Forum Update and Reorg

Twitter doesn't track. They don't have open graph or anything similar like Facebook. Twitter tracks link click through, which is why they reformat all links.

 

Well there ya go. On second thought, I don't even have a Twitter account, so I'm less paranoid about it somehow becoming linked with my life at Wordforge. I've gone from "fuck no" to "indifferent" regarding Twitter.

 

http://www.wordforge.net/showpost.php?p=2357640&postcount=273

Yes.

 

Considering that it's subscription-only, wasn't the Gray Room supposed to be a workaround for the "Don't reveal any personal information from other websites" rule?

 

Good point.

If the Gray Room is cluttering up someone's board experience, they could always unsubscribe from it.

 

Aye.

My desire to clean up the front page is tempered by the Daycare idea. Since the Gray Room IS subscription only and no discussion takes place there anyway* I say keep it open as an alternative to banning. Create a new usergroup called 'children' or something, don't allow them to post images, and only be allowed to post in the renamed Grey Room. Sounds worth a try. I don't like the idea of forcing people to get used to not posting at WF at all. Especially if they are decent posters just doing stupid things.

I would like to see Green, Iron, Gold and Camp Wordforge all merged into one. Is Lanz still thinking about name changes? I liked that idea as well.

I also think all the Admin forums should be merged. I mean really, I get that Barack H. Obama didn't work out and was banned. If you have a boardwide announcement just sticky it to the top of Help Desk for a week with a redirect stickied to the top of the RR for a day or two. Make The Shelter and FAQs subforums of Help Desk as well.


*Forum consolidation isn't just about looks although that is part, the main part is that boosts discussion. By segregating everything out, you decrease the likelylook that someone will see (and thus participate) in a given thread. By combining them you increase traffic and posting overall. Since Gray Room really has any discussion, keeping it Member Only and open as a Jail doesn't really hurt IMO.

 

One other thing, the bar across the Top. A link to the Calendar? The FAQ? Is the Chat room ever going to be open again? What the hell is Quicklinks? What is the point of the 'Forum' button when clicking the Giant Wordforge banner DIRECTLY ON TOP OF IT, points you to the same page? I'm pretty sure everyone on the internet knows that clicking the banner for the website takes you to the main page.

I'm pretty sure no one would notice if half those buttons went away. Pretty painless part of a board 'refresh.' Combined with some name changes, updating descriptions, etc, and a little consolidation/reorg you could get a pretty clean front page.

 

No, the original purpose of the Gray Room was to protect our members from retribution on other boards after they discussed the "foibles" of those other sites. *cough*TrekBBS*cough*Wong*cough*

 

Ah, okay. I wasn't following that particular drama...

 

Anc, do you have OCD? Not trolling, just curious.

Because I do have OCD and I get that way about stuff too. I like everything organized and logical and I dislike redundant links.

 

This sounds like an important project for Nicky Boi to work on.

 

Actually, it sounds like a job for Gold Bond Powder.

 

Partial. Some shit I like to have dress right dress, others I don't give a shit about.

On this issue though it is more about good layout and design than anything else. A website's front page should do two things. Tell people the most important thing you want to tell them, and then funnel them into doing whatever it is you want them to do. Ours fails at both. In no way does it communicate to anyone what we are about nor does it make it easy to do ANYTHING, much what we want them to do. Unless of course we want them to click a couple dozen links and wander aimlessly around the abandoned rooms/links of the board.

As others have pointed out we don't have a typical 'hook.' Really all we have is a group of relatively smart/informed people that like to discuss/debate issues/current affairs. The Redroom is the closest thing we have to a hook. We need to communicate that and get people into the discussions ASAP (on reason I like the FB credentials thing, easy to jump in).

Reorg/Consolidation helps reorient the site along these lines in two ways. First it cuts out a lot of the dead wood. 1 forum out of 5 sticks out more than 1 out of 15. Secondly by combining less trafficked forums you make them more like the RR in terms of activity so that if someone does go to one of them first, it's not a wasteland.


The top bar clutter goes along with this. Over half that shit doesn't work/is redundant. Get rid of it. Get the front page clean so it is easy to communicate what we want to communicate and get people to do what we want them to do.

 

I'm a few pages late but I just want to weigh in and say please do not add any links to Facebook. Our FB user group is as close as I want to come to merging those two worlds. In fact I really don't think I would want WF to grow much beyond its current size. I don't like big boards. This place is a small, unique community. Other boards out there, even small ones aren't nearly as tight knit as we are here. We are a few hundred people that have gotten to know each other pretty well over the last decade. A little fresh blood from time to time is great but if the board were to somehow catch on and surge to several thousand active users it would quickly lose that familiarity that brings us all back. In fact if that happened we would have to start a new room that was for the originals only and that kind of clutter would probably be too much for Anc.

 

That is a question I've wanted to ask Anc...

Why do you think bigger would be better??

 

He probably hears it from his wife.

 

I was bored earlier and looked through the member list.

I counted about 260 active and inactive members who have made over 200 posts in the past eight years. The vast majority joined in 2004. And of those members, only about 50-60 are still active.

