PSA: Forum Structure - How Would You Organize It?

13

Comments

  • Dauthi
    Dauthi Posts: 995 Critical Contributor
    edited June 2017
    I am done with this game, but I forgot to add one my quit message that these forums are another reason I quit. I think the ironic thing is my quit message was buried within 8 hours or so of creation. I took many  hours creating reasons why I quit only to have it forced into an area where nobody would see.

    I feel like this shows insecurity to your game, if you have to hide quit posts then you are worried about the life of your game. Combine this with you allowing cheaters to play and you got  yourself a game where players like myself will flee.
  • orbitalint
    orbitalint Posts: 511 Critical Contributor
    Mission accomplished, you got people to stop talking about your game by shuffling any and all discussions in General to non-read sub forums particularly if it was a critique of the game. 

    Sadly, if forum activity is your metric, I don't think the majority of the forum base is coming back no matter how you try and reorg/revive it. Discussions in even General go for long stretches without comment on the first page. That was unheard of even a year ago.

    None of that is particularly constructive so I'll agree with earlier posts that General should be treated as a discussion thread but it was over zealously tried to be shuffled/organized like the character or event threads, which are really reference threads. Treat discussion threads different than reference threads on how you Mod them and you might have a shot.

    Signed, 
    A three year former player that quit last month and misses the lively discussion in General. 

    @Brigby you have a tough job, brother. Best of luck.
  • broll
    broll Posts: 4,732 Chairperson of the Boards
    @Brigby

    Obviously I approve as this was one of my 3 suggestions.  I think it's the best of both worlds.

    JHawkInc said:
    If General Discussion goes away, at all, the forums will die. General Discussion is not a "catch all" for things that don't have a home elsewhere. It is the first stop for ALL discussion. The purposes of other forums are to collect certain topics and pull them away from General so they do not dominate the conversations by filling the front page. It is the foundation, the hub, and other categories are spokes or branches off of that hub. You cannot get rid of the hub and hope for things to survive.
    however it ensures that even posts located in the least visited sections will still get their fair share of the spotlight.

    It's our spotlight, not yours. WE get to decide what goes in the spotlight by how WE use the forums. If you keep pointing the spotlight at things people don't want, you are not filling their needs, and they will leave.

    You encourage growth in the tree by trimming back dead limbs, and by pinching off dead buds when you want new blooms. Some limbs won't get as much sunlight as others, and they will naturally produce fewer leaves as well, because that's what plants do.

    Just so the metaphor is clear, the current moderation direction seems to be to pump all effort into the dead limbs, which isn't going to work.

    Have you played with the Recent Discussion link?  https://forums.d3go.com/discussions
    It makes anything you post anywhere show up on top and the most active threads popcorn to the top.  We would still determine what's spotlighted by which threads remain active.  IMO it's General Discussion a great replacement for what most of us what General Discussion.  Try it out for a few days if you haven't, it might change your opinion.
  • JHawkInc
    JHawkInc Posts: 2,605 Chairperson of the Boards
    broll said:
    @Brigby

    Obviously I approve as this was one of my 3 suggestions.  I think it's the best of both worlds.

    JHawkInc said:
    If General Discussion goes away, at all, the forums will die. General Discussion is not a "catch all" for things that don't have a home elsewhere. It is the first stop for ALL discussion. The purposes of other forums are to collect certain topics and pull them away from General so they do not dominate the conversations by filling the front page. It is the foundation, the hub, and other categories are spokes or branches off of that hub. You cannot get rid of the hub and hope for things to survive.
    however it ensures that even posts located in the least visited sections will still get their fair share of the spotlight.

    It's our spotlight, not yours. WE get to decide what goes in the spotlight by how WE use the forums. If you keep pointing the spotlight at things people don't want, you are not filling their needs, and they will leave.

    You encourage growth in the tree by trimming back dead limbs, and by pinching off dead buds when you want new blooms. Some limbs won't get as much sunlight as others, and they will naturally produce fewer leaves as well, because that's what plants do.

    Just so the metaphor is clear, the current moderation direction seems to be to pump all effort into the dead limbs, which isn't going to work.

