SC Revamp

Yossy666's input:

yossy666 said:

You guys are missing the point. I agree with what
rich is trying to get across

What you have to understand is that the forum is
nothing. Rich is a businessman, and what he's
marketing is the main site content, not a forum
for the minority of members to kick back in for
their own entertainment, without helpin the main
site at all.

And arsonist, when you say things like 'rich
shouldn't focus only on the main site, he needs to
cater to the older members too' you're being
selfish. Let rich run his ******* website. It's his
career, his source of income, and he can manage
it however the hell he wants. You're a *******
teenager, it shouldn't concern you. If you don't
like it, **** off. Cos when rich says that he wants
the new members being attracted in, and isn't so
much concerned with the veteran forum
members, it makes perfect sense. Sure, these
new members will most likely get what they want
then **** off, but what they've done is increase
page views and all that jazz. Just because you've
been a site member for years and visit the forums
daily doesn't make you more valuable. You might
not like it, but that's the truth. And ****, I never
thought I'd say this, but people like vicar are
helping the site.

I'd appreciate it if someone copy and pasted this
into that thread.

He's right I suppose :/

*sigh*

....Yossy seriously said that...

Kind of level-headed, isn't he?

Yeah just because we don't like following stupid rules and aren't nice to people doesn't mean we're idiots.

My two cents:
I near-completely agree with Burn. This idea makes perfect sense to me, and I could easily imagine that activity here would increase a crap-ton.

You guys know my stance on this - I'm for whatever can bring good activity and decent, relatively intelligent activity to this place. I like the thing Derek is getting implemented, but I also have some concerns.

I'm afraid that for a lot of games (especially Pokemon and the like) most of the things posted will be common knowledge things that have no conversational (like how to evolve something) or other stuff like trading or asking for an AR code. Now that's fine, but if you go to the actual forum for the game and see the whole first page is "NEED AR CODE FOR LVL 100 SHINY MEW" that's a pretty big turn off. Looking at that screenshot Derek posted, it looks alright. But what would the difference between that and the actual forum be? I guess I'm just confused.

Another thing with this main site/forum integration - will everybody that wants to post be forced to make an account? Because I can see a lot of people wanting to contribute and then being pushed away because of the mandatory registration. Guests being able to post would, I assume, drive up activity, and that leads me to question how we would moderate it all. But that's for another day.

Now to Burn's points. I like condensing the forums. Certainly there needs to be less of them. However, there is a thing as being too condensed. I'm not sure having just one general board would work. Part of me thinks it would be too cluttered, but another thinks it would work. Perhaps two boards, one for TV&Film/Music/Cartoons/Books/Tech and the other for General Chat, the Times, and D&D. I don't know. The Launch Center and Gaming News sections definitely need to go, and just be shown on the main site.

I think having just one Gaming forum would be fine. With a subforum for Pokemon, of course. If I want to talk about Rayman Origins (which is a great game, by the way) I shouldn't have to go looking for the board that probably doesn't exist. I should just be able to make a general topic about the game and if that topic starts out as "Who has the game", changes into 'the games music', then into 'the graphics' and then 'the characters', so be it. That's how it should be. Now, currently if a game doesn't have a forum and you want to talk about it, we just say "go put it in General Gaming Discussion." But no. That isn't how it should be. That isn't what General Gaming Discussion is for.

Onto your rules changes and post quote gripes - eh. I'm fine with getting rid of the post quota. It never affected me personally, because I didn't get into the forums until a few weeks after I joined. Honestly, the 'oh it stops spammers' argument doesn't hold up anymore. Simply because we don't have any spammers. It doesn't stop bots, because we usually get them after they post once or twice. The way I see it, the quota only deters new members from coming back. I know I wouldn't like it if I was doing nothing wrong and somebody blocked my post button simply because I was new.

