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

Morrus · Jun 25, 2012

KidSnide said:
I'm not sure whether moving these discussions to the news forum is a good idea in the abstract, but there has definitely been less discussion of those articles since the move. It may be worth a longer experiment, but it doesn't look successful right now.

Probably takes some getting used to, but being on the news page and in the newsletter lets them reach ten times the audience that burying them in the forum does. What we are seeing is an increase in new users (not just new registrations, but also registered users who don't tend to scour the forums) posting in those threads, while the older users are not so much. The key is persuading those users to do so, but if they really don't want to then then they're not going to.

KidSnide · Jun 25, 2012

Morrus said:
Probably takes some getting used to, but being on the news page and in the newsletter lets them reach ten times the audience that burying them in the forum does. What we are seeing is an increase in new users (not just new registrations, but also registered users who don't tend to scour the forums) posting in those threads, while the older users are not so much. The key is persuading those users to do so, but if they really don't want to then then they're not going to.

I don't know if it's possible, but it seems like it would be ideal if the same conversation could appear in both the news page and the appropriate forum.

-KS

Morrus · Jun 26, 2012

KidSnide said:
I don't know if it's possible, but it seems like it would be ideal if the same conversation could appear in both the news page and the appropriate forum.

-KS

I'm trying to recruit someone to write such code. It's not a simple task, though, and the server load ramifications are unknown at this point.

We may have to settle for "not ideal". But the current setup will be better long term. It reaches a magnitude more people - literally.

Blackwarder · Jun 27, 2012

I'm feeling a drastic reduction in D&D articles disscusion, back when they were in the forums those articles usually spawned side threads about stuff written in them, now not so much...

Warder

the Jester · Jun 28, 2012

Blackwarder said:
I'm feeling a drastic reduction in D&D articles disscusion, back when they were in the forums those articles usually spawned side threads about stuff written in them, now not so much...

Warder

Yeah, I kind of feel the move actually discourages discussion.

EDIT: Not that that's the intent, of course; it's just that I go to the New Horizons forum to discuss 5e and this forum to see announcements and links about 5e.

Morrus · Jun 29, 2012

the Jester said:
EDIT: Not that that's the intent, of course; it's just that I go to the New Horizons forum to discuss 5e and this forum to see announcements and links about 5e.

But that's a choice, of course.

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.

For now, though, since people seem so resistant to it, I'll relax the rule. This isn't a permanent decision, though; I'm still working on the multi-forum modification, and I may still occasionally merge threads where the same conversation is happening in two separate places.

Chris_Nightwing · Jun 29, 2012

I have the D&DN forum bookmarked, and often go straight to it. If articles have threads about them, I used to discuss them there.

Initially I didn't do the same with articles in the news forum. I think it's because a news item isn't obviously a thread in a forum. I got used to it, but it's still quieter.

Rather than duplicating the threads, can you not have the frontpage/newsfeed be made up of *any thread* from *any forum*, set by a flag? Explicit news items can still be in a news forum, but threads from other forums could be promoted to news when necessary.

the Jester · Jun 29, 2012

Morrus said:
But that's a choice, of course.

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.

Mostly habit, to be honest, but also I've never seen the News forum as where to go to discuss things. Discussion always seems to thrive in the appropriate forums for the topic- New Horizons in this case- and since that forum exists and what we're discussing is 5e stuff, it just seems, I dunno, logical?

It's like the news forum is akin to watching the news. That might be where I first heard about (for instance) the Obamacare ruling, but I go elsewhere to discuss it. Like I said above, the news forum just 'feels' like the wrong place for extended discussion, forked threads, etc to me.

That said, I've been consciously trying to check it more and add more to the discussions there, but just the fact that it requires conscious attention and effort means that I'm saying (and looking) a lot less than I do in the other, discussion-oriented forums.

For now, though, since people seem so resistant to it, I'll relax the rule. This isn't a permanent decision, though; I'm still working on the multi-forum modification, and I may still occasionally merge threads where the same conversation is happening in two separate places.

The multi-forum thread is the best of both worlds IMHO; I hope you can find someone willing and able to pull it off!

Morrus · Jun 29, 2012

Chris_Nightwing said:
Rather than duplicating the threads, can you not have the frontpage/newsfeed be made up of *any thread* from *any forum*, set by a flag? Explicit news items can still be in a news forum, but threads from other forums could be promoted to news when necessary.

I'd love to be able to do that. It would be the perfect solution. But no, unfortunately I can't.

Mattachine · Jun 29, 2012

Since moving the threads about articles exclusively to the News page, there is very little discussion about news articles.

That wasn't the goal, was it?