Status update & new forum structure

[Tuberski]

I coulda swore I posted in this thread last night..............


ACK!

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Lancer
Also, one more point. If the people who post in the OT have more stuff going on to interest them they are less likely to leave. By removing these big three topics from the OT it was made a dull place. Add in the earlier execution of S&D and the OT can be a really dull visit. Not much there to hold interest. Never used to be like that. I'm not saying that if what originally worked is reassembled that it's a sure thing, but it's worth trying rather than watching those that are left, follow those that have left.

We've been over this over and over and over. We're not gonna have this discussion all over again, we weighed all the arguments and made our decision... for now. We all know all the arguments on both sides, no point repeating them again, I just wanted to clarify a point that was IMO poorly phrased by Solver.

The Sports forum was never under discussion, that's staying period. We've been over our reasons for that over and over as well: in short, we have far more sports discussion now than ever before (in spite of the overall downward trend in traffic). History and Tech are 'on probation', we'll evaluate their progress over time. And no, we're not JUST looking at the numbers, but the numbers are quite helpful for us to have when people keep saying that we used to have so much more discussion on these topics or that these forums never get any traffic anyway when that's clearly not the case

[Asher]

More "feedback":

1) Fix the country field in the profile such that it doesn't randomly reset to null (or reset to null when you update your profile and not actively selecting the flag again)
2) Stop "requiring" a last name. That's stupid.

[Locutus]

For the last time: we're not working on vB2 anymore, unless it's an urgent issue that's breaking the site. You're one of the people who keeps saying we desperately need to upgrade to vB3, we happen to agree. Most of our dev efforts are focused that. We're well aware of every single issue you've pointed out to date and will handle them in vB3. This thread is about the new forum structure, not about vB2 bugs/issues we already know about.

[Asher]

For the last time: I don't care for your excuses.

These are not vb2 errors, these are stupid hacks someone made to vb2. The whole reason this vb2 -> vb3 transition is taking so long is, presumably, you guys need to port your hacks.

I'm letting you know what 10 seconds of actual testing should've told you about issues with these hacks. I am providing FEEDBACK so you can address these issues once you move the crap code to vb3.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Asher
For the last time: I don't care for your excuses.

And I don't care about your whinging. Go elsewhere if you don't like it here. Again, this thread is about the forum re-structuring, other posts will be deleted.

[Ninot]

2 things

1: Did Asher get banned for posting a PM?
2: How about making the Misc. category more fleshed out by listing the Sports/Tech/History forums on the main page as well, instead of just Off-Topic?

[Locutus]

1) Asher got banned for doing what he was told not to, and if he keeps at it he'll be banned for a long time. His situation is between me (and the administration) and him, I strongly urge anyone else to not interfere or you will get caught in the crossfire.

2) I personally considered that but didn't bring it up with anyone else. It seems to me that those forums would be even harder to find for the OT guys, many of whom don't usually visit the main page, if we upgrade them to full forums. But if people seem to prefer that solution I'd be open for it (but I don't know how the other admins feel about that).

[Ninot]

I don't know if they need to be full forums, but couldnt they be linked to on the main page?

Also, as Stuie mentioned, what happened to the Paradox forum? That one was actually getting usage.

[Locutus]

They *are* linked on the main page, just in a smaller font. A forum is either a main forum or a subforum, you can't have both. Well, you can show subforums on the main page but that would show *all* subforums on the main page, and we have many, so that would completely negate this whole clean-up operation.

I think it's possible on vB3 to make a link look like a forum, I guess we could eventually create links to the subforums on the main page and make them look like regular forums, but that'll have to wait until we upgrade to vB3. (Edit: but they would be links, they wouldn't show "last post by" and all that stuff.)

We had a poll in the Paradox forums 2 months ago and there was near-universal agreement that it should be folded into the main Other Games forum. The 2 or 3 active threads that were there were moved to Other Games (although they were a bit of an exception, that forum was almost as dead as our MoO forums for most of the past year).

[LDiCesare]

Clash is a hosted site of us, we provide forums for all our hosted sites as long as they request it (and as long as it doesn't become outright silly). Clash unfortunately does seem to be verging on its demise after ~9 very successful years, but this is a relatively recent development. For the time being it's up to Mark_Everson (or whoever succeeds him, if anyone) to pull the plug if he deems fit. If he doesn't but Clash remains dead we'll deal with that eventually, but not yet.