    Have you played with the Recent Discussion link?  https://forums.d3go.com/discussions
    It makes anything you post anywhere show up on top and the most active threads popcorn to the top.  We would still determine what's spotlighted by which threads remain active.  IMO it's General Discussion a great replacement for what most of us what General Discussion.  Try it out for a few days if you haven't, it might change your opinion.
    I have used it, and personally don't care for it. It's neat if you want to see active threads across the entire forum at once, but that isn't the ONLY purpose of General Discussion, and that's why it can't replace it.

    General Discussion is the meat of any solid forum. It's the core at the center, the first place people go, and the place that holds most of the discussion. The purpose of having other categories is to recognize when a certain group of topics would be useful to sort through as a group (like Character and Event threads), or when a large portion of the discussions are under one umbrella, and are starting to drown out everything else (not a problem we really have here, but you see it all over reddit, with subreddits creating megathreads for random questions to prevent them from cluttering up the main page; I suggested a regular Q&A thread to solve what little problem we have with that on the MPQ forums).

    The advantage of going to General Discussion is that it doesn't have any of the threads from the Character or Events or Bug forums. The Recent Discussions link takes that advantage away, and just re-clutters everything by putting it all in one spot again. What's the point in creating categories to pull stuff away from General Discussion, if you're going to replace it with Recent Discussions, which puts all that stuff back in again?

    I don't think General Discussion is a negotiable point. We've already seen the negative effect a moderately moderated Gen Disc is having on the forums. Killing it entirely is only going to make things worse.
  • animaniactoo
    animaniactoo Posts: 486 Mover and Shaker
    Note: I’m new to *this* forum, but I’ve been active in several forums for a long time. And my day job involves being very very organized and my side job involves helping other people get computer-savvy and be organized.

    1st – the current main folder structure is overly complex – you have too many “main” categories and people are not going to want to navigate around and check into each of those to find out what’s going on. They want to consult certain areas when that’s the info they’re looking for, and otherwise, they want to know one to two places to go to talk to other players about what’s going on right now, etc. More navigating than that, and they probably (literally) don’t have time for it.

    2nd – moving items too quickly, or because they're tangential to something else feels like shutting down conversations. From a moderating standpoint, that's counterproductive, so I would take a harder look at what you're moving and why.

    • Updates: (replaces news and announcements):
    Has the following items (but not as subcategories)
    Release notes
    Links to New Character discussion threads (see proposed below)
    Links to PVP/PVE events currently running (see proposed below)
    Weekly buff list, etc.
    Game changes
    Anything urgent (known bug affecting many players, etc.)

    • General Discussion: Is for players talking to each other, about pretty much anything that is not a formalized “how-to" guide. Seeking and giving advice threads on gameplay should happen here. General griping, "is this happening to anyone else?" etc. along with things like the "positive moment of the day" threads. Links at top to unusual posts in updates (urgent bugs, game changes).

    • Suggestions and Feedback: Is for players who are directing the comments to D3/demi. This is where somebody might post something that had been fleshed out in GD, and then come here with a “final version”, or somebody in the GD discussion might suggest posting it here as an official suggestion. Others may skip the GD and go directly here and people who are interested in game development stuff will drop in and comment on what they want to comment on. “I quit” posts get moved here quickly, with the redirect link containing the poster’s forum name for those who might recognize them and want to see the post, etc.

    • Tips and Guides: Should have several sub-categories that are now “main” categories.
    - Roster and level help: Advice threads on these topics move here after a few days, for those who aren’t coming directly here. BUT the initial GD thread has to start out as a request for help, NOT devolve into advice being given about whatever the initial poster has said. May also contain advice threads such as “How to balance your roster for [X]”. Nothing else belongs here.
    - Character discussion: Each character should have its own thread, with the top post being general info about the character (abilities/etc.), a few other characters they pair well with, and then free for all discussion about them. New characters should be posted here as part of new release work.
    - Theories and statistics: Similarly, only for things that *start out* as a post about a theoretical possibility/circumstance that might be happening, or stats that others can consult for their own use. 
    - General Gameplay: for guides, info about how leveling up works, token pulls, etc.

