What can we change in our process of idea development?

Yes, so, this is probably a pretty good time to actually address the topic pipeline. At the moment, we're basically throwing things at three or four walls at once and not all of us can see what sticks as a result.

I like the idea of using the Discord for initial "Bounce ideas off people" sort of thing. From there, if people are feeling particularly good about an idea, we could move it either to a google doc or the forums - I'm personally more in favour of the forums for visibility's sake.

Thoughts?

I feel like this is a good time to list what my ideal process is, and then figure out what went right, what went wrong and what just didn't happen with relation to it.
So here it goes:
1) Get the idea. Ideally, the discussion would start either on the forums, or start on Discord and then have a thread made about it. Often ideas are started on Discord and don't get threads made, even if they look promising, so that's definitely an issue (and partly why I started pinning ideas, but I can't rly keep up with that). To ensure that everyone starts off on the right page (pardon the pun), I (and 14flash) think that a rough draft should be written up before anything else is done with regards to the script of the idea. The draft would preferably be written by the showrunner and/or a few trusted writers who are closely involved with the topic discussion. This step can be done either before or after 1.5), but will probably increase the odds of 1.5) being successful if it's done before.

1.5) Voting. Ideally, the next episode's topic will be decided by a vote linked in the previous episode's description. Furthermore, immediately after voting is finished a showrunner should be chosen for the chosen idea. It would make sense that the showrunner be the person who had the original idea or someone that is involved in the idea discussion and chosen by person who had the original idea. That wasn't the case this time, but will be for the second episode. Provided enough people actually vote, I think this is the best way to do this democratically.

2) Start the script. Ideally, this would be done through Google Docs (Google Drive), so that anyone can contribute. If we only used the forums, it would be hell to try and keep one post up to date with everyone's suggestions, since only admins and the original poster can edit a post. I think this part went decently well, but I think that having the discussion in a different place than the script creates sort of a detachment between the two - things started being discussed on the Google Doc through comments, which was fine... but I feel like better discussions could have been made on the forums in some cases. 

3) Finish the script. This is separate from 2) for a few reasons, mainly because by the end of the script writing process we started mainly making suggestions of things to add/remove/change, which was much nicer, and allowed a few people to make the necessary finishing touches to the script (with the help of everyone else) without the interference of anyone else. Ideally this would be done by either changing the permissions on the document so only mods (we aren't even necessary, it just seems like a nice-to-have thing), the showrunner and maybe a few of the writers would have edit permissions, while everyone else would only have comment and suggestion permissions. This part didn't really happen, but by the end most people stopped actually editing the script, so it effectively happened (without any permissions being changed).

3.1) This is where we need to start collecting gifs for the video, since the script shouldn't change too much at this point, so the gifs should work even if the script is slightly different from where it was when the gif was originally chosen for a passage.

4) Record the script. This is where I stopped having much involvement with the production, but I feel that setting a timeline for this part is important, since usually it's only one (or two, since Rose was involved this time) people doing this work, so they need to get it done in a timely fashion. Probably a good place to get Parker's thoughts, since he was the main person involved here.

5) Edit the recording(s). Again, I wasn't very involved in this part. This actually had major delays due to needing some graphics (mainly channel intro and outro, as well as some channel artwork (banner and profile picture)), but those should be one-time things, so I'm not actually sure how it'll go next time. Again, I think this needs a strict timeline, since it's probably going to just be one person doing everything here. Probably a good idea to get Griffin's thoughts, since he was the main person involved here.

6) Release. This just happened, maybe let's talk about this later. Channel managers (basically the hype squad) play an instrumental role here. The video was posted to most mainstream social media platforms within the first 12 hours after the release of the video, so I think that went pretty well. It would be nice to coordinate everything (so that everything is posted within a minute of each other) in the future. It's also a good idea to actually have the video file when you want to upload it (long story...).

7) Post-release (comment responses). This is probably going to happen next week, and I will probably be very involved in this, so I'll keep you guys posted.

PS If I add much more detail this is going to become very long. I may just make checklists for each step, so that, in the future, everything can be done by anyone who wants to do it, without needing any intervention from other people, and with minimal risk that something will be forgotten about.

While I would like the remove Discord from the process as much as possible, there's no getting around the fact that it's easier to discuss things on Discord (partly because people are more active there). I think the best compromise is to make sure that anything worse saying is also posted on the forums.

Seeing how the first episode script was mostly finished when we got a hold of it, we're venturing into new territory with respect to how to handle the transition from idea to script. Having a rough copy to start from seems like a good idea though, so I'll add that.

PS I forgot to mention the transition from idea to script phase ( 1) to 2) ) on my previous post. Editing now.

That's what I'm proposing, yes. I'm pretty sure it'll be tweaked pretty often.

With respect to Discord, starting the discussion on Discord seems like a great way to get lots of ideas flowing. We need to make sure there's nothing stopping people from posting their ideas on the forums at the same time, though. I think we should all work together to remind each other to post their idea on the forums while we're discussing it on Discord so we can all chime in on the forums too.