Proposed Forum and Subforum Layout Change

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

Hopefully at some point this month, we'll be making the upgrade to vB5. There's a decent amount of background work that will go into it, and making further tweaks to our existing layout and features will be null and void once the switch is made. As such, I have mostly stopped doing a lot the stuff I was doing since I would only have to go back and do it all over again. Why do something twice when you only have to do it once, yes? To that end, I feel it would be a good idea if we addressed our forum layout. It's been bandied about that we add some subforums, and I'm all for that. But, we should probably nail down what we want so that we don't have to hem and haw over stuff after the switch; we can have what we want spelled out so it can be implemented immediately.

I was thinking something like this:



General
* Introductions and Adverts
*Communications
*General Discussion


RP Discussion
*Star Wars RP Planning and Discussion
*General RP Planning and Discussion


Star Wars Roleplay
*The Galaxy

*Faction Homeworlds
- Bothawui
~ Recruitment Center
- Ossus
~ The Landing Pad
- Coruscant
~ Recruitment Center
- Tanaab
- Bespin
- Onderon, Dathomir, and the Hapes Cluster


General Roleplay
*General Roleplay
*Mutants Unite!
*World of Darkness


Hobbies
*Star Wars
*Box Office, TV, and Other Media
*Gaming
*Sports Hangout
*Artist's Medium


Archives
*The Great Library


And of course the staff stuff at the very bottom.

I've mixed up the order a little bit, as I feel we are at our hearts storytellers, and what we love should be as close to the top as possible. But, that's just me. I do feel that the other factions would benefit from a subforum of their own, as Ossus has, but at this time I'd rather leave it up to others in those groups to make that decision.


Thoughts and/or comments?

[Ndonsa]

Looks good to me! Probably add a 'recruiting center' type forums to the Alliance and the Empire? We desperately need new rpers in those factions imo.

They'd serve as places for new characters to get started at.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

Yeah, I agree we need peeps in both of those camps. Many of us do have Alliance and Imperial characters, but I also know that we've all got fingers in a lot of other pies, heh, so the only thing I'm concerned with is making a place that new folks want to get in with. If that makes any sense.

A 'recruitment center' for each of them would be great :)

[Ndonsa]

Should we scratch Bespin and make it Jovan Station? Could just move the Bespin threads into Star Wars rping.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

Either that, or tuck Bespin into the Imperial forum. Only issue there is that to my knowledge it's a hotbed of Black Sun stuff, despite being an Imperial holding.

[Ndonsa]

Well it's not exactly a hotbed of activity, just the one casino there with Sanis and Mikey based there. Doesn't bother me tucking it into the Imp forum/s, as we do most of our Bespin threads in the main forum anyway. I just don't think it's going to get more use, but you never know I guess. :)

[Droo]

I like the idea of the roleplaying forums moving up, since that's where the bulk of our activity comes from. Signed!

[Twopio]

Eleutheria is going to have a base of operations on Dantooine. We have six distinct RPers so we meet the 5 for a group forum, and I believe it will be useful to us. :)

[Kale]

Since we're getting close to subforum bloat again in the Faction Homeworlds, we could potentially move a couple subforums into the Star Wars Galaxy - particularly the ones that aren't faction-specific. We may end up with something like this:


Star Wars Roleplay
*The Galaxy
- Jovan Station
- Bespin

*Faction Homeworlds
- Bothawui
~ Recruitment Center
- Ossus
~ The Landing Pad
- Coruscant
~ Recruitment Center
- Tanaab - The Sith Order
- Dantooine - Eleutheria
- Onderon, Dathomir, and the Hapes Cluster


Links to Jovan and Bespin would appear at the top of the Galaxy forum, with all the Galaxy RP threads visible underneath. This would put Jovan and Bespin in a more visible location than tucking them into the Bothawui and Coruscant forums - which wouldn't make geographical sense anyway. They're meant to be galactic hubs of commerce and diplomacy, and just like with the Homeworld forums, we can include a little flavor text description for each one.

Also, question: are the Recruitment Centers and Landing Pad intended to be OOC receiving areas for newbies to introduce themselves and post their bios? That makes more sense to me than dedicated areas for IC arrival threads; I just wanted to be sure. :)

[Twopio]

The idea for the landing pad was to have an IC place for new Jedi to arrive at and be greeted. So after following the links in the So You Want to Be A Jedi post they've done their bio and then ...they don't know what to do. Having a clearly defined "post here IC newbies" forum then there's a more obvious next step to take. I have had new Jedi hopefuls ask me what they were supposed to do after their bio was posted up, so I think it is a useful forum to have.

