We need a thread for just making offhand comments about the current strip. Y'know, not really to ask a question or start a dialogue, just drop quick Goats-related remarks.

Like, a thread in which one can say
"I'm cocoa for cocoa pox!"

Would you folks be interested in us setting up a way for a thread to be automagically generated (say, by our friendly neighborhood thread-generating bot, HAL) for each series as it begins?

Or would it be best to just let you folks generate your own threads for series that you're interested in discussing?

This was an idea Phillip and I tossed around for a while but decided against. I'd rather leave control of those sorts of things in your hands, but I figured it would be worth asking you to see if it would be worth the convenience factor.

In Response to jon (#1139):

Yes, do so.....I've seen coments that were randomly posted in some topic or another because someone couldn't start a new thread, but wanted to comment/ask a question about the current strip.

Like the creamed corn incident.....

Maybee the a.i. generated comment to start the thread can have a link to the comic strip in the archives, so that if people are browsing through the forums and stumble accross a good discussion they can easily find the strip as well

In Response to Dynedain (#1141):

I'd say do nothing for now, but watch the behavior of the board to see if something like that would be appropriate. If it is the case that a discussion gets started for most series, then it's probably good to make it happen automatically. But if not, the auto-discussions will clutter the Pub.

I'm not too sure that adding auto-posts will stop off-topic posting. I've noticed that some topics comes up in mulitple discussions anyway, so even if the "right" topic exists, that doesn't mean someone won't post about it in the "wrong" topic.

That said, if you do decide to implement it, there are several ways you might keep the "clutter factor" down. Depends how much work you want to put into it. A bit of random brainstorming on the idea

- Option in user prefs to view series topics only if they've had at least one "real" post. Downside: could be a royal pain to implement.

- Don't auto-generate them, but make them "generate on demand", with some sort of mechanism in the Pub forum to say "i want to talk about such-and-such-series" which would be available regardless of karma level. Downside: also could be a royal pain to implement, and not suire about UI design.

- Handle it like the News posts (distinct forum). Downside: one more forum we all have to deal with.

- Two columns in the Pub forum; one for user topics and one for series topics. Downside: might just be visually ugly.

Probably none of these are really good ideas. If it's worth doing, it probably won't create too much clutter anyway. The question is, is it worth doing, and I'm not sure we can answer that until the forums have been around through a few series...

In Response to mea37 (#1142):

I dont think that putting into the current format would clutter the forum..... the topics get displayed in order of recent activity, so if threads about particular strips aren't used they'll quickly migrate off as active threads replace them.

In Response to Dynedain (#1143):

It's a good idea as long as there is a demand for it. I haven't been around long enough to make a decent judge, but if this is the first time the subject has been brought up since the forums started it might not be worth it to implement it at this time. Juggle it for a little while until the idea generates more requests. Either that or juggle the magic eight ball and see what it says.

In Response to Dynedain (#1143):

Yeah, that's a good point. Wasn't thinking about that. However, I'd still say it's just as well to wait and see if the real usage of the Pub calls for series threads before spending the effort to implement them.

In Response to mea37 (#1142):

First, I'm a big fan of waiting to see what the behaviour patterns are...the longer we wait, the longer before I need to figure out how to code it.

However, as long as you're discussing it...

What I liked about this post was that ti threw a bunch of ideas out there..nice brainstorming. Folks should keep doing that, and if something that just makes sense shows up, or we see something that we think a variation of makes sense, then we'll do it.

We thought about the having a discussion per series or strip thing, we thought about having one discussion for all strips, and creating a thread within it linked to from each series or strip, we thought about creating random discussions in random places (including other sites...take that, Kurtz!) just to confuse people, and then the beer was really kicking it, and so we decided if we had only had three thoughts and it was already kicking in, we better think about doing nothing. And we did.

In Response to mea37 (#1142):

Handle it like the News posts (distinct forum). Downside: one more forum we all have to deal with.

i think this is a better idea, all together. we'd have news, the pub, ring of fire, self-promo, patent pending, and the strip (name - strip club?). that way the pub can be for in general goats topics, and the strip forum could be used for specific series related topics. so those who want to make a comment wouldn't have to wade through the pub to do so, and those who want to just talk about randomness wouldn't have to wade through strip discussions.

In Response to beracjade (#1238):

Handle it like the News posts (distinct forum). Downside: one more forum we all have to deal with.

I'm adding my voice in for this. I, for one wouldn't mind being able to comment on series as they come, or old ones even.

Or where some sad git can say thet sucking all the water out of someones body could be done with plain old vanilla osmosis, not special reverse osmosis

Yeah, I'm a sad git

Igor

Today's comic is so vague, I can think of about two dozen things they might be talking about.

In Response to TheWizardofFez (#1313):

i might be wrong... but i believe that's the point.

actually, i'm quite curious as to where this entire series is going. for starters, the running "remember when the earth was destroyed?" gag is amusing, and adds to the surreal feel of everything that's going on. yes, the earth was destroyed, yet we're all seill here and really don't seem to care much either way...

then toss in random transition to diablo's comic adventure, which ends almost as abruptly as it began. i want to hear more about the one-trick pony, damnit! but the reappearance of jerrell was quite exciting.

now, about yesterday's strip... i must say that i was rather confused and amused. was i the only one that saw the link to the sexual innuendos similar to that of strip before? something's going down at the pub, and i must say that i have absolutely no idea what it is.

i know, i know, this was probably just a bit waste of space. but i wanted to toss my two cents in.

In Response to dirtygeek (#1348):

So was there a more unifying concept linking the series than A talks to B, B talks to C, and so on? I agree that a sick mind (like mine) could insert innuendo links, but it's hard to put my finger on anything specific...

Hmm... cocoa pox sounds like some sort of desise.. I don't see the attraction of eating POX of breakfast. Don't you curse people by saying: "A pox on you!" ?

Oh wait...this was supposed to have something to do with the currents goats strip. Um. In that case, i think the fish that lives in beer should...um.. say "A pox on you!" Yes.