Idea for Consideration: Front Page Invitation for Content?

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Psarketos

Guest
I feel that there is a dearth of Magic content out there created by and for Casual players, and by that I mean anyone whose interests are outside the scope of tournament and "best deck" style play.

Magic has a lot more depth than the scope of most current sites, and it seems to me that CPA has at least the potential to serve a niche of the community that is interested in different content.

Would a front page notice of welcome to the forums and invitation to content creation be a positive step? My thought here is that if you even pick up one or two active participants, that could snowball slowly over time. Perhaps my optimism about the community being interested in free content outside the tournament norms is misplaced. I am interested to hear what the CPA regulars might have to offer on the subject.
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
What do you mean? Post an "article" on the front page saying to come to the forums for discussion?

We kinda talked about that kind of thing a few years ago - unfortunately, the person who started that thread doesn't seem to be active anymore :rolleyes: But if you have some ideas, we're all for it!

Basically in a nutshell though, most of us "regulars" seemed to have stopped playing Magic in real life and no longer really keep up with sets, as far as I can tell (maybe people check out the Card Image Gallery threads that I post, I don't know). As a result, none of us really seem to visit other Magic sites; I only go to WOTC site daily just to see what's on their front page but I don't go to their forums, for instance. So none of us seem to be able to do any outreach on other sites. I don't know how we show up on search engines but we have gotten the occasional accounting person (before more stringent registration procedures were put in place to prevent spammers - now they probably hit those Magic questions and realize this isn't about accounting :) ). So I don't know what the traffic amount is. But we can try some things if you have some ideas.
 
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Psarketos

Guest
My thought was a one time front page article inviting people to make a forum account and create content, aye. I dont know if that kind of welcome sign would make a difference, or even if the interest is out there. Thought I would suggest to see what regulars here thought, like the history aspect of this being suggested before.

Not sure how I would advocate approaching, still thinking on the topic.
 

TomB

Administrator
Staff member
While I'm not sure how successful it would be, it would be nice to see the forums liven up a bit. I would think the "comments on the article" link that's been included in the articles you've been writing lately might have the effect you're looking for, but I suppose writing something that puts the idea center stage might have a stronger effect. Posting links in other online forums to your articles (or at least to the front page) might ensure people who like to talk about this stuff online know we (still) exist, which might also help.

I'd say give it a try and see what happens...:)
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
While people should see the Forum link to the left on the front page if they wanted to come to the forums, I also think it can't hurt. But to make it so people don't have to click yet another thing, I'd just make it an "announcement" basically. Like how I do little intros to the articles.

Oversoul said:
Psst, they closed those forums down years ago...
LOL. See, shows how much I visited them :rolleyes:
 
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Psarketos

Guest
I posted an invitation in the CasualMtG sub-Reddit, as a place to start. Announcements or similar might be great as well. Invited an opponent on Magic Online today to stop by after a brief discussion, and I would like to think that things like that are even more meaningful as a community, if not a driver of new population directly. Will continue to think on this and make the tiny moves that may build to something eventually.
 

turgy22

Nothing Special
I just Googled "Casual Magic the Gathering" and this site doesn't show up in the first 16 pages (I didn't check beyond that).
I'm not sure what point I'd like to make by mentioning that, but I found it a little surprising.
 
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Psarketos

Guest
I have an article in your box / forum messages at the moment, and it occurs to me that you could combine the Comment on... link at the end of it with TomBs thought above, simply changing that link line to contain a broader "Sign up on our forums here to comment or submit your own casual Magic content", something short but front page visible and integrated?
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
Well, that means someone has to click on the article to begin with. I was just thinking of posting something so it appears on the front page directly.
 
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Psarketos

Guest
Another idea / query: The Latest Article replies no longer links to new content - modify the page to have the welcome / invite message and link there? To Turgy's point, that might be effective for relevant web crawler results.
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
To be clear, Spidey shut down Article Replies because they were getting hit by too much spam back in 2014. Clicking "more" in the Article Replies section leads to a list of replies and their authors with months and days, but what might not be clear is that they're all from 2014 and 2013, the latest ones before Spidey shut down that system. I assume that the old replies are still archived somewhere invisible, but perhaps they're lost forever. If there are no prospects for bringing that feature back, it'd be ideal to hide the misleading banner at the top that once led to Article Replies. But I don't even know if anyone other than Ed can do that and it's not really a big enough deal to go bugging him about it.
 
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Psarketos

Guest
Aye, part of what I do not know is how much access Spiderman has to the html / layout of the main page. Would be a fairly easy modification if that is within his domain, and as you say, not a big issue if it is not. Seems like it might be a good fit for both banner and web results if it can be done without a lot of hassle.
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
I'll see what I can do. I have limited access to the "forms"/templates on the front page - for instance, I'm able to remove the "Submit" button on the Submit Articles form but I don't have access to the Reply Form so I can't remove it there (which is why I shut it down).
 
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Psarketos

Guest
Another idea: instead of a tagline for my submitted article, you could put an invitation for forum participation and content submission where you would usually put that tagline. Makes the front page that way, my article title is self-explanatory, and is a start that does not require page modification.
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
Mmm... my OCD wants to keep things neatly "compartmentalized"; one spot on the front page that deals with your article, and one that deals with forum participation. :)

No one wants to take a stab at saying something for me to put up? Should I just say "Come register at the forums by clicking here <I can include the link on the word> or clicking to the left and join some fellow Magic players who enjoy talking about Magic on a casual basis"?
 
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Psarketos

Guest
That TomB has "Administrative Assistant" in his title - put that guy to work! Make him build a new CSS for the site while he is at it! ;)
 

TomB

Administrator
Staff member
Don't look at me - I'm more or less just a forum mod as much as anything...:)
 
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