Forum Feedback Make an own board for Journals

[Teevster]

Hey. So currently journals are part of the field report forum. I think this is unfortunate because journals tend to overshadow reports. For example, a guy is making an effort to write down a report, only for someone to update 3 lines in his journal, which some do overly frequently. What happens is that THE MOST important forum, that is, the field report section gets totally overshadowed.

I personally don't read journals, never did and never will - and it is not because I don't think it is a legit thing - it is, I just find it overly boring to read. However I can see how they are useful to some. But I think it is a shame when journals and field reports are constantly battling each other for attention, when in fact both are THE MOST important elements of a pick up forum. Reports should be the center of the forums - it is all in the field reports! And I hope they can become more emphasized and put forward.

Best,
Teevster

@Chase

 

[Chase]

Yeah, that's a good point. I've noticed too, @Teevster.

Done!

 

[Glow]

On a related note - could we maybe move field rapports to the top as the first thing people see? Put beginners down before advanced eg.

It would tak the focus a lil away from beginners and set the tone in a field-oriented direction. More aligned with the skilled seducer visions as i see it.

it also might
- encourage less posts where people dont RTFM
- add more quality users who are ignited by FR insights over beginner level discussions.

some members say FRs has been the main reason they joined. eg lofty. just an interesting hypothesis if more focus on Field would bring in more new users too. its just a mild hypo but might be worth exploring from a traffic and quality of users angle. Might need further adjustments but worth a thought.

i understand its a bigger consideration about the prioritisation of content but just wanted to suggest it here under teevs great proposal. It might demand more thinking about several of the categories but just wanted to raise the idea.

 

[trashKENNUT]

Is journal and field report, under a different tab, that when one updates, it covers the other?

I didn't know!

I'm not a programmer. Not sure how one will tweak the code so that report is always on top.

z@c+

 

[mist]

On a related note - could we maybe move field rapports to the top as the first thing people see? Put beginners down before advanced eg.

It would tak the focus a lil away from beginners and set the tone in a field-oriented direction. More aligned with the skilled seducer visions as i see it.

it also might
- encourage less posts where people dont RTFM
- add more quality users who are ignited by FR insights over beginner level discussions.

some members say FRs has been the main reason they joined. eg lofty. just an interesting hypothesis if more focus on Field would bring in more new users too. its just a mild hypo but might be worth exploring from a traffic and quality of users angle. Might need further adjustments but worth a thought.

i understand its a bigger consideration about the prioritisation of content but just wanted to suggest it here under teevs great proposal. It might demand more thinking about several of the categories but just wanted to raise the idea.

bump this idea

 

[sunnygirl]

Hey just curious, what's the difference between field report posts and journals? Are journals more personal?

 

[Teevster]

Hey just curious, what's the difference between field report posts and journals? Are journals more personal?

A report is a report for one particular outing, one particular meetup, one particular interaction, on particular night. There are no rules per.se. but usually, a report involves a delimitation.... could be:
- One interaction (most common)
- One part of the interaction (early game, mid-game, late game, etc.... although this is an unusual form of report, it can still be very useful. Here is an example).
- One outing (also very common - example)

But anything goes. As long as it is a report "from the field" , then it is a report. However, it needs to involve some analysis, some reflection, and hopefully some useful details. You want to provide all this in order to either get advice from others, or, give advice, or both.

Journals are more like... you making a log on things you experienced, things you are working on, things you should work on, your learning process... and so on. I personally never cared about the latter. However, journals can contain reports.

-Teevster

 

[Chase]

@Glow, that's an interesting idea.

@mist, thanks for bumping. I hadn't seen Glow's suggestion.

We're rolling out a big new forum theme update soon. Theme development is largely completed.

So just thinking about it:

1. One way to order is by general convenience for posting members. Beginners and General are by far the go-to forums. By having those first, you have the places guys go to first right away. Kind of like having a drink bar near the entrance of the bar rather than farther back in the venue behind the VIP tables
   
   
2. Another way to order is by most active boards. Then anyone clicking on the first few boards is seeing the greatest amount of activity and the forum looks more active, which'll tend to drive engagement. Again, that's Beginners & General. These also tend to have beginner and general questions of interest to a bunch of different forum members and passersby.
   
   
3. Then we have the boards that are most interesting to members who'll become very active, valuable members. Those are, I would say, Field Reports, Tactics & Techniques, and Advanced. The kind of guys who'll become great contributors get sucked in by those boards. They're also generally interesting to passersby. The downside is they don't get as much activity.

If we want to focus the Boards more on hard game instead of "shoot the breeze / ask some questions" boards, we could do an order like:

1. Tactics & Techniques
2. Field Reports
3. Advanced
4. Journals
5. Messaging (new board focused on text & online messages / breakdowns / etc. -- guys are requesting this)
6. General
7. Beginners
8. Wingman Finder
9. Sex
10. Relationships
11. Lifestyle
12. Marketplace
13. Community
14. Off Topic

Also while we're on the topic, we are moving forward with the designations on the field reports board to differentiate types of approaches:

• Day game
• Night game
• Social circle
• Online game

I don't know how we're going to categorize all the thousands of old FRs. But at least new ones will be easy to distinguish.

Chase

 

[mist]

I don't know how we're going to categorize all the thousands of old FRs. But at least new ones will be easy to distinguish.

that sounds extremely daunting and imo probably too much maybe just give them a generic one like "archived report" or unmarked if your software allows for it.

I pity the man who goes through all those reports categorizing them otherwise haha

• Day game
• Night game
• Social circle
• Online game

I will make a vote you add cross game to the list

I like the focus, but there are a fair number of men like me that given the opportunity are gaming throughout their day or in a mix sorta messy fashion

nightgamer who messages babes online while taking a number two or social circle hound who makes a daygame approach while out hanging probably should get a lil representation

I could see an argument for just leaving lengthy or more nuanced cross game reports for journal, but to be totally candid most journals are more diary like than report/tactics oriented.

