Major forum restructuring

[Locutus]

It hasn't escaped most people's attention that the activity in our forums has dwindled quite a bit in the last 2 years or so, as the games we cover get older and older and their communities smaller and smaller. Close analysis of our forum activity has shown us that while our core Civ4 forums on the whole remain quite strong, everything else isn't what it used to be.

So we as administration feel it's time to do some major restructuring of our forums. We want to reduce the amount of 'clutter' on the main forum page by getting rid of some of the lesser trafficked forums (or demoting them to subforums), and 'reward' the most active (on topic) ones by moving them closer to the top of the page. Since we anticipate a lot of changes coming to the site in the future as we upgrade our front-end software (forums, Directory, etc) we also feel that it'll be important to make the A/C forum easier to find so people can learn about these things and give us feedback on them.

Of some other forums we're not sure whether they still warrant keeping them around, so we intend to start polls in the forums in question to see how the people actually using them feel about this, specifically History, Technology and Paradox Games. This isn't an absolute referendum in that we will follow the outcome directly no matter what, but it will be a major factor in our decision (though not just the outcome: we'll also look at how many people voted, who they were, what their reasoning was, etc).

Additionally, we already opened up a new forum for Spore: Civ4 isn't getting any younger and Civ5 isn't anywhere near on the horizon yet, nor is any other game in any of the series we currently cover, so we're looking into the possibility of covering other games to bridge the gap until Civ5 and to get some fresh blood into our community. The Spore forum may be a first step towards this end. Mind you, we're by no means saying at this point that we will definitely be covering Spore in full, but seeing how that forum turns out is a first step towards investigating the potential (incidentally, if you're interested in helping us with a possible Spore section (news and site section), please let us know -- we definitely won't be covering it if we can't find the staff for it). We may well change our mind and expand our coverage with other games instead, or not bother at all and just focus on Civ only. We just don't know yet, time will tell...

All of this is still a proposal right now, no final decisions have been made by the administration and we could still change our minds on any or all of it, but we feel that since this is such a huge and important restructuring and since we're hardly the only people using these forums it would be a good idea to get the input from the community, i.e. you guys, as well. Please let us know what you feel about this proposal, suggest further changes if you have them, etc. We're very much open to any ideas and (constructive) feedback at this point, though in the end this is still not a democracy, the final decision shall still be ours

Proposed new forum structure:

General [size=1][1][/size]
	Site Feedback & News
	Civ Series General
	Civilization: Revolution
	Civilization en Español
		PBEM en Español
		(PSPB Team Español)	(hidden for most users)

Civilization IV [size=1][2][/size]
	Civ4 General
		Civ4 Apolyton University
		Civ4 Stories
	Civ4 Creation
	Civ4 Multiplaying
		Civ4 PBEM & SGs
			Civ4 PBEM Trackers
	Civ4 BtS Tri-League Tournament
	Civ4 Vanilla Democracy Game
	Civ4 Warlords Democracy Game
	Civ4 BtS Democracy Game

Civilization II
	Civ2 General
	Civ2 Scenario League
	Civ2 Multiplaying/PBEM

Civilization III [size=1][3][/size]
	Civ3 General
		Civ3 Creation
		(Civ3 Conquests ISDG)	(hidden for most users)

Galactic Civilizations [size=1][4][/size]
	GalCiv Series General

Alpha Centauri [size=1][5][/size]
	AC General
		AC Creation
	AC Multiplaying/PBEM

Call to Power II [size=1][6][/size]
	CtP2 General
		CtP2 Creation
		CtP2 Ages of Man
	CtP2 Source Code Project

Alternative Civs [size=1][7][/size]
	Alternative Civs
	Clash of Civilizations
	Courts of Candle'Bre
	Freeciv

Other Games [size=1][8][/size]
	Call to Power I
	Master of Orion
	[i]Paradox Games[/i]
	Rise of Nations
	Spore
	Other Games

Off Topic [size=1][9][/size]
	Off Topic
		Sports Forum
		[i]History Forum[/i]
 		[i]Technology Forum[/i]

