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Post by the7thcynic on Nov 2, 2010 17:47:52 GMT -5
Does anyone have any ideas for jazzing the forum up? Its been kinda quiet around here and we think its time to try and liven it up! Im gonna try and clean up/update some of the stickied posts since they need the basic upkeep, but anyone else have any other suggestions? Im all ears. 7th
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Post by ghijkl on Nov 2, 2010 18:48:09 GMT -5
Maybe we could add a voting tag for your favorite Hasbro Heroes. How about that?
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Post by the7thcynic on Nov 2, 2010 20:08:47 GMT -5
You mean like a poll? Im all abt polls -we do them every once and a while.
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Post by meetthyreaper on Nov 2, 2010 20:56:36 GMT -5
Well....we haven't had any updates from the Q&A's. Has anybody been to statuemarvels.com? If you're a fan of Bowen Designs, that is the IDEAL place to go because you have direct contact with the developer (Randy Bowen.) Because of this, it's pretty busy with requests, polls, suggestions for tweaks, etc. Would we be able to get some of the folks at Hasbro to join our forums and get input from the fans? That would seriously bump the status of this place big time!
Another thing I am thinking would be minimizing/shrinking some of the expired lines (Adventure Heroes, Combat Heroes, Toy Story, etc.) They give a dated feel to the boards.
Additionally, if we can get more customizers to these forums, we could have sections for commissions and showcasing their work. Personally, I would love to hire some folks to make some custom SHS for me. MutieJoe vanished (I tried friending him on Facebook, but I think he's ignoring me.) Sucks b/c I sent him some stuff to work on for a future project. Likewise, Eddie Grayce....I asked him to make me about 6 different characters and he told me he'd work on it. I have sent update e-mails and whatnot, but he also seems to be ignoring me. These are two unfortunate cases, but it proves that there's a serious gap when it comes to customizers on these boards. Perhaps we can try to generate some e-commerce and get some talented artists over here.
Lastly, I think we should ask Hasbro if we can get a website exclusive SHS pack or something. Could you imagine how many people would come if they could only get it here?
We need some folks with connections to help bump up the status quo here. ^_^
-Your friendly neighborhood Reaper
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Post by meetthyreaper on Nov 2, 2010 20:59:13 GMT -5
One more thing that I think would be useful would be putting the Private Messages tab up TOP with "Home", "Help", "Members", etc.
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Post by the7thcynic on Nov 2, 2010 23:12:12 GMT -5
Q&A's- I havent heard much on that front. Plus also we used to have Kastor here to sneak in questions, but Im not so sure if he pops in anymore.
statuemarvels - yes. Its similar to the Eaglemoss forum. Its so awesome that the developer would be so hands on. Tho Im not so sure Hasbro would be as eager. If I recall someone on the forums told a Hasbro guy @ a convention abt us. So they may know of our existence.....maybe. Anything more that that....wouldnt know how to get it to happen.
minimizing/shrinking expired lines - thats a great idea! Ill look into rearranging things.
customizers - we seem to be the hotspot for custom SHS. Thats cool I suppose. Thats why I pushed the custom section of the wiki so hard. Never got to finish it tho. Was very time consuming. And now with the new wikia look...ugh. But your right - customs seem to be the key.
MutieJoe - I should email him. I figured youd - if anyone - would know where he was at.
website exclusive SHS pack - That would be ideal IF we had any direct contact to whoever in Hasbro.
Private Messages - Ill look into that as well. Its prolly doable.
Thanks for the input guys. Keep the ideas coming! I'll see what I can do.
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Post by meetthyreaper on Nov 2, 2010 23:29:54 GMT -5
We should really look into inviting customizers here. Folks from toycutter.com might be willing to come here and do commission work. Personally, I'd be one to keep customizers busy and I know there are others who would probably do the same. It's a shame atgscl bombed out on all of us. He was working on doing casts of customs so we could all have a piece of the pie.
Additionally, GHcustoms does some fantastic work! The Star Wars community is brimming with customizers. I wonder if he might be able to bring some folks to these boards. After seeing some of the custom dioramas that were made for the GH line, I have found myself wondering why these individuals haven't made themselves known on these boards.
So yeah....aside from customizers for figures, there are folks who can do really impressive environments. Maybe we can attract those folks.
One last thing I might suggest would be a possible joint partnership with jestergoblin's website. Jester has always been committed to providing quality reviews/photos/news/etc. Does he link to these forums on his website? We could always ask him if he'd do that for us.
If I think of anything else, I'll be sure to post. ^_^
-MTR
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Post by meetthyreaper on Nov 2, 2010 23:54:43 GMT -5
Okay...before I go to sleep, I have one final suggestion. This is a way to generate more forum members AND be a fun way to liven up these boards.
Let's have professional photo contests and post our stuff on a social photo sharing site like Flickr. If you go to flickr and look up stuff, there are a ton of amazing images on there. I use it to look up images from the vinyl art community--look up Kidrobot Simpsons and see what pops up. There's some impressive photo-work on there! Additionally, the nice thing about Flickr is the fact that you can link back here and there's a social nature (comment feature.) We should try to take some professional photos of our SHS and GH figures and generate some hits to the Hasbro Heroes forum. 7th....you should setup a Hasbro Heroes account on Flickr!
We could have bi-monthly photo contests with themes. For example, first contest: Battle of Hoth! Just off the top of my head, I think about a battle of hoth diorama with snow and what not with an upshot view of the AT-AT walker with Luke hanging underneath? After that, we can have votes for the best ones. Maybe at the end of the year, have an award ceremony with prizes.
Needless to say, I think this would be a very interesting activity and something that the collectors community could appreciate.
