E4 Proposal - Split the Forums into 2 Sub-Forums

i imagine the market forum being the wild, wild west.

in theory it’d be nice, but sometimes “less is more,” to use a famous quote here from modernist thinkers.

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@smpratte, as I mentioned, this can change daily. I should have posted this two days ago when I had originally thought to do so when you would have seen the opposite. You will see this change a lot, but it is not uncommon to see market price conversations flood “New Topics”.

This isn’t about creating more topics - this about being able to sift through conversations easier and navigate the forums in a more digestible way.

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Vegetables represent at least 50% as much conversation as investing does on E4.

These are the stats I’m looking for in my Pokemon communities.

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the forums are really good the way they are. I’ve learned a lot as a lurker

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I like your solution and I also tire of the endless threads pertaining to buying/selling/grading/market but I think the problem lies in the New Topics button itself and not with the design of the forum. It’s already split up into sections for exactly what you’re describing.

I think an easier solution would be to have the ability to filter the New Topics button by threads relating to collections and art appreciation or price tracking and market related topics.

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I don’t know if that’s really a good data point to go from because that data only goes back less than 2 hours. What you’re saying is essentially “in the past 2 hours only 2 threads have been made discussing prices/market”.

My response to that would be: only 2?

Another data point to look at would be that at least 25 different threads have been moved into the market mega thread since it was created. There is clearly a desire for people to “Discuss the current price of cards and the market trends” as the tagline for that sub-forum invites, yet a lot of that discussion is being shepherded into one big let’s-not-have-too-many-threads-here thread.

Right now it feels like the market mega thread is where market threads are moved to die. I don’t think that one thread really serves its purpose any more - or if it ever did to begin with. All other mega threads on this forum are structured in a way where people post a thing and move on - they’re not intended for extended discussion which the market mega thread seeks to achieve.

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I agree with @azulryu,
Because it’s so general I rarely even open the general market thread. I’m sure I often miss some cool stuff but you only have so much time. Now if there was no general market thread at all, that would be fine too (since I rarely open it now anyway;) But my preference would be to end it and let people make individual threads.

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I think that there has to be an acceptance of the new place financial conversations have in the collecting world.

This affects all collectibles of all types. 10 years ago, the hobby was still always talking about the most expensive cards. People love that element of the hobby. That doesn’t make the conversation about collecting impure. There is no dichotomy between investing and collecting. They are intricately intertwined. E4 is not experiencing a metamorphosis in purpose. E4 is doing exactly what it always has: meeting the biggest, the best, the brightest, the most dedicated, the most curious, and the sickos that prefer miscut cards where they are at in their collecting journey right now.

Creating a community that doesn’t acknowledge the elephant in the room is never going to be healthy or thrive. E4 remains topical. Anyone can choose to participate only on the topics that they want to participate. People have the freedom to leave for years and come back as life takes them different places. People have the dignity to assert authority and put themselves out there when they know their shit and take a back seat when they don’t both without judgment or consequences for failing.

Every time a conversation comes up where people try to put their finger on the exact difference between a collector and an investor, the thread is filled with 200 people who all identify somewhere unique on the spectrum of investing/collecting. This is the natural diversity within the hobby that we need to learn to embrace. The flipper chad and the “pure” collector are equally annoying archetypes that miss the point. And the reality is that a lot of people aren’t ever even going to be at the same place on the scale. There are days when I’m pouring my wallet out to buy cards I love without a concern and days when I’m jumping on an opportunity to make some money that I see. We have old school icons that have never sold a card and old school icons who have made this their daily job. This boogeyman of the person taking advantage of the hobby to suck it of all of its life doesn’t exist because the barriers to entry of knowledge and reputation severely impede the ability of ignorant people to influence the hobby on a grand scale. And even the few tiny segments that are impacted represent cards so rare that logistical challenges and the luck of when you entered the hobby are a bigger factor in who does and doesn’t obtain the cards.

E4’s growth comes with challenges. The staff feels them first. Increased moderation requirements. A sense of direction that needs to constantly be tended to and reaffirmed. And yeah, the members sometimes are going to have to flip through the new threads a little more to find the content they’re looking for. But all of it seems like a small price to pay when you consider we are winning more than any other segment of the collectibles world. We have unbridled growth, new members every hour, fresh excitement, new things happening, baller products from TPC, and so much more going for us. E4 is benefitting from and reflecting these new circumstances. And I firmly disagree that the response to it is to deconstruct what we have going.

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A pure market subforum could turn into r/wallstreetbets for Pokemon pretty quickly. @fourthstartcg really does a great job putting the smaller market threads into the Giant Market Thread, but maybe there should be more specific Mega threads. Like a ‘price check’ Mega thread or one for ‘what grade would this get’, or a ‘stonks/investing’ one.