[Serena Laran]

^^pretend I posted as Serena

edit: I like the idea of Jovan and Bespin as subforums off the Galaxy forum.

[Atreyu]

My 2 cents. :)

1. Rearrange forums with roleplaying on top
Yes x 10,000. Currently when I visit on my 1366x768 resolution laptop you can't even see the roleplaying forums without having to scroll down. Given that they generate 90%+ of our traffic I think it's a no-brainer.

2. Subforum shenanigans
Not a roleplayer so I defer to the rest of you guys on this one. :)



Since we're talking forums I thought I'd like to bring up the non-RPing side of the messageboard. As mentioned above RPing occupies by far the bulk of our traffic but on the main forum page the non-RPing side of things take up nearly 50% of the real estate, with most of the forums being dead quiet. Whilst traffic will hopefully improve as we close in on Ep. VII I was thinking maybe merging some of our general stuff in together will make it a lot easier when we just want to chit chat instead of having it spread all out. Just a thought. :)

[Ndonsa]

Technically we could put MU and WoD as subforums at the top of General RPing.

[Droo]

While I'm not sure I like the idea of all the extra sub forums (and nor do I think they're necessary, personally), I support moving MU and WoD to the General RP forum, since those places are only ever active periodically.

[Ndonsa]

Really I think each group's leadership should be able to have the subforums they want to have. The leadership being the mods of that group.

[Droo]

We went through a lot of effort to unclutter the forums, and I think it's not enough to consider just whether group members want extra forums or not, but whether or not they're needed. Forum layout and ease of use and accessibility have wider reaching implications than the needs of a few group members. I think so at least, and I would be less inclined to go digging through the subforums of subforums of subforums, especially when they don't have much going on in them. How do you think potential new members will feel?

[Arya Ravenwing]

I guess it all comes down to if Groups have the autonomy they used to have on the boards, which I suppose is 'no, they don't.' Groups used to be hosted on separate forums until we were invited to/allowed to have our boards hosted on the main site. Each group was it's own thing, had it's own moderators and it's own forums and ooc discussion area.

If the definition of 'group forum' has changed, then I suppose that should be addressed. If the whole board belongs to the whole board and there is no such thing as a group as it used to exist ... The point being we used to have all these things and it was never a problem. Sure, we had a list on the front forum page of all the groups, but was that really such a big deal? When we are putting them all under one main page heading, then they all automatically become subforums, which yes, leads to a lot more clicks.

So then, should we just have groups host themselves off of the main theholo.net site?

[Atreyu]

I think moving the groups off the site entirely would be a bad idea as they just wouldn't have the population to support themselves, not to mention the hassle of having to re-register at every single group board a roleplayer might want to post at. Stand alone group message boards are a legacy of the old ezboard days (when 'global accounts' made it easy to go from one board to the next) but that era ended over a decade ago.

(sorry I know I'm not a roleplayer, but I think the idea of moving the groups off board is just a really, really bad idea)

[Lilaena De'Ville]

I think moving the groups off the site entirely would be a bad idea as they just wouldn't have the population to support themselves, not to mention the hassle of having to re-register at every single group board a roleplayer might want to post at. Stand alone group message boards are a legacy of the old ezboard days (when 'global accounts' made it easy to go from one board to the next) but that era ended over a decade ago.

(sorry I know I'm not a roleplayer, but I think the idea of moving the groups off board is just a really, really bad idea)

It wasn't a serious suggestion. :)

[Atreyu]

Oh good then. :)

[Droo]

My feeling on groups is that their members should have creative control over them - in other words, control the characters and their stories - but when it comes to the website itself, I believe it ought to be a community decision. Unless your group can justify the need for subforums, in which case, I'm sure everyone would be in support of it, but as it stands I don't think there's a single group that does require one, and I include Ossus/the Jedi in that as well.

[Atreyu]

Out of curiosity, do 'groups' pay fees to TheHolo.Net for hosting rights anymore? If they still do I can understand why they'd still see themselves as fairly autonomous in their decision making; if not however it should probably be a collective community decision as Droo suggests.

[Droo]

I can't argue with you there, Atreyu. Under those circumstances, it would be understandable for groups to be allowed to manage their forum and subforums with some autonomy.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Groups were charged separately but at some point Ogre just started putting up the lump sum for the year's hosting. So I dunno!

