Great feedback from all. I just took some quick takeaway points in regards to motivation in creating primers.
- Not many views/eyes on threads.
- Too long, too much work.
- Feeling that deck list is not "competitive" enough or too niche.
- BBCode is daunting.
Not many views/eyes on threads
This really comes down to the fact that Nexus is still a relatively low traffic website.
I don't have statistics but it just doesn't pull the same numbers that Salvation had in its hey-day.
There are a lot of criminally under viewed/little feedback within our existing primers. Like it makes me feel bad that some hardly get any attention.
From my point of view the community as a whole just needs to keep doing small things to help improve the website so that people can see that it is progressive in a way that encourages more people to feel the website is worthy of their commitment.
I guess one of the goals of having official primers is so that Nexus can be viewed as a premium way to post deck lists online.
I can't really give a short term solution to this. I think it is a case of being consistent with content as a community as a whole so that others can see what a great group of like minded Magic players they can interact with.
In my opinion the community has been really great so far. Look at the features that have been added to the website since its inception over the last year.
My point is that I think for traffic to get higher we just need to be patient and keep doing a lot of what we have been doing.
We have discussed doing things like more articles to promote the website in general, but noticed that these ideas definitely took a back burner due to real life commitments, like job losses and pesky child births!
Unfortunately this doesn't offer a solution to primer owners when it comes to their brand new content and getting an underwhelming response considering the time and effort invested. At this stage it is more a labor of love rather that a way to spread information to a wider audience.
Too long, too much work
@Guardman brought up some points about primers just having too much content.
Obviously we don't want to
stifle people wanting to write a lot about their decks and subsequently if some interested enough to digest it all if motivated.
So it really comes down to minimum content required if wanting to get peer-reviewed.
I will say that I've never been an advocate for "card choices" myself. I like writing sentences about strategy and if written well enough is going to explain the reason behind card choices in the first place.
I've also found that when I explain specifics in the card choices section, that more often than not a person replying to the thread has missed or just not read anything there. I think a lot of information probably gets obfuscated because it really is just too much information for them to go through and especially remember.
Often primer submissions are pretty short initially when it comes to explaining strategy and if I'm being honest I'd prefer authors to spend more time on that section rather than filling out a card choice section that has a reasonable amount of redundant information.
Oh "Rhystic Study" is a great way to draw cards...
Therefore maybe it could be like "key synergy choices" rather than totality. Then even when I think about my strategy sections they are more than likely to mention key card choices, so a section like this could be very redundant still.
"If it ain't broke then don't fix it". You might say well people have managed to produce the work in the past, so why change the format?
Well the fact that nobody has had the motivation to submit a primer in at least the last 6 months is a good indication to look at changing with the times.
I completely understand why we haven't had submissions as Covid has meant that people can't go out and play their decks with frequency and thus talking and reporting on it makes it hard. No point making a primer if you can't report on it.
@Guardman brings up some other points about superfluous sections, but things like "about me" are purely optional. I don't want to discourage these types of things if a person wants to talk about themselves or fill their primers with information.
But I do agree that it would be beneficial to have primers set out in a way so that no-nonsense readers can cut to the chase.
There are a number of ways a primer could be formatted to help with this, and too numerous to discuss (for me right now).
However imagine something like a special type of box that can be used to highlight sections so that a reader can skim to those to get a broad picture if the deck might be for them or not.
Feeling that deck list is not "competitive" enough or too niche
This is a topic that some of us have discussed before and we really want to promote the idea of fun/uniqueness rather than "most winning" for primers on Nexus.
I'm probably one of the people who gets effected by changing my lists to be more competitive as time goes on as I get more views on the commander and thread.
Often this leads to making the decks more inaccessible to the average person who just can't afford the cards.
@Kelzam has bought this up in the past, and it is a very valid point.
So I just want to make it clear that your deck can be as janky or competitive as you want. The only thing that is important is being able to explain it clearly, not card quality.
It is up to the CPC to make sure that we explain this ideology to people on the website and that we create a sense of variety and uniqueness among Nexus primers rather than a gateway to being a source of "best deck for this commander".
BBCode is daunting
I personally take it for granted as I'm a coder so I literally speak the same language.
We've worked on making a simple template for people to use, so this has been something we've addressed.
We also help with formatting with primer submissions if required. This might be something that we can advertise more in that it doesn't have to be perfectly formatted off the bat. There are people with experience that can help you with that.
Feel free to submit a wonky looking primer as long as the content is good. Making things look pretty is not that important and can certainly be obtained with some help from us.