D&D 5E On DDI Articles: Please check the News Page first [UPDATE: rule relaxed]

KidSnide · Jul 1, 2012

Morrus said:
I'm still working on having them show up in both, but may I ask why you'd choose to discuss it in one forum but not the other? I'm struggling to understand the psychology behind it - for me, it makes no difference whatsoever.

I think there are three differences.

First, the News forum (at least how it shows up for me) is ordered according to when the threads were created, while the discussion forum is ordered in according to the thread received its last post. That ordering means that, in the discussion forum, interesting or contentious threads tend to stay near the top, while the News forum buries those threads. That's appropriate for a news forum, but not conducive to discussion.

Second, the discussion forum better encourages participation. If there is a particular point of an article that deserves separate discussion, you can create a new thread in the same space as the original, ensuring that folks looking for interesting community commentary find both. There even is (or was) a friendly competition to be the person to first post a link to an interesting article.

Third, inertia is significant here. The value of the forum is based on the number of other intelligent people looking at it. The fact that a community of often clever and insightful folks were checking and participating in the New Horizons forum was what made it valuable. (At least for me, this is the primary reason for coming to ENWorld.) When you try to move the eyeballs into another forum, folks adapt at different rates, reducing the value of the positive network effect.

I don't know how much the quantity of interesting discussion declined because of the forum change or because interest has died down more generally. (The level of interest from earlier this year was obviously unsustainable.) But I think it would be a real shame if this forum change resulted in a permanent decrease in the quantity or quality of discussion.

-KS

Blackwarder · Jul 1, 2012

KidSnide said:
I think there are three differences.

First, the News forum (at least how it shows up for me) is ordered according to when the threads were created, while the discussion forum is ordered in according to the thread received its last post. That ordering means that, in the discussion forum, interesting or contentious threads tend to stay near the top, while the News forum buries those threads. That's appropriate for a news forum, but not conducive to discussion.

Second, the discussion forum better encourages participation. If there is a particular point of an article that deserves separate discussion, you can create a new thread in the same space as the original, ensuring that folks looking for interesting community commentary find both. There even is (or was) a friendly competition to be the person to first post a link to an interesting article.

Third, inertia is significant here. The value of the forum is based on the number of other intelligent people looking at it. The fact that a community of often clever and insightful folks were checking and participating in the New Horizons forum was what made it valuable. (At least for me, this is the primary reason for coming to ENWorld.) When you try to move the eyeballs into another forum, folks adapt at different rates, reducing the value of the positive network effect.

I don't know how much the quantity of interesting discussion declined because of the forum change or because interest has died down more generally. (The level of interest from earlier this year was obviously unsustainable.) But I think it would be a real shame if this forum change resulted in a permanent decrease in the quantity or quality of discussion.

-KS

Can't xp you, seems I need to spread more xp... Weird since I haven't been to the forums for several days.

I agree with every thing you wrote, I'll also add that for me, heading to the forum to check the new news threads exposed me to all the other threads on the 5e forums.

The thing you need to remember Morrus is that most folks don't take the time to go through all the forums and check every thread, the spend several minutes here and enter the threads that catch their eye, problem is that by removing the news threads from the new horizons forum all those members who got lured into the dissections (me included) just aren't exposed to them...

My 2 cents.

Warder

Morrus · Jul 1, 2012

Blackwarder said:
The thing you need to remember Morrus is that most folks don't take the time to go through all the forums and check every thread, the spend several minutes here and enter the threads that catch their eye, problem is that by removing the news threads from the new horizons forum all those members who got lured into the dissections (me included) just aren't exposed to them...

The thing with that is that it's very exclusive - it only considers the small percentage of people who do delve into forums and find threads. What I'd like to see is that other 97% of site visitors seeing the threads, which is accomplished this way. Certainly more people are seeing them, and more new people are posting on them; these are two good things we should strive for. Otherwise we're focusing too much on a small percentage of people.

drothgery · Jul 1, 2012

Another issue is that the "XX replies" link on the home page goest to a reply form, not to the first comment (or first new comment). Which is counter-intuitive.

Morrus · Jul 2, 2012

drothgery said:
Another issue is that the "XX replies" link on the home page goest to a reply form, not to the first comment (or first new comment). Which is counter-intuitive.

It is counter-intuitive. But I don't think it's the explanation we're seeking.

Morrus · Jul 2, 2012

I'm trying an experimental change in the news sidebar on the left to see if it helps.

I've changed it to show items in order of last-reply (like a regular forum); this means that popular items will rise to the top and stick around for longer, while unpopular ones will just slide off the bottom. I've also increased it to show 15 items, again reducing the amount of stuff sliding quickly off the bottom.

JamesonCourage · Jul 4, 2012

Morrus said:
I'm trying an experimental change in the news sidebar on the left to see if it helps.

I've changed it to show items in order of last-reply (like a regular forum); this means that popular items will rise to the top and stick around for longer, while unpopular ones will just slide off the bottom. I've also increased it to show 15 items, again reducing the amount of stuff sliding quickly off the bottom.

I just wanted to say this is working for me so far. Thanks for going through the effort. I appreciate it.

Morrus · Jul 6, 2012

OK, we have (hopefully) the thread mirroring working. So now a thread can be on both the news page AND the 5E forum. We'll see how that works out - I don't know how it'll affect server performance. I've mirrored a small handful of recent D&D Next news items here as a trial. Please post in 'em so we can see if replies are mirrored correctly in both version of the thread.

Sir Brennen · Jul 7, 2012

Morrus said:
OK, we have (hopefully) the thread mirroring working. So now a thread can be on both the news page AND the 5E forum. We'll see how that works out - I don't know how it'll affect server performance. I've mirrored a small handful of recent D&D Next news items here as a trial. Please post in 'em so we can see if replies are mirrored correctly in both version of the thread.

That's awesome. I like how the news items are flagged in the 5E forum with the D&D icon as well.

If this experiment works, I for one would like the News forum to go back to being ordered by creation date. In the News Items sidebar, I expect News to be displayed by, you know, what's newest. Then heavily discussed mirrored topics can rise to the top of the related forum.