Is it time to re-integrate the specific games sub-forums?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

(Adapted from a post on one of the three (at the time of this writing) incarnations of this thread on various sub-forums on ENWorld.)

ENWorld's game-specific subforums mostly exist because there's a pool of partisans who can't behave themselves when confronted with the reality that someone else plays a different game than they do, and the entire community has to maneuver around them and their behavior.

If we can have Traveller and Runequest happily sharing space on the main board, there's no reason that Pathfinder, 4E and 3E can't be there as well, except for a subset of the players of each of those games.

If the purpose of running the site is serving its visitors -- which I think is absolutely what drives the folks who put in so much time and effort building and maintaining the site -- fragmenting a conversation into multiple spaces hurts that goal. Users have to realize they're in multiple versions of the same conversation and have to realize the reason they don't see a response to a question is because they're in the wrong incarnation of the thread. Likewise, publishers have to do three times or more as many forum posts just to make sure they're also practicing good customer service, which is an extra burden in the RPG industry, where many of these publishers are doing it as a part-time job along with their real "pay the mortgage" job.

And this extends to ordinary conversations as well. Go to the 4E, Pathfinder and 3E boards, and you find generic RPG discussions mixed in there about structuring games, building game worlds, dealing with problem players and so on. But because those posters are in the ghetto that their unruly fellow gamers have forced them into, they're getting less feedback on their questions and ideas than they ought to.

This isn't me bashing those who set up the current arrangement, but an acknowledgment (or merely an opinion, if you disagree), that it's now a suboptimal set-up. The fact that the site has been reorganized multiple times over the years is an acknowledgment that human beings built it and that circumstances change.

I understand why the site is set up the way it is, I think. I just think that everyone would be better served if the sub-forums were merged back into the main site -- it would mean less duplication of content and effort for everyone and better, more robust conversations for users -- and if problem users were ejected rather than being catered to.

If a child heaped screaming abuse on his siblings, his parents wouldn't move all the children to their own separate wings of the house -- they'd deal with the discipline problem directly.

This site could be dramatically improved, for all users (many of those problem users are still present on the sub-forums and make themselves known in various ways), if the same thing happened here. I've moderated sites before, and I know what a massive pain in the butt it is -- the site I worked at is probably only about 75 percent of ENWorld's size, but the pain is probably comparable -- and I know I'm asking for other people to self-inflict some migraines, and I'm guessing that's why the admins chose the set-up they have.

But it makes me sad when my RSS feed has multiple versions of a topic pop up, and I know that users (and in this case, publishers) are either going to have to jump through a lot of hoops to keep up or that some people are going to wonder why tumbleweeds are blowing through threads they reasonably believe should be quite active.

In any case, much love for all the admins and mods. No offense is intended to ENWorld staff, past or present.

 

[Umbran]

If a child heaped screaming abuse on his siblings, his parents wouldn't move all the children to their own separate wings of the house -- they'd deal with the discipline problem directly.

Yes, but we of the moderation staff are not your parents. We don't want to be your parents. We don't have time to be parents to thousands of users. Nor do we have the same kinds of power and authority as parents.

And, while I think to some folks it sounds good, "Just let the mods lay about them with banhammers with wild abandon if it keeps the peace," is apt to have unforeseen repercussions on the tenor of these boards that would be worse than the current situation. The number of false positives would likely be alarming, and would cheese off many otherwise good posters.

And, to be honest, several threads lately have reaffirmed to me that this community is not really ready to be reintegrated. Too many people are holding old grudges, too ready to re-engage in the old fights if given too much of an excuse.

You're right, it is a sub-optimal arrangement. We didn't want to do it in the first place, but I've not seen evidence that anything else would work better. I'll play it as Morrus wants, but if he asks my opinion, I'd officially recommend against it.

 

[jonesy]

I thought the reason they were separated was because otherwise General was swamped by threads, and the smaller topics were lost in the tidal wave. A kind of swampy tidal wave where only the 'people arguing about stuff'-threads were visible due to their unfortunate amount of popularity.

 

[Dice4Hire]

Overall I am quite happy with how the boards are set up now. I an easily find threads I want to see and it is easy to avoid the forums with threads I am not interested in.

 

[IronWolf]

If the purpose of running the site is serving its visitors -- which I think is absolutely what drives the folks who put in so much time and effort building and maintaining the site -- fragmenting a conversation into multiple spaces hurts that goal. Users have to realize they're in multiple versions of the same conversation and have to realize the reason they don't see a response to a question is because they're in the wrong incarnation of the thread. Likewise, publishers have to do three times or more as many forum posts just to make sure they're also practicing good customer service, which is an extra burden in the RPG industry, where many of these publishers are doing it as a part-time job along with their real "pay the mortgage" job.

I'm not certain the boards are ready for re-integration, but the fragmented conversations do not seem good for the board. I believe you refer to the Rappan Athuk threads which had a couple different versions pop up.

Monte's most recent Legends and Lore article has at least three incantations of it floating around, at least two in the same forum.

Conversation would seem to be better if it all happened in one thread. I know with the Legends and Lore article it would be nice to have one thread instead of visiting a couple different threads and sometimes feeling the need to repeat something from one thread in another.

Instead of reintegration, maybe a period of more strict enforcement of appropriate places for threads or the merging of threads into one. This would serve to keep the conversation centered in one thread instead of occurring in multiple threads.

 

[Umbran]

I thought the reason they were separated was because otherwise General was swamped by threads

No, we wouldn't integrate *everything* into General. It would be a merging of, say, the 4e, Pathfinder, and Legacy version forums into one big D&D forum.

Even if we were ready for it, in terms of arguments, I don't know that it'd be wise to do so in terms of volume of discussion, and usability for folks looking for discussion of only one of those systems.

The real solution is to perhaps educate folks better on when a discussion is rules-specific, and when it is not. There are some topics that, really, apply equally well to someone's Pathfinder game, someone else's 4e game, and my Deadlands game - those sorts of topics should be in General.

 

[Piratecat]

This is going to be even trickier when 5e hits. We really want to avoid the arguments that cropped up last time, and I think that's going to be done by adding a 5e forum.

 

[TarionzCousin]

"Just let the mods lay about them with banhammers with wild abandon if it keeps the peace."

Can I quote you on that?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

And, to be honest, several threads lately have reaffirmed to me that this community is not really ready to be reintegrated. Too many people are holding old grudges, too ready to re-engage in the old fights if given too much of an excuse.

This makes me sad, especially since there's certainly reason to believe that the 4E threads will be eligible for the Legacy forum in the next few years.

It kills me when people ask flavor questions about D&D and only get to see their slice of D&D's answer, when knowing what 4E or 2E or whatever added to the mix will almost always be germane.

I vote that to just let the mods lay about them with ... er, never mind.

 

[OnlineDM]

I'm a relative newbie, having been into RPGs and on EN World for less than two years, but I think the current system works well. I primarily play 4e, and I imagine that discussions about rules and builds for 4e characters and campaigns would be annoying to people who don't play the game. When I tried Pathfinder, I frequented the Pathfinder forum for a while and found it useful, but since I'm not playing that game at the moment it's easier for me to have the Pathfinder threads in a different forum.

I agree that there are occasional topics that are of interest to players of multiple games that will get threads started in multiple forums, and that's sub-optimal. But that's the exception rather than the rule, and I believe there are tools the mods use to merge those threads from time to time, right?

I'd personally advocate keeping separate forums for those games that generate a lot of post traffic, as we currently have set up.