It makes me wonder what happened to all of those folks.

And I found it interesting that some very well known posters have actually posted very little over the years. For example, everyone knows Batboy even though he has only made just slightly over 200 posts in all the time he has been here.

 

He is a dual though. Bad example.

 

Someone lost the passwords to all their duals.

 

He'll answer that for himself, of course, but I can see one way that a somewhat (not radically) bigger board with new members would be a vast improvement: Getting some new topics and viewpoints. There is a real problem here in already knwoing everyone's point of view on all of the issues we're usually debating. Fresh blood would change that.

 

Yep, pretty much it.

Also, as time has gone on we have lost more active posters than we have gained. I hope Tex was joking about the 1,000 new posters, that is not going to happen. I think at best with some tweaking of the board, making it more attractive combined with coordinated efforts to both contact old posters (divide it up, have people that were friends write) and attract new members, maybe, MAYBE we can start gaining more people than we lose. At the least it should at least help slow the attrition, but even at best I don't see some raving horde of newbies joining up all of a sudden. At best would be a gradual increase in posters over time hopefully back to early levels, but even that goal might be too high.

 

That's really the issue. When people say WF is dying they don't mean tomorrow. They just mean that the path we are on of losing more active posters than we gain, or more active posters becoming inactive posters (You, Ash, Bulldog, ManAfraidofhisShoes, etc) is not sustainable. Less people means less ideas and viewpoints. More repetition. We already know what someone is going to say, so why bother with the foreplay, just go straight to calling them and their ideas stupid?

That is why I want to improve the board. So we stop losing people or at least stop losing more people than we gain in new members. As I have said, I don't think there is one magic bullet, but what we are doing the last couple of years obviously isn't working, let's try a variety of little things and see if they have any positive effect.

 

Talking about how Facebook integration works NOW isn't enough of the story. Facebook is creepy and likes to change the rules without notice. I think that's a good reason not to link WF to it in any way.

 

It has to be a little higher than 50-60 of the originals. I'm not a 2004 member since I was in Iraq, but I was a TNZ poster who joined WF in 2005 when I returned. I shouldn't be excluded from the count of older members. I've tried doing a count from the user list in the past and I always found that there were over 100 that I would still call active. That doesn't mean they post every day but they drop by and say something every 3 or 4 weeks. People cycle in and out based on whats going on in their lives. The last 3 months I've only had time to come post every 2-3 weeks. I still tried to come by and read quickly but time to read and interact was just non-existent. Now with things slowing back down at work, having completed our move to the house, and gotten into the routine with the new baby I am starting to have a little extra time again.

With a spreadsheet that showed logins by user, posts, and time spent on the board during each login if that data were available I could bust out a graph that really shows the trends. I'm not sure how website data is tracked, or the extent of the details available but I would be happy to give it a shot if someone on the staff would just give me the info in Excel.

 

50-60 was just a rough guess. Looking through those names it is difficult to determine who is still visiting the site and who isn't.

Does anyone know what happened to Lethesoda? I noted that he hasn't posted since last November...

 

He's only been sporadic on Facebook, too.

I assume he is busy IRL although TKO or Listkeeper may know more.

 

I don't see how they could force FB links on us without us noticing.

Look, we don't have to do it, it was just a suggestion someone made that made sense. If we try it out and don't like it, or try it out and FB then changes the rules we can drop it.

If we don't do FB for login credentials, I think we should brainstorm some other way to make it simply and near instantaneous for someone to sign up and post. It's hard enough to get people who might want to post on here to find the place. No need to throw roadblocks in the way, once they are here and decide they do want to post.

 

Okay, so some people were saying they liked this basic forum arraignment. So combined with Lanz's idea to make it Blacksmith themed, if we went with that layout, what would people suggest for names? If we went with the layout I described above we'd have:

Red Room - Furnace
Green Room/Gold Room/Camp Wordforge/Iron Room - Quench
Blue Room - Hearth
Workshop
Techforge
Press Start
Media Central
Help Desk/Announcements/FAQ/Shelter
Jail/Daycare/Whatever.

(I still think that at the least Press Start and Media Central should be Merged)

What about the other forums? Any idea for creative names for them? Maybe just a middle ages theme instead of just a blacksmith shop? It's open up more possibilities. Or maybe go just modern industrial?

Also I think if we do go through something like this we should rewrite the descriptions so they are simple and clear explanations of the rooms since the names won't be.

 

Honey I understand what you are doing. I do I really really do. You want things to move forward. And you are only reiterating others ideas but get a grip sweetie. They aren't moving forward anytime soon. They are dragging their feet. I understand you wanting to pick up their pace.....but you won't. And all you will do is annoy them into doing the exact opposite of what you want.

Trust me, I'm like you and I work in Education. Hell you were military, you should know this. You are not going to get them to hurry up by bugging them so much. Start PM'ing Lanzman once a week. If you get no reply them start here again. But stop harassing the masses at the moment. All you will incite is a mob.

Subtle is usually the best answer. Especially when your brazenness has gotten you nowhere. Pull back re-group and find a better angle of attack. This has been talked among the masses enough.