# Recombining Forums



## Morrus

I'm considering a few options at present, and appreciate input.

We were told - strenuosly - "General RPG is too crowded and moves too fast, we can't find our Pathfinder/3.5/4E/DM-tips/etc/etc/etc" discussions.

So we split the forum and moved the various subjects into their own forums.

Now we're being told "General RPG is too quiet, therefore I think the site is dead, so I'm leaving".

So, what to do?  

Do we recombine everything, showing everyone how busy EN World is, but making it harder to find stuff?  Or do we keep it split and accept that if someone doesn't look further than General RPG and leaves, that's the price we pay for organisation?

I'm listening to your opinions!


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## Mark CMG

You might want to refashion this poll to show usernames, to avoid tampering.  It might also be worth setting up two polls, one for subscribers and one for non-subscribers.  Is there a way for admins to get that information without making it public?


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## RangerWickett

Does vB support 'promote threads with tag X'? Like, if you want Pathfinder threads, you could select 'Pathfinder' from a drop menu, and then everything with the header Pathfinder gets kicked to the top? Everything else would get sorted normally.


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## wedgeski

I would like to see a combined General again but I think your mods are going to have to come down super hard on edition-warring, more so even than they do now.


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## jonesy

Umm.. I've got an idea, but I've no idea how feasible it is.

What if you kept the forums as they are now, but added one more discussion area called "Combined RPG Discussion" (or Mega or whatever), and then linked the other discussion areas there, so that you could see all messages on the same discussion area, as well as their own? Or am I just out of my mind here?


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## DragonLancer

I've voted split. It takes me an hour as it is to go through the General forum each day as it is, and I like having a Pathfinder section devoted just to that game, as I'm sure the 4E and other edition players are too (probably).


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## Wicht

I have gotten to where I don't truly mind the 4e forums and the Pathfinder forums, etc.  being split off. But I would really like to see the publishers info back in general.


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## Morrus

Wicht said:


> I have gotten to where I don't truly mind the 4e forums and the Pathfinder forums, etc. being split off. But I would really like to see the publishers info back in general.




_Back _in general?  It's _never_ been in general!  At least not in the last decade!


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## LightPhoenix

I can't find a way to sort by tag; chances are that's linked to the Search function.

However, you can choose to view by prefix by going to the Display Options panel at the bottom of the forum and selecting a prefix.  You don't even need to be a subscriber to do this.  It also gets a unique link that you could save in a browser.

As far as combining goes, I think the problem is one of perception amongst both new members and old.  For the old members, yes, General is slower.  The reason for that is because edition-specific threads are actually being posted in the edition-specific forums.  I'm willing to go out on a limb and bet that if you looked at traffic to the edition-specific forums you'd see an increase in traffic correlating to a decrease in traffic to General.

My suggestion wouldn't be to recombine the boards, but rather to resort them on the main page.  I don't understand why the 4E boards aren't at the top of the board index.  They're the most popular boards, they're the most current boards, and the boards that most new members will be looking for.  If anything, General should be at the _bottom_, as a miscellaneous catch-all forum.  You could perhaps merge it with the "Other RPGs" forum.

The way I would order the role-playing forums would be 4E, Pathfinder, D&D Legacy, WotBS, General/Others.  Move Board Games to "Gaming Action," since they're currently under the RPG category when they're not RPGs.   I'd consider moving Miniatures to Gaming Action as well; really, most minis discussion is tangentially gaming related.  Leave the rest as is.


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## Jasperak

LightPhoenix said:


> As far as combining goes, I think the problem is one of perception amongst both new members and old.  For the old members, yes, General is slower.  The reason for that is because edition-specific threads are actually being posted in the edition-specific forums.  I'm willing to go out on a limb and bet that if you looked at traffic to the edition-specific forums you'd see an increase in traffic correlating to a decrease in traffic to General.
> 
> My suggestion wouldn't be to recombine the boards, but rather to resort them on the main page.  *I don't understand why the 4E boards aren't at the top of the board index.  They're the most popular boards,* they're the most current boards, and the boards that most new members will be looking for.  If anything, General should be at the _bottom_, as a miscellaneous catch-all forum.  You could perhaps merge it with the "Other RPGs" forum.




Response to bolded text: Nope. General always seems to have double the amount of viewers as either 4e or Pathfinder+Legacy D&D. Normally it seems to be about 50% General, 25-30% 4e, 20-25% all other D&D. 

As of my last refresh: General 313, 4e 209, and Legacy D&D 188. So not quite 50% right now but I have never seen it lower than 4e. I bet Morrus can provide us direct numbers of each forum's traffic, if the number of viewers in forum is not indicative of their movement, and if he were so inclined.

I would be interested to know the percentages of paid/unpaid and how it relates to gaming preference.


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## Wayside

I've spent a lot less time here since the forums were split. I actually assumed you were trying to tone down the edition wars by funneling people off into their own little worlds, which apparently is not the case. Separate forums are fine when it comes to rules minutiae, but my own preference is that the General forum cover non-rules discussion of all games. jonesy's idea would make for a good compromise, but only if rules discussion were kept out of the combined forum.


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## jonesy

Wayside said:


> ...jonesy's idea would make for a good compromise, but only if rules discussion were kept out of the combined forum.



