Archive this forum?

[Locutus]

We're planning a major forum restructuring that's being discussed here:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=174597

As part of that, we're not convinced that the activity level in this forum warrants keeping it around. How do you guys that actually use this forum feel about this? Does this forum still serve a purpose or should it be put out of its misery?

We're not only interested in your vote but also why you voted the way you did, so feel free to explain yourself below.

Of course, if this forum is closed down you can still talk about Paradox Games all you want in the main OG forum.

[Nikolai]

As I said in the other thread: I love PI's games and like this subforum(I'm probably the largest contributor here), but as it is now, I believe there are way too little activity to defend it being split off from the main OG forum.

[lord of the mark]

we tried adding other grand strat games, didnt we? Turned out if youre thinking of historical ones, theres not much out there that isnt Paradox or Civ, unless you count say the TW series which no one wanted in here.

So I dont think thats a real option.

I like this forum cause I know the folks, and I sometimes find the Paradox forums frustrating, and Im here anyway.

But I agree, if theres no activity, theres no activity.

[Harovan]

It should have been named Grand Strategy in the first place, and IIRC it was named so for a few hours a while back, when DanQ changed its name a couple times within little time. That said, the activity is not enough to warrant a subforum. Fold it into OG.

[Verrucosus]

Although I'm not playing Paradox Games often enough to post frequently, I like this sub-forum a lot. It's easy to find information in older threads and for specific questions it's good to know that Nikolai is around and happy to share his experience.

Given the low level of activity, broadening the scope of the forum seems like a good idea. However, "Grand Strategy Games" is not really distinctive enough because the term would easily cover most of the main forums and in particular all of the Civilization games. An important quality that distinguishes the Paradox games from the Civilization series and that they share with some other games, is that each of them is linked to a specific historical period. Apart from Paradox, you would get the Total War games, the Imperialisms and probably quite a few single titles like Colonization or Knights of Honour. That group would be different enough from Civilization, but at the same time closer to Civilization in spirit than most of the rest of the "Other Games" that it could merit a seperate forum on this site. What about "Period Strategy?"

Verrucosus

P.S.: Archiving any forum is a bad idea as long as the archive search does not work properly.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Verrucosus
P.S.: Archiving any forum is a bad idea as long as the archive search does not work properly.

True, but if we fold this forum back into OG you'll have a hard time finding back old Paradox threads as well, and if we never archived anything the site would gradually become so slow it'd be unusable, not to mention impossible to navigate as we've created almost 400 forums over the past almost 10 years of our existence (although admittedly a bunch of the old ubb forums no longer exist in any form).

We're working on upgrading our forums to vB3, that has our top priority as far as our tech staff goes, once that's done I do have finding some workable way to make the archives searchable on my to-do list (I tried messing with that a while back but our archives are so big it just broke search completely). In the mean time there are only a little over 550 threads and 8500 posts in this forum, you can still find stuff relatively easily by messing with the forum display settings and searching the thread titles -- I used to do that all the time for the CtP2 forums and usually found what I was looking for, and those archives are a LOT bigger. That, and Google search works okay as well, if you use "site:apolyton.net" (without quotes) and "Paradox Games" (with quotes) in your search string.

[Dinner]

Naw, once the new patch for HOI2 comes out next month we might see a resurgence in interest at least for a while.

[Nikolai]

When Rome comes in April, the interest might highten a bit too. But the question is whether it's enough to warrant a dedicated subforum. I wouldn't oppose a continued subforum, but it's not a big issue for me either way.

[Verrucosus]

I hadn't noticed that Rome would be out so soon. I still have a big EU3 game to finish.

Originally posted by Locutus
... Google search works okay as well, if you use "site:apolyton.net" (without quotes) and "Paradox Games" (with quotes) in your search string.

Excellent tip, Locutus. Thank you!