[Kale]

Apologies in advance for what is sure to be a long and rambling post!

It's definitely worth taking a look at why we have group forums, especially since several of them are barely ever used. The last time we had this discussion, the biggest argument for the group forums was that newcomers expect to see them. Imagine you wanted to try transplanting one or more of your characters to a brand-new forum. Your first question would be, "Where do I go to play a Jedi/Sith/Imperial/Rebel?" Then, "How do I get my character involved with other Jedi/Sith/Imperials/Rebels?" Group forums, in theory, provide an accessible starting point. However, if a group forum has no visible posts in it (by default only the last 30 days' worth are displayed), it's clearly not serving this role.

Ossus is successful in part because the Jedi have been so active (and let's face it - it's fun to play Jedi), but also because it's developed into a diverse and interesting setting for stories to happen in, like a good hub city for any RPG. When we changed from "Factions" to "Homeworlds," the idea was to create several more such hubs, in the spot where seasoned forum RPers will generally look for factions. Coruscant may be home turf for the Empire, but it's also a haven for organized crime, a potential lair for Sith, and a mission objective for undercover Alliance operatives and Jedi.

But this hasn't happened yet. The other homeworlds have remained largely unexplored. And it's not just that there aren't points of interest; there aren't characters based there that you want to go interact with, no reason for me to say (for instance), "I haven't done anything with Tannis in a while - why don't I assign him to Coruscant?"

I think Coruscant and Bothawui certainly could become worlds of interest just like Ossus has. But it would take a concerted effort to develop them. Senate threads aren't enough for Bothawui; we need to see where the Senators go when they're not in session, where they go to hobnob with Alliance military types, visiting Jedi, and criminals. Military characters, if they're going to be a thing, need meaningful activities now that the war has cooled. Coruscant needs an active training complex for the Imperial Knights, haunts for off-duty soldiers, pilots, and crime bosses, markets that might actually entice someone like Ben Merraska or Arya Ravenwing to drop by and offload some cargo. But it has to be intentional. No more of this, "If we build it, they will come" line of thinking. Newbies will go where the activity is. If we want activity, we have to make it.

Jovan Station, I think, has a strong possibility of becoming to the Alliance and the Empire what Ossus is to the Jedi and the Alliance. It's hard to maintain a place like Bothawui or Coruscant and actually make it feel like the seat of government for a galactic superpower; you need to actually deal with the administrative overhead that goes into running an Empire or Alliance. In years past there have been people eager to take on the roles of galactic movers and shakers, but those of us who are still here are generally more interested in smaller-scale, close-to-the-bone storytelling focusing on individual struggles and relationships with the Star Wars mythology as a cosmic backdrop. Ossus has been a fantastic vehicle for that, because its struggles are fairly self-contained and easy enough to wrap your head around. Jovan, a frontier station at the doorstep of the demilitarized zone, could easily follow the same pattern.

We definitely have some decisions to make. The more I talk myself through it, the more I'm leaning toward cutting out subforums that serve primarily as window dressing, even at the risk of confronting newbies with something unfamiliar. It's not like our current scheme is bringing them here in droves.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

I think we should change the default "show threads from the last thirty days" to br something more like "the last year", and I think we should make one of our nice pretty skins the default instead of boring vBulletin default style. That isn't selling us at all.

But that is off topic.

edit: for the sake of argument, if you "cut" subforums, where are those threads going? I would not want my LD background threads in the former KA forums to be archived, it's a current history...? I don't know if that makes sense or if I'm just weird. Would we merge them with the Galaxy forum?

[Atreyu]

I would assume any subforums that get removed would have it's contents moved to the main RP forum (or appropriate alternative subforum) - Ogre has been quite explicit in the past that he never deletes/removes things.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

Moving MU and WoD into general rp is a good idea I think, and due to their sporadic activity it would be fine to keep each one as a subforum. Atreyu's recommendation of cutting down on the hobbies section is very good too, I think. Maybe to start with, we can merge Gaming and Artist's Medium into General Discussion, and leave Sports Hangout alone as it has a decent amount of posts. Not that the other two don't have enough posts to warrant their own places, it's just that for the foreseeable future I think gaming threads and art threads may be better suited in General Discussion, and give that forum a decent amount of variety and 'flavor'.

