General Discussion

Satin Knights · Nov 17, 2011

Will one of our new moderators or Morris himself be able to pick up threads from the old locations and move them into this new forum? This is possible on many boards, but I don't know much about the software behind this one. I would hate to leave all the old history behind to be orphaned.

My thought on where to put the game threads would be a sub-forum from here of "In Character Games" or "Active Games" and have the sub-forum be sticky or sorted at the top of the thread list. That way, all the games are in one place but nothing else is cluttering their "directory".

sunshadow21 · Nov 17, 2011

Perhaps for now, since people are worried about the IC/OOC mix, we could simply have an OOC thread for each game in this forum. That would help justify the forum as we transition fully into it, and once we have fully transitioned everything from the social group threads we can start to move our games in here. However, until we get all the information from the social group transitioned, I think having the games in here might get in the way of the people trying to move stuff over, though we might see about getting the Inn and the Mystic Pearl moved over.

DalkonCledwin · Nov 17, 2011

Satin Knights said:
My thought on where to put the game threads would be a sub-forum from here of "In Character Games" or "Active Games" and have the sub-forum be sticky or sorted at the top of the thread list. That way, all the games are in one place but nothing else is cluttering their "directory".

I like this idea. Having a sub forum for active games would be in my opinion ideal. Also having a new sub forum that allows GM's to post OOC threads for their active games would also be ideal. And further I recommend an Archival Sub Forum where games that have been completed can be moved and auto-locked so that they do not clutter up the active games sub forum.

At least that is my opinion on the matter.

IronWolf · Nov 17, 2011

Systole said:
Is it possible to have sub-forums in this forum or no? Personally, I'd prefer one-stop shopping. My vote is put everything in here.

Satin Knights said:
My thought on where to put the game threads would be a sub-forum from here of "In Character Games" or "Active Games" and have the sub-forum be sticky or sorted at the top of the thread list. That way, all the games are in one place but nothing else is cluttering their "directory".

DalkonCledwin said:
I like this idea. Having a sub forum for active games would be in my opinion ideal. Also having a new sub forum that allows GM's to post OOC threads for their active games would also be ideal. And further I recommend an Archival Sub Forum where games that have been completed can be moved and auto-locked so that they do not clutter up the active games sub forum.

Morrus is generally pretty reluctant to create more forums. His efforts in the past few years has been to reduce the number of forums as opposed to increase the number. He would rather see fewer, but busier forums than separate them out too much.

Not sure how many know the history, but a request was made by HolyMan when LPF first started to have a forum like this. Given the infancy of the group a social group was the option given. As time has gone by our group has grown and several felt the social group was a bit limiting as we grew. This is what led to the request this time around since we were able to show growth and an active community to warrant a full-fledged forum.

Several of us felt pretty lucky to get the forum and were glad Morrus saw that the group was active enough to benefit from it. I hate to back asking for more sub-forums right off the bat. So I think we'll need to work with the forums we now have at our disposal - our new Living Pathfinder Forum and the Playing the Game forum.

IronWolf · Nov 17, 2011

Satin Knights said:
Will one of our new moderators or Morris himself be able to pick up threads from the old locations and move them into this new forum? This is possible on many boards, but I don't know much about the software behind this one. I would hate to leave all the old history behind to be orphaned.

I did some googling and it doesn't look like you can move threads between social groups and forums.

I look at this as a good opportunity to get some organization that we couldn't have with the social groups. I know there is a lot of info in them, but a lot of it might as well be inaccessible given the lack of stickies and such to act as pointers.

I think first thing is to make sure we have our "hot" threads created here - things like character approval, character level-ups, upcoming adventures, general and such.

A lot of the proposal threads once approved should have that noted in the Wiki which would be the go to source for wanting to know if an option is approved for play or not.

We do risk losing some of the discussion that went along with approval of a play option, but we can look at the social group as our way back archive. I do not think it is being removed.

