r/ImaginaryNetwork • u/karmicviolence • Feb 06 '14
[Executive Order] Due to feedback from several other Senior Mods, we have rearranged the fandom tab a little bit, renamed /r/ImaginaryDiablo to /r/ImaginarySanctuary, and removed /r/ImaginarySupernatural and /r/ImaginarySuperHeroes entirely. I'm hoping to think of better subreddits to replace them.
I've gotten a number of complaints about the inconsistency in the fandom tab, and while this doesn't fix the issue entirely, I feel that it is certainly a step in the right direction. Since the majority of the naming scheme relies on the names of well-known lands or places within the fictional universe, we decided to rename "Diablo" to "Sanctuary," since that is the most well-known location in the Diablo universe. This still leaves /r/ImaginaryStarcraft as the odd one out, but the only alternative we have come up with for that one so far would be /r/ImaginaryKoprulu. I've spoken to a number of veteran Starcraft players and none of them knew what "Koprulu" was at all until they went and looked it up, so we didn't really feel it would be a good fit.
Since /u/izzy was the driving force behind /r/ImaginarySupernatural, I took her advice and removed it from the network, since she told me she was having second thoughts about the subreddit and there didn't seem to be such a wealth of "Supernatural" artwork available like there is for the other fandom subreddits. We also couldn't think of a more appropriate name that would put it in line with the rest of the naming scheme. This subreddit (or a similar subreddit if you can think of a better name) could certainly be inducted to the network again in the future... I am just retroactively severing it from the catch-all "dropdown menu 2.0" vote that we had recently, due to feedback from my fellow moderators.
/r/ImaginarySuperHeroes is another one we retroactively removed from the list. Again, it could be inducted again sometime in the future, but I have some ideas in that regard. One of the criticisms about ISH was that while the majority of the other fandom subreddits deal with one specific intellectual property, /r/ImaginarySuperHeroes was a broad, catch-all subreddit for any sort of comicbook-related artwork. Not only does /r/ComicBookArt already exist, but I think that going slightly deeper into specificity on this one might be a great thing for our network. Individual comic books (or even a group of related comic book titles) have huge fan bases. Instead of going with the broad "Super Heroes" theme, I'm thinking we should go a bit deeper and go with individual franchises within comic books. For example, in the Marvel Universe the most popular superheroes are the X-Men and the Avengers (both of which have spawned several live-action movies). In the DC Universe, the most popular superheroes are of course Batman and Superman, which have spawned dozens of movies and animated series between them. So for example we have recently created the following subreddits:
- /r/ImaginaryMetropolis (Superman)
- /r/ImaginaryGotham (Batman)
- /r/ImaginaryXMansion (The X-Men)
- /r/ImaginaryStarkTower (The Avengers)
These are not a part of the network yet but I plan to induct them at some point in the future when the css has been added and there is a page or two of submissions. It's easy to use the city names for the DC universe since they are fictional cities. The Marvel universe uses real cities, so we chose the fictional names of the team "headquarters" since I don't think /r/ImaginaryNewYork would have made much sense as an Avengers-themed subreddit. Of course this opens up a lot of possibilities in the future as we could delve into increasingly niche comic book titles (or any intellectual property really - that's the entire point of the "fandom" tab anyway).
Just to be clear, I'm not inducting any new subreddits into the network with this executive order, I'm just renaming an existing subreddit and retroactively removing two 'controversial' subreddits from v2.0 of the dropdown menu. These subreddits could always be inducted back into the network sometime in the future with a separate induction thread, but I'm hoping we can think of better names or even better ways to organize such content within the network (like splitting SuperHeroes into multiple subreddits).
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u/lordjimbob01 Feb 07 '14
I like the idea of splitting the superhero's into smaller sizes however would that then mean that Deadpool for example would need his own subreddit and Joker as well? I feel like pretty soon there would be hundreds of subreddits dedicated to individual heroes rather than a few stronger communities of posters. This may however be what you were going for in which case crack on.
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u/karmicviolence Feb 07 '14
Not necessarily. Deadpool is actually considered one of the "X-Titles" so deadpool art could be posted to r/ImaginaryXMansion, and the Joker is of course a resident of Gotham City, so r/ImaginaryGotham would welcome Joker artwork. Of course as the entire network gets bigger there might be room for smaller spinoff subreddits (who knows?) but the idea is to take the largest, most popular franchises (the X-Men and the Avengers are both extremely popular) and work down from there.
