If you Administrator, how would you Organize the Forums...

GothicKratos

...and how would you regulate organization?

A little bit ago I made a thread about the "mods vs community" debate and how everything tied into together in my eyes. I got a lot of feedback here and I got a lot of feedback on Line which was great. Here I am now trying to follow that up.

From what I can tell there is a gigantic disconnect between the normal end users and the moderation team -- and then administrators themselves from that. I'd like to try and foster a discussion on how we can remodel and rework current methods and current organization to make everyone feel more comfortable with the forum labels and where everything fits.

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As a moderator, as it applies to this conversation, I try and put organization first and foremost. Having information where a layman's user is going to expect it to be is the most important thing to me. I think it's important to define each category with it's own identity and to stick to those relatively strictly.

Additionally, I think it is important to keep most conversation on one topic in one topic. Yes, it can make for some confusion because there can be multiple conversations going on in one thread, but that's what quotes are for.

I think that both moderators and regular users alike need to familiarize/refamiliarize themselves with all the available tools to them and each other prospectively. I don't think a lot of users are adequately using native forum tools to the best of their ability (things like "View my Posts", View New Posts, etc) and doing so would ultimately alleviate some of the difficulties of using the forums. I also think that some of us moderators are not as familiar with the moderator tools as we'd like to be(/we should be), and we need to work on that to be able to facilitate a better environment (myself included).

Bottom line:

• Define/Redefine the identity of each forum category and sub-forum.
• Identify what categories are missing, are unnecessary, and what could fit under different categories more appropriately.
• Realize that we need to come to compromises as a community to try and make everyone the least unhappy.

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My suggestion boils down to rejigging how the forums are labeled and grouped, so we can more readily realize what each section is there for and how to use it properly. If it were more, it would look something like this;


*MPQ News and Announcements
>Sub-forums: None.

*MPQ S.H.I.L.D. Agent Lounge
>Subforums: None.

*MPQ Community S.H.I.E.L.D. Database
>Roster Guidance

>Guides and Tutorials

>Character Discussion
>>Theorycraft and Analystics
>>Speculation and Concepts

*MPQ Battlegrounds Infogrid
>Story Events
>Player versus Player
>Miscellaneous

*MPQ Alliances
>Looking For An Alliance
>Looking for a Merc
>Alliance Megathreads

*MPQ Helpdesk and Feedback
>Helpdesk
>Feedback

=====

So, it's mostly the same, right? Just a little bit of moving and shaking to be done.

Announcements is the same. Lounge would be general chat.

With the 'Database' forum, I was thinking it would be best to put the guide type things and the asking for advice type things together because they are somewhat of a symbiotic demographic. The people writing guides and going to be the people helping people and the people needing help are going to be looking for guides -- but also all the character discussion stuff as well, since it's general game information that is going to help players looking for information about the game. For that subforum, I chose to break it up into two sections; the first for official stat thread and discussion of existing characters, then the other to discuss potential future characters and what their impact on the game would be (the character creation section also feels very weird to me on it's own). TL;DR this section houses all the information about the game, how to play the game, and all the hard numbers.

The "Battlegrounds" would be the currently 'Events' subforum, but broken down into subforums for each event type where threads can be appropriately created and threads can be created and adequately stickied without crowding up one specific forum. I foresee Story having a temp sticky about the current PvE (and maybe the next PvE, which would move upward) kinda like current ones with prizes, as well as a rotation sticky, threads about help in PvE or PvE meta would go here. PvP being similar, also housing character rotation stickies, threads about current PvP meta would go here, etc. The misc I see mostly for like DDQ, the boss type events, or like Anniversary discussion; things like that.

Alliances forum is mostly the same, but broken down into actual sections. It should help with people not posting in the right area/thread, and getting to the right people quickly.

The last section is a merging of Feedback and Bugs, each having it's own succinct subforum.

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I think that's it for me for now. Let me know what you think. Let me know you're ideas. This is something actively being discussed behind the scenes, so now's the best time to get your voice out there.

