ntnon

And I'm being contrary (because I'm busy and all over the place) and using Hulu and TCM to watch things sans-disc, thereby missing most of the bonus bits. Dang it.

orlmac

I didn't quote all of the parts where you love us but I'm sure that we all love you (and happy birthday whenever it is)! I think everybody wants the same thing here so this would be the most beneficial solution. I would like to suggest an addition to some of the challenges (I think that some people are already doing this). If the hosts or participants could start collecting sources of streaming choices for the challenges it may increase participation. I know that this is dvdtalk and most people here have a ton of dvds to choose from (and that is our focus) but introducing streaming channels and tv channels to the mix does not destroy the concept, it just enlarges it and creates more opportunities for interaction. Collecting information like this at the beginning of the thread is one way to start enhancing things. Also, as LJG765 (and maybe others) are doing it is good to have some parts of the checklist to point to some suggested lists that are somewhat finite (top 50 or top 100). The list's movies do change with time, but like someone mentioned earlier in regards to the Academy Awards Challenge, having a finite (even if it is quite large) number of movies to choose from can encourage more participation. I'm sure that there are many other ideas that the hosts can come up with and ask the participants to help with so that they aren't too (more) overworked.

TheBigDave

I totally agree. I love those schmaltzy Hallmark Christmas movies. Sometimes I'll turn on the Hallmark Channel and just let the marathon play all day long. I've still got 5-6 movies on my DVR from last year.

And that's my reason for wanting to do a mini Romance Challenge in February. Hallmark does a marathon with new movies the first two weeks of Feb. All the cable channels play cheesy Romance movies. And the streaming services add extra movies. There's tons of stuff to watch.

Dimension X

After watching how Chad gets people involved early for the OHMC, last year I asked people to help me pick out some of the prizes for Comedy Challenge. I thought it was a good way to get people involved before the actual start of the challenge. Several people got involved in picking and/or voting on the final choices.

orlmac

Getting people involved in picking and/or voting for the prizes sounds like an excellent, creative way to get people involved. I bet even more people will get involved this year as these ideas seem to grow more popular over time. It may get more people thinking about the challenge earlier who missed out on being involved in that process last year.

ntnon

What about mooting something like this: "120 Hours of Musicals" (Feb 1-6), then "8 Days of Valentines" from Feb 7-14 and "Ten Days of Drama" (15th-24th)? A week of Romance and slightly more/less of Drama & musicals, within - and without - the Oscars Challenge. There'll be enough nominated (and winning) films for people to completely cross over, but a separate mini-challenge for non-nominees.

And still the option (as always) for collaborative multi-person May MYOCs.

ntnon

Agreed. I thought it an excellent idea in November; kudos to Dimension X and Goldenwheels.

Dimension X

Thanks. I won't have the time to host it this year. Maybe Trevor will mention it to the new host he picked.
I'll try and remember to mention this idea in the initial post next May, and maybe start the discussion thread a little earlier so people can have more time to plan (assuming there's interest in it).

orlmac

I have to say, I am pretty disappointed that the idea of working together to make the challenges better has been overshadowed by an attempt to add another challenge. It will have no impact on me personally but it definitely doesn't feel like an attempt to encourage improvements in our challenges, which I had high hopes for earlier. I know that I only have 400 posts here so I am definitely a newbie here in comparison to others but I have been active here since 2009, I just don't say a lot. I appreciate the last couple of posters that have encouraged new things being done and hope that their trend will continue.

Trevor

I think you're reading too much negativity into the posts. No one is that insistent on adding a new Challenge, and all of us are focusing on trying to improve what we have already. Given the current vote results, the fact that the initial proponent voted no, the fact that at least one person voted yes just to continue the discussion, and that I've changed my vote to no; I think it's pretty much a done deal that we overall don't want a new challenge.

People are passionate about various aspects of the Challenges, some conversations got misconstrued as attacks, and unfortunate responses were made. But overall I think this has all been quite civil for an Internet exchange.

In a discussion involving possible big changes, it's important to be honest and get everything out there. Once we get everyone's thoughts and preferences out, we'll be better equipped to make some positive changes.

