test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Options
Forum Restructure Proposal
bareel
Member Posts: 3 Arc User
One of the major problems with the forums in my view is the underlying structure. The forums serve three primary purposes; discussion, feedback, and information sharing. To that end I think they should be restructured to those ends.
Socialize and Discussion
This would be for general banter primarily for parts of the community to come together and socialize. Moderation would be mostly hands off only focusing on direct attacks and such, much as it is now. Subforums could include General Discussion, Ten Forward, Fleet Recruitment, and the addition of a Trek focused subforum and a 'Rant Hall' type subforum.
Information and Mechanics
This would be for the sharing of information about STO. The tips, the tricks, the builds, and so on. Moderation rules would lightly enforce a 'stay on topic' policy and try to dissuade general banter. The academy could go here as is. A databank subforum could be created where only specific 'best of' guides and breakdowns of general game mechanics would go perhaps with some developer/mod assistance. Several guides would be taken from the academy and moved here along with some of the math intensive posts from the past. Just make Virus Dancer a mod with the ability to place a few of his consolidated summaries and it'll be great. All three shipyards would be moved here and a single thread created for each ship along with a 'universal' shipyard subforum. If you have a Fleet Galaxy R build it goes in the Fleet Galaxy R thread. Tags would be useful here such as 'pvp' and so on, as would increased support and integration of gateway for build sharing eventually. Lastly the doff/RnD subforum would go here as would foundry. A method of allowing posts with more 'thumbs ups' to move to the top would greatly increase the value of such subforums. PvP forum should be folded into the existing forums along with the creation of a pvp subforum in Socialize and Discussion for the pvp community to socialize and engage in forum pvp.
Feedback
Test server forums would go here. Bug reports would go here. A new subforum labelled 'focused feedback' would be created. Hopefully once a month or so a new thread could be created soliciting specific feedback on a topic much like the 'space meta' thread. These forums would be heavily moderated with any post not on topic being removed and any portion of a post not on topic simply having the fluff edited out. I'm talking iron fist level moderation here.
Thoughts?
Socialize and Discussion
This would be for general banter primarily for parts of the community to come together and socialize. Moderation would be mostly hands off only focusing on direct attacks and such, much as it is now. Subforums could include General Discussion, Ten Forward, Fleet Recruitment, and the addition of a Trek focused subforum and a 'Rant Hall' type subforum.
Information and Mechanics
This would be for the sharing of information about STO. The tips, the tricks, the builds, and so on. Moderation rules would lightly enforce a 'stay on topic' policy and try to dissuade general banter. The academy could go here as is. A databank subforum could be created where only specific 'best of' guides and breakdowns of general game mechanics would go perhaps with some developer/mod assistance. Several guides would be taken from the academy and moved here along with some of the math intensive posts from the past. Just make Virus Dancer a mod with the ability to place a few of his consolidated summaries and it'll be great. All three shipyards would be moved here and a single thread created for each ship along with a 'universal' shipyard subforum. If you have a Fleet Galaxy R build it goes in the Fleet Galaxy R thread. Tags would be useful here such as 'pvp' and so on, as would increased support and integration of gateway for build sharing eventually. Lastly the doff/RnD subforum would go here as would foundry. A method of allowing posts with more 'thumbs ups' to move to the top would greatly increase the value of such subforums. PvP forum should be folded into the existing forums along with the creation of a pvp subforum in Socialize and Discussion for the pvp community to socialize and engage in forum pvp.
Feedback
Test server forums would go here. Bug reports would go here. A new subforum labelled 'focused feedback' would be created. Hopefully once a month or so a new thread could be created soliciting specific feedback on a topic much like the 'space meta' thread. These forums would be heavily moderated with any post not on topic being removed and any portion of a post not on topic simply having the fluff edited out. I'm talking iron fist level moderation here.
Thoughts?
Post edited by bareel on
0
Comments
A couple. My first one is, they've restructured the forums a bunch of times in the past. And I don't think it has done much, so I'm not all that enthusiastic about your idea. That's just my opinion, so you know, keep that in mind.