And Andrew, all of your points are spot on, and I agree completely about needing to let go of the 'if we build it they will come' mentality. Since the first of the year I've been trying to take a much more active response to things, and just go and do them. I think if we start exploring our options in terms of setting, and start writing them, the need to organize things will come naturally (if that makes any sense). We still need to reorganize, but if we take the guesswork out of trying to figure out what we should have, and start with what we already have, then we'll have a better vantage of what we'll actually need later on down the line once we reach that point. In my opinion, at least.

One thing that did occur to me, was that while our current group system is a bit limited, it can still very easily serve as OOC planning for the members of a particular group, therefore negating the need for any OOC subforums. Even limited as it is, I think we're criminally under using our groups feature, and after the move, I'm pretty sure it will be a bit more indepth.

As for the default skin, I totally agree. I had the thought to give it the classic black, yellow, and blue color scheme, but if we want something more slick, I'm game for that too. I'll see about changing the default thread view to 'the beginning' :)

[Atreyu]

The 'Groups' feature really needs more promotion (even a sticky thread with a link in RP Planning would be an improvement), as it is presently hidden under a menu item at the top of the page that is easily missed - I wasn't even aware the feature existed until late last year.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Adding them as a prominent link by "Wiki" would be helpful. They are completely hidden.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

Before we get too off-topic, how does this look


General
* Introductions and Adverts
*Communications
*General Discussion


RP Discussion
*Star Wars RP Planning and Discussion
*General RP Planning and Discussion


Star Wars Roleplay
*The Galaxy
- Jovan
- Bespin

*Faction Homeworlds
- Bothawui
~ Recruitment Center
- Ossus
~ The Landing Pad
- Coruscant
~ Recruitment Center
- Tanaab
- Dantooine
- Onderon, Dathomir, and the Hapes Cluster


General Roleplay
*General Roleplay
- Mutants Unite!
- World of Darkness


Hobbies
*Star Wars
*Box Office, TV, and Other Media
*Sports Hangout


Archives
*The Great Library




Now, back to the groups :)

The whole sub-navbar is pretty redundant with some of the things on there. For instance, there's three different ways to check for new posts, and a tab for private messages and profile editing when we have those options up in the top right. A bit of pruning is definitely in order, so that we can showcase the features we offer in a bit more of a visible place.

[Serena Laran]

Well, those three different ways show you three different kinds of new posts - one is the activity stream which shows recent posts, but if it's really hopping with posts you won't see all new ones. New Posts shows new posts by thread since your last visit. And posts in the last 24hrs is all posts... They're all useful in different ways. I wouldn't want to prune any away, personally. All those links up there are useful, except maybe the calendar because we don't use it.

edit: I like that forum order :)

[Kale]

Looks like that leaves us with a General Roleplay heading with only one item under it: General Roleplay. If we're collapsing all Gen RP into one forum, we might as well group it with The Galaxy and Faction Homeworlds under a catchall Roleplaying heading.

There's also no Eleutheria in that scheme.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

Well, I find it redundant in that it - to me - is the same general information. If others don't then so be it, we'll leave it alone.




edit - I put Dantooine in there. I don't know about putting General RP into the SW RP, though. I'd like to keep them separate from each other if at all possible.

[Serena Laran]

Looks like that leaves us with a General Roleplay heading with only one item under it: General Roleplay. If we're collapsing all Gen RP into one forum, we might as well group it with The Galaxy and Faction Homeworlds under a catchall Roleplaying heading.

There's also no Eleutheria in that scheme.
Eleutheria becomes Dantooine in the new group naming scheme of using planets.

i was thinking to split the RP discussion threads and put the General RP discussion with the Gen RP forum, and the SW one under the SW RP heading.....?

edit: naming group forums after planets makes it imperative that the descriptions are quite explicit as to what the forum is about, since otherwise it doesn't look like we have Sith factions or whatever. No one would see "Tanaab" and think, "oh yeah, the Sith Order!"

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

That could definitely work. It would eliminate a forum group while still being able to keep the two RP sections separate.

[Kale]

Ha, missed Dantooine in there because I am derp.

I'd rather keep General RP separate, too; it just tweaks my inner editor to have a major organizational heading with only one item underneath. The alternative would be to just keep the General RP section as it is now. Looking over our style sets, though, our major headings don't occupy a whole lot of vertical space. Your scheme should work fine.

