Forum Merger Discussion/Suggestions

[Mipha]

The bigger point in my stuff on that is there is nothing to maintain. People aren't using them.

The people here use them quite frequently. And i need them too so i can keep my fic.
We can scrap science and tech but everything else actualy brings mkre activity.

 

[Djinn]

The bigger point in my stuff on that is there is nothing to maintain. People aren't using them.

Which also means keeping them requires no extra work on part of the staff of that is the case. However the way I see it we as staff should be trying to work towards increasing activity instead of punishing inactivity. I tend to start posting to drum up activity for things like that.

 

[Spiritual Mask Salesman]

Most of our sections are kept active by our members, non-zelda sections are great. I've said a lot of times in the past I'm completely against expanding so there are sections for each individual zelda game. It's a terrible concept that will create inactivity, and put off new users. Nobody wants to join a forum with too many sections.

I don't mind maybe just having a “future Zelda” section... but in the past individual sections for new games on this forum has never done too bad.

 

[Emma]

We don't need boards for every game. If that's where you're going, that's absurd. 50% or more of the boards would be dead 90% of the year if not more. Dead boards = lack of driving new user activity. If a forum looks dead to an onlooker, they are far less likely to join. Now if there are 10 dead boards, they aren't even going to bother to look elsewhere. The idea that forums need to be expanded into 50 boards is an archaic one. The more spread out the activity is, the less people are going to join to use them. There is a direct correlation between new user activity levels and signups and dead forums.

Well I do appreciate that you're awknowledging the existence of the perception of no activity driving away activity. The exact same thing as I cited as my chief concern for the wiki. Without an active community on this site, and without any real activity on the wiki itself, people will see it as dead and have no incentive to join. And regardless of whatever else we try to do, we won't be able to get around that hurdle. They won't know, or care, that we actually consider it just one part of a larger unified whole. That mindset is all well and good for how we go about operating things but it is not going to mean anything to the casual observer we're thinking to entice into joining.

As for more "nuanced discussions move to page two" - pages exist for a reason, like you can go them. But beyond that, the most active board in terms of pure number of topics actually posted in this month is the World of Zelda board. It has 5 or 6 topics that basically haven't been posted in in two weeks on the front. That to me tells me that there isn't even enough active conversations happening to support a full page, let alone worrying about "consolidation leading to lost topics". You already don't have that many boards and none of them are overly active save a handful of threads.

Eh.... but for precisely the same reason why you're saying people will be turned of by too much scrolling by having too many sections, topics that move beyond the first page are rapidly going to become irrelevant. Most people will never bother to look beyond the first page and it's rather absurd to assume they would. And absolutely insane to count on them doing so. They won't. If topics, say, younger than a week regularly get pushed to the second page, that section is too active and needs to be split up. It's back to my bucket analogy. In this case, the bucket is at capacity and the excess is simply spilling over, going to waste, if you want to hold more water overall, you need another bucket.

While the proposal and goal now is to maintain all ZD structure with some slight renaming where needed, I do propose a more ZI like setup for consideration. We have 5 boards to your six, but new boards are never needed to be created or deleted. It's a very simple setup - Future Zelda game talk (yet to be released games), Home Console, Handheld (can change this to some sort of different organiation method if you prefer), Theories, and General Zelda.

The idea here is that really, there is no single game that can actually properly support full board activity levels of a truly active page one. Not even Zelda U. But, if you consolidate future Zelda talks together, that allows TPHD and Zelda U talk to exist together, creating a more full and active single board for that talk. Obviously once TPHD releases, any currently active threads move to home console discussion with ghost links left behind.

Home console is self explanitory. So is handheld. But those dedfinitions and names can change to whatever. 2D/3D, however people want to work out it out. But generally, 2D Zelda games are talked about less - so they don't need individual boards. But one board for all of that chatter is better. 3D games are talked about more, but none can support a board on their own as it stands right now today. None of them.

I'm not sure that either existing system is precisely right for what we need. But you described is far more sensible than what ZD has been doing previously. However, remakes throw a spanner in the works there. Previous home console games now becoming handheld like the N64 titles. The average gamer today is going to be aware of them through their handheld ports, so the existing the home console section would cause confusion. If we did something more like ZI's organization, we'll have to think of something that can withstand the test of time a bit better than that. Especially with how Nintendo's blurring the lines between console and handheld with Hyrule Warriors.

