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As someone who has lurked for a while at Apolyton and then finally became a member a while back, it has been a pleasure to learn about and discuss TBS games here. So first off, in case this is not clear in any way, I must say that I enjoy Apolyton immensely and wish it only the best; this message is intended in that spirit and will hopefully prove to be constructive. Sometimes it feels like I've spent as many hours on here as actually playing the games discussed. 
When the chance came up to join an empire for Galactic Civilizations, it was only natural that I found myself in the Apolyton one; I enjoy the community aspect of this place as well as the knowledge and discussion itself.
Which leads me to the subject at hand: the forums, and specifically the way message threads show up when you read them. I realized recently that the only part of this site that seems annoying to me on a regular basis is the long time it can take to load up message threads, and how difficult it can be to easily read the text within them because of the clutter. Specifically, the pages of threads seem so cluttered with extra stuff that take extra time to load up and can get in the way of readability when trying to get through a lot of message threads.
With some checking, it seems that there are specific "extras" that show up in every message or message thread which could made optional or eliminated entirely. This would speed up the time taken to load each page, and drop the load on the server as well. Currently it can take over 5 seconds to load up a page with just one message on it, and more than twice that long to load pages with 10 messages. The following is a list of 15 items which pop up on every message thread that could be made optional or cut down (this is with everything optional turned off in my User Control Panel).
Community Info
These are pieces of info that show up in each individual message that either give info about the member (user) who wrote it, or ways to communicate with them. These could all be put under the Profile of the member, or at least be made optional (from your own User Control Panel) to give a choice whether you want to see them on each message. Note that most of this info is already available in the member's Profile, it just also shows up in each message that he writes.
On the left side by the member's name:
1) The member's country flag
2) The icons for all the lists that the member is in
3) The member's location and local time
4) Whether or not the member is online
5) The AIM, ICQ, and Yahoo Messenger info on them
The yellow icons across the top in the middle:
6) More of the same sort of items: the icons to email, send a private message/instant message, see the member's homepage, add the person to your buddy list -- none of these are needed on every single message. The Find more posts by and Profile are the two main ones that should always be there; one relates specifically to the Forum, and the other contains all this other info so people can access it easily.
All of the info listed above pertains to who the member is, and how to contact them. While it is very nice to be able to have access to this info, it seems redundant and wasteful to have it posted on each individual message. Honestly, how many people are reading a message and think "I wonder where that guy lives... oh look, it says right there that he lives in China! And it's 8 hours different over there than here! Now I wonder if that info is actually true..." The few times that people do wonder about that, they can look it up in the writer's profile. Having the Profile icon handy makes it wonderfully easy to locate all the info that someone could need about a member, and then some.
Other Info
There are other pieces of info that could be eliminated entirely, or made optional.
7) The Search box and dropdown -- Something that you either use a lot, or very rarely. As such, it could be made optional, especially since there's a link right above it to access the more full featured search page.
8) Get Post ID -- This icon is on the top of every message that every person who reads the board can see, but (presumably) can only be accessed by the board admin. If the board can be smart enough to realize this, it shouldn't show this icon unless you can actually click on it without getting an error.
9) Edit/Delete Message -- Ditto on this: if you aren't the message's author (or an admin with access), you don't need the icon to edit/delete the message.
10) Chat info -- This makes up at least three lines across the top and can get rather lengthy (or it could when the chat was active.) There's already a Chat link further up, this is just 3 more links to get to the same place. This could be an option to have on if you're a chatter and want to see if your friends are around; I would guess that well over 90% of the members here never go into the chat unless there's an event with it.
11) Post Quick Reply -- Something else that could be optional and save a lot of space if it weren't there, including the three buttons relating to it. Personally, I almost always go into the main posting screen to write a message, both because I'm a perfectionist and because I often want to include links and am too lazy to type it out myself. For others who don't use the quick reply (or are one of the majority of people who read messages here but rarely write them) it would be worthwhile to turn this off.
12) Forum Rules -- These are sometimes necessary to see, given that there can be some forums where the rules aren't the default. But to post them on every single message thread seems duplicative. Given that they're already on the main page for each individual forum, they could certainly be optionally turned off.
13) Listing of time spent generating the page and loading it -- As useful as this was for writing up this particular message, it probably isn't needed for 99.99% of the times that people read messages, or do anything else on the site for that matter. Again, could be optional.
14) The translation box -- Since I read English and (most) postings here are done in that language, obviously this isn't something I'd use very much, but I'm sure many others do. For those who find it useful, it seems a very nice tool to have handy... as, you guessed it, an option.
15) The three line site navigator at the bottom -- This one may just be personal preference on my part, but I would guess that not many people use it often. The only thing I've ever used this for is to go back Home, and then I usually make my next selection from the main screen. (I only go to that list for the Home link because it's nowhere to be found at the top of the page; I kept clicking on the main Apolyton Civilization Site graphic at the top until I finally started remembering that when you're in the forums it doesn't take you to the main apolyton.net page, but only to the forum page.)
So there is a list of links and icons which show up on every message page that could be made optional, or for a few entirely eliminated. I have no idea how easy or hard it would be to make these sort of changes, so if it's time consuming it may not be worth it, with all the other work that goes into keeping this place running and up to date. Given the tens of thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of displays of message threads that are shown here every day, though, it seems like if these ideas would be possible to implement they would make the load a lot lighter. I'm curious to hear feedback on this, and if people do use those links so much that they couldn't be made optional.