As for your rule changes, I've pretty much got an 'if it isn't illegal and can't get you or me in trouble, go ahead' attitude. Most of the filters should be removed imo. As long as people don't get ridiculous and feel the need to add in a cuss every other word, I don't really care what is said. If people can show respect and not act like 12 year olds who just learned new words, removing the swear filters should be fine. I try and be as lenient as I can with everyone here. And if you all have noticed, since we had the staff purge and made the rules more lax, activity has about doubled. There's only so much we can do in the way off rules though. Obviously stuff like porn and anything illegal will never be allowed here. This is, after all, a video game website. But for nearly everything else, I'm fine with it.

Only needing two mods I'm not too sure about. Obviously I'm going to see that, being a normal moderator and thus at the most risk to lose my place if something like this happened, but I believe we would need just a few more than that if everything was as condensed as you want. It'd be good to have at least one Staff member on at all times, but that probably isn't realistic. Mods is probably another thing, like the removal of the filters, that we would have to try for a bit and make changes based on how the community is reacting.

I like the skin we've got now. It fits with the main site. Not too sure what a redesign would look like, unless he main site was also redone. That would probably be pretty low on the list, as stuff like that can take a long time.

All in all, I'm not too sure what's best for the future of this site. It isn't my place to decide that. But if we are ever going to be active like before, changes need to be made. Whether it's integrating the forums with the main site or simply condensing them. Something needs to be done. And remember, while money is important, the experience of the user should always be at the top of the list. The established community should not be sacrificed to bring in more revenue.

I can't tell you whose got the better plan. Derek's, I think, would bring in more guests and new users. But I'm not sure it would do much for the established community (us). However, that seems to be what the future holds. Burn's idea would bring up activity among the people already here. And if they were shown of on the main site more, I can see it bringing in new members who won't be deterred by the sheer amount of inactive forums we've got.

Whatever the case, it'll be interesting to see how the future unfolds.

Edit - Just saw yossy's input, and he is right. It is Rich's site and he can do whatever the hell he wants. But that doesn't mean that the forums should be completely ignored. There's gotta be ways to make both the main site and forums better. Finding those ways to get the best of both worlds just takes time and energy, and not everybody is going to get what they want. This may just be the opinion of an old forum member who is afraid of being forgotten, but I don't think it's right for the forums to be discarded. Call me selfish, but that's my opinion.

I realize that isn't what's happening. We all want what we thing is best for the site.

Also what the hell this post is so long.

« Last edited by steelersrock01 on Apr 15th 2012 »

Well, I think we can all agree that this big evil troll who keeps evading bans is actually level headed and right.

Yeah... I never thought he would see things from my point of view...

By the way, Rich should TOTALLY let me work on the site. I'll be the first root to give half a damn about the forums. <3

No like change...

But in my opinion we should start with just getting rid of all the specific game forums that don't get any activity at all and only have specific game forums for popular game series such as pokemon or COD. Just a huge waste to have that many forums up and majority don't have much more than a few posts in them. From there I think it would be smart to move into condensing the forums a little more to make them more organized.

The post limit really doesn't seem so bad, I mean it might drive a few new members off so it would probably be smart to raise it to maybe like 30-40 posts a day for a week.

Relaxing the rules a bit doesn't seem necessary, they are pretty laz as they are now and as this is supposed to be a "family friendly" site the curse word filter thingy is reasonable. The double post rule is pretty lax right now too as well as off-topic posts. But I think the off-topic posts should still be kept, a topic is made to discuss one or a few ideas.

No revamp, that is just unneeded work, the main site and forums look really good already. And we are given the nice little choice of which design we want, red, white, or black. (Black is best) It looks pretty cool already compared to some other gaming sites it is alot more inviting.

If Rich gave Derek Admin, activity would plummet for sure.

Maybe part of the problem isn't in the forum setup itself but the fact that half of the new members don't even know about the forums. We're sitting here wondering why people won't buy the product when we have a tiny link in a navbar and five links at the bottom of the main site to promote it.