So, while I accept my ideas probably will never be used, the very best and most active forums in the world consolidate down to similar measures because it drives further activity levels higher. It's not like I'm saying "let's be NeoGAF and put it all in one board" - that's silly. We're a very specific game driven place. You can split up the convos. But split it too far and no one new is going to bother anymore and you're left with a forum that has a ton of scrolling and 4 active boards.

Again, the issue here is that the forum gets cluttered with inactive boards. I've seen other places try this and it just killed off the whole forum. A smaller, more compact but direct forum in general, leads to increased new user activity and growth. It's hard to sell a place with 20+ boards and only 4 of them actively being used.

This is one big problem in your line of reasoning though. A "ton of scrolling" isn't necessary with a lot of sections. That's merely poor structuring. There is such a thing as subsections and I have seen them nested multiple levels before. That can give you the specifics that we tend to look for without making the main index page absolutely massive. It is entirely possible to hide the lists of subsections from the main index and only have them show up when you open the main sections. I have seen it done before, though of course I wouldn't know how it is done. Point is, the lack of willingness to organize things into coherent, streamlined groups isn't a reason not to split things up more.

I'm only going to focus on the Zelda sections for now, but I will say I think ZD has a few too many boards outside of the Zelda area. As an example - does Science and Technology need to really exist? It has 1 active thread this motnh and 2 all year, and many that haven't been touched since January 2015. What's the purpose of keeping that section there? Forum tutorials and FAQ too could easily find a way to consolidate into the feedback area (and you can make rules appear on every single forum in IPB easily). It's barely active and creates scrolling,a nd it's purpose crosses over a lot with feedback and suggestions. Mafia hasn't been used in ages - I'd say can it, but if the communtiy wants to bring it back, cool. Just noting that no one is really using it at all.

I don't think we should be merging any of the general discussion sections. Instead we should work to keep them active. People are attached to the games sections, but they shouldn't all be their own main sections, they should be on subforums. Mafia and roleplay should be listed as subforums of Forum Games and not listed as their own sections. And for that matter, forum tutorials/FAQ and feedback should be moved around the same way, subsections. The ability to make subforums exists for this very reason. We should be using it. It cuts down on this "scrolling" issue. And is a far more sensible solution than simply getting rid of various sections.

 

[Nathanial Rumphol-Janc]

Which also means keeping them requires no extra work on part of the staff of that is the case. However the way I see it we as staff should be trying to work towards increasing activity instead of punishing inactivity. I tend to start posting to drum up activity for things like that.

The changes I suggested to 3 boards outside of the Zelda area aren't really punishing. The boards aren't being used. Leaving dead boards around that aren't being used is a deterrent to new users. That's all. And these forums have an increasing amount of scrolling with is detrimental to the new user experience as well. I think just yesterday the scroll bar was bigger in the boards that the entire index of Zelda Informer. That's a lot of scrolling when some boards are dead. That's all.

Most of our sections are kept active by our members, non-zelda sections are great. I've said a lot of times in the past I'm completely against expanding so there are sections for each individual zelda game. It's a terrible concept that will crreate inactivity, and put off new users. Nobody wants to join a forum with too many sections.

I don't mind maybe just having a “future Zelda” section... but in the past individual sections for new games on this forum has never done too bad.

The idea behind a future Zelda game section is no 2 year period.new Zelda games come every other year. It really keeps things flowing nicely instead of constantly creating new boards and deleting boards. It feels weird as a Zelda fan going to a board that looks like it's emphasizing one game over the rest. A future Zelda board eliminates that. Just my thoughts.

Well I do appreciate that you're awknowledging the existence of the perception of no activity driving away activity. The exact same thing as I cited as my chief concern for the wiki. Without an active community on this site, and without any real activity on the wiki itself, people will see it as dead and have no incentive to join. And regardless of whatever else we try to do, we won't be able to get around that hurdle. They won't know, or care, that we actually consider it just one part of a larger unified whole. That mindset is all well and good for how we go about operating things but it is not going to mean anything to the casual observer we're thinking to entice into joining.