    • Events
    - PVP: Contains a sticky about all PVP events (specifics like what’s in each node), and then general discussion about current event, etc. OR similar to character discussion, each event has its own thread with the initial post being specifics about the event, and then general discussion about it.
    - PVE: Same as PVP but for PVE
    Current event general discussion may start in GD, and be moved here after event is over.

    • Alliances (recruiting, etc.)

    • Support
    - Bugs & Tech Issues (User reported)
    - Contact info for CS, and how to file a ticket (what kinds of issues should be ticket issues, and what should be reported to the bugs threads).
  • keitterman
    keitterman Posts: 127 Tile Toppler
    My 2-cents, eliminate general discussion.

    Any time you have something like GD, people will gravitate to it. If you want people to use the sub-forums (which you must, because you move threads to them) then you have to eliminate GD.

    Provide a reasonable level of categories that accommodate any topics that come up concerning the game, Moderators correct miss-classifications. Done


  • madok
    madok Posts: 905 Critical Contributor
    Brigby said:

    (Disclaimer: I am not a web designer/developer, so the following comment is purely hypothetical, as I'm uncertain of technical capabilities)

    Since the Recent Discussions section essentially aggregates all threads ever created, what if General Discussion was replaced by an MPQ Recent Discussions? Players would still need to post in the appropriate sub-forum to begin with, but their thread will be guaranteed visible on the MPQ Recent Discussions section. Clicking on the thread in that section would redirect players to the appropriate sub-forum. (Duration of front-page visibility on the Recent Discussions section would be determined by activity of the thread, just like any other forum section)

    This way there will always be forum organization, however it ensures that even posts located in the least visited sections will still get their fair share of the spotlight.

    What are everyone's thoughts?
    We fall back into the issue though of the site navigation now dumping you in that sub-forum without a way to get back to the discussions.That is the biggest pain with all the dang moving of posts. Now I'm multiple clicks to get back to General or wherever I was.

    Like others, I miss being able to just click into a topic to see the main story but NOPE. You go to the first unread and then get to navigate back to the first page just to see what was updated.

    I would also like to see what life would be like without any moving of posts for a couple weeks.

    As for the site design, I miss the old forums greatly. I've actually spent an hour hacking the new forum's CSS with Chrome so it doesn't totally suck for me.Between that and all the missing functionality the upgrade is a major downgrade in my book.
  • deadtaco
    deadtaco Posts: 409 Mover and Shaker
    @Brigby

    It looks like that idea was kind of decisive.  I sort of like it but I can see why folks would hate to lose the General sub altogether.

    I have been a web designer and this generic forum style wastes a ton of usable space.   If that massive logo is still at the top (I blocked it as soon as I saw it) you could simply replace that with links to the most active MPQ discussions.  Or for desktops, the sides of the site are completely wasted.  Put a section over there with the most popular discussions.

    Or at the very least a new sub similar to the announcements one that is the most popular MPQ discussions that we can't post to but the links take us to the threads.  That would make for a good landing page instead of General (if that's what the users wants)
  • animaniactoo
    animaniactoo Posts: 486 Mover and Shaker
    animaniactoo said:

    - Character discussion: Each character should have its own thread, with the top post being general info about the character (abilities/etc.), a few other characters they pair well with, and then free for all discussion about them. New characters should be posted here as part of new release work.

    - PVP: Contains a sticky about all PVP events (specifics like what’s in each node), and then general discussion about current event, etc. OR similar to character discussion, each event has its own thread with the initial post being specifics about the event, and then general discussion about it.
    - PVE: Same as PVP but for PVE
    Current event general discussion may start in GD, and be moved here after event is over.
    I meant to mention - the thought behind these is that it makes the forum easier to top-level search and come up with specific information, vs having to dig through several discussions to find info you're looking for.
  • Brigby
    Brigby ADMINISTRATORS Posts: 7,757 Site Admin
    JHawkInc said:
    broll said:
    @Brigby

    Obviously I approve as this was one of my 3 suggestions.  I think it's the best of both worlds.
    -snipped for space-
    Have you played with the Recent Discussion link?  https://forums.d3go.com/discussions
    It makes anything you post anywhere show up on top and the most active threads popcorn to the top.  We would still determine what's spotlighted by which threads remain active.  IMO it's General Discussion a great replacement for what most of us what General Discussion.  Try it out for a few days if you haven't, it might change your opinion.
    I have used it, and personally don't care for it. It's neat if you want to see active threads across the entire forum at once, but that isn't the ONLY purpose of General Discussion, and that's why it can't replace it.

