So, do we really need this place?

[Sasseeri Reeouurra]

All in favor of mothballing the Black Sun forums, say Aye.

All against... what are your reasons for wanting the forums to stay open for posting?

[Dasquian Belargic]

It might be worth converting this into a more general... smugglers/bounty hunters/criminal scum area of the forum?

[Sasseeri Reeouurra]

Would it get posted in?

I'm leaning toward no.

[Xel-Naga]

It's sad to see it go, but yeah. We really do not use it. For anything. At all.

[Captain Untouchable]

Rather than just lopping off the boards we don't use, maybe it's worth working out why we don't use them, and having a rethink?

We've had some issues lately with discussions being tucked away in faction forums and not being noticed. Our factions are a bit blurry too: the Jedi and Rebels overlap on the Wheel; the Empire and Black Sun overlap on Cloud City; and the Alliance and Empire have private boards, yet most of their discussion involves talking to each other to plan combat threads.

Maybe we need fewer discussion forums? A shared "Galactic Civil War" one? Separate Star Wars and Mutants Unite ones?

Our Roleplay boards are mostly geographic (The Wheel, Cloud City, the Onderon/Hapes blob, etc), but those locations are allocated to a single faction. Most Black Sun things happen on Cloud City, which is an "Imperial" forum. Sometimes however, a thread set on Coruscant (an Imperial forum) goes in General, so that it isn't tucked away out of sight. Maybe the fringe forums would get more use if they didn't "belong" to a faction? We've got new stuff potentially starting up, too: would a Corellia thread be a wise addition for the insurgency/etc stuff?
Since we all chip in to the annual fees regardless of our faction, and since most of us have multiple characters in multiple groups and plan arcs that span multiple groups, maybe there's a more "ensemble" way of structuring things?


I dunno if the Backroom is private - feel free to move my post if you feel it warrants discussion somewhere else. :)

[Dasquian Belargic]

I'm not sure I understand.. do you mean remove the OOC discussion forums that are within each faction, and have all OOC discussion take place in the RP Discussion forum? If that's what you mean, I wouldn't be entirely against that to be honest. If that's not what you mean, then I've misunderstood ^_^;

[Xel-Naga]

The Backroom is private.

The problem goes beyond just overlapping fields of play. Black Sun lacks membership and activity. I'm not entirely sure how much is going on, but the only Black Sun activity I know of is Sass and her uncoordinated crew, along with Kal's thread with Sam. I did not even know that Black Sun was involved on Bespin. Shows how much attention I've paid. Having planets controlled by two factions does pose a problem. Beyond combining them, I cannot think of a better way to get them better represented together. The only way I can figure to make the faction forums more steamlined is to add another forum to the list. That way it could be broken down into forums dedicated to each faction, such as Jedi, Rebel, Empire, and a "Other Systems" grouping that contains Onderon, Hapes, Bespin, Carshoulis Cluster (maybe?) and any other planets we might want to add. Fans has adopted a minimalist approach to the faction forums with spider-webbing sub-forums that can be a nightmare to navigate. Much different than the straight lists of locations within the faction we had in the past. I realize that adding another forum is not the optimal path but I think it would help unclutter the factions. I realize we are just figuring what to do with the Black Sun forum, but I think the entire faction section could use a retrofit. It's a wayward string that when picked at starts to unravel the sweater that is SW-Fans.

As for the private OOC forums, I think it would be best to get some combined ones so that no one is playing middle man between the Jedi and Rebel forums. It's either that or just getting all the rebel and jedi characters set up in both user groups so they can each see the private forums. I also think it is a discussion to involve the rest of the board in and not just us that have access to the Back Room, but a good point all the same.

[Captain Untouchable]

I'm not sure I understand.. do you mean remove the OOC discussion forums that are within each faction, and have all OOC discussion take place in the RP Discussion forum? If that's what you mean, I wouldn't be entirely against that to be honest. If that's not what you mean, then I've misunderstood ^_^;

Sort of.

