The Return of Tragic Comedy

Scott Hardie | July 5, 2010
If you weren't here six years ago, it's hard to imagine that Tragic Comedy was once bustling with activity, averaging hundreds of comments daily. Now it's a good day if we get a single comment. Part of that is due to the same gradual shrinking of the user base that the whole site is experiencing (I'm working on that), and part of it is due to the driving away of certain controversial authors, who may have ruffled feathers but definitely kept us talking. However, another reason that TC isn't what it used to be is that the site structure changed in a way that sapped its strength. I have made five changes today that I hope will restore some activity in TC again.

Blogs have been merged from Exquisite Corpse into Tragic Comedy.
Once upon a time, we had contributions to spare, and it made sense to have two separate discussion sections on the site, one for open-forum conversations and one for more personal writing about our lives. Now that we've shrunk, it's clear that people are sharing on XQC to the detriment of TC, and the content belongs together. I have merged all content from the blogs into TC, and adjusted the display of each blog post so that it reads more like a discussion, inviting more replies. This change brings TC full-circle, since it began in 2001 as a blog.

Oddities has been discontinued.
I really liked this page of links, and I know other users did too. But many discussions stem from the sharing of a link, whether humorous or newsworthy or any other kind, and presenting links in this condensed format was cutting off conversation. Please continue to share the interesting things you find online, as either discussions or blog posts.

Discussions can now have polls.
When starting a new discussion, you have the option of attaching a poll to it, asking users for more quanitified feedback. It's an easier way to start a discussion, and hopefully a fun way too. (If you start a poll, you can leave the comment field blank; it will auto-fill with your poll question as a time-saver.) I look forward to some interesting questionnaires.

Discussions can now be flagged as being about Celebrity Goo Game and/or Rock Block.
Maybe you play in one or both of these games and you want to know what people are saying about them, but you find all of the unrelated conversations too distracting to bother. Or, maybe you don't play in these games, and you find the many conversations about them to be a nuisance that keeps you from participating more. If either of these sounds like you, go to your TC options and tell the site which kind of discussions you want to filter. This will affect current discussions, saved discussions, Dashboard, and email notifications. It will not affect search results or lists of discussions on user profiles, where it is assumed you want all relevant results.

Be reminded to keep participating.
More than any structural change, what will really help TC grow again is regular, daily input from devoted users who are trying to start conversations and keep them going. If you want to help TC in this way, you can have the site remind you to keep it up. Go to your Dashboard subscriptions and turn on "TC Reminder." It will show a message if you haven't participated in more than 24 hours. This activity can take the form of starting a discussion, writing a comment, voting in a poll, writing a blog post, replying to someone's blog, and more - all activity is good activity.

It's going to be a long time before TC returns to its former health, if that's even possible now, but I do hope that these changes are a step in the right direction. I appreciate everything that you all do to keep it going. There are more big changes coming to the site in the near future, all of them in one way or another about boosting activity and attracting more people. For some time now, it has seemed like this site's past is brighter than it's future, and this year I'm working to reverse that.

Scott Hardie | July 5, 2010
The other overhaul today is to the User Rankings system (both the combined list and the per-section lists). Besides the layout of each list, there are four changes:

1) The page no longer displays the actual "userrank" value. That number should be redundant next to the other statistics.

2) In the combined rankings, sections of the site are now weighted according to their importance on the site. No longer is Gothic Earth given equal weight next to Celebrity Goo Game. For purposes of computation, each section's numerical importance is based on how long it has been around on the site and the number of active users participating in it.

3) Tragic Comedy rankings are now based on discussion comments, blog posts, and replies to blog posts, collectively just called "contribs."

4) As site administrator, my own combined score is ranked highest. It's one of the perks of running the site. :-D

Lori Lancaster | July 6, 2010
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Scott Hardie | July 7, 2010
Yes, I'm cheating. It started as compensation for running all of these games without having the same quantification for my contributions that the player have, and turned into a mad grab for rank. Maybe I should just remove myself entirely.

I like the new home of the blogs too, but the blue page takes a little getting used to. I thought merging the blogs would be really difficult and time-consuming, but it was a breeze compared to programming the polls and the new ranking system.

Lori Lancaster | July 7, 2010
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Scott Hardie | July 7, 2010
Yeah, I know. But I usually take more time to think of more fair solutions, and in this case it feels like I rushed to a decision that really benefitted me, and it was a little petty. Or I'm just in a guilty mood for some reason and taking blame over nothing. Stupid brain chemistry.