SKUNKWEASEL FUTURE

[Wally]

I've been looking into my crystal   and been thinking about this forum's future   
It has only been 3 weeks since the soft launch and 2 weeks since the official launch, we got 40 members in total which is hella neic.

I've been curious what vision the current members have for skunkweasel so far!
What do they want it to be? Do they have any ideas for what direction it should go?

I have been daydreaming about several ideas for the forums, and I want to know what you all think:

 IDEA 1:

More power to the frontpage!
The frontpage of skunkweasel.com is currently a billboard and an animated gif of a serial killer. (Neat detail, there are 4 different killers, a priest, a doctor, a clown and a butcher)
I was thinking that one day the frontpage would have more meat to it.
Perhaps dedicated pages to especially good threads, articles written by users, maybe our own equivalent of "the flash tub" like Something Awful.
Who knows! Just thinking out loud here.

 IDEA 2:

A forum war game!
I was talking in Rovk's introduction thread about how I used to have my own proboards forum as a teenager in which I homebrewed my own wargame.
I was feeling very nostalgic about it, and have been daydreaming about doing something like that again.
The idea would fit the theme of the forum, so I was thinking something in a dilapidated city.
A gangwar between militarized landlords in a no-go zone in the future.
You got your own units like deadly rent collectors or EVIKTRON robots, and you fight against other forum members.
I dunno, just a crazy little idea.
If we were to do this I would probably need volunteers to brainstorm, test, and fine tune the game into something fun.
Once again, just an idea!

 IDEA 3:
A zine!
When I was at the Annecy animated film festival 2 years ago, I was part of a collaboration organized by Ori Goldman called MONSTERFUCKERS.
He promoted the film by making a zine and handing it out all over the festival.
Every artist that took part in the collab sent in one of their drawings in black and white line work, and it was all printed into this little booklet that also had a link to everyone's socials and stuff.
I was thinking, maybe we could do something like that as a way to promote skunkweasel outside of the internet?
Right now I've only promoted it by directly reaching out to people and shilling it on my socials.
And in turn, some of you wonderful people have also recommended my forum to others!
The userbase is growing nicely this way, but wouldn't it be cool to hand out free zines at events and places full of the right type of weirdos?
There's a b-movie festival here in the Netherlands, called butff, every year around August/September.
It would be dope if I could leave a stash of zines to promote skunkweasel there.
What do you guys think?
If you got other promotion ideas, I'd love to hear those as well!

I also got some other future ideas, like adding more forum tags, adding new boards, maybe add competitions who knows!
If you got any ideas for new tags, smilies, boards, whatever, you're always free to share them!
Either in this thread, or in the Janitor's Closet in general!

Either way, your input is appreciated!
Lemme know what you think!
Cheers!

[zekeyspaceylizard]

Zines are real fuckin neato
That said even if we regularly made one I got no idea how you get a zine around anymore
back in the day you could print out a few and hand them out at cons n shit to help make people aware of your shit

the only one i kinda regularly kept up with, cause:
a) i knew it exists cause ive talked to the peeps in charge of it a few times
b) its uploaded to twitter
is the Ghostfruits group who do comics, songs, and lots of multimedia type of stuff


but besides them im entirely out of the loop on the zine thing and how it goes and spreads these days, if it spreads at all thanks to the glut of content online

i like the idea of the frontpage potentially being articles made by the forum users
i think we got enough people here with enough odd walks of life and interests to probably have some real neato articles about various subjects, be they informative, reviews of films, or just whatever the fuck

its part of what drew me to sites like I-Mockery and Something Awful back in the day cause it was a cool way to sometimes learn about weird shit i never would have known about otherwise. which used to kinda be like the whole point of big websites before web 2.0 and myspace came along and flushed it all down the toilet.

a forum war RP thing could be cool
i've never been big into RP that isnt a tabletop or vidya gaem
most I ever did was the old weebl forums where a group of lads had a dumb war RP thing based on Metal Slug i would participate (ie, shitpost) in somewhat regularly
but i do know that kind of thing is very popular, even now
MAFIA is still very popular and has several sites dedicated to it that are still going strong
and hell if it wasnt for MAFIA, something like Trouble in Terrorist Town would probably never have existed, and spawned stuff like Space Station 13, Repo, Amongus, Lethal Company, etc
so a forum war game mite b cool

a neat forum feature (if these even exist anymore) I remember there being a mspaint-like program you could install into some forums back in the 90s/00s that was called like oekaki or sommat.