Notes:

[1] General is a new category. Site Feedback & News == Apolyton/Community; Civilization en Español = Spanish Civilization Site (said site has been dead for 2-3 year, but the community is one of the most active on the site). Civ Series General will be the place for Civ5 discussions (at least for now). CivRev doesn't really warrant its own category (yet?) but as the most recent Civ game does deserve a place above the fold.
[2] Civ4: The SP DG and IS DG forums will be archived.
[3] Civ3: All MP, DG, AU and Stories forums will be archived; Creation & ISDG moved into General.
[4] GalCiv: Apolyton Empire will be archived, the other two forums merged. This will likely be moved under Other Games once Stardock stops developing GalCiv2 (should be later this year).
[5] SMAC: Creation will be moved into General, Stories archived.
[6] CtP2: AoM will be moved from Hosted Sites into CtP2 General.
[7] Alt Civs: Clash of Civilizations will be moved here from Hosted Sites.
[8] Other Games is a new category. CtP1, RoN and MoO forums will be merged into a single forum per game; Nation States will be archived; Paradox Games will be subject to poll (may or may not be folded into the main Other Games forum).
[9] Off-Topic (formerly Miscellaneous): S&D will be archived, History and Technology subject to poll (may or may not be folded back into main OT).

With this proposal the number of front-page items will be reduced from 40 forums and 13 categories to 30 forums and 9 categories (once GalCiv is moved under Other Games). 13-15 (public) subforums also pruned (pending polls).

Note that we're not in a hurry to make any of these changes, you have a few weeks at least to voice your opinions.

[OzzyKP]

Sounds good.

[LordShiva]

Nation States will be archived

S&D will be archived, History and Technology subject to poll

[Krill]

WTF is S&D?

[Locutus]

Originally posted by LordShiva

Nation States will be archived

Sorry, 12 posts in the last 7 months, 3 of which about a password and 6 in the last week about what sounds like a bug in the game? Pretty similar pattern in the 6 months before that. Over the last year the least active forum on the entire site -- if we don't clean that one up, we have no case for any other forum.

You will still be able to discuss Nation States all you want in the main OG forum (if you need some threads moved there that can be arranged, although considering the low traffic I'd just start one new thread for everything)...

Originally posted by Krill


WTF is S&D?

Stories (i.e. NES) & Diplomacy. Effectively been dead since last July or so (aside from some spam had 0 posts since September).

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by Locutus
Effectively been dead since last July or so (aside from some spam

We were telling stories, and being diplomatic about it

[Harovan]

This would be a more logical structure:

Civilization IV
	Civ4 General
		Civ4 Apolyton University
		Civ4 Stories
	Civ4 Creation
	Civ4 Multiplaying
		Civ4 PBEM & SGs
			Civ4 PBEM Trackers
		Civ4 BtS Tri-League Tournament
	Civ4 Democracy Games
		Civ4 Vanilla Democracy Game
		Civ4 Warlords Democracy Game
		Civ4 BtS Democracy Game

[Locutus]

I would disagree, the last thing we want to do is make some of the forums that have the most activity and potential for future activity harder to find (not to mention that Tri-League is a single player tournament). If anything it actually makes more sense to move PBEM & SGs up a level...

[Harovan]

I didn't know that the Tri-League Tournament is single player. In this light it would belong in General, where the other (former) single player tournament (called Apolyton University) already resides.

And with all respect, I wouldn't consider it "harder to find", when the particular democracy games are in a folder called, well, democracy games.

Moving a "General" forum, which won't generate any notable traffic aside from being a convenient link to hosted sites, to the top of the forum tree is another thing I don't understand.

But I applaud the coverage of Spore by Apolyton. If a moderator is needed, I have a proposal (no, not me).

[Maniac]

Why place General above Civ4? Is it more active?

[Solver]

It's fairly common for sites to have a General category first on their forums, followed by the main on-topic category (Civ4 in our case). One reason why we want to move this to the top is we feel that this (Apolyton/Community) forum doesn't get enough exposure. It's mostly seen by people who have been here for a while, but we often have some important announcements here and this forum is our primary means of communicating about the site with its users.