Clash is indeed rather dead right now. This is mostly because I picked up a kob which didn't allow me to continue work on it, Gary Thomas having RL problems and Mark getting tired after that much time.
So with noone coding, the project is standing idle.
I could start working on it again, but the moddability of Civ IV makes it more interesting to create a civ IV mod than to try and promote the program as it was.
So, I personnally wouldn't object if the Clash forums were archived, although I'd really dislike if they were deleted, considering there are lots of really interesting stuff inside, for those who read them, that I think I will probably dig again someday.

[Locutus]

They would never be deleted, archived would definitely be the way to go. Since in the end it's Mark's project though, it's his call. If you can confirm that he's not around anymore at all and can't make the call, I don't mind leaving the decision up to you -- in his absence you're probably Clash's best representative.

[Ninot]

Thanks for the answers Locutus.

[Locutus]

Welcome.

Okay, I went through all the Civgroups and cleaned them up (Dan has to look this over so further changes may follow but I don't expect so). If anyone still sees any issues with CivGroups being missing/misplaced/not working/whatever, please post so.

For the extremely bored, here's what I did exactly:

(unjoinable = you can't join these civgroups anymore, but you can still access the private archives (if any) and leave if you want to get rid of the badge; better than outright deleting groups and killing a lot of people's badges which I'm sure would upset many, but for the groups in question there's no point in allowing new people to join).

Originally posted by Locutus
- Pointed CtP1 MP groups to the CtP1 General forum. They're still open as they're no different from other MP civgroups: their primary purpose is for players to find each other. Moved the SuperLeague group to the CtP1-MP archive that was created years ago and made it unjoinable.

- Civ2 MP groups were pointed to Civ2 General (I think some of these were pointing to non-existant forums that we deleted long ago).

- Same with Civ3 MP groups.

- Pointed Diplomacy (from the S&D forum, not to be confused with the DiploGames group from Civ4 MP), NES and Nation States groups to the Other Games forum and left them open: same logic as MP groups, people can use these to find each other.

- Pointed the GalCiv Apolyton Empire group to GalCiv General and made it unjoinable. Would've put it in a GalCiv archive if we had one (we have the private Empire forum archive the civgroup gives access to, but that's creates a recursive situation making the civgroup and forum inaccessible for anyone that doesn't have it bookmarked).

- The Storywriters group now points to Civ4-Stories, Civ2-General, Civ3-General, AC-Stories, CtP2-General, CtP1-General, GalCiv-General, MoO-General and RoN-General, as well as a few Stories archives (that I can't be arsed to sort out in detail). This was mostly already the case, but it had a few old 'broken' links.

- Made the AC DG groups unjoinable (still pointing to the AC DG forum, which is now in the archives).

- The still-running Civ3 ISDG group was moved to Civ3-General, together with its signup thread (which was now in an archive somewhere). All other Civ3 groups made unjoinable, kept in the main Civ3 DG archive.

- CtP DGs pointed to their archives and made unjoinable.

- Civ4 ISDG was already unjoinable, don't remember doing that. Still points to Civ4 Vanilla DG forum, there's no other better place to point it to IMO. The Civ4 SP DG points to two different archives, not sure what's up with that but I'll look into it as I look into the archives later. Nonetheless, made unjoinable.

- Bunch of long-deceased Civ2 DGs made unjoinable (already pointing to archives).

[Lancer]

Originally posted by Locutus


We've been over this over and over and over. We're not gonna have this discussion all over again, we weighed all the arguments and made our decision... for now. We all know all the arguments on both sides, no point repeating them again, I just wanted to clarify a point that was IMO poorly phrased by Solver.

The Sports forum was never under discussion, that's staying period. We've been over our reasons for that over and over as well: in short, we have far more sports discussion now than ever before (in spite of the overall downward trend in traffic). History and Tech are 'on probation', we'll evaluate their progress over time. And no, we're not JUST looking at the numbers, but the numbers are quite helpful for us to have when people keep saying that we used to have so much more discussion on these topics or that these forums never get any traffic anyway when that's clearly not the case

Okally dokally then. Anyhooo... love what you've done with the place, the all new deck chair motif gives a wonderful view of the impending disaster.

"(in spite of the overall downward trend in traffic)"

Even that the powers that be are willing to see this trend is something like progress. I recall when any mention of the leak in the ship was denied up and down, so you're past the denial in this one regard, and that's a good thing.

Please remember that there are those of us nobodys that really want Poly to recover lost glories, as you do. When a mind is closed to something that may seem obvious to oneself the frustration can swing both ways. Lets all try to take the high road and remember that people are mostly here to enjoy. When the fun is gone so are the people and so is the site. So lets all consider how best to bring back the pleasure, (stop the leak) and do it in a way that is enjoyable and not arrogant >>on all sides<< because that has already cost this site too many good people. Lets have a good time!