If the Mocks section goes away, will the Random Mocks, Tounge-in-cheek mocks threads etc all be locked?
Yes they will
What’s wrong with keeping it?
Can I ask what the purpose of phasing the mocks section out would be? Your post mentions “changing traffic” but it would be useful to understand the staff’s thinking behind this more clearly if you are looking for comment/opinions.
What’s the benefits of closing a thread?
If someone were to make a mock then, are you guys wanting us to not share it on this forum, or instead post it in Nine News Content and Appearance for example?
I’d argue that there is still enough foot traffic into that area to warrant keeping it. A large number of the quality mocks recently are still receiving a lot of likes.
If there has been any reduction in foot traffic, I would say that some of the questionable mocks over the last few years led so its demise.
Even perhaps the “mock networks” some members have created - no offence to them, but I silenced all those threads because they were constantly cluttering the latest view when I personally think none of them need entire threads devoted to themselves.
I’m not sure how such a thing could work, but could the forum be “locked” where members must first go through the moderators for their initial post before they are allowed to post publicly there, or you must be a member of Mediaspy for X months /1 year before being allowed to post?
we also noticed that when the UK based TV Forum closed earlier this year, its replacement elected to drop their mocks section.
And the users of that site complained and The Gallery was bought back onto the site. It currently has 63 Topics posted to it.
We are looking at ways to evolve the site - part of that is reviewing what we have existing. Removing the mock threads would be a significant change, hence why we want to hear from people about the threads.
We know that the Mocks section has attracted a fairly loyal group of members, but we’ve noticed that the activity has shifted, especially towards significant threads of mock television stations/networks and somewhat away from graphical mocks which was the original intent of the mock designs section. We’ve also seen the need to closely monitor some of the threads to remove some of the more unsavoury comments that are made about some mocks.
That hasn’t been decided
Interesting that they require you to login to see it
Why would it be closed? There’s plenty of engagement, worthy keeping IMO.
As I briefly mentioned in my edited post, I believe that this is part of the problem. These mock networks provide no real purpose. If anything they should be kept in a single mock TV stations thread and be done with it instead of having many threads.
I see no reason in stopping the community in creating graphical mocks.
I don’t get why you would remove it at all. If it was to be removed that’s just less traffic then there is currently.
I think it does no harm and it’s a great way for people to show off their work and ideas.
I agree the mocks section would benefit from returning to its original focus - being original and creative graphic/set design. I think it would be a shame for the site to leap straight to the nuclear option of shutting down the whole mocks section.
I post less regularly now than I used to (work has taken over my life the last few years) but I would never have gotten into this sort of thing without this forum and specifically the mocks section.
Based on the comments so far it sounds like there might be some degree of support for curation of mock content posted?
From my perspective as a mod the value the section has added to the forum has steadily declined over the years as quality of content contributed has declined, and we have to put in a disproportionate amount of work into the “mock television stations / network” content as well as the large general threads such as random mocks / tongue in cheek mocks, which routinely goes off the rails for various reasons.
It sounds like it may be worth putting some very clear rules/guidelines in place, and then adopting a hardline approach to individuals who chose not to follow those rules.
I would happily support something along those lines.
I don’t use the mock section so it doesn’t bother me. But what’s your vision? How would you like it to evolve?
I suppose I have two perspectives on this - I remember as a weird kid posting my own made up TV channel mockups as one of the earliest things I did on here, but that eventually the drive to make something vaguely television like drove a fairly helpful improvement in my graphics ability, which I still make use of today. Without the motivation of showing people on a website those things, I probably wouldn’t have developed those to nearly the extent I did.
The flip side, is that it’s a really weird section right now, going off on threads full of how a made up channel would be programmed in excruciating detail, especially when it leaks out into the main forums - seeing someone post that they’d bring a show back on their fictional channel in one of the history threads for example - seems to be getting to a point you need to row people back to reality a bit. If those threads continue, I’d love to be able to hide them entirely.
Still, I enjoy occasionally shitposting in the tongue in cheeks mocks thread, and very occasionally there’s some good stuff in the main random mocks thread - though that frequently goes a bit off the rails. I think to some extent that’s a lot when a poorly crafted visual is used to use the mocks thread instead of a more appropriate mock schedules thread.
I’d think we’d end up losing more than we’d gain getting rid of it entirely, but then I don’t see just how much I don’t see - so I can really understand if something’s become too much of a moderation workload.
I’d like to see more discussion and to try to attract more active members - how we achieve that is a challenge and is unlikely to be easy. The idea of opening up the show threads was aimed towards the first.
There is also a balance between trying to attract the new with maintaining what we’ve got and we know that making some changes to the site is going to upset that.
I quite like the random mocks and you get in cheek and of course the studio mocks thread and I know they are quiet too. I feel maybe consolidating threads may be a better option over the next year and see what happens then.
One of the things I love about this forum is it gives people the ability to be creative and post ideas in a design sense. There aren’t many spaces to do that and have a discussion about it.
As someone who uses the Mocks section I would be quite sad to see it locked up.
Maybe for the future it can be a thread as apposed to people being able to make threads independent?
Similar to the “Random Mocks”
Maybe “Mock Designs” instead? That way it defines to the graphical type.