I think though that if we only had one RP Discussion forum, it would get filled with a lot of annoying crap that 90% of people don't care about. What I'm suggesting is that maybe a small selection of Discussion forums is in order. It might look like this:

Roleplay Discussion
General RP Discussion - for games, to-post-to lists, random thoughts, hiatus notifications, and general stuff that doesn't fit in elsewhere.
GCW Discussion - for fleeting, politics, planning to assassinate General Dan, discussions about how the Alliance and Empire works, diplomatic overtures towards Hapes/Cizerack/Hutts/etc, and an obvious place for new players to "check in". Contains all Rebel and Imperial stickies. May also contain a sub-forum(s) for ship specs.
Force User Discussion - discussions about Jedi training on the Wheel, evil schemes of the Kuklos Ataxia and other dark Jedi groups, and an obvious place for new players to "check in". Contains all Jedi stickies.
Mutants Unite Discussion - contains mutants stuff, since there's quite a lot of it going on.

I was also talking about the Roleplay boards themselves. We've had threads that have occurred on Nar Shaddaa, but were posted in general: perhaps because people didn't know there was a "The Smuggler's Moon" forum, or because they thought that it was for Black Sun use only.

Since the majority of our in-character boards are a location or setting that is used by multiple factions, it might make sense to arrange those forums in a slightly less faction-based, and more geographical way. For example:

Imperial Space
Imperial Center - existing forum, for everything that happens on Coruscant regardless of faction. Could be renamed "Imperial Core" or "The Core", which would let it encompass all of the Core Worlds: this would include Chandrila, if anyone wanted to post there.
Imperial Bespin - existing forum, for everything that happens on Cloud City and in the Greater Javin: Imperial operations, piracy and smuggling by Black Sun and others, attacks bythe Rebel Alliance, etc.
Imperial Corellia - new forum, for the Corellian Resistance stuff being discussed for the Corellian Sector. Would be used by Imperials, Rebels, and any civilian/CorSec people, as well as smugglers/etc passing through. Since Duro is right next door, and since a lot of that stuff will be related / relevant to the Corellian Resistance, Duro posting could happen here as well.

Alliance Space
The Wheel - existing forum, for anything that happens on the Wheel.
Mon Calamari - existing forum, for anything that happens on Dac, and in the surrounding area (Sector and beyond). This would include Alliance politics and fleet command, a huge chunk of the ship construction type stuff, as well as any fleeting by the Second Fleet (based at Mon Cal), and events that happened on New Alderaan (just outside Mon Cal Space).
Bothawui - existing forum, for anything that happens on Bothawui, in the Bothan Sector, and in the surrounding space. This includes Alliance Intelligence, SpecForce, SpecOps, and fleeting by the Fifth Fleet.
Sullust & Sluis Van - new forum, for anything that happens on Sullust, on Sluis Van, and in the surrounding space: this includes everything involving the Fourth Fleet (most of our fleeters), the headquarters of General Dan and General Brecklin, the Starfighter Corps, and a chunk of political and military stuff planned for now and the aftermath of the Dan Crisis.
Free Space
Onderon & Hapes - existing forum, for anything involving the Kuklos Ataxia, Onderon, the Hapes Cluster, et al. Zeltron is fairly close to this area of space; and while Dathomir isn't geographically close, it's in the same general area. If/when Onderon and Hapes join the Alliance, this could be moved into the Alliance Space area.
The Outer Rim - renamed forum (The Smuggler's Moon), for anything sleazy and scummy that takes place in remote locations. This combines The Smuggler's Moon and Jabba's Palace for general Black Sun antics; it also represents most of the territory controlled by the Independents; the Corporate Sector; the Cizerack; Hutt Space; Rebel operations on Mustafar; a slew of future Rebel and Imperial stuff around Ithor; and a ton of other stuff. If you don't want it to be in "General", this is a good catch-all bucket. Could even just be "The Rim" (vs. "The Core") to incorporate Mid Rim stuff like Naboo, and so on/so forth.


Just an example anyhow, that provides somewhere to put everything that we're either doing now, or planning to do in the immediate future. We still only have three Forums on the front page, but instead of Jedi Enclave, Empire/Rebellion, and Kuklos Ataxia, we've got three forums that are relevant to the way we currently roleplay.