.

Forums are non essential to wikis. Wikipedia doesn't have one and it's the largest in the world. What drives people to a wiki is the popularity of that wiki. How much it is promoted. I did 3 promotions for ZI's wiki in the past and activity soared. Forums are part of the cog, but they aren't the answer to the wiki. If people here aren't already editing the wiki, they certainly won't start now. We're in an age where forums are no longer essential to anything but themselves. Sad internet world we live in, but it is the truth. You need to let go of that mindset and look to other methods of driving wiki activity.

Eh.... but for precisely the same reason why you're saying people will be turned of by too much scrolling by having too many sections, topics that move beyond the first page are rapidly going to become irrelevant. Most people will never bother to look beyond the first page and it's rather absurd to assume they would. And absolutely insane to count on them doing so. They won't. If topics, say, younger than a week regularly get pushed to the second page, that section is too active and needs to be split up. It's back to my bucket analogy. In this case, the bucket is at capacity and the excess is simply spilling over, going to waste, if you want to hold more water overall, you need another bucket.

If we reach a point where activity level warrant more boards, sure. But I mean, if we're getting threads pushed to page 2 within days, that means we've increased the forum level activity by 1000% compared to now. I'd call that a pretty bg win. That's how much your concern isn't warranted. We're nowhere near active enough to worry about 5 boards instead of 6 = page two topics. We'd be lucky to get half of page one to be active there at present.

I'm not sure that either existing system is precisely right for what we need. But you described is far more sensible than what ZD has been doing previously. However, remakes throw a spanner in the works there. Previous home console games now becoming handheld like the N64 titles. The average gamer today is going to be aware of them through their handheld ports, so the existing the home console section would cause confusion. If we did something more like ZI's organization, we'll have to think of something that can withstand the test of time a bit better than that. Especially with how Nintendo's blurring the lines between console and handheld with Hyrule Warriors.

That's why I said I'm open to changing them a bit to adjust for this.

This is one big problem in your line of reasoning though. A "ton of scrolling" isn't necessary with a lot of sections. That's merely poor structuring. There is such a thing as subsections and I have seen them nested multiple levels before. That can give you the specifics that we tend to look for without making the main index page absolutely massive. It is entirely possible to hide the lists of subsections from the main index and only have them show up when you open the main sections. I have seen it done before, though of course I wouldn't know how it is done. Point is, the lack of willingness to organize things into coherent, streamlined groups isn't a reason not to split things up more.

The more hassle getting to a section is, the more likely people won't use it.

I don't think we should be merging any of the general discussion sections. Instead we should work to keep them active. People are attached to the games sections, but they shouldn't all be their own main sections, they should be on subforums. Mafia and roleplay should be listed as subforums of Forum Games and not listed as their own sections. And for that matter, forum tutorials/FAQ and feedback should be moved around the same way, subsections. The ability to make subforums exists for this very reason. We should be using it. It cuts down on this "scrolling" issue. And is a far more sensible solution than simply getting rid of various sections.

My point was - people aren't using those sections. Specifically the faq stuff - that's has so much crossover with feedback they can just be a solitary section.

 

[Djinn]

If 1-2 staff members post 1-2 threads within a week an reply to a thread then all of a sudden the section is active. Then people see it is used and post more. Activity breeds activity.

 

[Nathanial Rumphol-Janc]

If 1-2 staff members post 1-2 threads within a week an reply to a thread then all of a sudden the section is active. Then people see it is used and post more. Activity breeds activity.

If one reply in a week is active to you, then we have very different definitions of what an active community is. In that sense, ZI's community was active too before all of this.

But it wasn't. It was dead. I want to drive these boards to activity levels they may have never seen before. Not one where a week between replies is considered active. :/

 

[Spiritual Mask Salesman]

The idea behind a future Zelda game section is no 2 year period.new Zelda games come every other year. It really keeps things flowing nicely instead of constantly creating new boards and deleting boards. It feels weird as a Zelda fan going to a board that looks like it's emphasizing one game over the rest. A future Zelda board eliminates that. Just my thoughts.

Yeah, that does make sense.

