Yep. Partaking in other types of threads and actually interacting with other creators helps tremendously. Not only do you make friends and potentially subscribers, but you can learn a lot more that way too, which can help you improve your comic/novel.
I'm working on a community magazine with a bunch of people to try and get some more interactions going with small creators and help people find interesting stories that get lost in the heap, but every time we try to organise something or let people know we exist, our threads get pushed out of view because of even a single person going around posting on all the self promotion threads they can find.
It's getting a bit ridiculous when after 1 hour, your thread is no longer seen because of twenty threads, that are identical to each other, popping back to the top.
There's a number right after the link you posted, it's the click counter. You can go back and check for yourself how many click you get from those links you posted on promotion threads...
I agreee there is a certain problem with those threads. i myself created two threads where I celebreated my milestones and wanted peole to share their work. The fact is most people just put link in and run. People don't usually check out other people's work. You can see that on the humber of link clicks. I myself try to support other people and check their work, but it's kinda sad to see those threads don't help that much. I guess it's also because after some time you can see there are always same people and works, which is understandable. However, I don't know what to do with this situation.
Oh, I'll post the link then. I didn't want to do it instantly, because of the irony, but now someone's asked, here it is.
It's currently very small, but we're pretty dedicated to making it bigger and better. As you might notice, the older issues are a lot lower quality and have a lot more mistakes. If all goes as we hope, it could grow to be a useful non profit (and thus free) tool for tracking community projects and new interesting stories. But we're not there yet. Hope you like what we have so far though.
Those self promotion threads really aren't helping.
Oof, I feel kind of bad because I was spamming my story before. Sorry about that! I didn't realise it was pushing other threads down. I'll be more mindful and stick to promoting in only one or two threads at a time from now on.
Broad promotion threads normally barely work. But more specified threads tend to bring traffic to my works and I find some interesting work on there to. Some people honestly can only find new interesting works via the forms as well so maybe there could be less of them, but they don't need to go away.
Writing this will bump this thread back up, but I think it's kind of telling that when I'm writing this, two hours after the previous poster, this thread has been pushed down by 15 threads, 9 of which are self promotion threads.
3/5 of these threads are self promo. That's a bit too much self promo if you ask me.
One of them clearly asks for some commitment, and to not just post and run.
Two of them have restrictions, but they're vague enough that they still get crowded really quickly.
But that still leaves 6 of those being open post and run threads.
I have to say... I never really thought about it untill I stumbled upon this thread. I did some here and there but figured out pretty fast it wasn't really helping unless it was specified what they wanted. So I didn't bother to do it anymore. But now I see how annoying I was at the start :s
Yeah I agree, I do like promotion threads with a fun twist or something or very specific ones for a specific genre or theme. I mean, I genuinely like reading through the threads where people badly describe their stuff or show a part they're really proud of.
Attempts have been made to try and encourage promotion threads that require more engagement than the usual post and go type threads and in some cases at some points in time it's worked but as there's a continuous influx of new creators and new folks joining the forums, unless they are informed of the expected etiquette or directed to thread explaining what to do or how to do it it will continue to be the same, again and again, over and over. Even threads like this calling out about how there's too much/to many self promo threads are redundant.
At one point there had been globally pinned threads as well as threads pinned for each category outlining some of the basic ground rules and recommended methods of action. At some point or another they either changed or straight up poof and disappeared (they could still be around but I lack the time and patience to go digging that far).
The point is it's 100% possible to have promo threads that are more genre specific or have a certain set of rules to require more engagement that way rather than posting and poofing were encouraging discussion and engagement not only with one another content but the individuals behind them. But the only way that's gonna happen is either making those threads or informing new folks as they come in that that's what's preferred/encouraged or what have you. Someone's just gotta do the legwork 
Basically this.
I honestly think one way right now would be to close all of the old promo threads that haven't been updated for several months to a year and older. Because people do keep raising those from the dead, unaware that the OG poster and other users on that thread are gone.
Another way would be to somehow modify that pop-up message when making a new thread. You know how it goes "this title is similar to Thread X"? Maybe it can be modified in a way where it WON'T allow you to make a new promo thread if several others are already in existing with the same topic.
But that would also give room to people finding loopholes in the titles or getting bots to close them before they open. And then that could end up being "well, you're silencing users" and what have you.
There's also the fact that...people just don't plain read. They don't look at the OP to see that "yes, this thread is 10 years old and the last known post was 4 years ago. maybe don't post here". They don't look at a promo thread that has 500+ replies and go "wow, a lot of these aren't getting a lot of clicks. And it's already got so many replies. Maybe I'm gonna get buried here" They just post and go.
Can't cure that, sadly.
I'm enjoying the promotion threads that have "prompts" far more than the generic ones. Getting to post a favorite scene, or a line that contains a specific word, or an interaction between two favorite characters -- that's a win-win. It's fun for me to do, and it's also really fun to see what others are doing; I think it can give potential readers a sense of a story in a way that a carefully worded summary or elevator pitch can't.
So... more prompts, please!
Promo threads with prompts helped me get where I am, so can't really say the solution is to take them all out. Moderation tried to limit them before and keep raw promo to the stickied thread, but not only we have someone there constantly replying to every new post with their comics instead of just one and done, every new user that shows up sees a promo thread and goes "neat, I want to do that too!" since they don't know it doesn't work if it's just links and nothing else.
Concerning threads with prompts it'd be neat to see something like one or two new prompts a week or so, that way there's a couple different topics for folks to choose from depending on their personal preference or area of interest and enough time for people to interact, engage and keep things interesting overall.
Not to sure how to test such a thing out but it could serve as a decent starting point?
The problem with promotion threads is that for anyone who's been hanging around here a while, you've already checked out most of the other works and either subbed or know it's not your sort of thing. I think getting rid of the prompt-based threads, however, would remove a lot of interaction between authors - I made one the other day and I really enjoyed reading all the responses to it. Perhaps there should be some kind of avoidance of the 'drop your link and run' ones, and promotion of ones that involve community interaction.
I am guilty of dropping my link in the non-prompt based ones, but I do try not to spam them.
Agree with everything here. The interactions in the prompt-based threads are the most enjoyable part of them.
I think there should just be a thread per medium and genre, and you basically get to post your work in each of it's subgenres once. Then once every quarter the threads are refreshed and you can post again. That way every three months those threads would be cleared out, people could find a comic or novel they wanted by genre, and there wouldn't be as much spam.
Other than that, if you're going to link your work it should probably be in relation to the discussion that's being had (to provide an example or to respond to someone directly asking for it).
Honestly that's the only way I could imagine cleaning it up, making it servicable and keeping it managable.