    General Discussion is the meat of any solid forum. It's the core at the center, the first place people go, and the place that holds most of the discussion. The purpose of having other categories is to recognize when a certain group of topics would be useful to sort through as a group (like Character and Event threads), or when a large portion of the discussions are under one umbrella, and are starting to drown out everything else (not a problem we really have here, but you see it all over reddit, with subreddits creating megathreads for random questions to prevent them from cluttering up the main page; I suggested a regular Q&A thread to solve what little problem we have with that on the MPQ forums).

    The advantage of going to General Discussion is that it doesn't have any of the threads from the Character or Events or Bug forums. The Recent Discussions link takes that advantage away, and just re-clutters everything by putting it all in one spot again. What's the point in creating categories to pull stuff away from General Discussion, if you're going to replace it with Recent Discussions, which puts all that stuff back in again?

    I don't think General Discussion is a negotiable point. We've already seen the negative effect a moderately moderated Gen Disc is having on the forums. Killing it entirely is only going to make things worse.
    @JHawkInc
    I believe you would enjoy the Mute feature immensely then. This feature allows you to pinpoint which sub-forums you wish to ignore, and prevents you from seeing those threads pop up in the Recent Discussions section. In a sense, it would be a customizable General Discussion.

    If you utilized that feature, then that section would essentially become your ideal General Discussion, but with the benefit of all threads living in their appropriate sub-forums to begin with. This would also help prevent duplicate threads from popping up, because a big issue we currently have is multiple threads talking about the same topic, but split between General Discussion and its appropriate sub-forum. No split threads means more activity in one thread!

    In addition, just like broll said, the players would still determine what's "spotlighted" by which threads remain active. That aspect of the forum wouldn't change. 
  • animaniactoo
    animaniactoo Posts: 486 Mover and Shaker
    Brigby said:
     a big issue we currently have is multiple threads talking about the same topic, but split between General Discussion and its appropriate sub-forum.
    Real question: If there are different aspects/approaches to a portion of discussion around the same topic, why is it a problem to have multiple threads about it - focusing on those different aspects?

    Who is it a problem for if this is happening?

    In part, people start separate discussions because they don't want to read a 20-page long thread about something, or they believe their question/comment is distinct enough from the other. In part, they do it because they don't want to take the time and effort to figure out where it should go or see what's been said about it before, or do a simple search on it (or they've tried and come up with too many options and are now confused). This is not behavior you will be able to change and fighting against it too hard leaves you in the box you're in now - with people unhappy with the amount of moderating going on, and you doing more moderating than you want to be doing.

    The ONLY effective solutions I have seen to this are to 1) accept that it's going to happen and nothing that you do will stop it, 2) merge threads which are not just on the same topic, but are addressing the same portions of the same topic, and 3) actively participate in the thread and redirect people to other threads with useful info/active discussions,

    or 4) do away with the "sub-board" structure, and use tags as filters because sometimes a thread may be applicable to several categories.
  • Anon
    Anon Posts: 1,455 Chairperson of the Boards
    I honestly prefer how the site was before the update.
  • Brigby
    Brigby ADMINISTRATORS Posts: 7,757 Site Admin
    animaniactoo said:
    Brigby said:
    a big issue we currently have is multiple threads talking about the same topic, but split between General Discussion and its appropriate sub-forum.
    Real question: If there are different aspects/approaches to a portion of discussion around the same topic, why is it a problem to have multiple threads about it - focusing on those different aspects?