As soon as you said that a gamebreaking problem emerged. If it were possible to do such a forum, would it be possible to post there? And if it was, would that post be visible in the separated forums too? And if it was, how would you decide which one? I mean, you could code a system like that from scratch, but can you do it with the code that the forums are running now? And is it too complicated? Sheesh.. the more I think about this the more problems there are..


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## Aegeri

I much prefer having the 4E forum, I didn't post here at all when it was combined because of the incessant trolling of threads. Now that things have their own happy little islands in the forum there is less of that and more actual discussion (well okay, except when Essentials gets involved after around 5 pages). I would prefer it stay as it is.


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## Theo R Cwithin

I like them split.


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## Erik Mona

I say combine them. I don't have the time to look through multiple folders (many with little noticeable traffic), although my interests are varied. Paizo and WotC have very good "dedicated" fora for 4e and Pathfinder, and I always appreciated a brisk and lively General forum.

I do agree that it seems like activity on EN World is _way_ down, but that's because I've been primarily a "General" forum reader since the Eric Noah days. When the topic mix doesn't change very much from day-to-day, it's easy to think that it won't be different the next time you visit, which makes it easy to stop visiting.

--Erik


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## AdmundfortGeographer

Word of caution.

WotC had the out of print settings off in separate forums for . . . years and years. Some of those forums fostered their own little community for fans and they generated a bunch of traffic.

Then the forum administrators got it in their heads that they needed to make certain forums look like they had more traffic, so they dumped every solitary of print setting forum into a single über forum for all out of print settings.

The result was a worse-case scenario. Not only was more traffic *not* generated in the consolidated forum, but the majority of the traffic left for good finding more hospitable environs elsewhere, particularly The Piazza.

I'll admit that I've let some of those thoughts about General not having that much traffic creep in to my mind. I guess I'm not that open to wandering around other new forums that have popped up, especially when some days clicking on a link seems to take longer and longer for the page to get loaded.  I just want to stay where I'm familiar if it's going to be sloggish getting around elsewhere . . .


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## mach1.9pants

ONE MEGA FORUM.... MOAR!

Why?

Well that is one RSS feed

One click to all the discussions I am interested in (cos I like all editions and flavours, found very few RPGs I didn't enjoy reading if not playing)

Too much 4E goes into general and is not moved or moved late or there is another of the same in 4E and merging would make a mess (like essential fighter... one thread in general, now moved, and the other in 4E 15 and 18 pages!)

With the current thread title drop downs (and a way to filter or prioritise... subscribers only obviously) would be great.

My 2pp


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## Morrus

Eric Anondson said:


> Word of caution.... the majority of [WotC's] traffic left for good finding more hospitable environs elsewhere, particularly The Piazza.
> 
> ... I guess I'm not that open to wandering around other new forums that have popped up




Well that sounds like a no-win!  

You say combining them would lose traffic, but say you don't look in them when they're split?  So there's _no_ arrangement where you'd see the actual traffic?  Yikes!


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## AdmundfortGeographer

It's totally a manifestation of the famous Yogi Berra quote, "nobody goes there anymore because it's so crowded."

ENWorld is getting more traffic, splitting out forums to take the extra posts, but for some (like me some days) the site has slowed down enough (webpage loads, that is) that exploring those unfamiliar forums is unappealing so they stay in the familiar but reduced traffic forums . . .


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## fba827

I like the forums split for the following reasons*

1) Keeps topics from rotating off the front page
(I'll admit, I hardly ever look back the first page of a forum unless there is something specific I am looking for, that, plus, I think back to long ago when there were fewer forums on this board, I remember seeing people "bump" their threads a lot to keep them on the front page)

2) Keeps 'cross talk' down
(back before the subforum split for different editions, all too often i would see a dozen vocal people who would just post back and forth about one edition over the other... I don't want to call it 'edition waring' because really it was usually the same dozen people derailing the threads and ignoring them avoids seeing their posts, but the threads get derailed to the point of silence by that point)

3) it makes it easier when reading/answering rules-related questions...
(if someone new just jumps in and says "i'm new here, how does damage resistance work?" it's a lot easier to see whether they are posting in a pathfinder/3.5/ogl or 4e discussion forum to know how to answer the question on the basis of the little info the OP actually gave)

4) it allows me to be selective
(i just subscribe to the forums that interest me and just focus on those and thus don't need to worry about the traffic related to other things.  as an example, i like to visit the media forum. ever since it got merged with off topic stuff, i find myself less excited to go to that particular forum since the noise-to-post ratio -- from my perspective -- has increased.  disclaimer: i completely understand the reasoning behind that merger, i'm not picking on the decision, just using it as an example from personal perspective.)

*all these reasons are, of course, subject to my own whim and are in means meant to represent anyone beyond myself.

Having said that, i can see the advantages of it being combined.  Would I personally be upset/hate it/etc if the general forums were merged together to forum super forum? na. 

it would just increase what I perceive the noise-to-information ratio.  And, hey, i might see something mentioned for a game system I haven't tried that would make a good addition to the game i am playing with some modifications.  Or, for people who have site-time load issues one forum is easier to stomach than many.  And, as you said, it would show as more activity to those who don't bother going to the subforums like I do. 