Anything else that falls in the cracks we can create a new thread here and put the info we want kept in our current discussion area in it.

The transition is apt to be a bit rocky for a short time will make the growing pain worth it. Heck, I've already found excellent use of the Multiquote tool!

GlassEye · Nov 17, 2011

I feel the IC games should stay in the Playing the Game forum for visibility. I never look at or even think about the other living games here and a new person isn't likely to do so either unless they are specifically looking for such. Seeing our prefix in the Playing the Game forum might draw attention to our games from those who might not otherwise think about getting involved in a living game.

Remember, the Living Pathfinder prefix exists just for the purpose of pulling up only those threads you are interested in so the ability to get 'one-stop shopping' already exists (excluding social groups, of course). That prefix has to be applied for that to work, though, and I notice none of these new threads have it. It may seem redundant to apply it when we have our own labeled sub-forum but not doing so cuts out a level of functionality.

sunshadow21 · Nov 17, 2011

IronWolf said:
Morrus is generally pretty reluctant to create more forums. His efforts in the past few years has been to reduce the number of forums as opposed to increase the number. He would rather see fewer, but busier forums than separate them out too much.

Not sure how many know the history, but a request was made by HolyMan when LPF first started to have a forum like this. Given the infancy of the group a social group was the option given. As time has gone by our group has grown and several felt the social group was a bit limiting as we grew. This is what led to the request this time around since we were able to show growth and an active community to warrant a full-fledged forum.

Several of us felt pretty lucky to get the forum and were glad Morrus saw that the group was active enough to benefit from it. I hate to back asking for more sub-forums right off the bat. So I think we'll need to work with the forums we now have at our disposal - our new Living Pathfinder Forum and the Playing the Game forum.

That is why I suggested making OOC threads here, but using the regular forums for games for now. It makes this forum well used, but keeps the actual games separate from OOC business. Once we have everything transferred over from the social group that we want to transfer, we could reconsider. The only threads that need to move over here now really are the Inn and the Pearl, since they represent both IC and OOC, and are the core of much of our activity; ideally, if we could simply get those moved, so as to retain the history of them.

GlassEye · Nov 17, 2011

sunshadow21 said:
That is why I suggested making OOC threads here, but using the regular forums for games for now. It makes this forum well used, but keeps the actual games separate from OOC business. Once we have everything transferred over from the social group that we want to transfer, we could reconsider. The only threads that need to move over here now really are the Inn and the Pearl, since they represent both IC and OOC, and are the core of much of our activity; ideally, if we could simply get those moved, so as to retain the history of them.

I don't think it will be necessary to artificially inflate our forum activity with OOC threads. I also feel OOC threads will clutter up the forum and draw attention away from discussion/proposal threads. And I've found them to be unnecessary in every LPF game I've been involved in.

Satin Knights · Nov 17, 2011

OK. Since we cannot move threads and have to start new continuations, I will start with that. Major threads like the Mystic Pearl and The Dunn Wright Inn should be started with the LPF Judge's account so that the first post in the thread can be updated by judges as needed. I will start with the Pearl. Towards the end, I will be adding a "Shall not be orphaned" thread to contain links to all the old threads/proposals/etc, and in the case of proposals, the results. I think that is the best we can do within the software constraints.

IronWolf · Nov 17, 2011

Satin Knights said:
Major threads like the Mystic Pearl and The Dunn Wright Inn should be started with the LPF Judge's account so that the first post in the thread can be updated by judges as needed.

Wait.

The Mystic Pearl and Dunn Wright Inn are in the main forums here, those could be moved. But that's sort of what we are talking about whether those threads should be here or in Talking the Talk.

It is the threads in the Social Group that I do not think can be moved to the forums proper.

At this point only the Social Group's purpose is being replaced by this new forum. The rest such as the Mystic, Dunn Wright Inn, IC threads, OOC game threads are all subject of discussion and no immediate plan of action for them.