    Who is it a problem for if this is happening?
    @animaniactoo If the threads are talking about different aspects of a topic, then that's perfectly fine to have multiple threads for each one, For example, one thread could be talking about Strange Sights progression reward, and another thread could be talking about which characters to use in Strange Sights. Both topics revolve around the event, but are addressing different aspects of it.

    The issue is when there are multiple threads started that are talking about the same aspect; two threads talking about Strange Sights progression rewards, for example. This creates unnecessary clutter, as well as potentially useful information to be split between two threads. In the past, we would merge these two threads together, but unfortunately we no longer have that functionality.
  • KJB Agent
    KJB Agent Posts: 12 Just Dropped In
    Brigby said:
    Hi Everyone. Thanks so much for the feedback!

    From what I gathered so far, it seems like at the core of forum usage, players want one designated area where they can see all of the most recent/popular discussions and let the sub-forums be very focused sources of information.

    (Disclaimer: I am not a web designer/developer, so the following comment is purely hypothetical, as I'm uncertain of technical capabilities)

    Since the Recent Discussions section essentially aggregates all threads ever created, what if General Discussion was replaced by an MPQ Recent Discussions? Players would still need to post in the appropriate sub-forum to begin with, but their thread will be guaranteed visible on the MPQ Recent Discussions section. Clicking on the thread in that section would redirect players to the appropriate sub-forum. (Duration of front-page visibility on the Recent Discussions section would be determined by activity of the thread, just like any other forum section)

    This way there will always be forum organization, however it ensures that even posts located in the least visited sections will still get their fair share of the spotlight.

    What are everyone's thoughts?
    This would be very helpful for me.  I focus on General Discussion as it has been the best place to get current information.  I have always thought of the other sub-formus as a sort of archive. 
  • animaniactoo
    animaniactoo Posts: 486 Mover and Shaker
    Brigby said:
    animaniactoo said:
    Brigby said:
    a big issue we currently have is multiple threads talking about the same topic, but split between General Discussion and its appropriate sub-forum.
    Real question: If there are different aspects/approaches to a portion of discussion around the same topic, why is it a problem to have multiple threads about it - focusing on those different aspects?

    Who is it a problem for if this is happening?
    @animaniactoo If the threads are talking about different aspects of a topic, then that's perfectly fine to have multiple threads for each one, For example, one thread could be talking about Strange Sights progression reward, and another thread could be talking about which characters to use in Strange Sights. Both topics revolve around the event, but are addressing different aspects of it.

    The issue is when there are multiple threads started that are talking about the same aspect; two threads talking about Strange Sights progression rewards, for example. This creates unnecessary clutter, as well as potentially useful information to be split between two threads. In the past, we would merge these two threads together, but unfortunately we no longer have that functionality.
    @Brigby -  Gotcha. The main issue I see with your proposed solution is that you're looking at still having an off-topic forum (and you'd need to because there'd still be plenty of threads like the "best moment of the day"), and what's going on here will simply transfer to that forum instead, as people are looking for a general gathering place.

    Could you do a "smart folders" kind of thing? So that if you organized the forum as I outlined in my initial post here, new posts could go into GD, but with the ability to tag them into other forums they may be relevant for, so that they show up in both right away? People are more likely to work with a system like that if they can one-stop shop it.

    If not, see this next part...

    Ultimately, while I think that part of the issue is that you're top-heavy on categories, the bigger issue is the moving of conversations that are really only tangential to another, and it feels very heavyhanded as if the mere mention of something relevant to another forum will get the thread moved when it's a tangent discussion off the original post, etc. So I think that the issue is not so much organization as it is execution.