To put it bluntly, I think you are in one of those situations where you do it one way and group A is vocal in opposition, so you adjust and do it the other way and you'll have group B in vocal opposition.  I think you (Morrus) yourself once said that if you keep trying to please everyone at once with the boards you end up pleasing no one (at least I think it was you, may have been back at Eric's days, or one of the mods making a retort to someone else's comments... or maybe it was a movie or book or show or song and I am just a senile old man).

Or maybe find a way to get thread tags to replicate forum delineation (though I understand tag usage is not necessarily an easy thing to get people indoctrinated into)

Maybe the general forum should instead read like an index that pulls from all the other forums (I believe you have something like this on the front page.. or at least used to for a couple weeks while testing other stuff -- it acts like an index of all the recent threads).  Though, I don't know how practical that would be in usage since someone couldn't just go from thread to thread, they'd have to keep coming back to the general index.

anyway, just my late night rambles before i go to bed.  apologies if my sleepy-thoughts are not entirely coherent.


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## TheAuldGrump

Hmmm, if I had to choose between one extreme and the other then I would say 'cram 'em all into one'. But, really, there ought to be a middle ground between the extremes.

Right now I feel that E.N. World is too spread out - I don't visit most of the fora, and do feel that a large percentage can be combined into fewer options. 4e, legacy, retro, and Pathfinder, properly labeled, probably _should_ all be folded into General. 

Board games, card games, and miniatures games probably _shouldn't_ be folded into general.

The Auld Grump


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## AdmundfortGeographer

How about "best of both world" solution.

Let people have the option in their account settings to let the General forum (when they view it) draw from a random sample of miscellaneous other forums in addition to all the other posts in General. Too complex to make work?


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## Lanefan

I don't play 3e; I don't play 4e.  Thus, those having their own forums is fine by me as I can happily ignore 'em when I want to, which is most of the time. 

About 98% of my reading and posting is in General.  Another 1% - if that - goes in Meta, with the remaining 1% spread out between everywhere else.

I'd say General is fine the way it is, or close; I certainly wouldn't want to see it inundated with specific-edition (or specific non-D+D system) threads unless I had a way of ignoring them.  That said, it might be worth looking at the specific-edition-forum threads with an eye to whether any have or are developing any relevance to other editions or systems; and if any do then punt 'em into general so we'll all see them. (i.e. the reverse of moving a specific-edition thread out of General into its own edition's forum)

And while we're at it, a suggestion/request: a 5e or future developments forum, where we can speculate on what comes next - and-or design it ourselves.  That's a forum I *would* hang around in! 

Lanefan


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## Noumenon

The problem is that General is followed by four forums with very little participation, making it look like nothing else is going on on the site.  Sort the forums by popularity, or make the forums like Board Games with 0.3% the posts of General into subforums.  Right now Board Games is getting equal billing with General as far as icon size and description alotted, and much higher billing than 4E and Legacy which are way down the page.


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## Maggan

A huge general is my choice of the two.

But ... I'd much rather see a "virtual forum" where the threads are shown from a collection of sub-forums. And then keep the sub-forums, for those who want to have easier access to those specific topics.

Some sort of dashboard showing the last active threads is what I would like to see. From that, I could easily go to any of the other sub-forums depending on what I'm interested in.

I've seen it at other forums, but I imagine there are special obstacles for a site this big.

EDIT: Missed that it was another suggestion for this! Off to give XP!

/M


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## Herobizkit

I have noticed General being a little 'slower', but I'm fine with that - I tend to take an hour or so and read EnWorld as if it were a newspaper.


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## IronWolf

I think the forums should be kept separate.



Morrus said:


> We were told - strenuosly - "General RPG is too crowded and moves too fast, we can't find our Pathfinder/3.5/4E/DM-tips/etc/etc/etc" discussions.




I this would be the result of combining them again.  Things wouldn't stay on the main page and a lot of good discussion would be lost in what one poster or the other would call noise.  Admittedly what I consider noise would quite likely not be noise to another and vice versa.

While a busy general forum worked in the past, the gaming community is much more split these days with people still playing 3.5, some moving to Pathfinder and others moving to 4e.  I think as the gaming community changed then the forums needed to change to match this further split in the community.



			
				Morrus said:
			
		

> Do we recombine everything, showing everyone how busy EN World is, but making it harder to find stuff?  Or do we keep it split and accept that if someone doesn't look further than General RPG and leaves, that's the price we pay for organisation?




I think the bickering on the forums would likely increase as forums were combined to General.  More people will be having game systems they are critical of forced to the spotlight in general and leading for more detractors of the system to post in those threads.  With them split it is easier to avoid (or have a safe haven) to discuss your system of choice.



fba827 said:


> I like the forums split for the following reasons*
> 
> 1) Keeps topics from rotating off the front page
> ...
> 
> 2) Keeps 'cross talk' down
> ...
> 
> 3) it makes it easier when reading/answering rules-related questions...
> ...
> 
> 4) it allows me to be selective
> ...




I snipped the reasoning for space sake, but these are all great points in my opinion and echo a lot of my thoughts on the decision.


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## freyar

A smaller change that comes to mind would be to put discussion of upcoming releases, etc, back into General RPG and merge Pathfinder rules questions/discussion with the Legacy Rules/Houserules forums with heavy use of thread labels (since Pathfinder rules probably isn't active enough by itself).  I know that would put a few active Pathfinder threads into General.  I see some 4e upcoming release type threads from time to time in General already, but maybe there are also more of those in the 4e-specific forums, too.  This would keep the rules stuff separated and still bring a little traffic back to General.