JamesV

In general, the more forums and sub forums, the more splintered discussion boards become, especially if the sub forums do not have a very explicit purpose. This makes it harder on users when creating threads (which tends to make them default to specific forums over others), makes it harder on mods trying to clean up the forum and keep it organized and gives the impression that the mods are over modding by doing so.

I currently admin/mod a general conversation forum that is currently at 873K posts over 19K threads so I appreciate and am super sympathetic to what you guys are trying to do.

I am not sure how many (or if anyone) was ever a member of newsarama.com back in the day. This would have been about 10 years or so ago when the site began to break up the general talk@ discussion into sub forums (the site already had different main forums for general discussion, main page, features, etc).

The first new forum spawned from talk@ was a reviews section and there was a very vague delineation between what was in that section. If I start a thread wanting to talk about the new issue of Amazing Spider-Man at what point is that me reviewing the book, you know?

Then about two years after that, the talk@ was given sub forums dedicated to Marvel, DC and Other publishers. This presented two (kind of three) new situations for the board:
1) What was the purpose of talk@ now? If Marvel topics belonged in the Marvel sub-forum of talk@, then you either had double threads on topics, or you were draining conversation out of the main forum.
2) People eventually just nested inside their own subforums. If you only read Marvel, why did you care what Oni or Dark Horse were doing?
2.5/3) which had the added effect of minimizing less popular topics that were put in the correct forum that had less viewership

That's the same situation you guys are trying to deal with. So I would be very weary of breaking down forums into smaller and smaller subforums if overlapping can occur. As it stands right now, for example, if I had a question about specific tactics/etiquette in PVP I could see three different forums for it to potentially go in(General Discussion, Guides and Tutorials, Player versus Player).

Or to put it another way, ff the vast majority of stuff that is in General Discussion SHOULD/COULD be in another forum, then what is the purpose of General Discussion? (Rhetorically asking that, it could be used for other forums too).

I think the Alliances and Helpdesk/Feedback is a pretty clean reorganization.

And for the subforums for the Events, I would just follow the conventions used in-game to avoid confusion. On one hand, Misc makes sense the way you defined it, but since the game places those in the Story or Versus tab, mirroring that would make life easier for you all I think.

Malcrof

GothicKratos wrote:

>Character Discussion
>>Theorycraft and Analystics
>>Speculation and Concepts

In addition to characters, a place for "partnerships and teams" would be nice. We all know the big ones.. cagefist, fistbuster, charlies angels.. but since they are multiple characters, they do not belong in any one place.. would love a place to strategize and discover other new fun combos.

babinro

I'm personally okay with how things are organized now.

The one main change I'd like to see is that all items be allowed to stay in general chat for a while before moving onto the 'appropriate' subforum for organization.

People post threads to general for exposure. It's just a fact that this is where most of the forum views and activity takes place. People want their threads read, commented on and voted on in a timely manor. It just makes you feel good and motivates you to keep posting on forums.

I've frequently seen threads with active discussions die as soon as they shift to a subforum. This is unfortunate. You clearly can't force the masses to be active elsewhere so the solution is to be more forgiving in general forums.

Let a topic stay there until it is no longer an active part of the discussion. Upon reaching page 3 the mods can then shift this to the appropriate subforum so it becomes easier to find in the long run.

fight4thedream

babinro wrote:

I'm personally okay with how things are organized now.

The one main change I'd like to see is that all items be allowed to stay in general chat for a while before moving onto the 'appropriate' subforum for organization.

People post threads to general for exposure. It's just a fact that this is where most of the forum views and activity takes place. People want their threads read, commented on and voted on in a timely manor. It just makes you feel good and motivates you to keep posting on forums.

I've frequently seen threads with active discussions die as soon as they shift to a subforum. This is unfortunate. You clearly can't force the masses to be active elsewhere so the solution is to be more forgiving in general forums.

Let a topic stay there until it is no longer an active part of the discussion. Upon reaching page 3 the mods can then shift this to the appropriate subforum so it becomes easier to find in the long run.

I share the same sentiments as babinro.

