Forum Structure Revision

[Sopo]

With the advent of Discord, people are often directed to important threads and updates via ping. Our new forums have a more dynamic system of alerts and active topics. Folks have often complained that our current forum structure and/or naming conventions are not intuitive, and now seems like the perfect time to make revisions.

I have a few ideas to kick things off, but I'd like to hear your ideas as well.

1) Move all ministries barring the Navy under one main-page parent forum that would hold all applications.
2) Move the ERN HQ under the Octagon, possibly moving Navy sign-ups to the Octagon.
3) Move all political parties and societies under one parent forum with a stickied link to the party/society application and perhaps also party membership applications.
4) Move the Republic Square to the Europeian Station. Delete the Cultural Hub and move subforums (after pruning unused ones) under the Republic Square.
5) Rename the Red Light District to a name appropriate for housing only the EBC and Letho-Monarchy Media Center (maybe also the new Parties/Societies main forum)
6) Combine the Office of Diplomatic and Foreign Relations into 17 Dove's Swoop Lane (embassy forum), potentially with a more practical name.
7) Consolidation of university and pine-euro library (archives) with potential renaming to better clarify their purposes.

This would be a dramatic reduction of our main-page forums and hopefully clarify/simplify where things are. This is NOT set in stone (the other admins have not signed off).

Let me know what you think of these and what other improvements we could make.

 

[Prim]

Could you elaborate on #1 -- how would this change affect Ministry hidden subforums?

I'm tacitly in support on the rest.

 

[Sopo]

Could you elaborate on #1 -- how would this change affect Ministry hidden subforums?

I'm tacitly in support on the rest.

No change, it would just push them down a level. Main ministry forum -> current ministry forums -> current ministry subforums

 

[Salem]

I would be perfectly chill if all the Navy stuff was all thrown into one subforum. Having three areas for the ERN gets confusing on where stuff got put!

 

[Prim]

No change, it would just push them down a level. Main ministry forum -> current ministry forums -> current ministry subforums

Seems fine by me --

 

[HEM]

I like all of this. I also think we should rename the "Letho-Monarchy Media Center" to be less confusing.

 

[Sopo]

I like all of this. I also think we should rename the "Letho-Monarchy Media Center" to be less confusing.

Maybe just the Lethen Private Media Center? If we want it to be named after Lethen.

 

[Drecq]

Meh. I dont care. This doesnt affect me in the slightest.

 

[Le Libertie]

I support all the changes, especially the ones in the Cultural Hub and Republic Square. Those places are a mess, with some parts being extremely active and others basically silent.

 

[Izzy]

How is #3 going to work when the ECP has multiple subfora?

 

[Sopo]

How is #3 going to work when the ECP has multiple subfora?

They'll still be there. they'll just be subfora of a subforum of a main forum rather than subfora of a main forum.

 

[Darcness]

Ministries should be front-and-center. The fact that their primary activity is from Discord pings rather than citizens regularly browsing them is a problem, not something that should be catered to.

 

[HEM]

Ministries should be front-and-center. The fact that their primary activity is from Discord pings rather than citizens regularly browsing them is a problem, not something that should be catered to.

I'll be honest, I'm torn. My sense is that the way things are structured is inefficient. Our forums are still essentially following a very 2006 LKE model, that I think might be outdated (start with introduction forums, then work your way down the government hierarchy and then social forums).

I also think people are using the active topics list, and so this becomes more about what first impression are we giving new members and less about actually projecting what our priorities are.

 

[Darcness]

I'll be honest, I'm torn. My sense is that the way things are structured is inefficient. Our forums are still essentially following a very 2006 LKE model, that I think might be outdated (start with introduction forums, then work your way down the government hierarchy and then social forums).

I also think people are using the active topics list, and so this becomes more about what first impression are we giving new members and less about actually projecting what our priorities are.

I think most of the rest of the ideas are fine, it's just #1 that I dislike.

 

[SkyGreen]

I fully support this because it's unusually hard to navigate these forums if you're new, especially since the naming convention is kind of off-putting.
However, even as a new user I see Darcness' point. Ministries should stay main page, even with active topic lists.

 

[Kari]

The Office of Naval Recruitment as it is totally our of place in Europeian station as such it and the IJCC should also be moved within the Octagon as this would focus all of the Military functions of the region. The IJCC is at present also listed under a section dedicated to "Cabinet Offices and Embassies", of which it is neither. The Office of Diplomats and Foreign Relations should be placed in 17 Dove's Swoop Lane, as it has always been misplaced in Euro. Station as it has no relation to the rest of the functions of Euro Station. The ODFR should probably be renamed to something that is less of a mouthful and 17 Dove should be renamed to something that actually indicates its function.

The Regional Service Center should be moved to within Min. Interior.

The Europeian Broadcasting Corporation should be moved into a renamed LethoMonarchy Media Center and made the top listed sub-forum, this would consolidate all of the region's print media in one location.

The Pine-Euro Regional Library and Archives should be moved to within the University, which in turn should become a part of the Red Light District.

The proposed Parties and Societies sub-fora would also be best placed in the RLD as it does not really fit within the Media Center as has been suggested.

The Cultural Hub should be cleaned up (drastically) and it, or the remaining sub-fora depending on the number of them, placed within Republic Square.

I think these actions along with a general clearing up of the dead sub-fora, particularly Embassies, Publications and the multitude of dead fora within the culture hub, would have a pretty big effect for clearing up the main page of the forum. Given how the new Xenforo forum works these changes should not actually effect any already fixed links.

 

[Johnny Costello]

yes please help my OCD young sloth.

 

[Lethen]

Is this really that much of a problem...?

 

[Prim]

We've had two of our most recent newcomers both state that they have had issues with the layout of the forum and finding things. Seems to be at least a bit of a problem.

 

[SkyGreen]

Plus it's obvious that the layout was optimized for zetaboards not xenforo, with xenforo providing a different enviroment it seems like a good time to reorganize the forums.