When the chance came up to join an empire for Galactic Civilizations, it was only natural that I found myself in the Apolyton one; I enjoy the community aspect of this place as well as the knowledge and discussion itself.Which leads me to the subject at hand: the forums, and specifically the way message threads show up when you read them. I realized recently that the only part of this site that seems annoying to me on a regular basis is the long time it can take to load up message threads, and how difficult it can be to easily read the text within them because of the clutter. Specifically, the pages of threads seem so cluttered with extra stuff that take extra time to load up and can get in the way of readability when trying to get through a lot of message threads.
With some checking, it seems that there are specific "extras" that show up in every message or message thread which could made optional or eliminated entirely. This would speed up the time taken to load each page, and drop the load on the server as well. Currently it can take over 5 seconds to load up a page with just one message on it, and more than twice that long to load pages with 10 messages. The following is a list of 15 items which pop up on every message thread that could be made optional or cut down (this is with everything optional turned off in my User Control Panel).
Community Info
These are pieces of info that show up in each individual message that either give info about the member (user) who wrote it, or ways to communicate with them. These could all be put under the Profile of the member, or at least be made optional (from your own User Control Panel) to give a choice whether you want to see them on each message. Note that most of this info is already available in the member's Profile, it just also shows up in each message that he writes.
On the left side by the member's name:
1) The member's country flag
2) The icons for all the lists that the member is in
3) The member's location and local time
4) Whether or not the member is online
5) The AIM, ICQ, and Yahoo Messenger info on them
The yellow icons across the top in the middle:
6) More of the same sort of items: the icons to email, send a private message/instant message, see the member's homepage, add the person to your buddy list -- none of these are needed on every single message. The Find more posts by and Profile are the two main ones that should always be there; one relates specifically to the Forum, and the other contains all this other info so people can access it easily.
All of the info listed above pertains to who the member is, and how to contact them. While it is very nice to be able to have access to this info, it seems redundant and wasteful to have it posted on each individual message. Honestly, how many people are reading a message and think "I wonder where that guy lives... oh look, it says right there that he lives in China! And it's 8 hours different over there than here! Now I wonder if that info is actually true..." The few times that people do wonder about that, they can look it up in the writer's profile. Having the Profile icon handy makes it wonderfully easy to locate all the info that someone could need about a member, and then some.
Other Info
There are other pieces of info that could be eliminated entirely, or made optional.
7) The Search box and dropdown -- Something that you either use a lot, or very rarely. As such, it could be made optional, especially since there's a link right above it to access the more full featured search page.
8) Get Post ID -- This icon is on the top of every message that every person who reads the board can see, but (presumably) can only be accessed by the board admin. If the board can be smart enough to realize this, it shouldn't show this icon unless you can actually click on it without getting an error.
9) Edit/Delete Message -- Ditto on this: if you aren't the message's author (or an admin with access), you don't need the icon to edit/delete the message.
10) Chat info -- This makes up at least three lines across the top and can get rather lengthy (or it could when the chat was active.) There's already a Chat link further up, this is just 3 more links to get to the same place. This could be an option to have on if you're a chatter and want to see if your friends are around; I would guess that well over 90% of the members here never go into the chat unless there's an event with it.
11) Post Quick Reply -- Something else that could be optional and save a lot of space if it weren't there, including the three buttons relating to it. Personally, I almost always go into the main posting screen to write a message, both because I'm a perfectionist and because I often want to include links and am too lazy to type it out myself. For others who don't use the quick reply (or are one of the majority of people who read messages here but rarely write them) it would be worthwhile to turn this off.
12) Forum Rules -- These are sometimes necessary to see, given that there can be some forums where the rules aren't the default. But to post them on every single message thread seems duplicative. Given that they're already on the main page for each individual forum, they could certainly be optionally turned off.
13) Listing of time spent generating the page and loading it -- As useful as this was for writing up this particular message, it probably isn't needed for 99.99% of the times that people read messages, or do anything else on the site for that matter. Again, could be optional.
14) The translation box -- Since I read English and (most) postings here are done in that language, obviously this isn't something I'd use very much, but I'm sure many others do. For those who find it useful, it seems a very nice tool to have handy... as, you guessed it, an option.
15) The three line site navigator at the bottom -- This one may just be personal preference on my part, but I would guess that not many people use it often. The only thing I've ever used this for is to go back Home, and then I usually make my next selection from the main screen. (I only go to that list for the Home link because it's nowhere to be found at the top of the page; I kept clicking on the main Apolyton Civilization Site graphic at the top until I finally started remembering that when you're in the forums it doesn't take you to the main apolyton.net page, but only to the forum page.)
So there is a list of links and icons which show up on every message page that could be made optional, or for a few entirely eliminated. I have no idea how easy or hard it would be to make these sort of changes, so if it's time consuming it may not be worth it, with all the other work that goes into keeping this place running and up to date. Given the tens of thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of displays of message threads that are shown here every day, though, it seems like if these ideas would be possible to implement they would make the load a lot lighter. I'm curious to hear feedback on this, and if people do use those links so much that they couldn't be made optional.
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