Fanpop Article: Snerkie's say on Spots

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posted by Snerkie

Right, I have been thinking about this. I have been thinking about certain things on Fanpop recently and as much as I love this place there are certain things that irk me.

Hate Spots
I've seen spots that are about hating a certain thing. I thought this place was more about sharing things we enjoy so we can give each other images, links, videos, etc not "oh I hate this and this and this". It doesn't make anything friendly.

Me Me Me Spots
I mean no offence to anyone that has these kinds of spots and has created them but Fanpop isn't MySpace or any of those other social networks. It's a different kind of place to share common interests. It's like pointing out "I like this person but the rest of you suck".

Duplicate Variation Spots
If you want to make a spot, go ahead but always check in search first. It's extremely easy to check and if you have to make a spot that has a letter off of the original name then you've got yourself a duplicate. Also for some reason a while ago I saw someone end up making 3 spots of the same thing just named differently, the search engine is your best friend, don't be a hater to it.

Create and Run Spots
This has been said before but it happens anyways. When you make a spot, even if it's just for other people to enjoy try and give it these things...

-An icon
-A banner (even if it's not fantastic looking someone else may create one later for you)
-An image
-A link
-A video

You should be able to find at least one of each of them. Not all have to be done but if you get one for each it's just a little bit of help for the spot and the things there don't take long to find. Picks take longer to do but all these things can attract people to the spot.

I'm not trying to be mean about any of these things, they're just my view on them and how I feel against them.

LowriLorenza89, Nice-Guy and 44 others like this

DrDevience "I thought this place was more about sharing things we enjoy so we can give each other images" - Actually, I thought it was about The Daves making money by building a one-stop site where people can find what they want instead of going to YouTube for videos, somewhere else for images, yet another site for links, etc. Along the way is loads of fun for members... But I do get your drift, and I do agree with your major points. Duplicate Spots dilute the usefulness of Fanpop's purpose, and I have never understood why anyone would make a spot and then leave it empty. Pet Peeve, that.

dave Good article Snerkie, thanks for bringing up some very important points. We've gone ahead and removed some of the anti/hate spots because that wasn't what this site was intended for. Fanpop is for people who are fans of things and a fan of hating something doesn't really qualify. Plus that can lead to a slippery slope if we allow for a lot of anti-X spots. As for the me me me spots, we've been struggling internally to figure out a way to allow people to express themselves whether on their profile or in personal spots. We're considering different ways of handling this like allowing more personalization of your profile because ultimately that's like your own personal spot. Or we may have a personal spots channel so friends can share with other friends or fans. Just some ideas we're thinking about. And please people, when like Snerkie said, if you know a spot exists, please don't create a duplicate spots of existing topics (the big red message on the spot creation form kind of hints at this). The only thing it does is fragment the population of fans when the goal is to have a critical mass of all the fans of a topic together in one place so it can become active and fun. 50 Heroes spots of 5 fans is a lot less fun than 1 Heroes spot with 250 fans. It also makes more work for us when you create duplicate spots because we have to move everything before we delete it so we don't lose any contributions.

JulieL44 Well said! (This is so short a comment compared to the others... I'm embarrassed!)

DrDevience Can you believe I just now realized I can use 'report' for duplicate Spots? DOH!

Snerkie haha, yeah the nice lil' report button :) just creates more work for people though so would be good when everyone learns duplicates arn't fun.

PkmnTrainerJ [b]-A banner (even if it's not fantastic looking someone else may create one later for you)[/b] Such as Snerkie who has made some excellent banners for spots I have made. Good article.

Snerkie haha ^_^ thanks :)