And, as an added bonus, if you click on the "Roleplay Groups" link on the front page, you'll see all of those forums in a nice list, instead of being nested several levels down behind IC/OOC hierarchies and what-not.

[Morgan Evanar]

It would make sense to try and push OOC discussion to a single forum for the most part.

[Dasquian Belargic]

I'm going to move this thread to the main RP Discussion Forum to get some more opinions on restructuring the forums.

As an added thought from myself, if we did condense OOC RP discussions from across all group boards into one forum... I would prefer that we have one for General RP and one for Star Wars RP, though even having a whole forum just for General RP discussion may be a little too much given that most of the threads in this forum are SW related. I could see the potential for splitting Star Wars into more than one discussion forum, if it were busier here, but as it stands I think that too is perhaps unnecessary.

Things like ship specs I think should ideally be kept on the wiki, like character bios. Creating more sub-forums feels like it would go against the idea of streamlining and condensing.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

I'll talk to the Imperial boys and see if we can't weed out our own subforum trash :)

[Taataani Meorrrei]

Consolidating forums is a great idea and the more we do that, the better. I hate having to navigate five times to get what I want

[Lilaena De'Ville]

So now we're talking about getting rid of all the group boards? Just wanting to be clear.

I started this discussion about Black Sun in particular because is has literally no activity. No posts in years.

[Dasquian Belargic]

Not getting rid of them exactly, just looking at ways to reorganise them so that you don't have a lot of sub-forums where discussions or threads can get lost, or sub-forums that aren't getting used at all (like the Black Sun). In particular I'm in favor of consolidating the OOC discussion forums that each RP group has - e.g. the Officers Club, Rendezvous Point, Helpdesk and so on - into a single area. Having those made sense when all the boards were separate and much more active, but when we're all on one forum it would be just as easy to have all OOC RP discussion in this very forum here :)

[Lilaena De'Ville]

This pretty much already happens, except for private forum stuff, I think.

KA I would prefer remained as it is.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

The group boards in terms of OOC planning really do need to be consolidated, since it's a hassle to have to check however many group forums for planning updates as Charley mentioned.

It would help a lot to cut down on 'noise' and the chance for confusion for new folks.



edit - curses for walking away from my post mid-way through. If you want to keep KA planning forums private Holly, that's cool. I think stuff like that should come down to the people who are at the head of each respective group. I know for me personally I'd like the Imperial guys to be able to plan with the Alliance blokes to an agreed-upon outcome. However I'm still up in the air on R&D. Open source sharing is always fun, but so is surprising the opposition and letting them come up with creative solutions. I'm open to whichever.

[Miranda Tarkin]

Streamlining would be very helpful for new people and I agree - maybe if we can do that and update the FAQ we can perhaps find a bit to advertise more and keep/find people

[Dasquian Belargic]

For each groups private discussion forum, I could go either way on that. On the one hand, it's fun to have a private planning area where you can come up with schemes and such like - but on the other hand (playing devils advocate) all of those forums get a minimal amount of activity. Perhaps because you have to log into your faction-specific character to see them, or perhaps because a lot of discussion takes place on AIM or in the main RP Planning Discussion Forum.

Most of us have characters in all factions now, so the argument could be made that private planning forums are redundant (because the majority of roleplayers can access all of the private forums) and in some ways counter-productive to the actual roleplaying. I say that because for example, you may have a handful of ideas being discussed in the Wheel private forum about potential Jedi RP ideas, but if someone doesn't log in as their Jedi character, forgets to check that area or is just plain new to the board, they won't see all of those ideas being bounced about and won't get involved.

[Droo]

I really do like Jace's proposal pretty much in its entirety. If we're going to consider consolodating the OOC group forums, then I think it's prudent we ask ourselves what, outside of OOC discussions, group forums are for at all? We do roleplay geographically, or at least try to, roleplays that take place in the Wheel are posted in the Wheel's forum, but when it comes to other locations (places for which we already have forums), we have a habit of posting the roleplays in the catch-all Star Wars roleplaying forum because those locations fall under group forums.

