Making a Forum that Makes More Sense

Comfed

Former 18-year chairman of the Federal Reserve
Citizen
Pronouns
he/him
This forum has a quadzillion top-level forums. It’s confusing to navigate and contains some superfluous forums. I present some suggestions to make it better:
  • Merge Games and Arts and Entertainment to create a forum called “Games and Arts” and put it under Republic Square
  • Put “Citizenship and Foreign Relations” under “Newcomers Hall” and rename it “Citizenship”. Move “Office of Foreign Diplomats” to be under “17 Dove’s Swoop Lane”.
  • Put “Employment Central” under “Newcomers Hall”.
  • Make the category “Ever-Expanding Bureaucracy” a subforum under “Armhelm Captiol District”. Maybe change the name to something more inspiring like “Government Square”.
  • Make the category “District of Regional Enlightenment” a forum under “Palace of the People”.
  • Move “r3naissanc3r Administrative Bureau” to “Europeian Centre”, only because most people don’t look at a government category for the admin forum.
These are merely suggestions :)
 
I am more than open to these changes if people want them! I will say, your vision here is much more amendable to things being nestled into subforums than we are traditionally, but change can be good! My initial thoughts are below in blue.
  • Merge Games and Arts and Entertainment to create a forum called “Games and Arts” and put it under Republic Square. This would leave individual roleplays and A&E VERY deep into the subfourms -- to an extent that I think it would be more confusing than having an extra main page forum. I am fine with moving games because there aren't any real subforums of value.
  • Put “Citizenship and Foreign Relations” under “Newcomers Hall” and rename it “Citizenship”. Move “Office of Foreign Diplomats” to be under “17 Dove’s Swoop Lane”. I tend to disagree here. I think the place to apply for citizenship should be on the main page and not a subforum.
  • Put “Employment Central” under “Newcomers Hall”. I think if there is a strategy here to have employment center be an active hub for connecting Europeians to jobs in the region it deserves main page status. If it's just an inactive resources place, then maybe we can demote it.
  • Make the category “Ever-Expanding Bureaucracy” a subforum under “Armhelm Captiol District”. Maybe change the name to something more inspiring like “Government Square”. We had Ministries as subforums once upon a time, but folks thought that meant the machinery of our government was hidden away. Some people right now are upset they are at the bottom of the forum (and maybe they are right?!). Given how many people surf the forum using the active topics list and/or discord pings, I'm open this personally but I know others might not be.
  • Make the category “District of Regional Enlightenment” a forum under “Palace of the People”. Ooooo I don't like this one at all. Individual papers and resources get totally buried.
  • Move “r3naissanc3r Administrative Bureau” to “Europeian Centre”, only because most people don’t look at a government category for the admin forum. I'm fine with this if people think it's better!
 
Thanks for your suggestions! I think you make very good points.
 
I hope other people come with other ideas too!!! I think the forum CAN be better, but there's just not a lot of universally-agreed ways to do it. Maybe we can find some?
 
Some people right now are upset they are at the bottom of the forum (and maybe they are right?!).
I have more thoughts, but I just wanted to say I've been complaining about this particularly on-and-off ever since all of the government subforums were moved to the bottom of the page. I understood the rationale at the time - honestly I don't remember who did it, if it was a large admin decision or just done by one of us - but I truly think that this is something that greatly contributes to the scales being tipped towards "social players" instead of "political players." If those that don't use the forums with "new threads" or whatever it's called are forced to scroll past all our government forums, perhaps they'll actually visit them.
 
It took me a while to navigate the forum properly but it's worth relearning if it becomes more intuitive I guess
 
I tend to agree with HEM on all. I think there's a point to be made about doing something about archives too. For starters, I don't always realise they're in the Pine-Euro library at all so it would be great to have "Darcness regional archive" on the main page under the library
 
I tend to agree with HEM on all. I think there's a point to be made about doing something about archives too. For starters, I don't always realise they're in the Pine-Euro library at all so it would be great to have "Darcness regional archive" on the main page under the library
I have also found this odd. I found the archives by accident :p
 
I tend to agree with HEM on all. I think there's a point to be made about doing something about archives too. For starters, I don't always realise they're in the Pine-Euro library at all so it would be great to have "Darcness regional archive" on the main page under the library
I think another thing we need to keep in mind is that one of the reasons we've talked about reorganizing our forums - or actually reorganized them - over the years is because of the perception that our main page is too long/too busy. I'm not sure we should be making it longer.
 
