How to do a "Theme week" properly - a guide for idiots

Right, there seems to have been a spate of "Theme week" ideas recently and the piss-poor executio nof most of them is starting to fuck me off. Rather than repeat the same rant in every thread, I thought I'd lay out some guidelines here so anyone thinking up a great idea for a "Theme week" can come here, get some knowledge and hopefully not fuck it up for everyone.

So, simple guidelines in words even Elixir can understand:

1) It's not a theme week, it's an av/sig chain

Back in the day, we hardly ever had theme weeks. We had a Tifa week and Sephiroth week and a couple of others but they were few and far between. We did however have all sorts of av/sig chains going on, all the time and those were great too.

A theme week is so much more than different avatars and matching sigs. A theme week implies name changes, a new banner, massive board participation, theme related threads and events and all sorts of things like that.

An avatar/sig chain is where some people get together and create a bunch of avatars and sigs with a common theme and all wear them at once for a bit, it's a lot more low key, essentially.

If you're running a theme week, you'll need an admin's help, if you've not asked an admin in advance, don't call it a theme week.

2) Why does it have to be a week?

Why are you all so obsessed with things lasting a week? Why, if someone likes their av/combo, can they not keep it up for longer? I find this fixation with seven day cycles frankly bizarre and the more prescriptive about timing you are, I can guarantee you'll get fewer people involved.

3) Make it a noticeable theme

There's little point doing these chains if nobody notices. Take the suggested Mario theme we had recently. Loads of people here have Mario avs anyway, nobody will notice if a few more of you chuck up some random pictures of Mario characters for a week.

You have two options essentially:

Pick something obscure or at most, all use the same character. A 24 av chain wouldn't work nearly as well as a Jack Bauer one for example.

Have one person create all the avs/sigs so they have a running theme behind them. If they all look similar, other people will see the connection.

4) Keep it exclusive

Whilst big old chains might stroke your ego, smaller ones are always more successful. Loat Gaara, Qwarky and Face's Bonklers chain or Deni et al's Secret of Mana one. Simple but effective.

Personally, I'd recommend starting it in your journal, not CC, and advertising it in your sig.

And that's basically it. Simple, effective steps to stop us from having so many dumb theme week threads in CC. Also, don't try to schedule them all up, the more structure you enforce, the less fun it'll be. If one person has a My Little Pony chain and another has a Huge steaming piles of turd theme at the same time, just decide between them, don't go complaining that you can't join both at once.

Discuss if you want but you all know I'm right.

Originally Posted by Shin

1) It's not a theme week, it's an av/sig chain

...

2) Why does it have to be a week?

Calling it an av/sig chain and not a theme week will probably solve your second point c:

And i think when people have those av/sig chain signup threads they usually don't specify (at least definitavely) how long you have to keep them for so i think its pretty open.

Originally Posted by Shin

If one person has a My Little Pony chain and another has a Huge steaming piles of turd theme at the same time, just decide between them, don't go complaining that you can't join both at once.

Anybody who browses 7chan or fchan would be easily able to find a picture that satisfied both.

Thanks Shin.

I took a look at the "Alcohol Theme Av/Sig Event" and here are my EXACT thoughts:

Heh... I think I did this thread before... was more like "if you were to be a drink, what kind of beverage would you be? Name not your favorite drink, but what kind of beverage you think best describes you."

I guess I'm the type of person who'd feel more excited about prompt-based threads that inspire conversation rather than weekly "oop I call this image/character/object for _________ Theme Week!"

Quote:

the more structure you enforce in the forum, the less fun it'll be.

Sorry, I'll make sure to keep all these new regulations in mind when proposing my cornucopia ideas in the future.

Originally Posted by Rasputin

Sorry, I'll make sure to keep all these new regulations in mind when proposing my cornucopia ideas in the future.

They aren't regulations, they're recommendations. If people want to keep calling things theme weeks, using a really wide ranging subject and generally executing it poorly, that's their perogative. It just won't be any good, that's all.

Originally Posted by Shin

They aren't regulations, they're recommendations. If people want to keep calling things theme weeks, using a really wide ranging subject and generally executing it poorly, that's their perogative. It just won't be any good, that's all.

If that's the case, then why is my thread's title changed? I'm just curious of course, not trying to sound huffy here, but I liked my thread title since I had plans that went further than simply an av/sig chain.

And I suppose this is a friendly request to at least get a pm or something regarding this so at least I can respond quietly to any changes.

Sorry to be any trouble.

Personally, I think wide-range "theme weeks" are fine. So what if others are already using Mario related avs? There can still be a group of people sporting Mario signatures and avatars during a set time, for the fun of it. I think it makes more sense than everyone picking the same person/character, but that's just me.

Sometimes "theme weeks" are more than just wearing the av/sig. Sometimes it's fun to post like the character would for a while. Some people tried doing that during the FFVI week.

As for posting it in my journal, I did that first. But MOST of the participants came from here. *shrug*

Theme weeks work a LOT better when people are recruited against their will and consent.