Ideas/implementations for the Forum

[Djinn]

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.

 

[Emma]

I think the fact that the forums are now a hub for three different game series necessitates a bit more expansion for more general discussion areas. Technology was a good add. We need to bring back entertainment. The Zelda sections are also way too fast-paced. I think merging them all together was a mistake. We should have subforums dividing them up. Pokemon could stand to have one or two more sub-forums. Don't know enough about Darksiders to say there.

The level of organization in the Zelda sections is a complete mess and it makes it unappealing to post in there. And we're rather lacking in other areas to discuss, so that is one thing that's losing us members. We need to come up with a better solution than just throwing everything into one and hoping that prefixes are enough, because that doesn't work.

 

[Mases]

I am in agreeance on the expansion of Non-Dungeon-Gaming forums. Let's not go overboard with expansion, but I think 'Technology' was a good start.

For the Dungeon-Gaming sections, we might see expansion when/if new websites join the network. As of this point in time, there is nothing new on the horizon.

From a content archive perspective, I think it's fair to say that the Zelda sections are a mess, but I don't think this is a concern for the bulk of users. I do like that the Zelda sections are very fast-moving where if you post a brand new thread, you will get responses within a short amount of time. I think the Chatbox helps with this as well, since it posts the thread notifications. I think this keeps users a bit more engaged when their posts/threads get quicker responses. From some of the highly successful forum that I frequent, such as neogaf, this is a feature that I really enjoy.

 

[Vanessa28]

Personally I like the idea of more forums than just Zelda. What we see is people like to talk about Zelda but after a while they get a bit tired of it because most of what can be said already has been said. But with these latest changes you see more people getting more active and interested. My thoughts would be to add a Mario Forum in the future since the Mario world is also very large.
What I also like is we have an RP subforum now. I noticed on another Site I joined for years and which was pretty active the majority of the people left after they removed the RP part. It is of course not about RP but it does encourage members to be more active.
And what should we do with some groups? There is an overload of groups and sometimes it is hard to navigate through them to find what you are looking for

 

[Ganondork]

My thoughts would be to add a Mario Forum in the future since the Mario world is also very large.

We don't add another game-related forum unless the corresponding site on the Dungeon Gaming Network is added. The status of Mario Dungeon - to my knowledge - is that it was dropped. Therefore, we'd have to add another dungeon to create another forum geared for a specific game. Additionally, wasn't Metroid Dungeon being made? Why haven't forums for Metroid been made yet? I recall Metroid Dungeon being up long before Darksiders Dungeon, and yet Darksiders has a forum already.

 

[Fraxinus]

Additionally, wasn't Metroid Dungeon being made? Why haven't forums for Metroid been made yet? I recall Metroid Dungeon being up long before Darksiders Dungeon, and yet Darksiders has a forum already.

Yea, but if you look at what we have so far, it's still in the development stages.

But yes, I definitely agree that there should be expansion in the aspect of non-Zelda sections. I love the Zelda series, don't get me wrong, but I really don't post much in the Zelda forums anymore. And since there is not too much discussion going on in general chit-chat, except the forum games, I'm really not posting much at all. It's hard to maintain activity as far as posting goes, if there is nothing to discuss. So, I'd definitely support this movement.

Like Matt said, we could bring back the entertainment section... and probably with further discussion, we could come up with some more sections that could be added to promote more activity in the forums.

 

[Kybyrian]

I also like the fast-paced nature of the Zelda forum. I think encouraging quick discussion is a good thing. There is not an overly confusing quality to it that would get in the way, either, as we aren't that active.

Pokemon could stand to have one or two more sub-forums.

This is a definite no. We had World of Pokemon and Competitive Pokemon with two subforums before we merged them together. Alone the sections had 5 pages combined. Competitive got nothing really and World of Pokemon groups it all together nicely. It would be too much to have a lot of subforums for anything, since it's a very slow section anyway.

I recall Metroid Dungeon being up long before Darksiders Dungeon, and yet Darksiders has a forum already.

