Forum Update and Reorg

STFU and give it a fucking rest already!

Why? If you don't like it you can always go back to that better board where you can discuss more important things than the drama of WF.

Don't stand up for the oppression dammit! Go seek emancipation in the new havens!

Look...it's not about dragging feet.

The person who needs to make the decisions can't right now, for a million personal reasons that are, well, personal.

And I am certainly not going to take it upon myself to make these decisions and implement them unilaterally.

So, yes. It's going to take time and I can't begin to tell you how much time. You can post every hour on the hour and nothing will change yet.

Feel free to discuss it all you like, though. Just don't expect instantaneous results.

Off with her head!

I can't see how a bunch of blacksmith-themed forum names are going to change anything about recruitment and retention, nor how they would be in any way easier to understand than Red Room, Green Room, etc. (Because, let's face it, unless we change the names to "Heated Debate," "Light Conversation," etc., damn near any naming scheme we come up with is going to have an arbitrary element to it.)

It doesn't help a damned thing. Anc would put lipstick on a pig and feel like he's done something special.

Thanks for the update on what is going on behind the scenes.

Last time Lanz commented on this stuff he said he wanted there to plenty of discussion beforehand. He didn't want this coming out of the blue. I've been doing what I can to facilitate that discussion, is this no longer needed or is more community input a good thing?

Personally, I'd prefer less forums with more self explanatory titles (still a fan of Async's forum organization), but if Lanz wants to go with a certain theme, we might as well talk about it and try and get it as good and coherent as possible no?

Plenty of discussion does not equal continually repeating the same thing over and over again.
Can we give it a rest for now and let Lanz go over what has been discussed and make a decision?

As LizK says, discussion is one thing, but going over the same ground is not a discussion, it's just repetition......and, if you don't mind me saying so, it seems that the only things that keep getting discussed over and over are the ideas that you have, irrespective of the views you have already gotten on them. Since you are not resposible for making the decisions it could be said that this amounts to pursuing and agenda of what you think is right over everybody else.

So, either there are some new ideas to come from others, or it's probably time to let the powers that be sit back and consider all opinions.

The direction I'm leaning right now is to moosh the Gray Room into the Red Room, as activity level in Gray and its original purpose being OBE seem to warrant that move.

Then combine Gold, Iron, and Camp Wordforge with the Green Room. Finally, Media Central and Press Start would also be combined. The other fora would stay as they are.

Renaming stuff in accordance with my "Forge" theme could be done later.

There were, just not quite as many as in Press Start (obviously). Video game threads in Media Central started increasing in number once we started lobbying for the creation of the Press Start forum.

Sounds good to me!

Thanks for your sharing your thoughts.

Question though, why keep all the admin forums?

In my opinion each of the admin forums serves a specific function. All of them are very distinct. I can understand your point about possibly not needing the Announcements forum due to global sticky threads, but it's still useful to keep a catalog of official administrative announcements.

The question is that now that we have started talking video games regularly here on WF, is that going to suddenly slow down once they are merged? I don't think so. However if it doesn't work, if it doesn't help improve discussion we can always separate them out later.

Then make it a subforum of the Help Desk. The Shelter as well could be a subforum. Same for the FAQ. I'm not saying get rid of them, but just get them off the front page.

Lanz, I like your idea but I think you should keep camp wordforge and press start separate.

We have a lot of gun enthusiasts here, and I think they like having their own place...

Same thing with Press Start.

Press Start is fairly dead (though not quite as dead as Camp Wordforge). Press Start has 13 threads with any activity in the past month, while Camp Wordforge has seven threads with any activity in the past month. I don't think we run the risk of discussion slowing down much more. Both Media Central and the Green Room have had more activity in the last week (18 threads each) than the forums that are being absorbed. And if anything, that will direct slightly more traffic to Media Central and the Green Room.

I'm indifferent about axing Camp Wordforge and I enjoy Press Start, but admittedly it's a pretty dead place. I won't care if it's absorbed by Media Central, but I can certainly understand others not wanting these forums removed.

I dunno, I feel like they are forums that should be easily accessible on the front page. It makes sense to have Announcements listed first, whereas we hide our dirt in the Shelter and Help Desk towards the bottom.

Edit: oops, didn't mean to post three times in a row. But I basically agree with getting rid of the Iron Room, Gray Room, and Gold Room. I'm indifferent/bordering on "leave as is" for Press Start and Camp Wordforge, but people should post in those forums more!! And renaming the forums is a bad idea, in my opinion.

You mean all one of them? There's basically just the Shelter. I don't know that Help Desk counts as an admin forum, and the other admin-related ones are the Recycle Bin where threads go to die, and News from Within, which is where we release old Shelter threads. Which reminds me, I haven't done that recently and kinda need to get to it.

Sorry, by Admin I mean just administrative forums, not admin as in titles.

At the moment there are four such Forums on the Front Page:

Announcements
Frequently Asked Questions
Shelter
Help Desk.

Just like the Archive is a subforum of the Green Room, make the FAQ, Shelter, and Announcements a subforum of the Help Desk. Whenever you need to make an announcement, just post it to the Announcements subforum and have a global sticky up for a week linking to that thread.

The Shelter threads have always been a bit of a nonsense since the most questionable discussions are over PM. The Shelter is really just about how many time apostles reports apost. You could probably just dump it.

Moderator rotation is probably more key to freshness than the idea of transparency through old Shelter releases. Indeed, I suspect Anc already has himself in mind for a new modship.

As for "need to get to it". Fuck it, do it whenever you feel like it.Hardly anybody reads it anyway.

And born was Faceman Presents: The Red Room?

Could Press-Start be a subforum inside Media Central??

Oh and don't dump the Shelter. Make it a subforum of the Helpdesk.

Most of our discussions are held out here or in the Shelter.

Any PM discussions we've had lately have been initiated by members.

The truth is, we've all done this job long enough we generally don't need to talk about it much.

And unlike other BBS's, the staff here can say what they want and how they feel in the Red Room. No one needs to whisper in back rooms to get out frustration...they can just tell someone to fuck off like anyone else here.

Yes, that is the general problem.

Jobs for life, eh?

I don't even know who's on staff, but it's high time we fired Clyde. Nobody likes that guy.