Djinn
and Tonic
I think that anyone I talk to fairly often knows that I am constantly trying to come up with various methods to make the forums just a little bit better. Or at least to me it sounds like it may help, sometimes it doesn't. But I do at least think of various things that could be changed or improved. So I though in the best interest of getting some more ideas out there or to get some suggestions on what should or could be done I thought it might be a reasonable idea to make a thread here where feedback can be given.
The very first thing on my mind is adding a couple more non Zelda related sections to the forum. Lately I have heard from a few people that have mostly lost interest tell me that they only really moved over to another forum because they were mostly getting tired of just talking Zelda all the time. And that other forums have many many other sections on them where people can have other off topic discussions that are not related. On those forums they can converse in the various off topic sections and never really see or use the on topic ones at all if they do not want to. That ZD is just a little too Zelda centric and if they wish to talk about other things then they find themselves needing to go elsewhere. So my thought was to add a few other off topic sections to the forum list that are just that. Not Zelda related. This way members would not really need to look for another forum for interests outside of the Zelda series and could still chat with friends they know instead of having to start over. The new RP and Tech subforums were recently added with just this in mind. Quite a few forums have them and it does seem to be a common interest in many of the members here.
I would actually like to continue moving in this direction a little bit as I had an idea for another section to be added. But I would like to see what others think about it and then see if there are any more suggestions on implementation. What I have in mind of an Arena/Coliseum/competition type of forum that could handle every kind of contest between members, even if that may include RP's, writing or even say Pokemon or Mario Kart. I would think this might breathe some more life into the Community Competitions on ZD as well. The Community Competitions could be the stickied posts in the section for each week while the other thread topics could be whatever other smaller competitions between members. This could even lead to other things like weekly/monthly awards in the form of banners or gifs for something like Winner for June, that type of thing.
I have seen something like this on a few other forums and it seems to work out fairly well on them when implemented correctly. However that is the real question here, implementation. I would like to see if anyone thinks this is a reasonable idea or not, and if so what are some suggestions for making it work out. How would awards be handled, or should there even be official awards at all? Should it be kept to the individual members to take care of these things or should there be a small set of rules in place for the section? I would like to hear what anyone else has to say on the subject.
The very first thing on my mind is adding a couple more non Zelda related sections to the forum. Lately I have heard from a few people that have mostly lost interest tell me that they only really moved over to another forum because they were mostly getting tired of just talking Zelda all the time. And that other forums have many many other sections on them where people can have other off topic discussions that are not related. On those forums they can converse in the various off topic sections and never really see or use the on topic ones at all if they do not want to. That ZD is just a little too Zelda centric and if they wish to talk about other things then they find themselves needing to go elsewhere. So my thought was to add a few other off topic sections to the forum list that are just that. Not Zelda related. This way members would not really need to look for another forum for interests outside of the Zelda series and could still chat with friends they know instead of having to start over. The new RP and Tech subforums were recently added with just this in mind. Quite a few forums have them and it does seem to be a common interest in many of the members here.
I would actually like to continue moving in this direction a little bit as I had an idea for another section to be added. But I would like to see what others think about it and then see if there are any more suggestions on implementation. What I have in mind of an Arena/Coliseum/competition type of forum that could handle every kind of contest between members, even if that may include RP's, writing or even say Pokemon or Mario Kart. I would think this might breathe some more life into the Community Competitions on ZD as well. The Community Competitions could be the stickied posts in the section for each week while the other thread topics could be whatever other smaller competitions between members. This could even lead to other things like weekly/monthly awards in the form of banners or gifs for something like Winner for June, that type of thing.
I have seen something like this on a few other forums and it seems to work out fairly well on them when implemented correctly. However that is the real question here, implementation. I would like to see if anyone thinks this is a reasonable idea or not, and if so what are some suggestions for making it work out. How would awards be handled, or should there even be official awards at all? Should it be kept to the individual members to take care of these things or should there be a small set of rules in place for the section? I would like to hear what anyone else has to say on the subject.