Xandra
Prowler
- Joined
- Nov 30, 2005
- Posts
- 1,119
- Location
- In exile
- Society
- The British Empire
- Avatar Name
- Xandra "MadMaiden" Xandottir
Hi,
This is a difficult theme. It's about the very basics. I know that the forum owner has a strong idea about how this should be handled - and I happen to disagree.
This now is not a call for insurgence, rebellion or riots - it's more a call for discussion, reasoning, thinking about and maybe find a way suiting all of our needs.
The current state:
EF is meant in a way that any thread should be posted in one of the many, sometimes well hidden, subforums. The "General Discussion" is only meant for the few topics that wouldn't suit elsewhere, and should generally be avoided. This is what I read from the descriptions, and from what have I have got as reply by the powers that are when asking about this.
How others do this:
This is very different to the huge majority of game forums where "General Discussion" is the central point. Close to any threads are made there, as long as they are not this specialized from the beginning to belong to a special interest sub forum.
Reading "General discussion" on a regular basis will give you a good overview what's happening, and you'll notice the left over topics that have been moved to the specialized sub forums.
You'd need to read "General Discussion" and the few special interest forums of your choice, and you'd be up to date.
Why does this hurt:
As mentioned, in other forums you'd read "General discussion" and would be on top of the daily news.
Not here. Since there's no "Collect all" forum in EF, since there's strong advice to bury your thread in one of the many sometimes quite remote sub forums you need to read them all. Not just "General" and the few most interesting to you, you need to read them all, or you'd risk to miss important information.
In other forums, anything of general interest will first be posted to "General", then maybe moved to a better suiting sub forum, leaving a notice. While this is kind of work for the Forum Admins and Mods it has a huge benefit for the users: Anybody checking "General" on a regular basis will rarely ever miss something of "General Interest".
Consequences:
The way it's done here is causing a lot of missings. Who really checks every other sub forum? So things like this are possible:
Today, in a thread of random, I read a remark about Bolgar, followed by a link to the thread explaining its missing. This lead to "Greetings and Messages", buried at the very bottom of the thread list.
There I found the message of his death.
Is it really approbate to bury messages of the death of a most prominent participant in a remote sub forum out of anybody's sight? Wouldn't such cry for being prominently placed in a main forum anybody reads?
So my question:
Tell us what you are thinking of this. Are you happy with the current state, or would you like a change like I mentioned? If you are Admin/ Mod/ Owner of this site, what do you think? A chance to change?
(Usual "Have fun!" skipped due to the mentioned passing of one of us. Thinking of "fun" when you just read about the death of a good friend seems just wrong.)
This is a difficult theme. It's about the very basics. I know that the forum owner has a strong idea about how this should be handled - and I happen to disagree.
This now is not a call for insurgence, rebellion or riots - it's more a call for discussion, reasoning, thinking about and maybe find a way suiting all of our needs.
The current state:
EF is meant in a way that any thread should be posted in one of the many, sometimes well hidden, subforums. The "General Discussion" is only meant for the few topics that wouldn't suit elsewhere, and should generally be avoided. This is what I read from the descriptions, and from what have I have got as reply by the powers that are when asking about this.
How others do this:
This is very different to the huge majority of game forums where "General Discussion" is the central point. Close to any threads are made there, as long as they are not this specialized from the beginning to belong to a special interest sub forum.
Reading "General discussion" on a regular basis will give you a good overview what's happening, and you'll notice the left over topics that have been moved to the specialized sub forums.
You'd need to read "General Discussion" and the few special interest forums of your choice, and you'd be up to date.
Why does this hurt:
As mentioned, in other forums you'd read "General discussion" and would be on top of the daily news.
Not here. Since there's no "Collect all" forum in EF, since there's strong advice to bury your thread in one of the many sometimes quite remote sub forums you need to read them all. Not just "General" and the few most interesting to you, you need to read them all, or you'd risk to miss important information.
In other forums, anything of general interest will first be posted to "General", then maybe moved to a better suiting sub forum, leaving a notice. While this is kind of work for the Forum Admins and Mods it has a huge benefit for the users: Anybody checking "General" on a regular basis will rarely ever miss something of "General Interest".
Consequences:
The way it's done here is causing a lot of missings. Who really checks every other sub forum? So things like this are possible:
Today, in a thread of random, I read a remark about Bolgar, followed by a link to the thread explaining its missing. This lead to "Greetings and Messages", buried at the very bottom of the thread list.
There I found the message of his death.
Is it really approbate to bury messages of the death of a most prominent participant in a remote sub forum out of anybody's sight? Wouldn't such cry for being prominently placed in a main forum anybody reads?
So my question:
Tell us what you are thinking of this. Are you happy with the current state, or would you like a change like I mentioned? If you are Admin/ Mod/ Owner of this site, what do you think? A chance to change?
(Usual "Have fun!" skipped due to the mentioned passing of one of us. Thinking of "fun" when you just read about the death of a good friend seems just wrong.)