With all due respect to the other mods, I don't understand the recent urge to re-organize the forums and to mete out swift action against mostly benign posts. This is a forum, not a wiki, and discussion should be encouraged. There is a problem when members start posting how they don't feel comfortable discussing freely about an issue out of fear that there post will be moved. There is a problem when members start including messages in their post to the mods requesting that their posts not be moved. And there is a problem when the topic of moderation becomes a weekly thing in the General Discussion forum because let's be honest, 1. that shouldn't be an issue to begin with and 2. it has nothing to do with the game so if anything it should be in the Off-Topic section of the forum.

Instead, retirement threads that bring up poignant points and valid criticisms about the game like hello_goodbye's retirement thread get moved there, while we have discussions about mods and mod policy here and then we wonder why people are frustrated with our decision making.

I have to apologize to GK because I know there are a lot of good intentions behind his OP and that it took him a lot of time to try and find a good solution and write it up but the fact that this was posted here in the GD is basically acknowledging what everyone else already understands: that if you want people to notice and discuss your topic, you post in the General Discussion. And I don't think that is a bad thing. The forums exist for that purpose. I mean some of the best, most entertaining posts actually have very little to do with the game, *cough* I can't believe they said that *cough*

I agree with babinro that in general, if a person decides to post something in General Discussion that isn't already being actively discussed, that post should get a chance to walk on its own two feet before we decide to usher it off to one of the far corners of the nether realm. People are posting here because they want to talk about a topic and the act of moving it else where, more often than not, discourages the poster and hinders the conversation.

Unfortunately (or fortunately? Take your pic lol) my final grind in Hell is calling me now so I will have to end here but in the wise words of some random dude or dudette: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"

Malcrof

babinro wrote:

I'm personally okay with how things are organized now.

The one main change I'd like to see is that all items be allowed to stay in general chat for a while before moving onto the 'appropriate' subforum for organization.

If you recall, we tried this a while back.. putting notes in on when a thread would be moved, and to where it would be moved if still on the front page.

90% or more were gone from the front page before the 48 hours were up.. never to be seen again. If they had been moved when created... they most likely would have stayed on the visible front page of the forum they belonged in, for much longer. So , it was a failed experiment. We also tried shadow topics..

Everyone gets upset when their topics are moved, but the numbers are showing that less than 10% of the ones kept in general, got any movement at all.. the other 90% would have been visible for much longer, and possibly garnered more responses in their proper forums.

XandorXerxes

Malcrof wrote:

90% or more were gone from the front page before the 48 hours were up.. never to be seen again. If they had been moved when created... they most likely would have stayed on the visible front page of the forum they belonged in, for much longer. So , it was a failed experiment. We also tried shadow topics..

Everyone gets upset when their topics are moved, but the numbers are showing that less than 10% of the ones kept in general, got any movement at all.. the other 90% would have been visible for much longer, and possibly garnered more responses in their proper forums.

If people visited the proper forum, that's possible. The flip-side of that argument is that leaving it in general is a measure of popularity. If someone has an issue, and no one cares / responds, it falls off. If lots of other people have something to say about it, you'll have a big topic right where people go to look (not that it doesn't spawn 18 more threads, Galactus 1 I'm looking at you). Does moving threads give some of them more exposure than they should get?

The current setup I think still has issues - namely "Suggestions and Feedback." What's the difference between that and general discussion? Isn't everything in general discussion some form of suggestion or feedback?

I think the proposed alliance / merc structure is better than having one mega-thread, but some simple guidance like "if it's about 1-20 specific characters, it goes in the character thread, if it's about 1-2 specific events, it goes in the events thread, if it's about all events / all of one type of event or all characters / all of one type of character it can go in general" would probably clear a lot of issues up. Really though, aside from "suggestions and feedback" I don't think the current organization is bad.

DFiPL

JamesV wrote:

In general, the more forums and sub forums, the more splintered discussion boards become, especially if the sub forums do not have a very explicit purpose. This makes it harder on users when creating threads (which tends to make them default to specific forums over others), makes it harder on mods trying to clean up the forum and keep it organized and gives the impression that the mods are over modding by doing so.

Done in one. The more forums and sub-forums you set up, the more you're setting yourself up for micromanagement later.

And the less "active" the forums are going to appear to someone who visits for the first time. The activity is spread to hell and gone so it looks less populated.

I'd say, mmm, four forums.