 

[Spiritual Mask Salesman]

As for the Mafia section, it was active last year, active enough to have it's own section. Activity died when the community lost interest only a few months ago. I think it was mainly because we'd been doing games non-stop for practically 5 years. I'd like to leave it as it's own section to see if ZI members would be interested in playing. If nothing happens in like a few months I think it could be a sub-forum.

 

[Djinn]

If one reply in a week is active to you, then we have very different definitions of what an active community is. In that sense, ZI's community was active too before all of this.

But it wasn't. It was dead. I want to drive these boards to activity levels they may have never seen before. Not one where a week between replies is considered active. :/

My example was more along the lines of 4-ish threads and 2-3 bumps a week. I would consider that active.

 

[Spiritual Mask Salesman]

We could definitely revive the Article Center. Revise the editor list and all that. The Pokemon Article Sub-form is no longer relevant, it was never too active anyway. We could go back to just zelda themed stuff.

 

[Emma]

The changes I suggested to 3 boards outside of the Zelda area aren't really punishing. The boards aren't being used. Leaving dead boards around that aren't being used is a deterrent to new users. That's all. And these forums have an increasing amount of scrolling with is detrimental to the new user experience as well. I think just yesterday the scroll bar was bigger in the boards that the entire index of Zelda Informer. That's a lot of scrolling when some boards are dead. That's all.

As I said before, scrolling isn't an issue if you use subforums.

The idea behind a future Zelda game section is no 2 year period.new Zelda games come every other year. It really keeps things flowing nicely instead of constantly creating new boards and deleting boards. It feels weird as a Zelda fan going to a board that looks like it's emphasizing one game over the rest. A future Zelda board eliminates that. Just my thoughts.

Still iffy on the other Zelda sections, but future Zelda itself would streamline a lot of stuff that would make announcements and such less jarring.

Forums are non essential to wikis. Wikipedia doesn't have one and it's the largest in the world. What drives people to a wiki is the popularity of that wiki. How much it is promoted. I did 3 promotions for ZI's wiki in the past and activity soared. Forums are part of the cog, but they aren't the answer to the wiki. If people here aren't already editing the wiki, they certainly won't start now. We're in an age where forums are no longer essential to anything but themselves. Sad internet world we live in, but it is the truth. You need to let go of that mindset and look to other methods of driving wiki activity.

First of all, never, EVER compare a giant to a dwarf. What works, or doesn't, for something massive and firmly established as Wikipedia is absolutely meaningless to something smaller. It's like saying that all a small corner shop in a small town needs to do to be successful is buy in bulk from asian sweatshops like Walmart does. It won't work. It's two completely different universes so don't compare them.

For our kind of wiki, a relatively small, focused subject, gaming wiki, the absolute most successful, independent (not supported by outragously massive networks like Wikia) ones have forums attached. Like Bulbapedia and Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages. Their forums are absolutely essential to their success. And if we aim to one day outpace Zelda Wiki, we're not going to do that if we keep assuming "well Zelda Wiki/Mario Wiki/Metroid Wiki/Whatever Wiki, doesn't do that so why should we bother?" Because we have to look beyond our horizons. And we shouldn't limit ourselves by refusing to do what our immediate rivals haven't bothered to. We're not aiming to match them, we aim to exceed them. For examples of what to do, we shouldn't look to our immediate rivals, we should look at the most successful wikis that are even comparable to us, that are not direct rivals, and the big thing they have that we don't is a forum with a thriving community attached.

And once again you're thinking way, WAY too much in the terms of how you want to see our network. How you wish to think of it. No one that I can see is disagreeing with how you want to look at things. Everyone I can see that even acknowledged it thinks it's a fantastic way to see things. But what you're not understanding is that your view is not everyone else's view. When they see the wiki as it is now, they're going to see nothing, it's dead. And if we move the front page responsibilities to Zelda Informer and move the forum there too, there will be NOTHING but the Wiki activity visible to the public on the Zelda Dungeon domain. Did you not just get done telling us over and over that people seeing dead sections will discourage them from participating in a forum? The exact same logic applies here.