[oblivionballoon]

yes yes I would absolutely second oekaki or some kind of forum game. I wanna PLAY! I dunno about integration into the actual forum itself, but draw togethers could be fun too.. I would spend so much of my time on flockmod dicking around years ago. Is it even called that anymore or did they change it?

[Wally]

BOEKAKI:
Oekaki sounds like a great idea!  
I did a lazy google and haven't found out how to put it on this forum yet, but I'll look more into it.
If anyone else happens to know an oekaki paint type thing compatible with myBB, lemme know!
Speaking of fancy new things, we might eventually need someone more code savvy than me for future forum additions and website features.
I know enough code for basic things, and fancy css, but my epic html skillz have their limits.
And let's not get started on javascript!!!
If anyone is interested in being skunkweasel's resident code monkey, I'd love to hear from ya!

FORUM GAME:
Glad to see there's an interest in a forum game!
I'll have to do some research first, mess around, read some stuff, try some things out.
The game I have in mind now is mostly luck based, like a type of Risk.
Maybe I can see if I can get some actual strategy in there.
Although, there's nothing wrong with a luck based game, as long as we're having fun!
I've heard of this thing called "sub accounts", which are used for roleplay.
Apparently you'd still be logged in as yourself, but you got a separate account for your character that is linked to your main account.
Might be something to look into!
Although I haven't found a lot of info on it yet.
We'll see what's possible and what's within my powerrrr.

ZINE:
I was actually thinking of maybe a one off zine, or a couple of one off zines, instead of something that is regularly made.
One idea I had was maybe turning the pics and bios of the Dipshit Gallery thread into a zine, once there's more contributions.
Everyone would get credited properly of course, and you don't have to have your Dipshit in it if you don't want to.
It'd be called "SKUNKWEASEL.COM PRESENTS: DIPSHIT GALLERY", and I would just hand them out for free at places that might be visited by the right demographic.
Maybe I could send copies to members from all over the world, so they can hand them out where they live.
Or they could print them out themselves, who knows!

  FRONTPAGE ARTICLES:
It would be cool to try that, we'll have to see who wants to write and what they want to write about.
I'll also have to see if those articles would be written inside the forums or be on separate html pages, I'm fine with either one of these options.
Hadn't thought about things like movie reviews yet, might be a good idea!
Zekey, would you perhaps be interested in writing reviews for b-movies and other crazy films?
I think you'd be very good at that.
Only if you're interested, and got the time and energy for it of course!
Maybe if I'm ever in a better financial position I could actually pay people for articles and things.
Maybe even have an exclusive webcomic, or a webseries.
Now I'm just daydreaming!

But it's nice to speculate about the future.

  CURRENT PLAN OF ACTION:
Right now I'm just gonna do a bit of research and brainstorming on what the forum game will be like, and perhaps see if I can shill skunkweasel at some more places or recruit some more people directly.
It would be cool to see which ambitions can be reached and how the website will grow!
Maybe skunkweasel.com will become an internet legend, maybe it'll stay a cozy little hideout for a handful of weirdos, who knows!

[Gooly]

Games! We could also start small with a text-based game first. I think there are several werewolf variants that are played on forums.

[Markie]

All of these ideas sound excellent, but could also  possibly create an animated ad or even a quick cartoon for the motel to promote it in a more visually appealing way.. 

Even if some people are not animators, you can throw in their drawings, doodles etc..

Find a way to stitch it all together, like the camera pans to different motel room doors and then they open showing whatever the person has created.

Just a thought.

[Croonin]

I think it's super nice that this place is really chill and low noise. I get the feeling it's probably for the best that we keep some kind of regular reach maintained, but I don't think it needs to be pushed very far to get the job done. Just my opinion tho.

Zines are mad. Would love to see one. Heck I wouldn't mind trying to contribute a bit too.

Personally I'm not too keen on the idea of forum games, but it'd certainly be interesting to see if other people decide to get into something. it'd be really interesting to spectate, and who knows, maybe I'd join in eventually.

More meat = more good.

Glory to Skunkweasel Motel!

[Wally]

Yeah I've done some thinking, and I must admit I had some very ambitious ideas when I first started this forum, and when I posted this thread.
But I actually kind of like the way the forum is now.

Sure, more members are always welcome, and I'll be sure to promote the forum now and then to get some new faces.

But for now, I think everything is fine.
It already is a lot bigger, and a lot better, than any of my previous attempts at making an online community.

Not to sound too mushy, but this place has already made my life a lot better.
I got a nice place to dump my thoughts, talk to people, and something that keeps me away from social media.
We haven't had any difficult members yet, no spammer or jerks, which is also nice.

So for now, I'll just keep things the way they are.
Nice, calm and chill.
We'll just see where things will go!