Location: the bustling metro that is...East Providence, RI
Posts: 3,890
As many have mentioned already, the Paizo forum layout is very difficult to navigate. I've also had very long posts completely eaten on more than one occasion for no apparent reason.
I also find EN World to be much more "fair and balanced". There will always be strong opinions on the interwebz but to me, EN World is more equal opportunity.
And now that EN World has got its mojo back, it's a no-brainer.
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I'm actually disappointed ENWorld separated Pathfinder into its own message board. Having it isolated like this gives it much more of an echo chamber effect where you are likely to only see agreement with all things Pathfinder and, well, we already have plenty of that on the Paizo website. No where near as many eyes will be on these threads as before.
Well, I had become rather tired of the threadcrapping in the general forum with certain posters that seemed to want to enter *every* Pathfinder thread to say that it wasn't for them.
Because I like the format of the boards on Enworld more. Paizo's gives me a headache...
I am used to the ENworld style and layout. Plus the whole hovering over the thread title and reading the first paragraph to see if poster has a clue is a bonus.
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I feel less intimidated to discuss things here at ENWorld. Most here are quite friendly, even to those of us who happen to like 4E. I have a differing opinion of Paizo boards, likely a few bad apples but enough to spoil it for me.
Also, relevance. I used to post a lot more at Paizo when I was running Age of Worms, or reading Dungeon magazine. Now, with Pathfinder and my soon to get a copy of book, I might start posting again there.
Because I like the format of the boards on Enworld more. Paizo's gives me a headache...
+1. Also, someone said something about the sub-forums. There's so many of them, and I don't follow them every day, and so I've become so massively behind... o.o
Here is a pet peeve of mine. You can't subscribe to threads on the Paizo boards and have them send you an email when a response is posted to the thread. That's annoying.
At the same time I don't know that you can do it here either. I use to get emails to my threads all the time but I haven't in months. Did something change?
Well, I had become rather tired of the threadcrapping in the general forum with certain posters that seemed to want to enter *every* Pathfinder thread to say that it wasn't for them.
Correct. This can and does happen on either side of the fence. That's why I am not disappointed that Pathfinder has it's own forums here. Hopefully seperate forums won't be necessary long term, but I don't think it's bad for the time being.
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I'm ok with the separate forums here at ENWorld. 3E, 4E and OGL are all in different groups so if you only really care about one of those and don't want to dig past threads about unrelated things, you can do so. Not too many forums to worry with and it improves the signal:noise ratio. Potentially limits the thread crappers too heh.
Okay, lemme ask you this: what specific things would you like to see on the Paizo boards to improve them? For a long time, we've only had Gary doing programming stuff, but now we have Ross as well, and that should mean we can make some long-awaited improvements to our boards. So... what can we do better?
1. Separate the forums from other site content. The way it's currently set up is that forums don't have enough screen real estate because of the huge (and distracting) side bar and the intruding search box on top.
2. The forum main page should preview only ONE post per subforum. Those who want to see everything should use the "view active threads" option (basically, a list of threads ordered by date and time of last post, descending).
3. Reduce the number of sub-forums to improve visibility and make sure the categories are logical and have enough traffic to support them (e.g. never make a separate subforum for something that receives 1-2 posts per month).
4. Add the option to categorize posts and add tags.
5. Provide an optional high-contrast dark skin for the forums. It doesn't have to be anything fancy, just functional.
6. Rich-text editor and quick reply options. This is 2009, after all.
This is my gaming site. I am primarily a 3e +OGL focused gamer and though I like Pathfinder and Paizo a lot I don't want a second set of forums to keep up on. Same reason I don't participate on WotC, Necromancer Games, Malhavoc, and Giant in the Playground forums. I've been here a while, I participate and discuss things that interest me, I know where things are, I play pbp games here, I see stuff about new products and gaming ideas that interest me, whether it is 3e D&D, 3e D&D OGL, OGL variant systems, d20 Modern, Pathfinder, 4e, or the occasional other system.
1) I was a member of ENWorld before Pathfinder was a twinkling in Paizo's collective eye.
2) I much prefer vbulliten to... whatever that is that Paizo uses.
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1) I was a member of ENWorld before Pathfinder was a twinkling in Paizo's collective eye.
2) I much prefer vbulliten to... whatever that is that Paizo uses.
I have to agree on both counts and I will add that while I have posted on Paizo a few times, it does utilize a system that I find to be awkward. If they used a system more familiar to me, I would probably post there more but still not as much as I post here.
I visit both the Paizo and ENWorld forums. Here I love having one place to go for everything Pathfinder. As for the reason why I enjoy coming to ENWorld, its the quality of posters and posts found here to be honest. I find them to be quite above average in usefulness as far as internet message boards go. I've also been visiting these forums here since 3e first came out, I enjoy seeing a few familiar "faces" and I've gone from college student to rapidly growing curmudgeon, I couldn't possibly change now. :P
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This has been said quite a bit, but it can't be said enough. During the alpha and beta period of Pathfinder, the attitude of the boards were certainly enough to keep me away as well. If you weren't gushing all over the new material you got tarred and feathered. Heaven forbid you don't agree with the direction of some of the material or thing one of the principle goals they claim was important got lost in the shuffle.
Not to say that ENWorlders don't get hyper defensive on things they like, we all can. But it was an awful mob mentality over there that made it no fun to post or read over there. I wasn't just bashing stuff to bash it, I was being constructive. Ahh well.
Yeah, I saw that when I checked out the Paizo forums.
At times they did seem to want hive mentality only (like a Swarm), but sometimes they seemed to listen to the complaints. It was mostly the fans swarming (designers seemed to stay out of it), but I've always been one for under dog so that did'nt seem right.
Mainly, I go here because Paizo's organization is hard to navigate sometimes. Since they added new ones (for the contests) it became even harder.
Mostly just go to look at what they got: some day when I get another offline group (currently group less), it is likely it will be a pathfinder group so must be ready if that occurs by being up to date.
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Okay, lemme ask you this: what specific things would you like to see on the Paizo boards to improve them? For a long time, we've only had Gary doing programming stuff, but now we have Ross as well, and that should mean we can make some long-awaited improvements to our boards. So... what can we do better?
Make it an actual FORUM and not a blog style posting system. This promotes conversation. The current Paizo board is tied to the store item comment function making posts less conversational. This should be separated out. Also, lots of topics are nearly impossible to find because of archiving.
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