# Forum Consolidation



## Morrus (Jan 8, 2011)

We've been looking at each forum and its activity with an eye towards consolidation - the basic idea that we want fewer busy forum rather than lots of dead forums. There are a few which move incredibly slowly, and these are being merged into other forums; in general, if there are threads on the first page whose last post dates back to the middle of last year, it's gonna get merged with something else. 

We merged *Legacy House Rules* (which was very quiet) with Legacy Rules the other day to create a single Legacy forum.
We merged *Other RPG Discussion* (again, very slow) with General RPG Discussion.
We have just merged *Plots & Places* with General RPG Discussion.
*Software* has been merged with the Media Lounge. Video Games and tech discussion now go in the Media Lounge, while RPG utilities now go in the apprpriate game's forum (General, 4E, Legacy, or Pathfinder).
*Art *and cartography threads now go in Media Lounge.
Please use the relevant thread tags to help others find your thread.
Where forums are merged into larger ones, we have assigned tags to that subject so that you can easily pull out the threads on that subject with a single click (creating a "virtual forum" if you will). So if you go to General and click on a Plots & Places icon, you'll get a forum of just Plots & Places threads. Our trend will be towards virtual forums created via tags than actual real forums for the foreseeable future.

There are a few more merges to come; we're currently discussing the best fits in the admin forum. We'll let you know when we decide on final destinations.


----------



## Knightfall (Jan 8, 2011)

Okay, with Plots & Places now gone, can you move my Lands of Harqual to my World of Kulan social group forum?

The Thread
http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...-kulan-lands-harqual-updated-jul-20-10-a.html

World of Kulan Social Group Forum
World of Kulan - EN World: D&D / RPG News & Reviews

I have a couple other Kulan threads that i might want to move there, but it's important right now. (They could also go in the D&D Legacy Discussion forum.)


----------



## Morrus (Jan 8, 2011)

There's no way to move a thread to a social group; sorry.  The two systems don't interact.


----------



## Knightfall (Jan 8, 2011)

Morrus said:


> There's no way to move a thread to a social group; sorry.  The two systems don't interact.



Okay...

Can it be moved to the D&D Legacy Discussion forum?

Please and thank you!


----------



## GlassEye (Jan 9, 2011)

During the recent changes the links to my social groups no longer appear on the first page.  It was very convenient being able to check for new activity in my social groups while browsing other threads.   Is it possible to restore these links?


----------



## Aldern Foxglove (Jan 9, 2011)

GlassEye said:


> During the recent changes the links to my social groups no longer appear on the first page.  It was very convenient being able to check for new activity in my social groups while browsing other threads.   Is it possible to restore these links?




What GE said.


----------



## Thanee (Jan 9, 2011)

I'm not sure, it is a good idea to merge everything together into "Media Lounge & Miscellaneous Geek Stuff" as it is now.

It really makes it much harder to follow those forums. Boardgames wasn't very active, for sure, but this way it will just be drowned out completely.

Just a thought. 


A helpful feature would be to include "sort by thread title prefix" to the sort function list.

Bye
Thanee


----------



## jonesy (Jan 9, 2011)

Where are the boardgames now?

Also, the lack of a computer section is causing threads like these to vanish into General:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/298785-d-d-4ed-power-tracker.html
http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...3-d-d-4th-edition-combat-tracker-utility.html

Edit: boardgames and CCG's are in the Media Lounge? I suspect they'll also vanish.


----------



## Piratecat (Jan 9, 2011)

Thanee said:


> A helpful feature would be to include "sort by thread title prefix" to the sort function list.
> 
> Bye
> Thanee



That would be useful. There's already the "display only this prefix" function down at the bottom left, of course.


----------



## jonesy (Jan 9, 2011)

Art and cartography are now in the Media Lounge too? That's not good. Now they have almost no visibility, unless you already know what there was.


----------



## Zaukrie (Jan 9, 2011)

Not a fan of burying the niche forums in the huge media lounge forum. It will be almost impossible to find threads on boardgames and technology now. How does it help the site to do this? Is it easier to administer? Because from your customers' perspective, I can't see how this helps. I could, of course, be wrong.


----------



## Umbran (Jan 9, 2011)

Zaukrie said:


> It will be almost impossible to find threads on boardgames and technology now.




Go to the forum's page, scroll to the bottom.