I tend to agree with HEM on all. I think there's a point to be made about doing something about archives too. For starters, I don't always realise they're in the Pine-Euro library at all so it would be great to have "Darcness regional archive" on the main page under the library
I think another thing we need to keep in mind is that one of the reasons we've talked about reorganizing our forums - or actually reorganized them - over the years is because of the perception that our main page is too long/too busy. I'm not sure we should be making it longer.
This. While I don't agree with that perception (Ctrl+F isn't that hard to use, kids), we've gotten a lot of feedback over the years that there's too much there. That said, I think the Pine-Euro Library itself is primarily archive-worthy material, with the obvious exception of the Law Index and the class sessions. The Class sessions should be put somewhere adjacent to our Newcomer's handbook, the Law Index likely removed to off-index (our drop-downs provide perfectly acceptable browsing of our laws), and the rest of the Library moved into the Archives.

Given how many people surf the forum using the active topics list and/or discord pings
Do we actually have stats on this, or are they (the vast numbers who use Newest Posts rather than browsing the index) just more vocal? Independent of that, however, I wonder if perhaps it makes more sense to increase, rather than decrease, the number of visible front-page forums. Those who browse will have more information at their fingertips, and those who don't browse really have no skin in the game anyway.

Put “Employment Central” under “Newcomers Hall”. I think if there is a strategy here to have employment center be an active hub for connecting Europeians to jobs in the region it deserves main page status. If it's just an inactive resources place, then maybe we can demote it.
This is the one that really stuck out for me. Is there content here that is grabbing new citizens, or are we just pointing people to this place because it's where the employment threads happen to be? Employment Central is given a prominent position in the hopes that it drives engagement, but as HEM points out, we (as Admins) don't know if it's working.
Move “r3naissanc3r Administrative Bureau” to “Europeian Centre”, only because most people don’t look at a government category for the admin forum. I'm fine with this if people think it's better!
Agree with this one also. The Admin Bureau is also one of the few places where people with login/account problems can go for help, so making it easily accessible should be a goal. Moving it out of a Governmental category will also be a subconcious reminder of the separation of Administration and Government.
 
Definitely agree with the movement of the admin bureau.
We could perhaps put Games in A&E?
 
Overpacking the forums is the worst idea we could do. Is our long front page actually an issue? It seems too short as it is
 
Overpacking the forums is the worst idea we could do. Is our long front page actually an issue? It seems too short as it is
I think that reducing the front page or at least rearranging it so that things like the ministries aren't at the bottom helps make it more intuitive. If we make the front page smaller it would make the forums less daunting, at least to me. I know I was pretty scared of the huge forums and categories everywhere in the beginning, had no idea where to look for the things I wanted!!
 
Overpacking the forums is the worst idea we could do. Is our long front page actually an issue? It seems too short as it is
I think that reducing the front page or at least rearranging it so that things like the ministries aren't at the bottom helps make it more intuitive. If we make the front page smaller it would make the forums less daunting, at least to me. I know I was pretty scared of the huge forums and categories everywhere in the beginning, had no idea where to look for the things I wanted!!
Are we just working on this assumption based on nothing but anecdotal evidence? I really don't think the length of the main page is as much of a concern as we make it, specifically because of what Darc said above.

EDIT: I suppose the point I'm driving towards is how much do we gain from making the boards theoretically more appealing to newcomers versus what we lose in engagement and player retention/keeping people politically engaged on the forums?
 
Overpacking the forums is the worst idea we could do. Is our long front page actually an issue? It seems too short as it is
I think that reducing the front page or at least rearranging it so that things like the ministries aren't at the bottom helps make it more intuitive. If we make the front page smaller it would make the forums less daunting, at least to me. I know I was pretty scared of the huge forums and categories everywhere in the beginning, had no idea where to look for the things I wanted!!
Are we just working on this assumption based on nothing but anecdotal evidence? I really don't think the length of the main page is as much of a concern as we make it, specifically because of what Darc said above.

EDIT: I suppose the point I'm driving towards is how much do we gain from making the boards theoretically more appealing to newcomers versus what we lose in engagement and player retention/keeping people politically engaged on the forums?
I agree, I think that the way the forums are organized right now are alright, but things like the admin bureau being moved out of the government areas are things that I wholeheartedly agree with. Everything else is really a meh from me, I guess try it and see if it works. Strike a balance between ease of use and proper organization, but I think increasing the length of our front page is the wrong way to go.
 
Reorganizing the layout would be good (for instance, I'd love to see Republic Square, etc down at the bottom) but I don't think we need to be stuffing forums inside forums.
 
I would disagree with moving forums under other forums. It makes things harder to find (you have to click through superforums as opposed to just seeing it). I especially wouldn't want to hide forums that help newcomers get involved. I also don't think any harm is done by having more home page forums.
 
Perhaps Republic Square, Arts & Entertainment, and Games and be moved to their own separate category at the bottom of the front page?

Another idea - put Political Parties and Societies under Grand Hall. It's not being used all that much anyway.

Perhaps the rest of the District of Regional Enlightenment can be put into Europeian Centre, where Republic Square etc. is now. That would save some space and fits pretty neatly into that category, I think.
 
Bumping this because I think it's a worthy discussion and one that we need to have again!
 
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