I'm glad you spoke up. You're a core Challenge regular and I hope all the rest of us speak up too.

LJG765

I am definitely going to try this for at least one of the challenges I host next year. I was thinking about it for Animation, but just decided to skip it as I was already running too close into the start of the challenge. Hopefully I'll be a little less hectic next year and plan ahead!

orlmac

Thanks for the comments and the work that you have been doing here. I think you were right when you said that we had to take things slow. As we work on improving things that might mean adding a challenge. A lot can change in a month, a number of people who voted no might see things differently as we explore different ideas here.

ntnon

I had a very different (probably radical, likely terrible) idea - would there be any support for a merger between "Drive-In" and "Action/Adventure"...? The scope of each seems to overlap quite a bit (moreso using the fuzzy logic of "genre exploitation" to consider most big budget action that isn't automatically B-movie and cheaper grindhouse affair to still fall under the same umbrella), so I'll throw it out to the few and see what other thoughts there are.

ntnon

Planning? I wish I had time for planning..!

Darkgod

Speedy's ad posts... now thats a throwback

Trevor

I think it might help if we all sort of start at the beginning and deconstruct/talk through the whole Challenge process. Well, perhaps none of you need or want to do that, but I think it'll help me as I lay out my verbose thoughts and ideas, please indulge me. Why do we have them, what purposes do they serve? This is our description from post one of this thread back in 2009:I think we all agree that the main goal of community building is still there, right?

I'm pretty confident that no Challenge can ever come close to what we have in Horror. The combination of the unique aspects of Horror and our Saint Chad, makes those results non-reproducible. Horror content and October are just a perfect fit, and the genre fans are most likely unique in their binge-worthiness. October is horror, not just at this DVDTalk forum, but nationwide.

Personal opinion, but even if horror and Halloween didn't exist, and two Chads worked their butts off to run any other Challenge, it wouldn't be too much better than what we already have. Other genres just don't lead themselves to the level of immersion that Halloween gets.

That said, it doesn't mean we have to give up and just half-heartedly go through the motions on the other 11 months, and let them devolve into nothing more than "what are you watching this month" threads. We already have those threads, and Challenges are something different.

I admit that I've had this sort of laissez-faire attitude about many of the Challenges, and haven't put much effort into improving things overall, and particularly in the ones that I've run. I apologize for that.

Busy here at work, more later.

Trevor

Alright, let me continue my thesis.

So what's best for the number of Challenges? We grew from Horror to include Holiday and Academy Award. These three are probably still the best fit for the concept. They revolve around set dates, a holiday or ceremony, and involve TV content being easily attainable and a sort of worldwide participation already built-in, if you will. The other Challenges probably sprung because of our love of these first three, the fact that by nature we have a lot of film consumers/binge watchers here, and the desire to maintain the conversation we so enjoy in the Challenge threads year round.

Having one Challenge going year round, and having them diverse enough to cover almost every film, seemed like perfect symmetry. I was probably the main proponent for us to keep increasing them until we got to this 'perfect' twelve. But in order to encompass pretty much every film, to have at least one Challenge cover everything in our collections, made it necessary to broaden categories and have several of these newer Challenges be perhaps too diluted.

A smaller specific set of qualifying media is going to increase the chances of multiple people watching the same items and having something to talk about. If everyone watches their own things, it's harder for the community building take place. We might as well just be posting in our blogs or Facebook, or using DVDTalk's "what are you watching?" threads.

Even the horror Challenge had this problem but defeated it by creating the checklist and the daily themes and the daily subset films. These steps substantially increased interaction and, imho, greatly increase individuals enjoyment of the Challenge.

Do we need subsets and themes for every Challenge? Probably, but I think we need to do even more.

Break. Lots in my brain, trying to break this up into chunks.

Trevor

So is it even good to have these expansive multiple genre covering Challenges? By their very nature, and the fact that our forum is small, we're going to have 40 people watching 40 different things most of the time.