In the Display Options box, there is a drop-down for "Prefix".  Choose the desired prefix.  

Click "Show threads".



> How does it help the site to do this?




Historically, recombining forums has been a way to increase the visibility of low-traffic topics.

Whenever someone posts to one of these threads, it will be bumped to the top of the forum, meaning more eyes that weren't actively looking for it will see it, and some of those folks will consider posting to them.  The hope is that we'll see more discussion, rather than less.

Putting discussion of a particular topic off in its own little corner tends to limit discussion to only the die-hard, dedicated people who seek it out.  Those people will still be able to find the threads now, thanks to the sorting feature, but now you'll probably also see some activity from others, and that's a good thing.


----------



## Morrus (Jan 9, 2011)

Zaukrie said:


> Not a fan of burying the niche forums in the huge media lounge forum. It will be almost impossible to find threads on boardgames and technology now. How does it help the site to do this? Is it easier to administer? Because from your customers' perspective, I can't see how this helps. I could, of course, be wrong.




The media lounge forum was a long, long way from being huge. It had threads which hadn't been posted in since August 2010 just on the front page. Some of the others went back even further; art went back to early 2010 - it was practically dead. 

The aim is to have a smaller number of active forums rather than dozens of almost dead forums. It is, as you say, a PITA to administer a large forum list; micro-forums for every conceivable subject just confuses people (there are many people who weren't even aware of the existence of those forums - the list was too long).

What we now have is a forum whose threads on the first page go back a few days, which is about where we want to be with an active forum.



> It will be almost impossible to find threads on boardgames and technology now.




Just click on a thread icon. It'll sort you your own "virtual forum" with just boardgames or technology, making them very easy to find. Once we start doing it, I guarantee you'll find it a much better way of sorting threads on subjects as niche and micro as you like, without having to have dead forums littering the boards.

Just to prove it - click here: all board games threads!

You can even bookmark those "virtual forums"; and I might consider a way for you to store your list of desired subjects as a favourite, making the forum structure almost obsolete - you'll be defining your very own personal forum list.


----------



## Holy Bovine (Jan 9, 2011)

Morrus said:


> The media lounge forum was a long, long way from being huge. It had threads which hadn't been posted in since August 2010 just on the front page. Some of the others went back even further; art went back to early 2010 - it was practically dead.
> 
> The aim is to have a smaller number of active forums rather than dozens of almost dead forums.




I really wish the piazo boards would take this advice to heart.  Navigating their boards is annoying beyond belief due to the massive number of sub-forums.

Love the re-alignment especially... 



> Just click on a thread icon. It'll sort you your own "virtual forum" with just boardgames or technology, making them very easy to find. Once we start doing it, I guarantee you'll find it a much better way of sorting threads on subjects as niche and micro as you like, without having to have dead forums littering the boards.
> 
> Just to prove it - click here: all board games threads!




Being able to do this!!!!!  I was only lukewarm on the whole thread icon thing but this is beautiful!  Thanks Morrus!


----------



## Morrus (Jan 9, 2011)

Holy Bovine said:


> Being able to do this!!!!! I was only lukewarm on the whole thread icon thing but this is beautiful! Thanks Morrus!




This really is the selling point of the icons.  You can now have your virtual forums of subjects that we'd never consider opening a forum for.  For example, if you're an OD&D fan, you might sometimes wish there were an OD&D forum so you could see all the OD&D threads.  We'd never open one, because there simply aren't enough threads to warrant it - but now you can just use the OD&D thread icon and there's your own virtual forum!


----------



## Holy Bovine (Jan 9, 2011)

Umbran said:


> Go to the forum's page, scroll to the bottom.
> 
> In the Display Options box, there is a drop-down for "Prefix".  Choose the desired prefix.
> 
> Click "Show threads".




Heck it is even easier than that - just click the thread icon of any post and you get a listing of posts only with that thread icon!


----------



## Zaukrie (Jan 9, 2011)

Perhaps if I had read your announcement on the icons.....ok, that's a cool feature Morrus.

great, great site, btw. I've been coming here for years, and I love this site.


----------



## jonesy (Jan 10, 2011)

Ok, I'm probably being really obtuse here, but, is there a way to browse all of the icons from the same page so you could pick which prefix you want to view? Or even see what all of them are? The thread view below the boards only seems to pick the threads for that particular board.


