Proposed Forum and Subforum Layout Change

[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.