Recombining Forums

[TheAuldGrump]

Hmmm, if I had to choose between one extreme and the other then I would say 'cram 'em all into one'. But, really, there ought to be a middle ground between the extremes.

Right now I feel that E.N. World is too spread out - I don't visit most of the fora, and do feel that a large percentage can be combined into fewer options. 4e, legacy, retro, and Pathfinder, properly labeled, probably should all be folded into General.

Board games, card games, and miniatures games probably shouldn't be folded into general.

The Auld Grump

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

How about "best of both world" solution.

Let people have the option in their account settings to let the General forum (when they view it) draw from a random sample of miscellaneous other forums in addition to all the other posts in General. Too complex to make work?

 

[Lanefan]

I don't play 3e; I don't play 4e. Thus, those having their own forums is fine by me as I can happily ignore 'em when I want to, which is most of the time.

About 98% of my reading and posting is in General. Another 1% - if that - goes in Meta, with the remaining 1% spread out between everywhere else.

I'd say General is fine the way it is, or close; I certainly wouldn't want to see it inundated with specific-edition (or specific non-D+D system) threads unless I had a way of ignoring them. That said, it might be worth looking at the specific-edition-forum threads with an eye to whether any have or are developing any relevance to other editions or systems; and if any do then punt 'em into general so we'll all see them. (i.e. the reverse of moving a specific-edition thread out of General into its own edition's forum)

And while we're at it, a suggestion/request: a 5e or future developments forum, where we can speculate on what comes next - and-or design it ourselves. That's a forum I *would* hang around in!

Lanefan

 

[Noumenon]

The problem is that General is followed by four forums with very little participation, making it look like nothing else is going on on the site. Sort the forums by popularity, or make the forums like Board Games with 0.3% the posts of General into subforums. Right now Board Games is getting equal billing with General as far as icon size and description alotted, and much higher billing than 4E and Legacy which are way down the page.

 

[Maggan]

A huge general is my choice of the two.

But ... I'd much rather see a "virtual forum" where the threads are shown from a collection of sub-forums. And then keep the sub-forums, for those who want to have easier access to those specific topics.

Some sort of dashboard showing the last active threads is what I would like to see. From that, I could easily go to any of the other sub-forums depending on what I'm interested in.

I've seen it at other forums, but I imagine there are special obstacles for a site this big.

EDIT: Missed that it was another suggestion for this! Off to give XP!

/M

 

[Herobizkit]

I have noticed General being a little 'slower', but I'm fine with that - I tend to take an hour or so and read EnWorld as if it were a newspaper.

 

[IronWolf]

I think the forums should be kept separate.

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.

I this would be the result of combining them again. Things wouldn't stay on the main page and a lot of good discussion would be lost in what one poster or the other would call noise. Admittedly what I consider noise would quite likely not be noise to another and vice versa.

While a busy general forum worked in the past, the gaming community is much more split these days with people still playing 3.5, some moving to Pathfinder and others moving to 4e. I think as the gaming community changed then the forums needed to change to match this further split in the community.

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 think the bickering on the forums would likely increase as forums were combined to General. More people will be having game systems they are critical of forced to the spotlight in general and leading for more detractors of the system to post in those threads. With them split it is easier to avoid (or have a safe haven) to discuss your system of choice.

I like the forums split for the following reasons*

1) Keeps topics from rotating off the front page
...

2) Keeps 'cross talk' down
...

3) it makes it easier when reading/answering rules-related questions...
...

4) it allows me to be selective
...

I snipped the reasoning for space sake, but these are all great points in my opinion and echo a lot of my thoughts on the decision.

 

[freyar]

A smaller change that comes to mind would be to put discussion of upcoming releases, etc, back into General RPG and merge Pathfinder rules questions/discussion with the Legacy Rules/Houserules forums with heavy use of thread labels (since Pathfinder rules probably isn't active enough by itself). I know that would put a few active Pathfinder threads into General. I see some 4e upcoming release type threads from time to time in General already, but maybe there are also more of those in the 4e-specific forums, too. This would keep the rules stuff separated and still bring a little traffic back to General.

Moving things like the board games forum down the page a bit probably is a good idea, too.

 

[pawsplay]

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

I was curious about that too, once. Morrus shut down my poll in about ten minutes...

 

[the Jester]

I too think there's a middle ground here; but I favor recombining at least some of the forums.