So adding cross game will allow the journal/diaries to remain pure and cross game reports to be represented and developed better in the community imo

that's all i have to say though very excited to see the update when it comes woot woot

 

[ulrich]

I don't know how we're going to categorize all the thousands of old FRs. But at least new ones will be easy to distinguish.

AI, perhaps?

I don’t know, maybe it still a couple of years before it can do that.

 

[Chase]

@mist,

Oh, that's a point. So say a guy wants to write an FR where he is out all day, day gaming, meets up with friends, meets a new girl through them, then heads out to nightlife and chats up girls there, meanwhile is messaging girls he met on an app. How's he going to categorize that? That makes sense.

You'd think we'd want to disable that for LRs though. Even if the guy is doing all that, the LR is principally about a given girl, and whoever that one girl is, there was only one avenue of game used to meet her.


@ulrich,

That's an interesting thought.

If you had a good, trained up AI, it could probably categorize the full set of reports in an instant, probably with minimal corrections needed. You'd just need someone to skim reports and fix any glaringly obviously wrong categorizations.

The flip side of the coin is you'd need to train the AI first by providing it heaps of data that teach it "this is an online report; that is a night game report", etc. Then have someone reviewing it to give it feedback on when it is right vs. when it is wrong.

I also wouldn't know where to go to find such an AI or how to set up the training for it (nor how long to expect that to take).

I'm seeing more folks looking to commercialize AI for various functions. "Use this AI to [blank]."

Sooner or later someone will come out with a "Use AI to categorize the content on your website" product. Content-based AI categorization is already a part of how, e.g., email spam filters work.

It probably constitutes the biggest gold rush right now, this "building AIs to do all these different things" trend...

Chase

 

[Kvothe]

I think an ML model might be overkill-you might be able to get good accuracy just checking for a certain set of words

Daygame: street, daytime, coffee, insta-date, RPO
Nightgame: bar, club, shots, lounge, loud
Online: online, tinder, bumble, hinge
Social Circle (this one's the hardest): friend circle, college

 

[Glow]

@Glow, that's an interesting idea.

@mist, thanks for bumping. I hadn't seen Glow's suggestion.

We're rolling out a big new forum theme update soon. Theme development is largely completed.

So just thinking about it:

1. One way to order is by general convenience for posting members. Beginners and General are by far the go-to forums. By having those first, you have the places guys go to first right away. Kind of like having a drink bar near the entrance of the bar rather than farther back in the venue behind the VIP tables
   
   
2. Another way to order is by most active boards. Then anyone clicking on the first few boards is seeing the greatest amount of activity and the forum looks more active, which'll tend to drive engagement. Again, that's Beginners & General. These also tend to have beginner and general questions of interest to a bunch of different forum members and passersby.
   
   
3. Then we have the boards that are most interesting to members who'll become very active, valuable members. Those are, I would say, Field Reports, Tactics & Techniques, and Advanced. The kind of guys who'll become great contributors get sucked in by those boards. They're also generally interesting to passersby. The downside is they don't get as much activity.

If we want to focus the Boards more on hard game instead of "shoot the breeze / ask some questions" boards, we could do an order like:

1. Tactics & Techniques
2. Field Reports
3. Advanced
4. Journals
5. Messaging (new board focused on text & online messages / breakdowns / etc. -- guys are requesting this)
6. General
7. Beginners
8. Wingman Finder
9. Sex
10. Relationships
11. Lifestyle
12. Marketplace
13. Community
14. Off Topic

Also while we're on the topic, we are moving forward with the designations on the field reports board to differentiate types of approaches:

• Day game
• Night game
• Social circle
• Online game

I don't know how we're going to categorize all the thousands of old FRs. But at least new ones will be easy to distinguish.

Chase

I love the field focus of the first 4
really sets a tone in here

another idea

• Tactics & Techniques
• Field Reports
• Journals
• General
• Beginners
• Advanced
• Messaging (new board focused on text & online messages / breakdowns / etc. -- guys are requesting this

Which is more on 1 ) Field focus 2) Whats actually being used atm 3) + some logic in beginner/advanced being grouped.

Just an idea to bounce some thinking into it.

 

[Kvothe]

My personal belief is still that the boards should auto-filter out bad actors by limiting their blast radius. I also agree with others that the FRs and journals are the most important boards.

As an example:
Rookie: Allowed to read all major subforums, can post unlimited amounts in FR/journal subforums, can start a thread 5x per week in beginners, cannot reply in beginners forums - ideally some way to moderate if they start spamming FR/journal subs
Space Monkey (upgraded when 3 FRs each get likes by 5 tool-bearing homind or higher): All of the above, but start a thread 10x per week in beginners, and can reply to comments in beginners - ideally some way to moderate if they start spamming FR/journal subs
Tool-Bearing Hominid: 5LRs posted (with at least 5 likes on each by cro-magnon man or higher): Can post in more subforums as appropriate
Cro-Magnon man: 15LRs posted (with at least 5 likes on each by cro-magnon man or higher): Can post in more subforums than previously
Modern Human: Some LR count + history of offering good advice

There could also be a mechanism for downgrading someone-and then it's the same process to go back up (maybe based on flagging/reporting). ie someone at cro-magnon gets downgraded, they need another 15 LRs before getting the rank up again. Also auto-ban based on flag types and reports.

I know this is difficult to implement so I won't be unhappy if it doesn't work out. But I think it would definitely improve the signal/noise ratio on the site, and get people more into writing good reports. Should also note that generally writing reports and implementing feedback will differentiate out the good faith "helpless beginners" vs trolls.