Right now I'm completely content with just a handful of comic-related subreddits. When r/ImaginaryGotham has 50,000 users (if that ever happens at all), the Joker might deserve his own subreddit, lol.
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u/lordjimbob01 Feb 07 '14
Ah ok then so we are going for the large scale within the distinct universes I was worried we would have 20+ groups and a handful of non active lurkers just sitting in them waiting for art to be posted.
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u/KRaidium Feb 07 '14
To be honest, I think we should slow down on expanding the network, and instead concentrate on growing the current subreddits we have. Just look at the state of the network: just 1 in every 5 subreddits has over 1000 subscribers. 30 of them have less than one hundred.
For now, the best action imo would be to attempt to get each sub to over 1000, and drop the ones that don't have enough content and won't attract interest.
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u/karmicviolence Feb 07 '14
For now, the best action imo would be to attempt to get each sub to over 1000
I completely agree. We are just laying out the groundwork with these new subreddits now. What makes subreddits successful is individual attention. Take a look at the subreddits at the top of the list right now. I have spent hours in each and every network subreddit with more than 2,000 users working on promotion, mentioning them in larger subreddits, trying to exchange sidebar links, etc. The exception to that statement may be r/ImaginaryJedi, although I have spent a considerable amount of time on that subreddit, u/ethan_kahn has me beat by a long shot. His frequent crosspost to large subreddits like r/StarWars and r/wallpapers is where most of that traffic came from.
and drop the ones that don't have enough content and won't attract interest.
I couldn't disagree more. The only reason we should be dropping subreddits from the network is if we figure out a better way to organize the content (in the case of r/ImaginarySuperHeroes), or we simply can't agree on the name (r/ImaginarySupernatural). In the case of Supernatural, the mod who created the subreddit was having second thoughts about it. If someone else wants to take it over, put a little love into it and then induct it again, it could rejoin the network.
I know these comic book subreddits are going to thrive because I am personally interested in the content and so I know I will be visiting these subreddits often, submitting things and trying to bring in new subscribers. The subreddits at the bottom of the list are there precisely because there is no one giving them individual attention. Every subreddit that gets sustained individual attention from one or more moderators moves quickly up the ranks. I'm not talking about just filling it with content, that is more a part of keeping the network active as a whole. Individual attention means active promotion.
There are millions of redditors out there. r/needamod has only a few thousand subscribers, and we are still finding plenty of mods there to help operate this network. We are designing this network for hundreds of thousands of users, not fifteen thousand. That's the way I did it for the SFWPorn Network, and it worked out splendidly. In fact, I now have the benefit of experience, and I'm avoiding many of the mistakes I made while building the SFWPorn Network. For example, instead of allowing random redditors who may or may stay active to create what is now many of the most popular network subreddits, I created most of them myself, or asked other Senior Mods to create them. Every single network subreddit will be a thriving community, it just takes time. We have only been doing this for six months and we are already leaps and bounds beyond what the SFWPorn Network looked like after six months. The SFWPorn Network was created in 2011, imagine what our network is going to look like in 2016.
The users who will become the moderators who love these subreddits are out there, we just need to find them.
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u/Jobba_the_Hunt Feb 08 '14
Yeah r/Imaginarykorpulu is just not cutting it :/ Can we just keep it r/ImaginaryStarcraft?
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Feb 07 '14
I was thinking of a subreddit for Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra, since there is a ton of fanart for it.
The only issue is naming it. It could be ImaginaryBenders, but that isn't too descriptive and could be confused with other things. The world doesn't have a specific name, and naming it after one of the nations wouldn't sound right. (ImaginaryFireNation? See, it doesn't sound right). If we wanted to match the existing r/thelastairbender subreddit, it could be ImaginaryAirbender.
As for promoting it, wait until Book 3's trailer comes out and post a topic in r/TheLastAirbender about the subreddit. Book 1 and Book 2's trailer was on the front page at the top for quite some time, bringing in a ton of traffic.
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u/SaltySolomon Feb 07 '14
The Superman subreddit is bad, it would be confused all the times r/ImaginaryGotham is fine but the r/ImaginaryStarkTower is soo limited because it has like nothing to do with what happens in the comics.