(And why do we even have a TV Challenge? I know it's popular, but I think that's just because pretty much everyone watches TV, so it's easy to participate. Seems like the majority of us there just watch what we would have watched anyway, and there is little in the way of community building. Plus we already have an entire subforum dedicated to TV, and monthly "what are you watching?" threads. Seems to me like that whole Challenge is superfluous. But I digress.)

Perhaps we need to go away from these expansive genres and create smaller focused Challenges that can't help but have more shared viewings?

This would bring into play Mister Peepers suggestion that Challenges be less official but just have people decide on a concept and start their own whenever. We could have multiple or even zero Challenges going on at a specific time. Anyone could start a Challenge whenever, if people don't join in it'll just fade away.

This brings to mind the often suggested idea that we try to obtain a separate subforum just for Challenges. I know that non-Challenge participants used to welcome that idea, although I'm not sure why a usual 2 active threads in one subforum would bother them. And particularly know with the overall forum being so small, it shouldn't be an issue. I'm opposed to a separate subforum, because I think it would further minimize us into the basement, and decrease the chances of new participants.

Stupid emergency phones at work, brb.

Trevor

Ok, I'm going to try to be less verbose and wrap this up right here.

A potentially great idea from Travis is to have six set-in-stone Challenges and then six variable ones where we have voting to decide on themes a little less broad than "comedy" or "TV" or "action etc etc".

Or, keep the 12 existing Challenges to satisfy the people who like tradition and want a Challenge to cover everything in their collection, but then also have several (or even 12) variable challenges to cover the missing genres, and over more focused challenges. This would also help the people who don't watch horror, for example, have another option in October.

Or, and I think this is my preference, but to sort of combine the two extremes. One extreme would be keeping everything basically the same, and another extreme would be encouraging even more Challenges and "letting" people start new ones and/or having different Challenges running concurrently.

So here's my proposal: we could keep the basic structure, but then encourage innovation and a less broad theme within each monthly Challenge.

Take Comedy November for example. Instead of keeping it broad, we would use the month before planning stages of the discussion thread to work out a narrow theme. Maybe something like the icheckmovies top 50 comedies list. But, in the Challenge's "rules", it would continue to allow any type of comedy for the traditionalists and anyone who doesn't want to participate in the chosen narrower focus.

Other months would have similar "compromises", but having to be a bit different with the months that are already narrow focused like Academy Award and Holiday. February might be good to add the Romance mini-Challenge. Drama might be good to run concurrently with Criterion.

Anyway, thanks for not banding together and getting the mods to ban me while I've written all this today. I feel like I there was a lot more in my brain, and many of the better ideas are from Travis.

But in summary, I'm still for slow change and keeping tradition, but somehow adding a bunch of innovation.

LJG765

I kind of like meeting in the middle-instead of 6 changed challenges, maybe start with 3 and see how it goes? If the majority of hosts/participants don't agree, I think having double challenges would work too, especially if they somehow coincide with the current challenge. Drama and Criterion seem to be a good match, as is a short Romance challenge during February. I also think May would be a good one to have two as the MYOC is so flexible.

I like the idea of having a little more direction in a challenge and trying to get more people involved in discussion about the same thing. I know in Animation, there are a ton of different icheckmovies lists out there and we already use several. As a viewer, it's nice to have something to guide you to acclaimed films you may not have watched or even heard of before. As a host, it does increase the likelihood of multiple participants having seen a particular film and increases the chance for more involved discussion.

Honestly, I'm pretty flexible in how the changes happen, I feel like I would be open to almost anything as long as things aren't completely tossed to the side just for the sake of change, if that makes sense.

The Man with the Golden Doujinshi

I think we should do what's fun and not put limits on things or force challenges to fit a format. The host and participants will have the best feel for what a challenge should be like.

If this were a company and not a dying forum, sorry forum, then I could see having rules and regulations.

davidh777

LJG765

Why sad at me being willing to change? I'm not saying let's throw everything out the window, but I'd be open to adding something or changing even just a little.

Trevor

I think David was perhaps pointing out a typo that completely changes your meaning. Maybe?

The Man with the Golden Doujinshi

I only read as far as him being open to almost anything before I stopped to send him a pm.

Then I read the rest of what he wrote and saw he probably was talking about movie challenges.