Darksiders Dungeon is a pure Mases project... and what Mases does gets done. This is the truth. Metroid Dungeon is more on a standstill at the moment.

We need to bring back entertainment.

The removal of Entertainment was for the reason that it got no activity. At all. None whatsoever, really. We had music threads and movie threads, and the only active ones were our stickied "favorite X" threads. That's not the kind of thing I like to see, and that discussion takes place pretty well within General Discussion too. Our forums are no more bigger than they were back then, and Entertainment was largely ignored. I don't really see a huge warrant in bringing back the Entertainment section, though it's an idea I'm open about if people actually have the want to discuss anything in there, which most of the time does not happen.

 

[Emma]

The removal of Entertainment was for the reason that it got no activity. At all. None whatsoever, really. We had music threads and movie threads, and the only active ones were our stickied "favorite X" threads. That's not the kind of thing I like to see, and that discussion takes place pretty well within General Discussion too. Our forums are no more bigger than they were back then, and Entertainment was largely ignored. I don't really see a huge warrant in bringing back the Entertainment section, though it's an idea I'm open about if people actually have the want to discuss anything in there, which most of the time does not happen.

All sorts of things wrong with this statement. The section was way more active than you are making it out to be. And it was way more active than Technology is ever going to be. I don't see how you can think that the forums haven't grown since then. Are your perceptions of it just locked into an earlier time? The forums are a lot more active now than they were then.
And what's with this obsession with merging things to "increase activity" anyway? That does nothing of the kind. Any perceived increase is an illusion. It might look higher because you put two sources into one, but you didn't increase anything at all. If anything you just reduced overall activity because you just made it more difficult to track things. More difficult to find a thread to post in. I seriously don't understand how this backwards logic is supposed to work. How is a complete mess preferable to clean and orderly?

Even now a lot of the most active topics in General Discussion are entertainment-related. Sorry to be blunt, but you gotta dig yourself out of this fantasy world you're living in and face reality. It was a bad decision, it didn't improve anything. The concept of merging things to increase activity is flawed and only made things worse. Time to undo it.

 

[Kybyrian]

I don't see how you can think that the forums haven't grown since then. Are your perceptions of it just locked into an earlier time? The forums are a lot more active now than they were then.

No they haven't, and no they aren't. Our posting statistics have dropped exponentially from what they were over the course of the past few years. We are getting less than half of the visitors per day that we were getting 6 months ago. Just because the main site is growing and we've passed a lot of time since then doesn't mean the forums are growing any bigger. I've been disappointed by the stats the past year or so, as they seem to just be dropping off from what they were.

Though I've looked through the General Discussion and I see what you were saying with Entertainment. I think reintroducing it as its own forum rather than sub-forum would also help.

 

[Emma]

No they haven't, and no they aren't. Our posting statistics have dropped exponentially from what they were over the course of the past few years. We are getting less than half of the visitors per day that we were getting 6 months ago. Just because the main site is growing and we've passed a lot of time since then doesn't mean the forums are growing any bigger. I've been disappointed by the stats the past year or so, as they seem to just be dropping off from what they were.

This obsession with meeting quotas is rather disturbing. You don't cut things off if they don't meet a certain level you were expecting. You either find a way to deal with it, or you accept it as-is. Trying to mask decreased activity with a sloppy solution doesn't improve anything. Also there's way too much... "I don't want to talk in there because there's not much activity" attitude going on. That is just a feedback loop. Trying to hide this issue by creating a huge mess of a situation complicates matters. The levels weren't so low that that were an issue, and the influx of those topics hurt the other topics that occur in those sections. It takes up room and bump threads down the lists. Most users never bother looking at the second page. In fast paced sections, the second page could be as recent as a day. Topics get lost even though they're not old. We get a mess and it's hard to track anything. Harder to find something to post in. I really can't stress enough how we can never consider mergers as a solution again. They don't fix anything. I also need to really stress how this quota obsessions need tostop. They're running rampant. Knights qualifcations, staff qualifications, existance of sections of the forums. All of it being based far too much on some imaginary quotas on things that are largely irrelevant. It'd be irrelsponsible of me to not point out that this has to end. We got a reasonable solution with the knights stuff, for now. Now we need to settle this stuff on forum section activity. Because it got way too far out of hand in the last half a year.

