I'm not sure how/when it happened, but apparently I got posting privileges in this forum, which I'm glad about because I think I have a lot of good ideas as to how SmashBoards fits into the community in 2018.
First thing that I think needs to be established is what SmashBoards is
not. SmashBoards' main trait is its long form discussion threads as a standard forum which limits it in some ways, but also gives it possibilities that are never going to work on other sites. If you want your daily Smash news, chances are you're going to Reddit. Reddit's upvote system and algorithms push interesting topics to the top and they gradually fall as the original post ages and gets displaced by newer news. SmashWiki and to a lesser extent, Liquipedia, are for data archiving. The flexibility of adding charts, pictures, and other sorts of formatting make these resources very simple and easy to use. The comprehensiveness of certain pages is sometimes lacking, but any page touched by Kadano or other knowledgeable community members becomes a gold mine.
The biggest mistake SmashBoards could make is to try to "out-news" Reddit or "out-archive" Wiki sites. Those services are what they are designed for, so you'll have a hard time convincing the general population to come to SmashBoards for those things when there are sites specialized for it. Don't get me wrong, I think it's totally fine for SmashBoards to have a news section and archive certain kinds of data, but that can't be the main focus. It should be more of a supplementary thing to the rest of the site. SmashBoards' main focus should be on discussion since that is where it trounces every other medium. Maintaining conversations on Reddit and Twitter for more than a few responses is all but impossible, and for Wikis there's no discussion at all. Twitch chat is the antithesis of productive conversation, and YouTube comments aren't much better. Discord and Facebook groups probably come the closest, but Discord's chat-style doesn't suit discussions, and Facebook groups aren't that accessible. What I'd like to see SmashBoards do is capitalize on this conversational drought by piggybacking off of all the content that's being produced.
With that in mind, the question is obviously how? Top players are always saying how much they miss SmashBoards, but then why don't they post here? There's a lot of reasons, but I think the biggest one is incentive. Armada's videos get streamed on Twitch, uploaded to YouTube, shared on Twitter, and posted to Reddit. With all these mediums, none offer any real valuable discussion based on the content of the video. As someone who prefers long-form discussions, it's not uncommon to find me posting walls of text on YouTube comment sections or Reddit threads, but the environment simply doesn't encourage actual discussion. I may get 100 likes on a YouTube comment and have literally no responses to discuss the issue, which is kind of lame. SmashBoards needs to reach out to top players directly and implement a way to publish content to the forums quickly and easily. If you take YouTube videos and other content then publish them to the forums in the form of individual threads, people can comment on and discuss the content.
For example, here is a relatively standard video from Armada:
It would be awesome if Armada could come to SmashBoards, paste a link into a form, and have the video converted into a thread automatically. The thread's title can be the video's title, the video can be embedded at the top of the post, then below the video you can include the video's description or prompt the thread creator to include a few questions or comments to spark discussion. Then we can have players of all skill levels properly discuss the video instead of throwing away comments on YouTube and Reddit. This not only gives SmashBoards a role to fill, but it incentivizes top players to use SmashBoards because they are able to share their content. The more people discussing Plup's Genesis 5 win in Armada's SmashBoards thread, the more people you have watching Armada's YouTube content and subscribing to him.
To increase the incentive even more, player profiles need to cater towards content creators. Right now, when you check out a profile, it's a weird amalgamation of different social media tools. I have users I'm following or being followed by on the left. I have a status box with a 140 character limit. And I have a wall where people can effectively publically DM me. I shouldn't have to explain how obsolete all of these tools are with Twitter and Facebook in the picture. I'm the biggest SmashBoards junkie you'll find in 2018, and I've literally never thought to update my "status" on the site. I'm not even sure anyone would see my status update within the week. Instead, I'd like to see a player's profile page be designed to promote them and their content. A profile absolutely needs to link the player's Facebook, Twitter, and Patreon. Linking their Twitch and YouTube would be nice, but I'd take it a step further and embed these things right on the page.
If I click Armada's profile while he's streaming on Twitch, it seems unforgiveable for SmashBoards to not have an embedded Twitch window with a big red "LIVE" begging me to click play. Hopefully you are starting to see why Armada would be much more inclined to post stuff to SmashBoards if it means he's got his 10 most recent videos in Melee Discussion, all of the threads are filled with players discussing the topic at hand, and then clicking his profile from any of those threads directly leads into his social media, Twitch, and YouTube content. Ideally, users would be able to customize how their profile appears. Players who stream daily can embed their Twitch at the top of their profile while those who are more YouTube focused can have all of the content they published to the forums listed in order from newest to oldest. Hell, even someone who blogs or Tweets can have these things embedded onto the page.
Along with this shift in focus to being a resource for content discussion, I'd like to see SmashBoards rearrange their forum structure as well. Call me crazy, but I think even in SmashBoards' prime there were a few too many forums that needed to be trimmed. Reddit covers all of Melee's news and it's just a single page with 50 links. SmashBoards has an individual forum for
all 26 characters... It's basically April and there are still several forums without a single post since last year. Like, c'mon now, that should not be happening. Even in the Falco forums which is probably one of the more active areas, there is only really discussion in one thread. Every other thread is from last year. This isn't just a waste of space; it creates this terrible feeling of everything and everyone being spread out. I don't know what kind of traffic SmashBoards gets, but if you are actually active in a forum it is hard to believe it's anything but dead.
The forums need to be reorganized so
everything Melee related is in a
single forum. There's absolutely no reason Melee discussion can't house all Melee-related threads since there's probably ~50 active threads, many of which have <10 comments and are mostly garbage that shouldn't stick around on the front page anyway (e.g. "Is Hbox the GOAT?", "Who should I main (Im Noob)", "My tier list"). While all the Melee threads can go in one place, that's no reason to leave things disorganized like on Reddit. Threads should more heavily utilize the colored prefixes in front of titles. If I want to make a thread about Falco, instead of posting it in the Falco forums with 10 active users, I should post it in Melee discussion with
every active user, and slap a beautiful blue "Falco" prefix right in front of the title. Allow users to filter posts by prefixes, and voila, suddenly you still have the Falco forums just be selecting the Falco prefix. When Armada uploads his video about Falco in doubles, he can publish his thread with the Falco prefix. If I decide to leave Melee Discussion filtered just to display Falco and Marth threads, I will see his thread, click it, and get to immediately watch his video embedded in the thread. Then I get to go comment about something I noticed in his gameplay or respond to something Armada wrote himself to spark discussion.
I genuinely think SmashBoards still has a place in the Melee community, it just needs to restructure some things, and I have more ideas beyond the ones I laid out already. Just for example, I think there's plenty of archive-related things that SmashBoards actually
is suited better for than a SmashWiki. Local Power Rankings in particular are something that don't have a very good spot. I have seen them on SmashWiki, but you basically just have to type in the region and search manually. There's no way to search PRs or PR history for certain players, and I doubt smaller regions like college campuses even have their PRs on there at all. Having a PR system and integrating it with a new SmashBoards ranking system that uses Smash.gg results (not sure if that info is open to use for stats however) would be a great resource for the community that wouldn't really fit anywhere else. Smash.gg has done a great job branching out to TOs and has tons of information, but I'm not sure they're interested in compiling stats and working with ranking/rating systems. This might be something they'd be willing to outsource to SmashBoards.
Hopefully none of this came off as nonsensical rambling since I can see everything very clearly in my head, but I may not have described it properly. Let me know what you guys think and feel free to shoot an idea down if you see a logistical problem or limitation that I might not be aware of.