Moving things like the board games forum down the page a bit probably is a good idea, too.


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## pawsplay

Jasperak said:


> I would be interested to know the percentages of paid/unpaid and how it relates to gaming preference.




I was curious about that too, once. Morrus shut down my poll in about ten minutes...


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## the Jester

I too think there's a middle ground here; but I favor recombining at least some of the forums.


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## Dice4Hire

I like keeping 3E, Pathfinder and 4E separate, but maybe the mods could be more lenient with publishers and such stuff in general.

I personally only look at 4E and general these days, with a very seldom foray into meta or even more seldom elsewhere, meaning I miss about 90% of the site. 

So I like how it is now, but it is true general is pretty stagnant, with threads I did the last post to sticking around on the front page for days sometimes.


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## Hussar

I like the split as well.

It keeps general for just that - stuff that ((should)) be edition and game independent.  While a certain amount of game specific stuff is always going to happen, general doesn't need fifteen threads on this or that specific product or game.

BTW, is it just me, or did the list for each page get a lot longer some months ago?  That might be one of the reasons why people think topics are sticking around longer.


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## pawsplay

General gives us some breathing room for discussion. we can talk about different games, playstyles, issues in gaming, and so forth, without catching too much wind from edition diehards. If someone hates X about game Y, the small degree of specialization we have allows them to avoid game Y much of the time.


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## drothgery

I like the forums separate, but I wonder if it wouldn't be better to re-categorize the forums. Maybe put General, 4e Discussion, Pathfinder discussion, D&D Legacy discussion, and Other RPG discussion in the first group?


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## Scotley

I much prefer the separate forums. I am a fan of 4e, Pathfinder and legacy games as well as other systems. I'm currently playing all of them. I find it helpful to be able to go to a forum on the specific system when I'm thinking about/discussing/working with that system. 

When I'm not looking for anything specific, rather than visit the general forums, I go to the 'today's posts' link on the 'do stuff' menu. That way I can see what interesting discussion is going on in any forum. I highly recommend doing this to any fan of the 'mega forum' approach. You'll definitely get the feeling that there is a lot of discussion going on here. My only problem with this approach is that sometimes the twitter feeds clutter up this list. They don't really seem to fit when I'm going looking for things to read and discuss.


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## Bullgrit

Questions to consider:

How long should a post remain on the first page (after the last, or zero replies)?

How far down should a post fall (after the last, or zero replies) in 24 hours?

In my opinion, I'd like to not have to go past the first page to see all the threads started since I last check the forum yesterday. I definitely don't want to have to surf back further than the second page to see all the latest threads.

Bullgrit


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## GandalfMithrandir

I think that if all the General RPG threads are combined, edition wars will go way up and the mods will need to crack down hard to make it very clear that it is not acceptable, aside from that I think combining them would be ok.


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## Plane Sailing

The attached image might be useful to consider - it is a snapshot of the state of the forums at 2.30pm GMT.

I've included the 'Viewing' stats, as that gives a useful idea of the popularity of the forums as they are right now (number of threads/posts alone may be skewed by the age of the forums - the D&D legacy forum might have been around longer, hence accruing more posts).

Speaking with a moderator hat on, the split of legacy and 4e specific stuff from General has allowed discussions to flourish between interested parties without much unwanted interference from those who dislike the specific product. That has been a Good Thing. General system-agnostic discussions then proliferate in General RPG which is great.

However, I can understand how the site may look less busy and so not so attractive for some people.

I wonder whether one solution might be to group the most popular forums at the top? Thus the top forums are

*Main Forums*
 - General RPG Discussion 
 - 4E Discussion 
 - D&D Legacy Discussion 
 - Play by Post Games 
 - 4e Fan Creations and House Rules 
 - D&D Legacy House Rules 
 - Pathfinder RPG Discussion 
 - Software, Computers, Video Games and D&D Utilities 
 - Other RPG Discussion 


*Additional Forums*
 - Media Lounge & Off Topic 
 - Story Hour 
 - Art Gallery, Cartography & Miniatures Painting 
 - RPG Industry Forum 
 - Plots and Places 
 - Archive-threads 
 - Board Games
 - War of the Burning Sky 
 - Gamers Seeking Gamers 
 - Meta 


Obviously something more sensible than that would be in order, but I'm sure that there would be good mileage in ensuring that the most popular forums are at the top of the page - currently positions 2-5 in the main listing are occupied by the least popular forums!

Thoughts?


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## jonesy

Plane Sailing said:


> Obviously something more sensible than that would be in order, but I'm sure that there would be good mileage in ensuring that the most popular forums are at the top of the page...



How about this:

 General RPG Discussion
 RPG Industry Forum
 4E Discussion
 4E Fan Creations and House Rules
 Plots and Places

 War of the Burning Sky

 D&D Legacy Discussion
 D&D Legacy House Rules

 Pathfinder RPG Discussion
 Other RPG Discussion (popular by numbers, but not focused on any one RPG)

 Gamers Seeking Gamers
 Play by Post Games
 Story Hour

 Media Lounge & Off Topic (might be popular but does it attract people here?)
 Software, Computers, Video Games and D&D Utilities
 Art Gallery, Cartography & Miniatures Painting
 Board Games & CCGs

 Meta
 News
 Archive-threads


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## weem

I know you were looking for a more straight forward answer of whether or not to simply keep the forums as is, or merge them, but I could not help but submit my own idea of a re-organization of the forums (it just seemed fun).