I agree that things are a bit spread out and in some cases need to be condensed, but not drastically. Perhaps feature the forums on the main page a bit more, perhaps put an image of it in the ticker-type thing we have. How many people know about the MVP awards? How many people know we actually have a semi-active community?

You can change and herd the cattle however you want, but you gotta show them where the grass actually is to begin with.

dark_wolf_33 said:

You can change and herd the cattle however you want, but you gotta show them where the grass actually is to begin with.

That's why Rich is working on merging the forums with the site, check Vicars posts on the first page.

As for my input: I'd be in favour of raising the limit up beyond 20 and lowering the number of days from a week to like 3 or so days.

I'd also be in favour of merging all the general boards into one and increasing the number of topics shown on each page.

Then I'd also be in favour of keeping the pokemon boards as they are, but merging all the other boards into one called "Gaming". Again this board has an increased topics per page limit and what you would have is one topic per game in this forum with the title being the name of that game (or if its a popular SERIES like cod, the name of the series) so that people can ctrl+f to find it quickly. Then to make it actually work with Rich's idea, you could even work something out where when looking for somewhere to redirect users who are posting a lot on a game on the main site, the site searches that forum by topic title and finds the topic title they need (if there is one) or creates one with the name of the game/series.

At the end of the day though, all of these points should be ideally directed at Rich. I saw a few posts in this thread which I felt were directed at people like me, appointed staff members. The truth of the matter is our job is to make sure the forums are clean and in line with what Rich wants, but after that our input is null and void. It's all up to Rich.

TestVirus101 said:

dark_wolf_33 said:

You can change and herd the cattle however you want, but you gotta show them where the grass actually is to begin with.

That's why Rich is working on merging the forums with the site, check Vicars posts on the first page.

I had no idea when that was going to occur, so I guess my suggestion is more for the meantime.

I'm not entirely sure that merging every general board into one giant general board is a good idea. Sure, it would make that one forum incredibly active, I'll give the argument that, but it would be a mess. A mass of topics about TV shows, a slew of fan fiction and role play topics, the general GC nonsense and banter, anime and manga chats, all put under one roof. Mercy upon us if Forum Games is merged in as well.

If things are going to be heavily condensed, my meager suggestion would be that instead of one massive forum, we have three or four general boards.

dark_wolf_33 said:

TestVirus101 said:

dark_wolf_33 said:

You can change and herd the cattle however you want, but you gotta show them where the grass actually is to begin with.

That's why Rich is working on merging the forums with the site, check Vicars posts on the first page.

I had no idea when that was going to occur, so I guess my suggestion is more for the meantime.

I'm not entirely sure that merging every general board into one giant general board is a good idea. Sure, it would make that one forum incredibly active, I'll give the argument that, but it would be a mess. A mass of topics about TV shows, a slew of fan fiction and role play topics, the general GC nonsense and banter, anime and manga chats, all put under one roof. Mercy upon us if Forum Games is merged in as well.

If things are going to be heavily condensed, my meager suggestion would be that instead of one massive forum, we have three or four general boards.

Forum Games would be kept, yeah. I'd probably give FF/RP it's own space despite it not being particularly active these days. I'd say an "Entertainment" board for music, tv/film, sports and anime etc. could be beneficial.

I was going to suggest exactly the same thing. A "Media" type board, a "Fiction/Roleplay" type board, and a "General" type board.

« Last edited by dark_wolf_33 on Apr 15th 2012 »

sphynxx said:

If Rich gave Derek Admin, activity would plummet for sure.

Yeah probably from all the existing members leaving but there's always the possibility of new members.

Lol this entire topic is probably going to change nothing anyways :/

I'm all for Derek being admin, he's probably the only one active that cares enough.

Nah, he sucks.

And so do you

Yeah, but he's all "shlurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrp vrooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom" like some kind of wierd vacuum cleaner. I'm kind of like a basin plug that's just had a tiny amount of water in it - just enough to get a lil suction, but not enough to say I truly suck :D