Has BoLS 'Jumped the Shark'?

[murrburger]

@ Melissa

The former. I don't care if an author is male/female, but you shouldn't have to keep reminding me..

[Melissia]

Most of those articles aren't by girls, but by dudes who want an excuse to post pictures of tits on the blog.

[Commissar Lewis]

Man, BoLS hasn't jumped the shark; a shark jump usually indicates a massive change in the work in question. BoLS still is about the wargaming hobby, and as it is a social one the articles about the cads that can't be bothered with minimal hygiene is very much wargaming related.

[Denzark]

Man, BoLS hasn't jumped the shark; a shark jump usually indicates a massive change in the work in question. BoLS still is about the wargaming hobby, and as it is a social one the articles about the cads that can't be bothered with minimal hygiene is very much wargaming related.

CL far be it for me to disagree. But I had to check this definition and as stated, it implies a drop in quality, not just a change in content. And to date only 43% of those who answered the poll think everything is as good as ever...

[Melissia]

... which is a very telling percentage, considering this is a push poll.

[BuFFo]

CL far be it for me to disagree. But I had to check this definition and as stated, it implies a drop in quality, not just a change in content. And to date only 43% of those who answered the poll think everything is as good as ever...

This shows that 43% of people weren't part of BoLs before the spring of 2009.... That was the season BoLs hunted sharks and slaughtered them wholesale, just before the IG were released....

[DarkLink]

... which is a very telling percentage, considering this is a push poll.

It's also odd considering that a year ago, BoLS was a fraction of the size it is now. Sure, not all the articles are great, but we're getting significantly more content than ever before, and there's plenty of good stuff to go with the bad.

Saying BoLS has jumped the shark is almost like saying that a show jumped the shark during it's first season. BoLS really isn't that old, and since it seems like it's still growing strong I don't see how someone could really think that after one single article BoLS is suddenly horrible.

[BuFFo]

It's also odd considering that a year ago, BoLS was a fraction of the size it is now. Sure, not all the articles are great, but we're getting significantly more content than ever before, and there's plenty of good stuff to go with the bad.

Saying BoLS has jumped the shark is almost like saying that a show jumped the shark during it's first season. BoLS really isn't that old, and since it seems like it's still growing strong I don't see how someone could really think that after one single article BoLS is suddenly horrible.

Yeah, BoLs has gotten more readership, which is of course a good thing. I know you weren't talking to me, but despite my shark jumping comments, I am fully aware that more readership is better for BoLs overall.

I am just having a little fun finding ways to use the word "shark' in my posts here...

[Koppenflak]

Wouldn't say it's jumped the shark, per-se, but I definately preferred the days when it lived up to its name.

...That is, a pre-eminent focus on 40k. I couldn't give an ape's behind for warmachine or flames of war. This is a personal thing of course. But the reason I came to BoLS to begin with was that Warseer was going down the loo, and the 40k niche that was BoLS was a very pleasant, almost daily, revelation.

These days I confess, I probably only actually find something I want to read every two or three days, mostly because of the amount of interspaced FoW and WM articles that comes up.

Without trying to kiss ***, I miss the prevelance of articles written by JWolf. Every time I read something of his, I could spend hours trying to break it down. Gamer Hygiene? ...Probably a little less cerebral.

[Kahoolin]

Yeah, BoLs has gotten more readership, which is of course a good thing.

I'm just wondering why getting a larger readership is automatically a "good thing" though? BoLS is not a business to my knowledge. Does Just_Me get paid for writing his fluff articles? Why the assumption that what they should be doing is constantly striving for more readers?

I'm not coming at this from a standpoint of "BoLS is my special website and I want it for cool kids only", but rather just questioning the whole purpose here. BigRed and the others present BoLS as a blog run by volunteers who love the hobby. That's great. That doesn't require a high readership though. They could produce the same stuff for a hundred readers as for ten thousand because they don't have any responsibility to deliver to people what they demand. There are no customers here, that is an illusion because in a capitalist world we tend to see things in this producer/consumer relationship even when its not appropriate.

My point is the authors of BoLS seem to have made a successful blog, which seems to have made them try for even more readers and content, but if this means a dilution of content (which I'm not saying there is, but that's what we're talking about here), why should they seek more readers and try to increase content?

I just don't see how BoLS could possibly jump the shark unless they were aiming to pump out content that they weren't 100% passionate about in order to meet some deadline of a certain number of articles a day. And if that's what's happening then perhaps they should assess why they are doing that? I'm assuming here that BoLS is still basically an amateur publication, albeit a very successful one which gives the owner a bit of extra money through advertising. If that's true, what's wrong with a couple of high quality articles a week and leaving it at that?

If the truth is that BoLS is a professional publication however then it makes sense that they should do research, try to find out what people want, and give it to them in the form of daily articles written by paid professional writers. That's the only way to guarantee a standard people would expect from a business.