----------



## Morrus (Jan 10, 2011)

Not yet; that's coming soon.


----------



## Dice4Hire (Jan 10, 2011)

One...


----------



## Dice4Hire (Jan 10, 2011)

Two...


----------



## Dice4Hire (Jan 10, 2011)

Aaaaaaand.... Three!!!

If you click on the Zeitgeist banner at the top of any page, next to the twitter icon, and then try to click on the messageboard link at the bottom of the page that banner takes you to, there is an error.


----------



## LightPhoenix (Jan 10, 2011)

Thanee said:


> Boardgames wasn't very active...




Understatement of the century.  I would guess on average it got maybe four posts a day.  No reason for it to be a separate forum.  The basic fact is that visibility isn't a problem.  The problem is that so few people here are talking about board games.



jonesy said:


> Art and cartography are now in the Media Lounge too? That's not good. Now they have almost no visibility, unless you already know what there was.




This one is a little more strange to me.  I didn't browse that forum, but was it mostly RPG related?  If so, why merge it with Media versus the gaming forums?  I guess I understand the "art as medium" argument, but was a significant amount of it non-gaming related?  If not, then I don't think it should be in what is essentially the non-gaming forum.


----------



## freyar (Jan 10, 2011)

Thanks for separating the hosted forums from General RPG!  It's good to mark general as read without marking all the hosted forums!


----------



## Walking Dad (Jan 13, 2011)

I seconding the above post. Many threads in the General forum are Wizards (talking about what they do with 4e), Essential (part of 4e), 4e -> 4e and some 3.5 threads. (Can one report this threads to be moved to their 'home' forum?)

I know this sites history, but I always also liked a place for the less d&d stuff on EN World (I look in the other EN World forums for these).


----------



## Walking Dad (Jan 18, 2011)

http://www.enworld.org/forum/5433289-post1.html

Thanks! The industry forum is a great idea! It also solves the problems in my above post.


----------



## Piratecat (Jan 18, 2011)

Walking Dad said:


> http://www.enworld.org/forum/5433289-post1.html
> 
> Thanks! The industry forum is a great idea! It also solves the problems in my above post.



You bet. Plane Sailing gets the credit, I think, along with some members who suggested it; I just moved some stuff. I think it slides the current clog of industry threads into a place where they can be focused on.


----------



## Lanefan (Jan 19, 2011)

Piratecat said:


> You bet. Plane Sailing gets the credit, I think, along with some members who suggested it; I just moved some stuff. I think it slides the current clog of industry threads into a place where they can be focused on.



Or forgotten, which is sad. (if it's not in General or Meta, it doesn't exist...)

Did the GenCon planning forum also fall victim to this shuffle; and if not, where'd it go?

Lanefan


----------



## Piratecat (Jan 19, 2011)

Lanefan said:


> Or forgotten, which is sad. (if it's not in General or Meta, it doesn't exist...)
> 
> Did the GenCon planning forum also fall victim to this shuffle; and if not, where'd it go?
> 
> Lanefan



Well, it'll exist if anyone wants to talk about industry gossip or rumors! And even better, this will drive people to the forum where they see news of new products. I call that a win/win. It's the second forum; let's face it, it's not like it's hiding.

The GenCon forum is merely hiding, biding its time until GenCon reemerges! Have a preference when you want to see it return?


----------



## Lanefan (Jan 19, 2011)

Piratecat said:


> The GenCon forum is merely hiding, biding its time until GenCon reemerges! Have a preference when you want to see it return?



Well, badges go on sale this weekend... 

Lan-"going whole-hog on this one as I likely won't make it back until at least 2016"-efan


----------



## PaulofCthulhu (Jan 19, 2011)

Lanefan said:


> Or forgotten, which is sad. (if it's not in General or Meta, it doesn't exist...)




Interesting. My forum behaviour here is exactly the same.


----------



## Walking Dad (Jan 19, 2011)

PaulofCthulhu said:


> Interesting. My forum behaviour here is exactly the same.




While I like to find some non-industry related stuff in the 'General'...

Or shall they re-named General to 'Non-industry-forum' and the other to 'General'? I thought this site to be about the games and not the business decisions behind...

I usually don't read 'Meta' unless I have some problem... or glad that a problem is solved.


----------