1) "General Discussion" <- anything MPQ-related that doesn't start with "the devs should..." or "Is this a bug?"
2) Feedback <- split this one into two subforums. Suggestions, for "the devs should..." and "Bug Reports" for "is this a bug?"
3) Help <- You can subforum this if you really want to, but the point here would be for "How do I/what should I" etc type posts. How you split that off, or if you even do, is up to you. Would still keep the FAQ pinned in the main forum though.
4) Alliances <-- recruiters/folks looking to join post here

I'm not sure you really need much more than that tbh. If you're concerned about a proliferation of character/event posts in General Discussion, create an officially sanctioned post while a given event or new character release is running, and merge any wayward threads into that official post. Most of those sort of posts are going to be time-limited just by nature of the release or event (there's going to be a shelf-life on how long people are going to be discussing ideal Iceman builds five characters later. I mean, some may, but the natural tendency is to get distracted by the new shiny anyway), so there's no point segregating them into their own forum. They'll drop off the front page over time on their own, and if they aren't? There's a real good chance there's something in that thread that needs paying attention to in the first place, which is better done in the 'main' forum than shunted off to the side.

News and Announcements seems superfluous. Those posts get pinned in the 'main' forum while relevant anyway, so what that forum appears to be is mostly an archive of such posts. Valuable in its way? I guess. No real reason to excise it but no real reason to keep it either, if that makes any sense?

Seriously. Four forums. Split feedback into bugs and suggestions subforums.

Moon Roach

One of the main problems here is duplication of topics, followed closely by rubbish thread titles.

I think we'd increase the signal to noise ratio if the search was improved and each forum / subforum had a stickied thread with a list of popular subjects and links to the most recent / relevant discussion(s). And it was maintained.

And posters of duplicate threads lose 1029 reputation points.

:edit: ration? Oh dear.

GurlBYE

Malcrof wrote:

GothicKratos wrote:

>Character Discussion
>>Theorycraft and Analystics
>>Speculation and Concepts

In addition to characters, a place for "partnerships and teams" would be nice. We all know the big ones.. cagefist, fistbuster, charlies angels.. but since they are multiple characters, they do not belong in any one place.. would love a place to strategize and discover other new fun combos.

The game isn't deep enough to require an entire forum for that. thread in character discussion that's pinned would not only suffice but be far more organized over all. Main post thats updated that links to other posts in the thread about team ups.

___

From a user experience perspective, less clicks to get to info I want is better.
Less clicks to read more posts, better.

GothicKratos

I appreciate all the constructive feedback thusfar. I'm taking everything into account before making a proper proposal.

DFiPL pretty much hit the nail in the head imo. Forum descriptors are too vague as is and there are too much overlapping "topics". Lowering the amount of areas and specifying exactly what belongs where should alleviate most issues.

fight4thedream wrote:

With all due respect to the other mods, I don't understand the recent urge to re-organize the forums and to mete out swift action against mostly benign posts. This is a forum, not a wiki, and discussion should be encouraged. There is a problem when members start posting how they don't feel comfortable discussing freely about an issue out of fear that there post will be moved. There is a problem when members start including messages in their post to the mods requesting that their posts not be moved. And there is a problem when the topic of moderation becomes a weekly thing in the General Discussion forum because let's be honest, 1. that shouldn't be an issue to begin with and 2. it has nothing to do with the game so if anything it should be in the Off-Topic section of the forum.

Instead, retirement threads that bring up poignant points and valid criticisms about the game like hello_goodbye's retirement thread get moved there, while we have discussions about mods and mod policy here and then we wonder why people are frustrated with our decision making.

With all due respect (and that's a lot of respect, you make a ton of great contributions to the forums both as a mod and as a poster), I disagree completely with this line of logic, but I knew it would come up, so here goes;

I created this post specifically to garner a discussion on a topic related to our forum about our game. If that's not what General is for, I don't know what is? I hope you see the contradiction here.

Alternatively, the thread you chose as an example is specifically somebody leaving closing feedback before quitting the game completely - this user likely had little interest in continuing a conversation. Having valid points and meaningful criticisms does not make something a "conversation".