And as for other promotion, that is not going to work if all anyone sees is a dead site. They won't care what your higher ideals of togetherness are, however insightful and useful they are, they'll mean nothing. So we can do a billion different promotions, but the usefulness of the additions will be limited. Will it be a deathnail to the wiki? No, of course not, don't be absurd. It'll be enough to sustain it indefinitely. But it will not be enough for it to thrive, to truly exceed Zelda Wiki. It just can't do that without a community of its own. Even if that community is part of a larger whole, it does have to have its own organization and its own autonomy.

Also you're confusing viewers with contributors. What the wiki needs is contributors, not necessarily viewers. It's getting enough to get by. Promotion is fine and that, and it will increase viewers for sure, but that doesn't get you contributors. They are two entirely separate animals and getting contributors is considerably more difficult than getting viewers. And in the long term we cannot sustain a viewer influx regardless of any promotion if we don't have enough contributors to keep up with our rivals. Otherwise we become irrelevant and THEY start getting more and more of the traffic that used to go to us. So all these ideas for promotion you have are not going to give us what we need most. It's like you're more concerned with advertising a product to get sales when you don't actually have the ability to manufacture enough to make demand without hiring more employees or like when GameStop keeps selling preorders even though they've run out of their allotment and the excess never get their promised bonuses. We're not hurting for viewers, we can survive on what we have now, we can't survive on the number of contributors we have now.

If we reach a point where activity level warrant more boards, sure. But I mean, if we're getting threads pushed to page 2 within days, that means we've increased the forum level activity by 1000% compared to now. I'd call that a pretty bg win. That's how much your concern isn't warranted. We're nowhere near active enough to worry about 5 boards instead of 6 = page two topics. We'd be lucky to get half of page one to be active there at present.

Uhm, except no. On ZI terms, maybe. But not for ZD which has more forum activity. AND which also has a habit of merging section after section into world of Zelda. Topics being pushed to page two after a few days does not mean that overall activity has skyrocketed. As I've explained several times, all it means was that everything was dumped into one bucket to make it look like it was bigger even though in reality it's not. It's a parlor trick, a slight of hand. It looks impressive, but long term it's meaningless and unsustainable.

The more hassle getting to a section is, the more likely people won't use it.

Trial and error? There has to be some kind of reasonable middle ground between no subsections whatsoever to subsections of subsections of subsections. That way we can condense and streamline things a bit without losing substance. We let it play out for a while and if one particular section doesn't work, then we deal with it as it happens. But some sections I think are too important to get rid of even if they dip in activity. Like all the general sections. And the FAQs section (as a rule that's there for reference and not activity anyway).

 

[Spiritual Mask Salesman]

For our kind of wiki, a relatively small, focused subject, gaming wiki, the absolute most successful, independent (not supported by outragously massive networks like Wikia) ones have forums attached. Like Bulbapedia and Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages. Their forums are absolutely essential to their success. And if we aim to one day outpace Zelda Wiki, we're not going to do that if we keep assuming "well Zelda Wiki/Mario Wiki/Metroid Wiki/Whatever Wiki, doesn't have one so why should we bother? Because we have to look beyond our horizons. And looking at the most successful wikis that are even comparable to us, the big thing they have that we don't is a forum with a thriving community attached.

This forum becoming the ZI forum won't really compromise the Wiki. Mases concept will help out the wiki. If there are links to it on the forum still, links in this sites' guides, links on ZI frontpage, it isn't like the wiki gets pushed aside.

 

[Emma]

This forum becoming the ZI forum won't really compromise the Wiki. Mases concept will help out the wiki. If there are links to it on the forum still, links in this sites' guides, links on ZI frontpage, it isn't like the wiki gets pushed aside.

I don't think you read my entire post. It's wordy, as I tend to be, and I just posted it a very short time ago, too short for anyone to have read it in its entirety before replying so soon. I already refuted the idea of forum somewhere else on the network working for what the wiki needs to grow and how promotions elsewhere are not going to necessarily help it. Please refer to that post for the explanation as it's not going to help to repeat it again here.

 

[Jamie]

Can people who don't play mafia please stop trying to say where it should be located or if it should exist? With Mafia activity having died lately the last thing we need is for it to be a subforum under forum games. And I think the roleplay community would also be very offended by you calling roleplay a "game".