Then again, following that line of thought, we'd run the risk of the main Star Wars roleplaying forum becoming somewhat redundant and would instead have our stories scattered amongst a load of sub-forums. We're not active enough to support that model, I think. Sure, we have bursts of activity, but it inevitably slows down for a while before the next explosion of stories, so in that sense, would all those geographical sub-forums really benefit us, or would they simply cause the same problem we're trying to address with OOC discussions, but for IC threads?

That was a real stream of consciousness there. I started out in favour of the proposal, but now I don't really think it's necessary. Also, if the movement is to combat the problem of the breakdown in communication caused by the numerous OOC group discussion forums, what would be the point in one or two groups retaining theirs? I know it's their choice to make, but wouldn't that defeat the object if we're not all onboard?

[Reshmar]

One OOC planning forum is a great Idea. The private ones do not really mean alot. None are really private. One Forum and maybe use Tags to mark which group you mean for the discussion to been for. Like IMP or REB or JEDI... so on so forth.

Edit:

However I'm still up in the air on R&D. Open source sharing is always fun, but so is surprising the opposition and letting them come up with creative solutions. I'm open to whichever.

Most of us who deal with R&D are members of any private faction boards and would already know about any R&D

[Lilaena De'Ville]

If we do this then a thread icon system overhaul will be needed in order to make finding relevant OOC threads (or IC ) easier. IMO.

I know that personally, KA's forums are places because they are planets our characters rule. Lumping them into the main RP forum... I'm not sure how I feel about that. They might not get a ton of activity but I like having them the way they are. If the rest of the group disagrees I suppose we'll work something out.

Edit: another concern would be what the plan would be for existing threads in these soon to be obsolete forums?

[Dasquian Belargic]

Any currently public OOC discussion forums could just be merged into this here forum. Taking the Rebel OOC forum as an example: http://sw-fans.net/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=337

Most of the threads in there ^ have topic tags already. Some don't, but then there are plenty of older threads all over the board which don't so I'm not too worried about that.

Private OOC discussion forums... you could do the same thing with some of the most recent discussions, and then archive everything else to a read-only section of the board if necessary. None of them are really that active though. The Rebel/Imp private OOC forums have barely any threads/posts at all, for instance. I know the Jedi and the KA have had more but if you look at it in terms of numbers posted since the forums were established... the Jedi and KA forums get about 1 thread per month (if that) in their private discussion forums.

IC forums, I am not so bothered about. Maybe just streamlining where we can, i.e. getting rid of the Black Sun, perhaps condensing the Jedi and the Rebellion into an Alliance section.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

I meant thread icons for new threads not for existing ones. For instance, Jedi icons are available only in the Enclave forums and only for members of the Jedi user group. Most of the others are segregated like that.

[Dasquian Belargic]

That can be tweaked very easily. Each set of post icons has 'permissions' which can be changed, to allow them to be used in different forums so it's just a case of changing a few drop-down menus from 'no' to 'yes' :) Taking the Jedi icons as an example, they're currently set to be only accessible in the Wheel and some of the Rebel forums. By changing the permissions for that icon set, we can have it so that Jedi would also be able to use those icons in the RP Planning Discussion Forum if they wanted to... though most of their icons are more for IC threads, so I'd imagine the Jedi would just be using the regular Roleplaying topic tags in an OOC Discussion forum anyway, but we could look at for instance adding the 'Fleet' tag into the main Roleplaying tag group if that was something people felt would be useful.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

If we are going for one boardwide OOC planning forum for roleplays, then I would be in favor of one for SW planning and one for General RPs. Maybe set it up like this:

Creative
-SW RPing
-SW OOC
-Gen RPing
-Gen OOC
-Starving Artists (or at the top as it is whatevs)

?

[Captain Untouchable]

Splitting OOC discussion into Star Wars and General would make sense.

