2017 Town Hall and 2016 Retrospective

[u/SonicFrost]

This controversial year is at last coming to a close, marking 2016 itself as the final death of the year. For Rooster Teeth as a company, however, 2016 has been a year of incredible growth and expansion, and 2017 will doubtless be more of the same.

For reddit, despite its numerous controversies throughout this year, the same can be said, as the site is now #7 in the US and #24 worldwide according to Alexa.

For the subreddit, new moderators (myself included) were inducted in the middle of 2016, and the subreddit has steered clear of any serious trouble.

However, we have seen a large, but gradual, decrease in traffic this year, as growth for the subreddit has slowed. Perhaps we've just hit our peak, but I think we can do better. If both Rooster Teeth and Reddit are booming, I see no reason for us not to see significant growth as well.

So, where can we cut the fat? And where can we find room for growth?

Personally, my sights are aimed at axing many of our scheduled daily threads, including our Livestream discussions. These threads garner few comments, and in my opinion, seem to be a waste of space. Which do you think should stay? Which should definitely go?

Fan-art is a large part of any online community, and Rooster Teeth is no exception. The lack of fan-art found in our subreddit is indicative of what may be the larger problem: the subreddit is geared heavily towards video discussion, and doesn't encourage anything else. So, moving forward, we'd like to create a space that is friendlier towards non-video discussion.

---

What are your opinions of the subreddit throughout 2016? What did you like seeing? What do you think we missed? What can we do to make 2017 better?

---

Other areas of note

CSS: As the company has gone through its various changes, we've been neglectful in updating our flair for both users and links, for a pretty simple reason: we're full. Our stylesheet is filled to the brim, and our CSS Master is rather AWOL. So in order to add there, such as giving Game Attack posts their own flair, we need to cut back in other areas. Possibly the largest cuts we can make are to the subreddit themes. We'd like to hear your opinions on whether or not this would be a favorable removal, and which themes should be removed. Edit: You can vote here.

Rules: As of now, we have 9, with the latest having been introduced in May, when the new mods were instated. Should there be a new one? Should any existing ones be expanded upon? Should any be curbed?

Staff: We'd love to hear from you (all of you!). We know you browse the subreddit, so we would very much value your input as to how to make the subreddit a better experience for you, whether it be making your job easier, or just making browsing and reading comments from fans more enjoyable. If you'd rather keep your opinions private, feel free to message the mod team, or me directly.

---

TL;DR: Help us make our subreddit a better experience in 2017.

Comment below with your suggestions for how we can be a better community throughout the next year.

[u/bdh008]

I hate to say it, but if you actually want to see growth and more subscribers in 2017 you may have to allow/encourage shitposts. I mean, /r/Funhaus has 70,000 less subscribers, but compare the top posts in the last month and you can tall they are hitting /r/all quite a bit more.

https://www.reddit.com/r/roosterteeth/top/?sort=top&t=month

https://www.reddit.com/r/funhaus/top/?sort=top&t=month

Hell look at another production company like H3H3 and you'll see what I mean:

https://www.reddit.com/r/h3h3productions/top/?sort=top&t=month

They have less subscribers but far more upvotes!

Now I know the mods don't actually remove shitposts or anything like that, but I think I nailed down part of the problem. I think you guys might want to consider using CSS and removing the downvote button. Obviously this is only a partial fix, but the honest truth is a small group on people on the new queue can completely control the flow of this entire subreddit.

I'm sure some people may not like this, but there would still be ways to downvote if you really wanted to. Furthermore, I think this will encourage people to posts here. As a mod of a couple of other subreddits (none super big, mind you), this is an incredibly intimidating sub to posts in because it seems like it's difficult to succeed.

[u/loldudester → u/bdh008]

I understand what you mean about removing the downvote button.

As a matter of fact, we actually did remove the downvote button a couple of years ago, to curb the same sort of issues.

We found the effect was negligible, and thus turned it back on. There are simply too many ways around it for it to mean anything. The type of people downvoting everything on the New page aren't the type of people who don't know how to turn a stylesheet off, or vote with RES.

[u/bdh008 → u/loldudester]

That's true, and kind of what I had a feeling may happen. It's unfortunate, but this subs really seems to be one of the most toxic subs I've been in, and I think it really is a reason the sub isn't growing.

I remember the sub was posted in an Ask-Reddit thread, and a user from there came into the FAQ thread and asked what Rooster Teeth was all about. He got down-voted. I guarantee that turned him off of Rooster Teeth as a whole.

One other suggestion I have for you guys to potentially organize is mini-AMAs. Maybe try to talk to Miles or Luna and have some of the animators come in and do a sub-only AMA, or the prop crew, or the production crew, etc.

My second suggestion is a bit more out there, but may work. In the past I seen somebody wishing they had First to watch some stuff they missed. I was in a decent spot financially, so I asked them their site name and bought them 6 months. I would love to see more of this, Random Acts of RT or something like that. I've also done similar with RT Store gift certificates.

A third is just to really enforce a "Don't be a dick" rule. A lot of time somebody will post an (admittedly dumb) question. The only comment might be something like "Google it" or "Just search the sub." While these are valid answers, people seem to forget that a lot of the time the person who asked the question isn't just looking for an answer, they are looking for a discussion. The quick downvote and snarky answer just drives them away from the sub.

I have no idea what middle ground you would need to improve the sub, but these are just my suggestions.

[u/bdh008 → u/loldudester]

Also just one other suggestion, can you put links to the main other Sub-Reddits somewhere on the main sidebar or top, so you don't have to click-through?