The line between monetary stuff and collecting stuff is also often blurred. Like, I actually enjoy seeing when members share what they paid for an item in their collection threads. But at the same time I absolutely see your point @azulryu, I’d also rather if it was more about passion than money. For that reason I tend to avoid stonk threads and instead engage in artwork stuff and other more fun threads :blush:

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I agree that it is annoying how many discussions just revolve around prices/investments/flippers, but it would be hard to separate the two. Even the real collectors are going to talk about condition and ultimately prices on the regular.

But yes, it is super frustrating to constantly read about people buying just for investments or to flip the cards later for a higher price, probably to another flipper lol. But people are free to do what they want so not much we can do about it other than hope they get bored and move on eventually.

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I think the site functions well as is. I agree with @muk whereby if you encourage ‘market talk’ too much you risk entering cringe territory, there are already one or two folks who are clearly obsessed with talking about money and the value of their cards - they don’t need encouraging :wink: - not that I don’t really enjoy reading a lot of the market threads right now, I just think sometimes less is more. I tend to talk about that stuff frequently with a couple of friends privately and that’s how I prefer it (most of the time).

If it aint broke…

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You could argue though that a few months ago it wasn’t broke but got changed anyway;)

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Oh no, Mummy and Daddy are using me as a proxy in their fighting again :sob:

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Hasn’t fourthstartcg and other mods been moving market threads into the giant market thread. Without the movement of these posts you would see a lot of threads about market popping up.

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I think it’s perfectly fine how it is right now. If you don’t want to see market threads then just go Home > General/just a question/collection additions/articles & resources etc or whatever you want to see instead of using new topics button. I think collectors and investors are much too intertwined to split them in half without moderately annoying consequences at best

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I think the mods did a great job with the giant market thread. It was something people requested and serves its purpose in that I don’t have to read “will X go up or down?” ten times a day.

To improve the giant threads, one recommendation I have is an automated “welcome message” to new members that besides general rules goes over where to post market commentary instead of creating a new thread.

For new topics, you can add a string to the URL and save it to filter out sub-forums, but it became annoying to have to use it every time for me. Unfortunately pro boards does not allow the option to personally filter threads.

While I relate that the market talk can get overwhelming and frustrating, I strongly agree with Charlie that it has always been there. The key difference between e4 and older forums is stricter topic limits. If you were on PokeGym a decade ago, people were still discussing the market (though obviously in a different way, but constant noise about the price of Luxray GL Lv X going up or down is equally annoying). But the controversial / lightning rod threads got the most attention so the price threads were less noticeable. Instead of a dozen pages arguing over investments you’d get a dozen pages arguing over a new bill passed by the House of Representatives.

I love the collection posts but the replies will naturally be more along the lines of “awesome job!” And not debatable. If e4 loosened the rules on off-topic news you’d have far more distracting threads that people jump on. I’m already politically drained, I don’t want to feel obligated commenting on “H.R. ### Our honorable president’s New Cap and Trade Bill – Thoughts?” (Yes that is a genuine title I remember wasting hours over on PokeGym).

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It’s not a matter of not wanting to see market threads. Only certain ones. Right now you have to sift through all and their replies in order to get to ones you may want to see/participate in.

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That wouldn’t be fixed with a separate market/investing forum though, unless you really break it down into a lot of sub categories and moderate exactly what threads are allowed where.

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I don’t think Devin is suggesting that we remove any kind of conversation from the mix, just that we restructure the forum to cater to people who prefer one thing over the other. And while I can see that working in principle, in practice it would be a lot of work to implement.

Charlie pretty much hit the nail on the head with the whole investing/market/collecting thing. I personally do not like the direction that a lot of the discussion in the Pokemon community (not just on E4 but elsewhere) is going because I’ve always seen Pokemon cards as a collecting goal. I enjoy talking about the market, but I enjoy talking about collecting more. I feel like the enjoyment for the cards that drove us to purchase them in the past is being replaced by an enjoyment for the future monetary gains that the cards will provide. However, I’m fully aware that this is a backwards vision that does not comport with the reality of where the hobby is right now, and I’m not going to proselytize over the “correct” way to buy Pokemon cards.

Speaking as someone who has similar views to the people who are fed up with the “whatshouldibuy/howdoistonk” discussion, I can say that it has definitely improved. The addition of the Giant Market Thread has helped tremendously. However, as I’m sure many people can see, just because you have a megathread doesn’t mean people use it. I am very frequently moving low-to-zero effort posts and howdoistonk questions into that thread. Some threads in Price and Market Discussion are just better served to be on their own and they stay there.

E4 is a reflection of the Pokemon community at large. Right now, with the current massive price rises which really show no signs of stopping (where’s my retrace plz), investment and the market has become a dominant topic of discussion. To be fair, it’s only natural when you could have bought dog-shit smeared cards in 2019 and they’d have tripled in value by now. I fully expect that when things settle down, the investment and market discussion will become less prevalent.

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