Where would you like to have forum policy discussed exactly? Alliances? News? Feedback - a section for feedback about the game? What about bugs? No? Should we keep it bottled up in The Raft so no regular users can see it? It's fine if you don't have the same desire to keep things organized as some of us others do, and it's fine to say as much, but I don't understand this reasoning.

There's forums exist for exactly one reason; to share information. The forums are exactly a glorified wiki that additionally include a few subsections for "discussion". We're not having discussions about Gender Normality here, we're discussing opinions on matters concerning a puzzle game with hopes of passing information off to one another -- or honestly in most cases raw data. There are people that come here looking for information, and to easily find that information it needs to be organized. There are people that want to discuss certain types of information (bracket sizes for example) and for them to engage in fully functioning conversations with like minded people, those threads need to be organized.

Furthermore, what kind of community are we if we can't even have a discussion to find a proper middle ground? Why can't there be a discussion on "well this is mildly inconvenient for me, but it makes things easier for these guys, so okay I can deal with this" instead of "I hate this, this is stupid, it makes things mildly inconvenient for me, stop trying to change me!"? Am I asked too much from a group of mostly adults here?

There are definitely threads that are harmless and probably get moved prematurely. That's part of the reason of having the discussion in the first place; what seems fair, what should be where, how do we keep things organized without making users feeling like the carpet is being pulled out from under them?

Mawtful

I've got some thoughts that I'm more than happy to share, but I just haven't had a chance to really plot them out in a cohesive manner (some recent insights into administrative discussions has also swayed my opinion on a few topics, so I've also had to go back and readdress my stance on a few things).

ANYWAY, I'm not that great at segues, so:

I wouldn't describe myself as a "redditor", however I do frequent a single subreddit for Destiny, so what I'm about to suggest comes purely from that experience of Reddit alone. At the time of writing this post, /r/destinythegame has ~2,300 users online - MPQ General Discussion currently has 5 registered and 13 guests - so it must be doing something right to handle those numbers. That something is flair, which can be used to mark a thread as belonging to a specific type of discussion (Lore, Super Good Advice, Question, Suggestion, etc). And it works really well. Now a part of that is the fact that Reddit supports that kind of functionality, which I'm fairly certain phpBB does not (a quick Google search turned up nothing concrete). That said, I think the concept is quite solid and we could still learn something from it.

And while the topic flair is useful, it goes hand-in-hand with something else that I think is worth considering: minimalist structure and megathreads. I had to research this, but it turns out that you can actually have sub-subreddits, or nested subreddits, it's just not something I've seen done. Other than the main one (/r/destinythegame), there are probably 2 or 3 other prominent Destiny subreddits (one for PvP and one for LFG), so they're really covering a ton of information and posts into 3 "boards". And now I think maybe I'm getting to the hear of the matter for organisation. I'm just going to assume that someone else has pointed this out already, but the core problem with the MPQ forums is over-saturation of sub-forums. People complain that they need to post to General because whatever sub-forum they were told to use is too quite and gets no through traffic - creating more sub-forums isn't ever going to resolve that issue. Maybe we actually need less sub-forums?

Well, that's as far as I've actually thought that concept through. Probably definitely nothing could go wrong, so ship it and when I get a chance to write a full break down of how to organise and administrate less sub-forums I'll send out a patch.

Dninot

I have no experience modding, and I mostly lurk now, since I can't be bothered to comment on most topics, but here's my 2 cents.

Firstly, I think figuring out the perfect modding situation to make users happy is mostly fruitless. This community specifically has too many new, short-term users pop in who won't be bothered to figure out the culture or rules enough that any rules will matter THAT much.

However, I think that's solved by having a solid core of regular users who will help police the newcomers and point them to the resources they need. I think that's starting to happen more and more. But it's a problem that never gets completely solved, IMO. I know forums that have been around 15 years that still get stray posts in the wrong sub-forum. That's what moderation is for.

I personally agree with fight4thedream and babinro at the heart of it. The general forum is really where discussion can live and die until each of the subforums builds up enough of a community of their own to live. On the vibrant forums i've participated in, if threads are getting moved to subforms, mods are typically only doing that when its wildy off base (character discussion in a technical issues forum, as a bad example) or when they are sure they have enough users looking at both places. When one subforum isn't getting enough users, it gets merged into somewhere else, because the subforum proved it couldn't sustain itself.