The activity in that section also rather warrants that. The Spanish community is very active, CivRev will presumably see more activity and it's quite recent.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
I didn't know that the Tri-League Tournament is single player. In this light it would belong in General, where the other (former) single player tournament (called Apolyton University) already resides.

And with all respect, I wouldn't consider it "harder to find", when the particular democracy games are in a folder called, well, democracy games.

If our sole purpose was to have as little things on the home page as possible we'd get rid of listing any forums altogether and just list categories. We do not want that. Our philosophy is to list those forums that are most active and have the most future potential where they are easiest to find, i.e. on the front page and above the fold. Civ4 is responsible for like 60-70% of our total on topic traffic, so to reduce it to just 4 items on the front page only to make room for ancient and/or nearly dead games like Civ2, Civ3 and GalCiv that generate only about 5% of traffic combined (and 90% of that is from just Civ2-Scenario League) is silly.

For most of the last 2 years the Civ4 DG forums combined have been the single most active group of on topic forums on the site, we want to promote them by making them as visible and easy to find as possible. Having 3 of them on the front page tells people right upfront that they are a big deal on this site and worth checking out.

The Tri-League isn't quite that active but it's active enough to warrant front page mention, and we also want to promote it as we see a lot of potential for it for the future, it seems to be quite attractive to new users. It's most unfortunate that the AU has been on life support for a long, long time -- if it wasn't we'd love to move it to the front page as well, but the traffic doesn't nearly warrant it. In fact, traffic only warrants killing it off, but we don't want to go quite that far either. Hopefully in the future we can find ways to promote it and breath some life back into it, but that's a different topic entirely.

Moving a "General" forum, which won't generate any notable traffic aside from being a convenient link to hosted sites, to the top of the forum tree is another thing I don't understand.

Actually, the Spanish forums are after Civ4 DGs the second most active group of on topic forums on the site (in some months they're even #1), usually they're responsible for around 15-20% of all on topic posts. That, combined with our desire to make A/C easier to find (see Solver's post) was the main reason for creating a General category at the top. CivRev and Civ Series General are thrown in there as well because they both have a lot of future potential.

[Mercator]

Sounds good.

Interesting how Civ2 is above Civ3 on that list. The Scenario League is doing well.

I'd keep the Civ2 multiplayer forum in with General (as that's what it was merged with earlier) and make PBEM a subforum of the Scenario League, though. The Civ2 PBEMs are mostly (only?) scenarios. But I don't play multiplayer games or PBEMs so I'm probably not the right person to decide on that.

Why isn't the CtP1 forum merged in with the CtP2 forums to create a single Call to Power category, just like with Galactic Civilizations now? Or are they so different from each other that they shouldn't even be in the same category?

[Solver]

The two Galciv games have been merged because there is no discussion pertinent to GalCiv1. For all intents and purposes, our GalCiv section is just a GalCiv2 forum. CtP1 still gets posted about some - and it's sufficiently different from CtP2.

[Locutus]

We weren't planning any changes to the Civ2 section as it seems to work well enough. It is indeed ahead of Civ3 and not just thanks to SL (which is doing quite well indeed), the Civ2 General and PBEM forums together also have more activity than all Civ3 forums combined. The only planned change there is a slight renaming of the PBEM forum to make it more consistent with the rest of the site. I could do with moving it under SL and keeping the PBEM(-only) name as well though -- if other Civ2ers have an opinion on this do let us know.

As Solver points out the GalCiv1 forum is completely dead: 5 posts in the last 18 months. And even GalCiv2 discussion is unfortunately on life support, the only reason we're not placing it under Other Games right away is because there's still an XP coming that might cause a (temporary) revival. So a merger makes sense there.

CtP2 OTOH still has a small but dedicated community that's active enough to warrant keeping its own section. CtP1 was VERY active until but a few months ago, and even now it's still more active than the GalCiv forums combined. In the long term a merger of the CtP forums is quite possible, but that's still a while off at this point.