You said that the activity has dropped in the last six months. That's about the time we started merging everything in sight. Has it escaped anyone's grasp that the two things might be related? Back then, I told all of you if you did that, you will see a huge drop in activity. I was ignored. And then that was exactly what happened. I can't promise you that if you undo it, you'd get all of that activity back. I can I promise you the situation isn't going to improve if you don't undo it.

You seemed willing to move Entertainment back to its own section. That's a good first step. I was wondering about its name. Whether "Entertainment" works, or maybe "Movies/TV". Not sure how that would play out, it was something that Djinn mentioned. If he cares to comment perhaps he could elaborate.

 

[Kybyrian]

You said that the activity has dropped in the last six months. That's about the time we started merging everything in sight. Has it escaped anyone's grasp that the two things might be related? Back then, I told all of you if you did that, you will see a huge drop in activity. I was ignored. And then that was exactly what happened. I can't promise you that if you undo it, you'd get all of that activity back. I can I promise you the situation isn't going to improve if you don't undo it.

It's been dropping for more than 6 months. It actually took it's biggest spike down about November-ish. Maybe small traces of it a couple months before, but nothign unusual for the time of the year. It never really came back up like it usually does, though. I don't think the two are related.

And yeah, I am willing to bring back Entertainment. With all of the threads in General Discussion it seems like it's one of the biggest topics of discussion.

 

[Djinn]

I have to say, I am not a huge fan of removing things that do not meet a quota of some kind like that. Normally in looking for increasing activity on a forum and adding more off topic sections a Tv/Movie entertainment type of forum seems like a pretty basic concept. I actually wonder if the naming scheme was what caused some people to not really use it as much instead of overall general activity. There is a large group of people out there that prefer a very straightforward and clear instruction than something along the lines of General X forum and might not be fully aware of what that entails. Having a more descriptive title over a generalized one with a short description might help in this area.

 

[Djinn]

Like to revive this thread again. So had a couple other suggestions for shaping up parts of the forum I wondered if anyone thought it would be worthwhile or not.

A lot of sections are getting a little too cluttered, mostly by way of having a few too many subforums connected to them. I suggest taking the Community Forum and making that it's own section apart from General chitchat and having the four subforums be the main sections within the forum. This means Tutorials/Faqs, Games, Mafia, and Role Play would be the regular forums in the section instead of being subforums. I think this would help out in having people find these areas a little more easily instead of having to find the small links. I even wonder if we could have a subforum connected to RP for signups but I imagine that can wait until the section sees a little more life to it.

I also wondered if Forum tutorials/Faqs can be changed to a general Faq/Questions section. We have constantly answered, closed and suggested that they make these in the form of a PM, but some new members might not know who to ask. I have seen and heard of many random people getting questions from new members about things like "How do I post a sig?" etc. They will not seem so out of place or have people feeling like they did something wrong if there is a section for that type of thing.

Another idea is to make a Fun and Games Category with sections within it being Forum Games, Mafia, Role Play, and maybe a signups subforum.

I also wondered if we could revive the old Wiki usergroup we had around two years ago, but only this time be in relation to the ZD Wiki since we could use some more contribution over there and it might inspire some more community activity out of the members.

 

[Vanessa28]

To have a Competition forum is what I like to see happening too. It is much easier to have all competitions and contests in one place so people don't have to navigate to different forums for contest. The awards could encourage members to be more active and to participate. A special award for milestones is what i have seen on other sites too. It could be a banner or a small icon what will appear beneath the username or avatar

 

[DisappearingMist]

I also wondered if we could revive the old Wiki usergroup we had around two years ago, but only this time be in relation to the ZD Wiki since we could use some more contribution over there and it might inspire some more community activity out of the members.

I like that idea a lot. Gaining that wiki userbar was important to me (at the time) and I'm sure I was not the only one.