional comments section at the end. Maybe that would help if people have a set amount of questions to answer about the show.
Personally, I feel I've not talked about the show enough and am more than happy this weekend to watch an episode and come up with a bunch of questions that would fit each episode.

I think that could be a good idea, definately the generic thread for starters.

Ah, cool. I have to admit I haven't delved that far into the archives just yet. I'd definately like to see what the fanfiction is like and if any of them are still about, because it's surprising that little challenges can make even people who don't write, start to write. And the more you miss the characters, the more people will want to do it.

I think it might be a neat idea as well if someone can maybe 'call' the discussion for the following week. So rather than admins always choosing, if someone has something they wanted to bring up, they could do it the following week, whether or not the admin starts the discussion or actually posts it, it could still be someone elses idea. Hope that makes sense. lol!


Scrubs Week would totally work as well. Oh, another thing we did was dress up as much as we could like the characters, like with The A Team there was always someone with a cap of an A Team tee, I'm sure someone has actual scrubs out there, right?

I'll do what i can to help out if you need me too. I have weekends free so give me a shout if you need anything.

One last thing, the posts per day will be a breeze if you can just get 5 people into it. My first forum has 20 members. We've had 2 serious posters leave, so at one point, we had 22. Now, that forum went really quiet because the person it was about retired. The last time we were still using it on a fairly regular basis was September last year and even though we don't post there any more, because we posted on it so much our average posts per day is still 44.44. So, you don't need a massive amount of people posting you just need people who want to post.
I want to.

tushtush

I'm down with all the suggestions. As Alice linked to, some of the threads already exist, so all we have to do is revive 'em (I'll try and make some icons at some point, they'll be ugly and gross, but we can discuss them and give me fake compliments ), and I really like the ideas of weeks dedicated to people and discussion threads.

ETA: I'ma go make the good day/bad day thread now.

Sounds goood. Have any ideas for a discussion thread?

I. LOVE. THIS. IDEA. I have some Scrubs, with the Sacred Heart logo, signed by Zach Braff (just having a lil' ol' gloat, they are my prized possession!) So yes. We should do this.

biscuitzombie

Oh and these might be posts you've had, but the popular OT 'games' we used to have were:
Person above me & what are you listening to.
People love the games (I don't, I hate the games, but everyone else has much love for it. )

tushtush

I feel like we miiight have a The Person Above Me thread already, but I wouldn't swear on it. There's already a super popular what are you listening to thread on the music board, so it would probably work here, but I'm not sure if that's one OT thread too many. Might not be though, we'll see what Alice says, she'll know.

remlap

All this talk but 3 people post here, pretty useless, nothing is going to drive visitors to this board.

I have really no interest in reading same three people over and over again.

biscuitzombie

The quantity of people isn't important, it's the content. You could have 200 people posting here and if all they're interested in doing is saying 'Zach Braff's cute.' 'Yeah.' 'Totally' 'I agree' then sure you'll have a lot of visitors and posts but it'll be boring.
The key is to engage the people you have got and get normal conversations going.
People won't join a bored where the conversations are boring. You have to bring something else to it. You have to want to be there, talking about the show. I mean, the show might have ended but there are plenty of shows that have forums on them that are still very active now. There's no reason this one can't be.
But if everyone besides from the two mods goes into it with the same attitude you have, it will be a disaster because what else can it be? There's no willingness to try.

I'll be interested to take part in any conversations, even if it is just between 2 other people. I mean, so far besides this board I've only posted in one other topic more or less talking to one person and I have over 50 posts.

- Alice -

I think doing it at the same time would be ideal, but as you say may not be practical, but I think if we could sort it out that could lead to a massive influx of posts each week and really help our average. Alternatively I think the question list would help, but I think we should make it clear that that isn't like a set list, it might help give people ideas of what to post about, but since there are so little of us if we each just answered the questions with no further discussions about it it wouldn't add many posts to our count.

I like the idea of having a week dedicated to different characters/pairings/episodes, might help spur on some discussion.

I admit, I have some scrubs.

We don't have a person above me thread, or a what are you listening to one. I agree that I hate game threads, but the advantage of them is they are quick and easy posts that help up the count even if they don't add any quality to the posting, I sometimes use them if I'm really busy and I feel I haven't posted in a while because I can post on several of them within the space of 5 minutes. Which most people can spare even when they're busy.

Not going to lie, not a huge fan of your attitude. On the one hand, I agree that the number of posters is very small, and I don't think anything we do will significantly increase it. But the most active I've ever seen this board is when there were literally 4 of us posting, and that was certainly the most in depth with discussions we had, there don't have to be a lot, if the discussion is good and everyone enjoys posting post counts can stay very high without a few people.

remlap

I am at the point really I know the opinions of everyone here, I am not sure if there much further to discuss without fresh blood to mix up with.

I have often suggested a rewatch proper but it never seems to go further, I happy to discuss episodes as if they were airing first.

biscuitzombie

Yes, definaltly go beyond just the question list. And it's not like people have to answer every question. If they don't like the episode much they might find it hard to answer them all so you don't want to be all 'You have to answer!!!' lol! And of course, elaborating on it as much as possible is good. Knowing why people like something is much better than just knowing that they like it.

I feel this is the point to warn you that I like to discuss things in great detail so I'll be happy to bore you all with why I like everything.

You don't know mine yet. Sure, you know some of my tastes from Twitter but that's barely scratching the surface.

With the episode viewing we just did random episodes or someone might suggest a favourite episode of there, which I find more fun because it's nice to mix it up.

And can I also suggest we get cracking with some of this stuff.
I'm guessing you two mod ladies will be key to this, but as I offered, if you want me to help at all, let me knopw what i can do and I'll try and assist you.

remlap

I like random episode selection idea, not sure how to randomize it enough though?

tushtush

OK, so with the thing of the week stuff, should there be a new thread each week announcing the topic, or a general 'of the week' thread or just an announcement within the relevant topic thread?

biscuitzombie

I used to number different Seasons (so season 1 wouldn't be one, obviously ) and then get someone to pick a number. We could do that.
On my Johnny C gallery, all the pictures are uploaded by episode and each episode has an ID number, so we could always use that as a way to pick an episode. :S