Topic: Forum restructure thoughts.

[K-man]

I know a few of us have mentioned the lackluster pacing on the board lately.  Some of this is the fact of the banal day-to-day conversation (and trolling Cools!) has moved to the IRC chatroom.  I believe we are officially at a point where having a ton of separate forums is pointless and diluting the little discussion we have going on here.  I certainly don't think we need to separate "serious discussion" from general discussion.  I think we're all mature enough here to be able to distinguish.  I never visit the Art and Entertainment forums, but might feel inclined to interact more if those threads were in a general catchall forum.

Gaming gets enough traction that it warrants sticking around, for sure.  World of Warcraft?  People still play that?  Well aside from Pyro.

Anyhow, just a thought I had that might improve the overall flow of the board and perhaps make it seem more busy.  Of course the best way to make the board seem more busy is to POST MORE THREADS AND RESPONSES!

What say you community?

[Cobra951]

I guess I'm behind the times.  It's been a while since I've visited the IRC chat. 

My thought is that we need some forum separation, if perhaps not as much as we have now.  I can see art and entertainment moving into the general forum, but games, which are the reason for this community coming together in the first place, should probably keep their own forum.  And serious topics, which can get so heated by their very nature, should not intrude into the pleasant daily banter.  Right now, I don't even have to look at the thread titles there, and I'd like to keep it that way.

[TheOtherBelmont]

Moving Art and Entertainment into the general forum is probably not a bad idea, as well as getting rid of the WoW forum and just combining it into the Gaming forum.  I agree with Cobra on keeping the Serious Topics separate how they are now though. Help and Podcast could be merged into General, maybe Podcast could just have a sticky on General for archive purposes so someone doesn't have to dig for them.  As funny as Where's Beatrice is, that could be archived on a sticky somewhere and locked if someone wanted to so it doesn't get added to anymore since that joke has played itself out now.  Overall, I could picture the forum being like this:

Community
----------------------------------------
General Discussion
General Gaming
Serious Topics


Administrative
----------------------------------------
Suggestions and Issues
Site Updates

[PyroMenace]

Moving Art and Entertainment into the general forum is probably not a bad idea, as well as getting rid of the WoW forum and just combining it into the Gaming forum.  I agree with Cobra on keeping the Serious Topics separate how they are now though. Help and Podcast could be merged into General, maybe Podcast could just have a sticky on General for archive purposes so someone doesn't have to dig for them.  As funny as Where's Beatrice is, that could be archived on a sticky somewhere and locked if someone wanted to so it doesn't get added to anymore, but that joke has played itself out now.  Overall, I could picture the forum being like this:

Community
----------------------------------------
General Discussion
General Gaming
Serious Topics


Administrative
----------------------------------------
Suggestions and Issues
Site Updates

Everything he said.

[K-man]

Yeah I'd go along with that.

[Pugnate]

Yea I agree.

[Xessive]

Let's roll with it.

[idolminds]

Sounds like I can do some restructuring later.

[Pugnate]

Sounds like I can do some restructuring later. If you know what I mean. 

Don't know why that sounded dirty.

[Cools!]

General
Gaming
Serious
Art and Entertainment
---
Help and Suggestions
Site Updates

[Pugnate]

General
Gaming
Serious
Somber
Grim
---
The D Forum.
Site Updates

[W7RE]

I'm for the serious discussions staying in a separate forum. I never go there because when I do, I feel the urge to argue, and I hate that. I'd rather just stay out.

[MysterD]

The D Forum.

I wanna hear more about this forum...

[scottws]

I'm not against any suggested restructuring but there are some things to consider:

• The forum software does not have any built-in functionality to combine different boards.  I'm sure that threads in a board that will be shuttered can be moved to another board via SQL scripts in PhpMyAdmin, but I can't tell you what fields would need to be changed and I advise that whoever is going to do this first seeks help on the SMF boards for instructions.
• The help forum uses a plugin that added and uses two custom tables in the database.  I don't know what merging this board with another might do.  I imagine uninstalling the plugin first would be a start, though I'm not sure if this would drop those two custom tables.

Before making any changes, make sure to back up both the forum file structure and database!

[idolminds]

Yeah there is no quick "merge boards", but there is a mass move option so I can move threads from one board to another and then delete the empty board. I have merged the WoW board in with gaming. I think Im going to leave "Help" alone for the time being since...yeah, dont know what merging that would end up doing.

So...Wheres Beatrice can go in General I guess, Or I could make it a child board of General. Havent decided. And whats the thoughts on the Art and Entertainment boards. Merge them into "Arts And Entertainment" or just throw it all into General and be done with it? They don't really need to be separated.

[TheOtherBelmont]

Yeah there is no quick "merge boards", but there is a mass move option so I can move threads from one board to another and then delete the empty board. I have merged the WoW board in with gaming. I think Im going to leave "Help" alone for the time being since...yeah, dont know what merging that would end up doing.

So...Wheres Beatrice can go in General I guess, Or I could make it a child board of General. Havent decided. And whats the thoughts on the Art and Entertainment boards. Merge them into "Arts And Entertainment" or just throw it all into General and be done with it? They don't really need to be separated.

I would say you could just delete Where's Beatrice and Help then.  Help doesn't really seem like it needs its own board, yeah it has that thing where you can mark what did and did not help but I don't see that as a big deal since someone could just make a post on General Discussion asking for help and then stating what fixed it in a post. Podcast could just be deleted too probably since nothing has been done with that for so long. I would say to merge Arts and Entertainment over into General and be done with it.  I'm guessing it will sort the topics by date even when you merge them all at once and it won't lump all of the recently moved threads to the top of General Discussion, right?

[idolminds]

Yeah it all gets sorted by date.

[scottws]

I'm not for deleting anything.  Personally, I like how pretty much every post ever created is still present.  In fact not that long ago I went through all the Help forum posts and read everything.

[Xessive]

I agree. A lot of great stuff to hold on to.

Maybe we can have an archive section to put the stuff that we can't merge?

[TheOtherBelmont]

Maybe we can have an archive section to put the stuff that we can't merge?

This is what I was originally thinking to do, but maybe I misunderstood a previous post and thought that wasn't an option.  I'll take back my previous statement to delete Help, Podcast, and Where's Beatrice if it can be archived.  Maybe make some kind of Archive forum that has everything locked so new posts can't be made to them but can be viewed by anyone wishing to do so?

[idolminds]

Yeah that I can do.