[Droo]

I think that issue would be eliminated, however, if we went with Holly's suggestion, and put the planning forums under their respective roleplay forum groups. It would also eliminate RP Discussion as an extra forum group, which I'm in favour of. It would look something like this, I think:

Star Wars Roleplay
The Galaxy
Faction Homeworlds
Star Wars RP Planning & Discussion

General Roleplay
General Roleplay
General RP Planning & Discussion

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Maybe give the General Roleplay forum a catchier name, rather than just repeating the section title? Original Roleplay, Alternate Roleplay, Fandoms Roleplay, Misc. Roleplay, Choose Your Own Adventure Roleplay, Non-SW Roleplay, ....something.

Just throwing names out there, yes, they got silly, I'm aware, and the obviously silly ones are not serious suggestions...unless you all like them, of course. ;)

[Atreyu]

The category is currently called 'Original Roleplay' with the main forum called 'General Roleplaying' so it's not presently repeating itself. :)

[Lilaena De'Ville]

It's currently "Other Roleplay" but in the list in the OP of this thread it's General Roleplay.

[Atreyu]

I think people were just summarising for simplicity (like how all the subforum names listed are just the locations without the descriptors attached), unless there is an actual push to rename the category that hasn't been mentioned yet.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

No push intended :)

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

Getting closer :)


General
* Introductions and Adverts
*Communications
*General Discussion


Star Wars Roleplay
*RP Planning and Disussion
*The Galaxy
- Jovan
- Bespin
*Faction Homeworlds
- Bothawui
~ Recruitment Center
- Ossus
~ The Landing Pad
- Coruscant
~ Recruitment Center
- Tanaab
- Dantooine
- Onderon, Dathomir, and the Hapes Cluster


General Roleplay
*RP Planning and Discussion
*General Roleplay
- Mutants Unite!
- World of Darkness


Hobbies
*Star Wars
*Box Office, TV, and Other Media
*Sports Hangout


Archives
*The Great Library

[Charley]

This is less about layout (which looks good so far) but another really big suggestion I think we ought to consider:

Can we add "A Star Wars Roleplaying Community" as a tagline to TheHolo.Net header images? I think putting a caption on that would give a clear impression of exactly what we do first and foremost.

[Atreyu]

Happy with the layout, although not sure if the subforums issue was settled (seemed to be some reservations above, particularly from Droo, about adding more) - I'm indifferent myself.

Happy with Charley's tagline suggestion too. :)

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

bump bump. Hey Droo, how feel you on this?

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

If anyone has any last thoughts, speak up now. Otherwise I'm going to set about implementing this as it is.

[Atreyu]

Just another 0.02 cents.

Looking at the forums as they stand, and based on what's been written above, I wonder if instead of just adding more 'recruitment forums' you'd instead be better off promoting the 'Groups' feature more prominently and tying it into better planning within the RP Planning forum(s) (maybe sticky threads if need be). Realistically on their own I don't think recruitment areas are going to do much IMHO, especially when they're buried 2 levels down from the main page.

(not a vote for or against either way - I don't roleplay so I defer to you guys - only a suggestion)

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

Aye. A thread for the group feature is a good idea.


I'll be reorganizing everything later on today hopefully.

[Alexi Hesith]

I can see the roleplaying stuff immediately when I login. :eee

On the downside, out of habit I start scrolling as soon as I get to the site in order to bypass the stuff that was at the top but is now at the bottom. Stoopid brain. :shakefist

[Droo]

Sorry I completely neglected to get back to this discussion. I have no issue with any of the proposed changes except the subforums in group forums, but I have already mentioned this. I really don't think there's any need for them at all and they just add an extra inconvenience for the sake of a place that will be used for whenever a new member joins. We know how activity is in this place, it occurs in peaks and troughs, and I don't believe the influx of new group members, in the present or future, will justify the extra subforums. That said, I appreciate I'm probably in the minority with this opinion.

[Dasquian Belargic]

I like what you've done with the place :)

[Lilaena De'Ville]

call the ghostbusters, we're being haunted!

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

Most of everything is moved. There is a slight issue with group subforums not behaving, so I am not going to bother with those until talking with Ogre. Also, the Archives I will wait on, since upon further thought, moving them seems a bit of an involved process. I don't want to accidentally delete anything, so I'm going to confer with Ogre on it next I talk with him.

[Atreyu]

Something looked 'off' on the main page, and just realised what - the 2 RP Discussion forums don't have the little 'Moderated by: TheHolo.Net' under their titles.

The other thing was using 'and' as opposed to '&' (used in 'Introductions & Adverts' and 'Boxoffice, Tv & Other Media'). :)


EDIT: aside from that it looks good. :)

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

bumping this to note that I've tucked the Resources forum into the SW RP Planning and Discussion.