Hope my input helps. For my day job, I am an Instructional Designer and an educator, so it's in my nature to try and offer input to increase productivity and user happiness. I'll see what else I can think of 7th.
Night!
-MTR
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Post by bert19 on Nov 3, 2010 8:39:08 GMT -5
Increase the movie & comic parts of the forum to get more superhero-based discussion and then provide some general movie debate threads as well - increases the amount of traffic on here even if we do get a few users who aren't really SHS collectors/entusiasts.
Perhaps a comic-art thread/section too where members (new & old) can post their drawings and paintings and stuff like that too?
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docfairday
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Post by docfairday on Nov 3, 2010 9:14:20 GMT -5
I really think Meetthyreaper has covered a lot of my suggestions. This is def the place to be for hasbro heroes. I do think it is such a small niche of collectors, compared to 3 3/4 figs, that's it's really about finding those who even care about the lines outside of getting them for their kids. I do my part to direct people here especially customizers I see on hisstank, rebel scum, and the occassional ebay customizers. Customs and trading is what really brought me here. We just need more of both, customizers and traders, to keep people around more. I do know a couple here in AZ that does a lot of sculpting for hasbro but nothing for this line. They did a lot with Valor vs Venom and the one piece I know I own of theirs is the podium from Comic Con Cobra Commander. I asked if they do anything with the hero lines and they said they didn't. I see them every so often at toy shows and such. Next time I see them I will bug them to get us a hook for heroes. Sadly even an exclusive Spidey, Iron Man, or Wolverine figure would help get this forum more attention but that would mean another spidey, iron man, or wolverine fig. I do look forward to the cleanup process and do thing the older retired lines could be minimized and moving the inbox tab up to the top would help a lot. Make some social networking pages as well to draw attention here.
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jestergoblin
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Post by jestergoblin on Nov 3, 2010 10:56:44 GMT -5
I might be able to help out with a Hasbro connection, I'll contact some people this week and see what I can get, ideally in the form of a Q&A. If I can get it for my site, I'd be more than willing to cross post it here. While it has been dead, I actually like how specific this forum is in terms of toys. Many other sites bounce between 6 inch, 7 inch, 3 3/4s inch scales but I like knowing that almost all of this discussion is based off of tiny figures. I think expanding into comics and movies could be worthwhile to get any sort of discussion going. As for customs, I have a few of them that I want to work on but just haven't had the motivation or time (that and these toy reviews don't exactly write themselves). I try to regularly mention the forum but a lot of people don't bother clicking on the links in my site. A photo contest ON FLICKR is a great way for us to get people interested in the site and expose us to thousands of potentials. Remember the classic covers challenge we had? I'm thinking re-do that but this time, no photoshopping. Maybe make some rule about entry forcing us to watermark the images with the Hasbro Heroes Forum link? I think one of the biggest things holding us back is the url. I mean, du5tin.proboards.com is kind of an awful url to have attached to us. There's absolutely no connection between the subject matter and the name. But proboards is a proprietary format and there's no way we can self-host by getting something like HasbroHeroesForum.com (it could be possible to register that domain and set up a redirect though). But I don't want to do something like that without Squad Leader's approval - but it seems like he's completely disappeared. I'd be willing to grab the domain and set up a redirect so at least we'd get something. I say we do a Flickr contest showing off SHS figures recreating iconic covers or panels. (Maybe make part of it requiring you to show off the actual cover/panel too). Each of the submissions should have like www.HasbroHeroesForum.com in a corner to increase adds.
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docfairday
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Post by docfairday on Nov 3, 2010 11:02:52 GMT -5
Jester does bring up a great point the url is horrible and if i ever delete my history or some how my favorites gets deleted I ahve to go through google to find it. Luckily I know to search for hasbro heroes and this is usually the first link that is found. So this site wasn't started by Jester or Floridaboy? Hmmmm learn something new every day!
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jestergoblin
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Post by jestergoblin on Nov 3, 2010 11:36:07 GMT -5
Okay, I'm more than willing to create a website that is a redirect to here. My hosting plan is near unlimited so just domain registration would cost me. So I'd have to toss up an ad or two on the site to cover costs.
Would we want a straight up redirect or would we turn HasbroHeroesForum into its own site as well. I think a redirect would be best but want to get a discussion on this before going further.
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Post by the7thcynic on Nov 3, 2010 12:03:07 GMT -5
Ok, Im keeping notes. Good stuff: - Q&A's/Hasbro connections - at a loss there. maybe Jester can hook it up.
- minimizing/shrinking expired lines - should be easy enuff
- MORE customizers - that will take everyones help I suppose
- Private Messages on top - should be doable
- partnership with jestergoblin - we'd LOVE to
- flicker contests - great idea for possibly bringing traffic in
- Increase the movie & comic sections - will do
- comic-art thread/section - also easy
- social networking pages - hmmmm...like Facebook?
- The URL - Ummmm....not much we can do since we cant RENAME it. And as for moving - I wouldnt wanna be the one to move it. Will have to wait for X for sumthin like that.
One thing that jester touched on that Id like to maintain is the dedication to the tiny figs and no much of anything else. I feel that getting into other 'taller' lines dilutes what we're going for and will be hard to be on top of. But Id REALLY like to thank you guys for your dedication and input. We couldnt do it without you. Hopefully we can pull all our resources together and jazz this place up bigtime!
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jestergoblin
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Post by jestergoblin on Nov 3, 2010 12:49:44 GMT -5
With the url, I'm thinking it would be a redirect so nothing here would change. The forum would still exist at du5tin.proboards.com but HasbroHeroesForum.com would redirect to the proboards site. So we wouldn't have to change anything here. Or it could be something like: (Looks awful, I know - just did the thing in MSpaint in like a minute to make a point)
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