Anyway, this is how I would do it for my own reading preference, understanding full well that I might be the only one to like it this way...






...with that said, and as has been mentioned, it's always one of those damned if you do damned if you don't things. Your decisions have done well for EN World for a long time now. You know the numbers the best, and I would imagine that you are the best person to decide how to handle it.

Asking for opinions is great though, and appreciated - I hope the feedback helps in some way


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## Mr. Wilson

I like Weem's setup, but IMHO I don't see why you couldn't fold plots and places back into the general RPG board.


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## jonesy

weem said:


> ...snip...



I like your version, if you put CCG's together with Boardgames.

But what about the RPG Industry Forum?


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## IronWolf

weem said:


> I know you were looking for a more straight forward answer of whether or not to simply keep the forums as is, or merge them, but I could not help but submit my own idea of a re-organization of the forums (it just seemed fun).
> 
> Anyway, this is how I would do it for my own reading preference, understanding full well that I might be the only one to like it this way...
> 
> Asking for opinions is great though, and appreciated - I hope the feedback helps in some way




I wouldn't merge D&D 3rd edition with Pathfinder.  For those of us that frequent those forums it is nice for each to have their own forum so we can know what rules we should be using when answering questions.  There are enough subtle differences between the two systems that there is apt to be confusion if a poster posts a question but neglects to clarify which ruleset they are using - it will have an impact on the responses.  By keeping it in different forums we know how to answer simply by knowing what forum the thread is in.


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## IronWolf

Mr. Wilson said:


> ... but IMHO I don't see why you couldn't fold plots and places back into the general RPG board.




I think this could be a reasonable idea.  Plots and Places is fairly edition indifferent and it could bring some good discussion to the General forum without flooding it with a massive number of posts.


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## AdmundfortGeographer

jonesy said:


> But what about the RPG Industry Forum?



In a weem-inspired arrangement, could go under Meta or under Gamer's Corner, IMO.


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## weem

Mr. Wilson said:


> I like Weem's setup, but IMHO I don't see why you couldn't fold plots and places back into the general RPG board.




I think that works, sure. See updated image below.



jonesy said:


> I like your version, if you put CCG's together with Boardgames.




Right, I just forgot to do that (didn't mean to get rid of it - they are together already which i think works). See updated image below.



jonesy said:


> But what about the RPG Industry Forum?




Yea, I forgot that one as I was going to do something different with it. See updated image below.



IronWolf said:


> I wouldn't merge D&D 3rd edition with Pathfinder.  For those of us that frequent those forums it is nice for each to have their own forum so we can know what rules we should be using when answering questions.  There are enough subtle differences between the two systems that there is apt to be confusion if a poster posts a question but neglects to clarify which ruleset they are using - it will have an impact on the responses.  By keeping it in different forums we know how to answer simply by knowing what forum the thread is in.




There are differences to be sure, though as you said, they are subtle. The goal here to merge items where it makes sense, and to only keep separate if the activity is high enough to warrant it, or if two things are fairly different.

Pathfinder and 3e are certainly similar enough to be merged (imo) and there simply is not a lot of activity in the PF forum - the first page shows threads up to 11 days ago (at the time of this post). In a merged forum such as this (PF and 3e), it would not take long for people to start appending "PF" or "3e" to the beginning of their messages when they want specific information on that system (see rpg.net). It might be that those kinds of options could be put into thread creation and chosen from a drop down - in the same fashion as adding a 'prefix' in the General RPG Discussion.

In fact, prefix options would be great in many of the forums - for example, in a "D&D 4th Edition" forum, prefix options of "Rules", "House Rules", "DM" etc would be nice.


Here is the updated layout with the 2 changes from above...







You will notice RPG Industry Forum is now Announcements. I love the idea of this because right now it's not a place to discuss the industry, as I feel the name implies. It is (or has become perhaps) a place to post promotional links or press releases. This is a good thing though. Those in the industry want to have places to do this - so EN World should offer it.

The thing is, other people want to do the same for their work who might not consider themselves "in the industry". I am a prime example of this. I want to post links to some things I do on my blog from time to time. And to be honest, I have done so there once or twice - but if it were simply "Announcements" it could have those kinds of things from industry people and non. It would be the obvious place for people to put those messages as opposed to putting them in General RPG, etc as happens occasionally now.

I would point to rpg.net's "Ads/Open Promo" for an example of such a forum. I post items there every once in a while.


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## IronWolf

weem said:


> There are differences to be sure, though as you said, they are subtle. The goal here to merge items where it makes sense, and to only keep separate if the activity is high enough to warrant it, or if two things are fairly different.