Two: They've talked about redoing the forums completely in the future, going with newer tech. So that's coming. And will happen. So this idea of yours may have legs. If it meshes well with their redone forums plans when the time comes. So keep pushing for it? Maybe?
Why fix what's not broken?
R.I.P. Leonard Nimoy
Half the ship build threads are located in the Builds, Powers, and Game Mechanics, the other half in the respecive shipyards. Most of the sub forums in the 'feedback' section lack any semblance of developer interaction or seem to be treated as feedback.
The forums currently lack focus. Trying to find valuable information requires either the use of bookmarks or become the proverbial needle in a haystack.
I know a thread detailing the formulas behind turning rates and passive shield regen exist. I created them. No clue where they are anymore.
Many posts asking questions tend to devolve into debates or go unanswered. Threads with valuable feedback become bloated with off topic conversations rapidly loosing direction.
I just find the entire thing to be a bit, unorganized lately. Might just be me though. A fix could also make it worse I guess.
Well that's more to do with how people use the forums, not how they are structured.
R.I.P. Leonard Nimoy
I know that the issue of finding answers to questions is a bit of an issue, and there are ideas being talked about on how to fix that
Other than that, I agree while the idea of restructuring is a good one if the community won't follow the structure it's kinda pointless.
The one thing I'd do personally is put all the bugs into one section but that's just me :P
Former Community Moderator, Former SSR DJ, Now Full time father to two kids, Husband, Retail Worker.
Tiktok: @Askray Facebook: Askray113
having our bug reports displayed with their status (wip/not started/fixed) would put a lot of us at ease...me especially. I have problems with the game that cause the game to not work properly, its been this way for a long time, some bugs have followed me since i first started playing
Having run several different forums, past and present, for several different topics and of various size communities, what you are asking for is a structural and administrative solution to a fundamentally user generated problem.
One of the fundamental and most common problems that ANY forum owner/operator will face is users posting things in the wrong sub-forum/section no matter how well organized the forum is. There is absolutely no way in hell for any Owner, Admin, Mod or Operator, to fix this. If a user posts in the wrong section, he/she posts in the wrong section.
Now this is why you hire either paid or volunteer Admins and Moderators, not only to make sure your ToS is observed, but to move topics to their proper areas, direct people that need help etc, etc.
The problem you run up against quickly though is one of scale. The larger and more active the community, the harder it becomes to "police" it. There are only so many Admins/Mods you can "hire", since each has to play out of the same playbook,... the goal is for consistency.
In short, you are asking for a technological or organizational solution to a problem that originates with the users and is really, fundamentally unsolvable.
The ONLY solution to this problem, is that users take the time to read, search and exhibit some common sense,... I really would not advise you to hold your breath waiting for that to happen though.
"There... are... four... lights!" ~Jean Luc Picard
I preferably use "Today's Post" myself, no troubles concerning structures and a perfect view about what's important at the moment.
Smirk started doing the known issues master index, and we're trying to keep it up to date with what the dev's report. It's a slow, manual process sadly atm, but we're trying
Former Community Moderator, Former SSR DJ, Now Full time father to two kids, Husband, Retail Worker.
Tiktok: @Askray Facebook: Askray113
(Off topic)
Askray, can I create another thread that is devoted to asking you questions? :P
I'm sorry to people who I, in the past, insulted, annoyed, etc.
Why cant I see my last posts and if I can I have to login to Arcgames to do so? How on earth are we supposed to track our posts?
I see the redness in my eyes is gone now so maybe I have more forum abilities I am unware of - I certainly wont be using Arc website to have to login TWICE to search my posts.
Hawkeyez
i have an idea for tracking your posts, i can assign one redshirt cat from the Kittyprize for each post, each will have their number, then just call out the number of the post u wanna find and look for the paw to raise
Honestly that is one feature I have in virtually every other forum I operate/visit. In my user control panel, there is a link to show all of my own posts, but there doesn't seem to be that function in STO's forum software. I really really miss that feature.
"There... are... four... lights!" ~Jean Luc Picard
Search yourself...it's what I do the following day to see if there have been any additional replies to something that I have replied to...
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/search.php
Enter your username for username.
Show results as posts.
Search...