    Q: Have you tried asking posters to move conversations over to another (relevant) forum when it's devolved, or the OP is in the wrong place, rather than redirecting it manually as the first step? If not, I would suggest doing that because you'll get some clutter for awhile, but you're getting people used to moving the conversation themselves, and being in those other forums and it's likely people will cooperate more if they're being asked to do it rather than feeling forced into it. Hopefully you'd end up with enough to start making a difference in the amount of stuff you're trying to handle.
  • broll
    broll Posts: 4,732 Chairperson of the Boards
    @fight4thedream  
    Fantastic Post!  I wanted to say several of the things you said about welcomeness of the forum declining and over-moderation increasing but was worried I couldn't say it with tact and didn't want it to seem like an attack.  You put what I was thinking out there much better than I could have.  Thanks for your thoughtful and well written post!
  • Zappa
    Zappa Posts: 102 Tile Toppler
    It's like inviting everyone over for a party, telling them to have fun and mingle, and then you go around and start moving people around and telling them they can't talk about food in the hall, you have to move to the kitchen. Micromanaging people is a pretty surefire way to kill any enthusiasm to talk.
    How about this, what if someone went on your desktop, told you they didn't think your filing system was optimal, and shuffled everything into their own idea of what they thought was best for you? I'm pretty sure you'd tell them to **** right off.
  • feraldayor
    feraldayor Posts: 48 Just Dropped In
    I've only been a lurker and rare poster on these forums for the last three years, but I've noticed how didactic and over-zealous the mods are becoming. Most of the things they change/do are heavy-handed and unnecessary. But then, I've also noticed how toxic and whiny the forums have become...
  • Pogo
    Pogo Posts: 185 Tile Toppler
    I contributed a pitch back in the "Defining General Discussion" thread, but here's a revision with tweaks (please forgive the typos in the raster image):



    fight4thedream said (paraphrased):
    [make Speculation & Concepts a section of Suggestion & Feedback]
    Wait yeah hold on that's even better.


    Primary emphasis:     Upper section is organized so as to make information easily accessible to newcomers and non-powerusers.

    For the view mode nicknamed "The Floodgate," I don't know how technically-involved it would be to implement.
    broll said:

    https://forums.d3go.com/discussions
    I've already made the above link my personal replacement for General Discussions and I've been loving it as an alternative. 
    Essentially this, but with each user defining what to exclude in their own feed. Checkboxes for each subforum, with everything enabled by default. This should solve the bulk of the problem for people who can only be bothered to read one subforum.

    This setup also involves providing separate sections for raw info and discussion. The existing Character Discussion subforum would be completely unusable without the "Technopathic Boogaloo" directory post. When I was a new user, I came to look up information on characters and their abilities. The search function wasn't helpful; it just presented me with a sea of asterisks (Sidenote: a row of asterisks is a very unhelpful way to format a character information thread title), and dozens of posts that may or may not actually be part of the dedicated discussion thread for the character I had searched. It took several visits before I realized that the compendium thread was the only effective way to navigate to the information that I needed.

    Separating raw info from discussion makes the reference portion more accessible. Same goes for events: The subforum is divided into one section for schedule/announcement of upcoming events and discussion of those events, and another section for hard information.

         "Here's a thread for a breakdown of Hearts of Darkness:
              Day 0:
                   Node 1- Title, Point Value, Opponents, Rental Hero
                   Node 2 -Title, Point Value, Opponents (etc.)
              Day 1:
                   Node 1: Title, Point Value, Opponents, Rental Hero (etc.)"

    [debate over whether to make a separate info thread for each rerun or just have additional posts and use the first post of the thread to edit-in links to each rerun if there are any changes beyond cover rewards]

    This setup would also include the addition of the Metaforum, so discussion about the actual forum wouldn't have to pop up in Feedback or General Discussion (or prompt snark about where that discussion belongs).

    (I would personally fold Theories and Statistics in as a subdivision of Community Discussion, but I'm guessing that the people who use that subforum have reasons why it should be separate)

    Supplemental suggestion for resolving the "Feedback" subforum, since it seems to be the prime destination for thread-moving: Allow users to designate serious feedback with a tag or marker or, ideally, a checkbox in the post/reply composition field. The feedback subforum would still be there for threads that don't neatly fit into another targeted subforum, and marked threads (specifically if the OP is marked) in other subforums could be mirrored in the Feedback directory. These posts and threads would then all be searchable and grouped for dev review as necessary without users trying to do phrasing gymnastics to prevent their threads from getting moved (which, as we all know, is tantamount to that forum user being literally buried alive).

    Regarding actual thread navigation: When choosing a thread from the subforum directory, have buttons that clearly differentiate between "First post" and "First unread."

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