The two core problems I generally see is that
1. Too much of the forum gets used as a wiki, and that can be confusing and intimidating for new users who don't want to muddy deep conversations by experienced users.
2. There's just too many darn complainers!

The first issue can be solved, it just needs some dedicated people behind it. As for the second...

Every darn new event and character causes a rush of people complaining about the developers, and the same old arguments get rehashed too many times. Some if it is perfectly valid and makes sense to some degree. I can get users asking about teased future features, and discussing the mechanics of new events. That makes sense. So does a lot of other stuff that i'm probably unfairly lumping into "complaining."

What doesn't make sense? Multiple threads about how hard it is to transition. A thread about the Randomness of Covers, which can never be proven to everyone's satisfaction so it's fairly pointless (trust me, I work for a gambling organization, this is my life.) This is all stuff that I think can be regulated with more rules and harsher moderation. I think its perfectly fair to say that certain issues are off topic, or will be merged with vengeance (20 ISO being a good example, we don't need new discussions when one is ongoing, you guys did that well I thought.) You don't have to kill the debate, but it can definitely be regulated a bit better to reduce the negative atmosphere.

Oh, and yeah, add a subforum on the topic of forum moderation. I dont think that should be in general at all (and it gets discussed enough.)

On the whole I think the mods are doing a stellar job as it is. You guys deserve a lot more credit for what you put up with, and I love visiting. This is just my bored rant, so I hope it helps contribute.

Dninot

OJSP wrote:

How do we define "enough users"?

Enough that threads don't go there to die. If a conversation keeps going, its enough users.

From your previous suggestion.. It will probably be merged back to General Discussion

There's a lot that can be posted and discussed there. Rules, discussion of rules, suggestions about moderating. If the mods are going to crack down on certain topics, there would likely be a lot of discussion about the mods being 'harsh', which would bog down the General forum with pointless negative bickering. This atleast gives the mods a place to file all that away without affecting other gameplay discussion.

Cymmina

I think character related forums/subforums need restructuring. Our current structure looks like this:

> Character Specific Discussion
>> Speculation and Concepts

I think it makes more sense to have them grouped like this:

> General Character Discussion (who's awesome? who needs a buff? polls, etc.)
>> Character Specific Discussion
>> Roster Help
>> Speculation and Concepts

The "General Character Discussion" forum should hold the sticky to each individual character's thread. I don't know about everyone else, but I'm rarely interested in active character threads, I'm looking for information on one specific character. For me, general character chatter plus a thread with quick links to individual character threads would be the most useful.

I was rather disappointed to see the new "Roster Help" subforum tucked away under "Tips and Guides", when it is heavily tied to character discussion (which of these 3 characters should I throw away?).

Speaking of "Tips and Guides", that's a rather poor title. It seems to encompass other things like spreadsheets (via Google docs), tools & external websites, asking for advice (when is a good time to...). I think there are more stickies there than there are non-stickied threads on the front page. Most of the data related threads (TU guide, etc.) belong in a wiki where other users can continue contributing to it after the original author loses interest. We should be encouraging the migration of information to a more suitable medium after the initial discussion/data collection is complete.

Have you considered hosting your own wiki? It's not entirely unusual for game developers to do so (Guild Wars and Dungeon Defenders II do it). Wikia is convenient when you can't host your own, but it's also slow and full of ads.

Nellobee

Honestly, a "threads with red responses" section or flag or something would be all I would want for organization. Because those are the ones that matter.

Cypr3ss

I'd do it like thus:

*MPQ News and Announcements

*MPQ Character Discussion
>Roster Guidance
>Theorycraft and Analystics
>Speculation and Concepts

*MPQ Battlegrounds
>Story Events
>Player versus Player

*MPQ General
>Guides and Tutorials
>Looking For An Alliance
>Looking for a Merc
>Alliance Megathreads
>Feedback

*MPQ Helpdesk
>Helpdesk
>BugReports

Keep it simple

Regards,
Cypr3ss.