In saying subtle, I meant more that one has to be very aware that there are differences between a good number of spells, feats, creatures and mechanics.  Merging the forums will cause more headache for those of us actively discussing either topic since everyone will have to clarify whether they are talking the PF version of the orc or the 3.x version of the orc.  Or which version of power attack are we talking about?  The PF version of the Destruction spell or the 3.x version of the Destruction spell. 



			
				weem said:
			
		

> Pathfinder and 3e are certainly similar enough to be merged (imo) and there simply is not a lot of activity in the PF forum - the first page shows threads up to 11 days ago (at the time of this post). In a merged forum such as this (PF and 3e), it would not take long for people to start appending "PF" or "3e" to the beginning of their messages when they want specific information on that system (see rpg.net). It might be that those kinds of options could be put into thread creation and chosen from a drop down - in the same fashion as adding a 'prefix' in the General RPG Discussion.




I disagree that they are similar enough to merge them, as someone that hangs out in both forums.  The examples listed above barely scratch the surface and only focus on what I meant on the subtle differences.  That doesn't cover the larger changes between systems.

Also, there are starting to be more people that are starting playing RPGs with Pathfinder as their first game.  They have no interest in the 3.x versions or the nuances between systems.  This shift is likely to continue over time as 3.x remains out of print for longer and Pathfinder's reputation continues to grow.  Then there are the folks who have shifted completely to Pathfinder and simply have no interest in having threads shift further down in the forum by topics for a game system they have no interest in any longer.

Pathfinder and 3.x are at unusual times with the player base of these systems likely to continue to shift to favor Pathfinder more heavily.  This seems a poor time to be merging forums for those two particular systems.

Just as folks don't see thread tags useful for segregating 4e discussion from 3e discussion I don't see them as being useful for segregating 3e discussion from 4e discussion.


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## weem

[MENTION=21076]IronWolf[/MENTION]

I see what you are saying. I'm not an expert on Pathfinder to be sure. I have played a lot of 3e, but Pathfinder is something I have been exploring slowly so I don't have the same insight as you.

It probably wouldn't be a big deal to separate that out as there was some good merging in other areas (in my layout) anyway.

Good feedback, thanks for the response 


<edit>

In which case, I would probably prefer something like this...

*Featured Discussions*
- General RPG
- D&D 4th Edition
- D&D 3rd Edition and Earlier
- Pathfinder

</edit>


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## IronWolf

weem said:


> Good feedback, thanks for the response




No worries.  Hopefully I didn't come across as _too_ anti-change... 



			
				weem said:
			
		

> In which case, I would probably prefer something like this...
> 
> *Featured Discussions*
> - General RPG
> - D&D 4th Edition
> - D&D 3rd Edition and Earlier
> - Pathfinder




This looks good to me as well.


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## weem

For fun, I took a copy of the EN World forum index and modified it to match my layout. I even took the "Viewing" numbers that were currently on the boards and matched them up as well, including merging numbers where I have merged forums...

http://theweem.com/enw.html


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## jonesy

weem said:


> http://theweem.com/enw.html



Huh. That looks really compelling. I was trying to click on the links, and then realized what I was doing. Doh. 

I mean, you used the actual links, but they don't go where they say they go because they're not like that. Yeah.


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## weem

jonesy said:


> Huh. That looks really compelling. I was trying to click on the links, and then realized what I was doing. Doh.
> 
> I mean, you used the actual links, but they don't go where they say they go because they're not like that. Yeah.




It's just for looks, to give you a feel for how it would look on the page - i did not change the links to match, etc etc.


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## jonesy

weem said:


> It's just for looks, to give you a feel for how it would look on the page - i did not change the links to match, etc etc.



Which I noticed only after being compelled by the look to click on the links.


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## pawsplay

weem said:
			
		

> You will notice RPG Industry Forum is now Announcements. I love the idea of this because right now it's not a place to discuss the industry, as I feel the name implies. It is (or has become perhaps) a place to post promotional links or press releases. This is a good thing though. Those in the industry want to have places to do this - so EN World should offer it.
> 
> The thing is, other people want to do the same for their work who might not consider themselves "in the industry". I am a prime example of this. I want to post links to some things I do on my blog from time to time. And to be honest, I have done so there once or twice - but if it were simply "Announcements" it could have those kinds of things from industry people and non. It would be the obvious place for people to put those messages as opposed to putting them in General RPG, etc as happens occasionally now.
> 
> I would point to rpg.net's "Ads/Open Promo" for an example of such a forum. I post items there every once in a while.




Maybe things have changed, but the last time I checked, Ads/Open Promo was a place announcements went to die. I would actually prefer separating out Announcements and RPG Industry, where the latter is for more discussion-oriented threads.


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## weem

pawsplay said:


> Maybe things have changed, but the last time I checked, Ads/Open Promo was a place announcements went to die.




I can assume that by saying they "go there to die" you mean that announcements are not successful there. In that case, our definition of "success" is not the same. Announcements, or Promotional posts are not defined by the amount of discussion that takes place (in case that was your measure of success), but rather by the traffic they drive to the desired destination. By that standard, they are very successful - people post there daily, not only at rpg.net, but here in the RPG Industry Forum. I have posted them as well (on both sites), and can tell you they do quite well.

You will notice people who make posts there tend to come back and do more - you don't waste time on that if it is not working for you.



pawsplay said:


> I would actually prefer separating out Announcements and RPG Industry, where the latter is for more discussion-oriented threads.




Right now, there is no difference between those two - hence labeling it as such. There is no discussion in the "RPG Industry Forum" - there is only announcements and promotions. You will see, most threads have zero responses and to be honest most of the people posting in there would tell you (I'm fairly confident) that discussion is not what their goal is. The goal is to drive traffic - to inform people of something new and get them to check it out.