I think we should be careful not to overload it with topic tags, though. Do we need all the Enclave-specific tags, or would the existing "Jedi" tag be enough? Do we perhaps need to think about making our tags more informative - subject orientated perhaps (Fleeting, Politics, etc), or perhaps a separate tag for each group (The Wheel, Cloud City, Corellia, etc)?

If we're going to streamline the IC forums and move the Jedi in with the Rebels, could we please separate the Alliance and Empire? Like Charley says, it'd be nice to be able to get to where you're going without quite so many clicks; and it'd mean that we won't have three factions of new posts (Jedi, Rebel, Imperial) all stacked on top of each other.

[Morgan Evanar]

Definitely for splitting OOC into SW and General. Can't go into much more detail about what I think is good and what I'm not as for, I'm slammed at work.

[Kyran O'Hurn]

I like the idea of having 1 open planning for each SW and General. A lot of people have so many characters in so many groups that they are in all of the private forums anyway so why bother with them anymore. Also opens up things to people who you might not necessarily think would be interested in something coming up with a suggestion or want to take part in something that they wouldn't have known about in the past.

In terms of a IC forum(s) to around the Black Sun forums, I wouldn't mind seeing what Jace suggested way above about an "Outer Rim" forum where it's not a fixed location but you can specify where you are. There's been a number of times that I've wanted to write something small for Xavier with him being at Silenus headquarters to flesh out the character, but the thread itself doesn't seem to fit with in the main RP forum.

I think that if there was a forum/sub-forum that wasn't designated as a specific location or group, that it could serve as a secondary RP forum where non-group affiliated characters can RP in the same way as a group character might use the bar or barracks.

[Dasquian Belargic]

Our General RP OOC forum is now live: http://sw-fans.net/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=410

[Atreyu]

Am I the only one who finds having the actual word 'Forum' in the forum title ... weird? Aesthetically it just rubs me the wrong way, especially since we don't do it with any other other forum titles (we don't call it the 'General Discussion Forum' forum, or the 'Boxoffice & Other Media Forum' forum etc).

Especially now that with 'Star Wars' and 'General' in the titles they're getting pretty long. I think it'd look far better as per Miss Deville's suggestion above ie. SW Roleplaying OOC & General Roleplaying OOC.

/rant :x

[Dasquian Belargic]

Point noted ;)

[Atreyu]

Oh look, you fixed it. Now everyone's going to point and say "silly Atreyu, there's no 'Forum' in the forum title" and make it look like I'm mad. Mad I tell you. :verymad

(but it does look nicer, ta :D)

[Dasquian Belargic]

I'm sneaky like that.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Am I the only one who finds having the actual word 'Forum' in the forum title ... weird? Aesthetically it just rubs me the wrong way, especially since we don't do it with any other other forum titles (we don't call it the 'General Discussion Forum' forum, or the 'Boxoffice & Other Media Forum' forum etc).

Especially now that with 'Star Wars' and 'General' in the titles they're getting pretty long. I think it'd look far better as per Miss Deville's suggestion above ie. SW Roleplaying OOC & General Roleplaying OOC.

/rant :x

Atreyu, what are you talking about. You're a crazy person! /purposefully.obtuse

;)

(the above was a joke)

It looks great, Jenny. :)

[Atreyu]

:shakefist :shakefist :shakefist

[Tristan Alastor]

I'm going to box the Black Sun at some point this evening probably, providing no one has any last minute revelations about what we should do with them :)

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Sounds good!

[Dasquian Belargic]

The Black Sun has now been boxed away :wave

Discussions are taking place in the Imperial and Rebel forums currently to decide how their forums are being reshaped. Please check in on them if you haven't done so already, and have any thoughts on how best to organise them.

[Dasquian Belargic]

The Rebellion and the Galactic Empire have now been restructured. How do you guys like the new layout for the forums?

[Atreyu]

Nice. :)

One thing however is that the groups might need to double-check their FAQs to ensure it still meshes with the new forum layout. For example, the FAQ in 'The Wheel' forum still mentions directing enquiries to the 'Helpdesk' forum (which now no longer exists).

[Sam]

But it still works nicely as a passive aggressive "take your comments and questions and shove 'em" statement.