Gothic Girl's thread in Loungin gave me the idea for this. Basically it seems that Gamegrep has a very small base of users and members compared to its big brother Neoseeker. It's in no way small but a few dozen more participants surely wouldn't hurt and Neoseeker has far more than that.

Now in my travels through the forums I have discovered a few things. 1)Barely anyone on Neoseeker seems to have any idea what Gamegrep is, and those which do don't understand the mechanics behind it beyond "It has gaming news" 2)Those which do discover what Gamegrep is find the whole process simply to much to comprehend and often give up on any involvement then and there. 3)That people simply don't care enough to post news or comments, with little to no reward available.

Now basically what I'm suggesting are more links and ways to access Gamegrep from Neoseeker as well as more advertising or displaying of it. Simply explanations for beginners on everything and perhaps a simplification of the processes involved in general. And more rewards/bonuses for Gamegrep users and ways they can show off these and there points on Neoseeker.

I understand a lot of this would require a great deal of refining and that some of this Gamegrep is probably better off without but I feel we could at least discuss some ways to bring Neoseeker and Gamegrep closer together as well as enlighten more people on the joys of Greppin.

There are a few ideas in the pipeline that will help promote GameGrep activity and help reward users, but any related suggestions you guys might have are invaluable. How does everyone feel about having to log into GameGrep separately? Do you think that the purpose of the site is immediately noticeable upon first visit? Every bit of feedback really does help!

I would say Gamegrep's purpose is pretty obvious. It's a neatly set-up site.

I think one of the biggest problem is that people don't realize they can access Gamegrep with their Neoseeker accounts. Alot of them don't seem to realize that Gamegrep is joined to Neoseeker, and probably just assume that they will have to Register a new account (which is a pain in the ass to do, especially if they only want to rate or comment on articles).
If Neoseeker members didn't have to re-login to comment/rate/submit Gamegrep articles, I reckon we would see alot more activity from people who might click on a Gamegrep link from a Neo forum, and realize they can comment/rate/submit right away without having to login again or Register a new ccount.

A part of the reason I made this thread in Loungin was to see what general members think of Gamegrep. As I said in the thread, considering the site is a year old (AND can be immediately accessed by any Neo member), it seems pretty quiet with most articles being commented on by the same people over and over. Most articles will get around 10-20 comments and 50-200 ratings. At this point in time, I was expecting the site to be A LOT busier.
(I also think Vermillion brought up an excellent point about the general mentality of people who comment on Gamegrep >_>).

quote Silver Mirror

Now basically what I'm suggesting are more links and ways to access Gamegrep from Neoseeker as well as more advertising or displaying of it. Simply explanations for beginners on everything and perhaps a simplification of the processes involved in general. And more rewards/bonuses for Gamegrep users and ways they can show off these and there points on Neoseeker.

I pretty-much agree with this. Gamegrep needs alot more advertising and links on Neoseeker itself. People love helping out with the Wikis (and the Portals when they were around) because they get a "reward" (in the tags) and because there was alot of Wiki advertisements in the forums. Gamegrep is definitely lacking in that area.

quote Gothic Girl

I think one of the biggest problem is that people don't realize they can access Gamegrep with their Neoseeker accounts. Alot of them don't seem to realize that Gamegrep is joined to Neoseeker, and probably just assume that they will have to Register a new account (which is a pain in the ass to do, especially if they only want to rate or comment on articles).
If Neoseeker members didn't have to re-login to comment/rate/submit Gamegrep articles, I reckon we would see alot more activity from people who might click on a Gamegrep link from a Neo forum, and realize they can comment/rate/submit right away without having to login again or Register a new ccount.

I think one of the big reasons why NeoWikis are so easy to hop into is because you start off logged in. Whether or not we explain to users that GameGrep can be logged in by members its annoying to log into 2 separate sites. That's my view anyway.

Because of this I've considered a few options:

1. Move GameGrep into Neoseeker as a subdomain. Eg gamegrep.neoseeker.com, or just grep.neoseeker.com.
   1. People would automatically be logged into either site (they actually share the same login code).
2. Completely rebrand GameGrep as another feature on Neoseeker, so we would get rid of the concept of "gamegrep" altogether and instead use the same engine as something like Neoseeker's social news section.
3. Somehow merging Neoseeker's news and Gamegrep (GameGrep would disappear, so this is a variant of option #2). Some of the Neo staff feel this is a good option if we can figure how to do it properly, but I worry that the news will all get jumbled up.

In both options 2 and 3, you would still have a separate profile of sorts. I'm not really sure how that's going to work out tbh.

However, if we do not do one of the above options we can try to also raise awareness, this is a less disruptive change, and can be achieved by pasting more Neoseeker logos in places where it tells you to log in.

Integrating with NeoPoints

Probably in Aug or late July, we will be integrating GG's submission feature with CRS submission, so that certain submissions go to 2 places at once. Eg if you are writing news about new screenshots you will have to option of submitting the screenshots as images on GG AND also submit them to Neoseeker at the same time (provided they have no watermarks, as are required for Neoseeker).

The following content types could work that way:

• reviews
• previews
• interviews
• screenshots
• concept art
• release dates

Something completely different

I have also one really divergent idea, and this one is a really weird one. Do away with the whole GameGrep as a separate service concept, and instead turn it into a forum service. Basically threads that are of News worthy nature are voted on by members to be listed in the "GameGrep" homepage (they would be displayed just like the current GameGrep articles). There would no longer be any comments system at all, since the forums serve as comments. This one has its own set of problems, as you can imagine, but there will still be an article score, and users will still get to submit screenshots to the "news article", and etc. Also, people who hate going to a "gamegrep" news site will consume the "news" exactly like they already do in the forums.

Threads that are greppified will show a score beside the thread listing, but in the "grep.neoseeker.com" site there will still be categories like PS3, etc, and also the threads are automatically attached to certain games, but can be attached to more a la gamegrep.

Anyway like I said this last idea has lots of problems too. But I think it also has potential.

This message was edited by Redemption on Jul 13 2008.

Hmm some interesting ideas there Redemption, making gamegrep a sub domain is definitely a possibility. Integrating it with neopoints also seems like a excellent plan. What about the whole advertising gamegrep idea? Anyway we could stick a gamegrep link somewhere besides the bottom of the page?

Personally I really like the idea of GameGrep being its own entity and promoting the social "anyone can post" thing. Some sites have enthusiastically promoted us so far with that in mind..I think it works. To me, Neoseeker is your standard game/hardware site with all the bells and whistles..while GameGrep is something more unique (both have their place).

But ahh..thats just my take.
So yeah, I vote for more promotion/integreation between the two.