I think if you made an "Announcements" forum, and an "RPG Industry Forum" you would see all the posts from the latter, migrate to the former and you would have one very empty forum... and one with announcements.

But that's just my opinion - I could be wrong, but that's how I see it based on my experience.


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## pawsplay

weem said:


> I can assume that by saying they "go there to die" you mean that announcements are not successful there. In that case, our definition of "success" is not the same. Announcements, or Promotional posts are not defined by the amount of discussion that takes place (in case that was your measure of success), but rather by the traffic they drive to the desired destination. By that standard, they are very successful - people post there daily, not only at rpg.net, but here in the RPG Industry Forum. I have posted them as well (on both sites), and can tell you they do quite well.
> 
> You will notice people who make posts there tend to come back and do more - you don't waste time on that if it is not working for you.




In my experience, it neither drives traffic nor discussion.



> Right now, there is no difference between those two - hence labeling it as such. There is no discussion in the "RPG Industry Forum" - there is only announcements and promotions. You will see, most threads have zero responses and to be honest most of the people posting in there would tell you (I'm fairly confident) that discussion is not what their goal is. The goal is to drive traffic - to inform people of something new and get them to check it out.
> 
> I think if you made an "Announcements" forum, and an "RPG Industry Forum" you would see all the posts from the latter, migrate to the former and you would have one very empty forum... and one with announcements.
> 
> But that's just my opinion - I could be wrong, but that's how I see it based on my experience.




Right now, the regular press releases pretty much strangle most discussions, as they quickly scroll of the first page. Mixing the two types of content, which have a much different life cycle, is not a healthy environment for discussion.

So in a sense I agree with you... RPG Industry is currently filled with posts that are not there to entice discussion. Once upon a time, there were several forums open to various industry talk, plus the OGL discussion list. The OGL stuff stagnated in the wake of a the Great Schism but in theory might in theory generate some discussion from time to time. The experiment with the ads system took a bite out of the freelancing section. You are basically saying, if I get you, "To heck with all that actual discussion of freelancing, publishing, the industry, licensing, design, and discussing industry trends, it doesn't generate traffic and no one wants it."


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## weem

pawsplay said:


> In my experience, it neither drives traffic nor discussion.




That's a bummer 



pawsplay said:


> You are basically saying, if I get you, "To heck with all that actual discussion of freelancing, publishing, the industry, licensing, design, and discussing industry trends, it doesn't generate traffic and no one wants it."






Let me clarify before this (somehow) turns into an argument - I certainly don't want words put in my mouth.

I think "RPG Industry Forum" is currently an announcements forum - so I would (pretending my opinion shapes things here) simply call it that... "Announcements".

The discussion on the industry, freelancing, publishing, design, trends as far as I can tell takes place in the General RPG forum right now (like it or not, for better or worse, etc). You could certainly make a case for pulling that out of there - but the point of this discussion was to address the complaint that "General RPG is too quiet, therefore I think the site is dead, so I'm leaving" - pulling content out of there does not help accomplish this.

So what I'm getting at is that it does already exist, this kind of discussion. I'm not saying "to heck with it", it has a place (again, whether that is the proper place or not will depend on who you ask - but it seems fine to me).

Now, maybe Russ and others are being bombarded with requests to have a dedicated place to discuss licensing, design and more - maybe I don't see that. If they are, then Russ would need to decide whether or not to pull it out into it's own thing - but I wouldn't without a lot of evidence pointing towards that request.

That's just me though - your points are as valid as mine, maybe more so for all I know 

In the end, I want Russ to do what he feels will work best and for EN World to   be really successful. If that means my ideas do nothing for him, or don't spark any more ideas, then that's fine too - and I do appreciate your feedback as well - it helps demonstrate more possibilities and ideas


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## pawsplay

Here are some non-announcement-related threads, just to give you an idea what I'm talking about:


http://www.enworld.org/forum/rpg-industry-forum/272343-pod-rpgnow.html

http://www.enworld.org/forum/rpg-industry-forum/266463-open-content-then-its-not.html

http://www.enworld.org/forum/rpg-in...erial-violation-4e-gaming-system-license.html

http://www.enworld.org/forum/rpg-in...aming-license-crpg-implementation-issues.html

http://www.enworld.org/forum/rpg-industry-forum/264895-clip-art-stock-art.html

http://www.enworld.org/forum/rpg-industry-forum/265979-usage-d20-other-products.html


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## weem

pawsplay said:


> Here are some non-announcement-related threads, just to give you an idea what I'm talking about:
> 
> 
> http://www.enworld.org/forum/rpg-industry-forum/272343-pod-rpgnow.html
> 
> http://www.enworld.org/forum/rpg-industry-forum/266463-open-content-then-its-not.html
> 
> http://www.enworld.org/forum/rpg-in...erial-violation-4e-gaming-system-license.html
> 
> http://www.enworld.org/forum/rpg-in...aming-license-crpg-implementation-issues.html
> 
> http://www.enworld.org/forum/rpg-industry-forum/264895-clip-art-stock-art.html
> 
> http://www.enworld.org/forum/rpg-industry-forum/265979-usage-d20-other-products.html




That's interesting.

