Recombining Forums

[Morrus]

I'm considering a few options at present, and appreciate input.

We were told - strenuosly - "General RPG is too crowded and moves too fast, we can't find our Pathfinder/3.5/4E/DM-tips/etc/etc/etc" discussions.

So we split the forum and moved the various subjects into their own forums.

Now we're being told "General RPG is too quiet, therefore I think the site is dead, so I'm leaving".

So, what to do?

Do we recombine everything, showing everyone how busy EN World is, but making it harder to find stuff? Or do we keep it split and accept that if someone doesn't look further than General RPG and leaves, that's the price we pay for organisation?

I'm listening to your opinions!

 

[Mark CMG]

You might want to refashion this poll to show usernames, to avoid tampering. It might also be worth setting up two polls, one for subscribers and one for non-subscribers. Is there a way for admins to get that information without making it public?

 

[RangerWickett]

Does vB support 'promote threads with tag X'? Like, if you want Pathfinder threads, you could select 'Pathfinder' from a drop menu, and then everything with the header Pathfinder gets kicked to the top? Everything else would get sorted normally.

 

[wedgeski]

I would like to see a combined General again but I think your mods are going to have to come down super hard on edition-warring, more so even than they do now.

 

[jonesy]

Umm.. I've got an idea, but I've no idea how feasible it is.

What if you kept the forums as they are now, but added one more discussion area called "Combined RPG Discussion" (or Mega or whatever), and then linked the other discussion areas there, so that you could see all messages on the same discussion area, as well as their own? Or am I just out of my mind here?

 

[DragonLancer]

I've voted split. It takes me an hour as it is to go through the General forum each day as it is, and I like having a Pathfinder section devoted just to that game, as I'm sure the 4E and other edition players are too (probably).

 

[Wicht]

I have gotten to where I don't truly mind the 4e forums and the Pathfinder forums, etc. being split off. But I would really like to see the publishers info back in general.

 

[Morrus]

I have gotten to where I don't truly mind the 4e forums and the Pathfinder forums, etc. being split off. But I would really like to see the publishers info back in general.

Back in general? It's never been in general! At least not in the last decade!

 

[LightPhoenix]

I can't find a way to sort by tag; chances are that's linked to the Search function.

However, you can choose to view by prefix by going to the Display Options panel at the bottom of the forum and selecting a prefix. You don't even need to be a subscriber to do this. It also gets a unique link that you could save in a browser.

As far as combining goes, I think the problem is one of perception amongst both new members and old. For the old members, yes, General is slower. The reason for that is because edition-specific threads are actually being posted in the edition-specific forums. I'm willing to go out on a limb and bet that if you looked at traffic to the edition-specific forums you'd see an increase in traffic correlating to a decrease in traffic to General.

My suggestion wouldn't be to recombine the boards, but rather to resort them on the main page. I don't understand why the 4E boards aren't at the top of the board index. They're the most popular boards, they're the most current boards, and the boards that most new members will be looking for. If anything, General should be at the bottom, as a miscellaneous catch-all forum. You could perhaps merge it with the "Other RPGs" forum.

The way I would order the role-playing forums would be 4E, Pathfinder, D&D Legacy, WotBS, General/Others. Move Board Games to "Gaming Action," since they're currently under the RPG category when they're not RPGs. I'd consider moving Miniatures to Gaming Action as well; really, most minis discussion is tangentially gaming related. Leave the rest as is.

 

[Jasperak]

As far as combining goes, I think the problem is one of perception amongst both new members and old. For the old members, yes, General is slower. The reason for that is because edition-specific threads are actually being posted in the edition-specific forums. I'm willing to go out on a limb and bet that if you looked at traffic to the edition-specific forums you'd see an increase in traffic correlating to a decrease in traffic to General.

My suggestion wouldn't be to recombine the boards, but rather to resort them on the main page. I don't understand why the 4E boards aren't at the top of the board index. They're the most popular boards, they're the most current boards, and the boards that most new members will be looking for. If anything, General should be at the bottom, as a miscellaneous catch-all forum. You could perhaps merge it with the "Other RPGs" forum.

Response to bolded text: Nope. General always seems to have double the amount of viewers as either 4e or Pathfinder+Legacy D&D. Normally it seems to be about 50% General, 25-30% 4e, 20-25% all other D&D.

As of my last refresh: General 313, 4e 209, and Legacy D&D 188. So not quite 50% right now but I have never seen it lower than 4e. I bet Morrus can provide us direct numbers of each forum's traffic, if the number of viewers in forum is not indicative of their movement, and if he were so inclined.

I would be interested to know the percentages of paid/unpaid and how it relates to gaming preference.