As I said, I know these discussions happen, I just think they happen mostly in General RPG at the moment (again, for better or worse I don't know really). 

The threads you link to are from a year ago (Aug-Sep 2009), so I'm assuming that kind of activity there died down a while back? - perhaps because of the announcements burying them - and perhaps that's what drove those discussion to the General RPG forum. That certainly would be unfortunate to have happen, to have announcements trounce on good discussion, but here's the angle I'm looking at this from...

In order for a topic to warrant it's own forum, it needs to either a) be a very hot topic capable of producing a large number of topics on it's own, daily or b) be different enough from anything else that it just needs to be it's own thing.

That kind of discussion (RPG Industry topics), at least to me, fits fine in the General RPG forum. They don't stick out to me in that forum in a "what is that doing here" kind of way - in fact, they seem to fit right in. But that's my opinion. Maybe that's because the topic is not as near/dear to me as it is to you - so I may be bias in that regard - that would be fair to say for sure.

I guess the question is this...

1. Let's assume an "Announcements" forum was created.
2. Let's then assume that people with announcements then began posting them there, instead of RPG Industry.

Now, do you think people would move any of their "freelancing, publishing, the industry, licensing, design, and discussing industry trends" talk to the RPG Industry forum from General RPG?

I think SOME might. I think the Mods would have to move the rest, or regularly remind people of the separation of Industry talk from General RPG talk. So, again, my problems with this are that a) this re-org is meant to discuss getting more content into General RPG as opposed to removing it and b) while I think the topics you have linked above are great and have value, I'm not sure they don't fit into General RPG.

I would find it hard as a Mod to pick out those discussions for moving. In fact, your classification of these topics as "freelancing, publishing, the industry, licensing, design, and discussing industry trends" seem to me to be exactly that - General RPG discussion. If you say, for example, you want to talk about the RPG Industry, my response is that that is a pretty General topic.


----------



## jonesy

Here's archive footage from 

2002:
EN World - d20 News & Reviews - powered by vBulletin

2003:
EN World - Morrus' D&D/d20 News & Reviews Site - powered by vBulletin

2004:
EN World - Morrus' D&D/d20 News & Reviews Site - powered by vBulletin

Anything past 2004 seems to lead right back to the current pages, so there's nothing on 2005-2009.

You can see the comparative sizes per threads and posts. Too bad the number of views isn't visible.


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## pawsplay

weem said:


> That's interesting.
> 
> As I said, I know these discussions happen, I just think they happen mostly in General RPG at the moment (again, for better or worse I don't know really).
> 
> The threads you link to are from a year ago (Aug-Sep 2009), so I'm assuming that kind of activity there died down a while back? - perhaps because of the announcements burying them -




I think that definitely happened.



> and perhaps that's what drove those discussion to the General RPG forum.




But I don't think that happened. I think mostly the traffic was just lost, with a few stray posts appearing in General from time to time. Apart from prognosticating on "the industry," I really don't see this stuff popping up in General very often.


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## Plane Sailing

jonesy said:


> Here's archive footage from
> 
> 2002:
> EN World - d20 News & Reviews - powered by vBulletin
> 
> 2003:
> EN World - Morrus' D&D/d20 News & Reviews Site - powered by vBulletin
> 
> 2004:
> EN World - Morrus' D&D/d20 News & Reviews Site - powered by vBulletin
> 
> Anything past 2004 seems to lead right back to the current pages, so there's nothing on 2005-2009.
> 
> You can see the comparative sizes per threads and posts. Too bad the number of views isn't visible.




Did you notice the spooky coincidence in the 2003 one?

Look at the "welcome to our newest member



> Members: 9,689, Threads: 39,334, Posts: 671,077
> Welcome to our newest member, jonesy 	The time now is 12:10 PM.
> You last visited: 02-06-2003 12:10 PM




Spooky, eh? What are the chances of that?


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## jonesy

Plane Sailing said:


> Did you notice the spooky coincidence in the 2003 one?
> 
> Look at the "welcome to our newest member
> 
> Spooky, eh? What are the chances of that?



Oh, wow. No, I didn't. That is freaky. 

What are the chances? How many members did you get at the beginning of 2003?


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## MadLordOfMilk

Put in another vote for keeping things split, but rearranging the board order. 

And while we're at it, could we have the navigation from the main page be, y'know, not a mess? Or, at least give an obviously link to the forums. You have to hunt a bit to find where the forums are, and even then it's in a drop-down menu. It'd probably help get more traffic in the right places if you rearranged things and made it easier to find said forums.


----------



## Noumenon

I believe we have a consensus about re-ordering the boards.  Are you going to do it and just haven't gotten around to it, or do you actually prefer the order it's in?


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## blargney the second

Morrus said:


> Now we're being told "General RPG is too quiet, therefore I think the site is dead, so I'm leaving".



That's really bad.

I run a dance on Saturday nights.  The hall we rent is huuuuge, so we set up dividers to barricade off about a third of the space.  It's totally counterintuitive, but it's really important that people bump into each other when dancing.  If a space is too underpopulated for bumping to occur, some essential part of the social experience is lacking, and the dance will die over time.

My advice: merge forums so it feels more intimate, but ideally you should find some way to give yourself wiggle room to grow or shrink appropriately.
-blarg


----------

